FM 2013 Tactics Review: Shubhayan’s Chelsea 4-3-3

FM 2013 Tactics time again, this week we’re taking a closer look to another tactic that was submitted by one of our readers, Shubhayan Sengupta. He says he created this 4-3-3 FM 13 tactic in an attempt to recreate Chelsea’s formation and he also says this tactic has brought him great success. But before going into the  actual tactic review, let’s recap the testing procedure:

We install the tactic and use it through pre-season plus six league matches with Spurs. Then we watch each match closely, see what happens and come up with the best review we’re capable of. We will also keep track of various statistics in order to be able to compare the essential numbers between this and other tactics that have been or will be analysed. It is more or less like a benchmarking tool for FM 2013 tactics.

Now let’s see what Shubhayan’s FM 2013 tactic.

Formation

As you can see the formation is quite similar to Chelsea’s real life formation, with a flat back four, two central midfielders and an attacking trio behind the poacher.  All the three attacking midfielders have advanced playmaker roles.

Team Instructions

The tactic uses very fluid style with an attacking strategy, direct passing and lots of pressing. The central attacking midfielder is set as playmaker and the striker is the designated target man.

Average Positions

The average positions screen shows something which is a bit worrying, and that is the rather big gap between the back four and the midfielders. Moreover, the left side centre back tends to take higher positions than the other three defenders, even more advanced than the full backs and that can be a problem as well. On the bright side, the five men upfront seem to create a good attacking force.

Defending

The tactic uses a very high defensive line and lot of pressing, as illustrated by the screen shot above. The opponents are trying to play a direct ball forward while our MC is trying to close down along with the AMR and the centre back is ready to rush out and intercept the pass (which is what happened in the situation described above). However, you can see the gap between defence and midfield I was talking about earlier, there is an opponent lurking totally unmarked between the lines and that generally is a dangerous situation.

Attacking

Things change when the team moves forward, the attacking force is tremendous and the team puts the opponents under a great deal of pressure in most games. The two central midfielders move forward quite often and the opposition defence is placed with the back against the wall in most situation. The screen shot above shows the left side central midfielder with the ball at his feet at the edge of the area with two great options to pass though, either to the AML or to the AMC inside the penalty area. Similar situations happened in most games while testing, creating lots of chances to score.

A good example of what the central midfielders can do in attack is a nice goal scored by Huddlestone against Swansea:

Results

Unfortunately the results were not that good, we haven’t managed to win a single game but, on the other hand, only lost one to a vastly superior Man United. It was a matter of incredible bad luck though, combined with some poor defending. Take the game against West Ham for instance: we were leading 2-1 in stoppage time but West Ham converted a controversial penalty while we had struck the woodwork no less than 4 times before that! Wigan also equalised in stoppage time on their only shot on target in that match. At Sunderland we missed a penalty and hit the woodwork twice, which we did again against Aston Villa.

Statistics

Goals scored: 6 (1 per game)

Goals conceded: 9 (1.5 per game)

Shots on target for: 6.83 per game

Shots on target against: 3.5 per game

Clear cut chances for: 1.33 per game

Clear cut chances against: 1.16 per game

Half chances for: 4.33 per game

Half chances against: 1 per game

Ball possession average: 53.83%

The numbers show that this tactic creates good ball possession and a good number of chances. Not converting those chances into goals was mostly due to bad luck but the same can not be said about the defence. There are some serious flaws in there as far as I can tell and that gave the opponents quite a few opportunities to punish us. If you are interested in comparing the various tactics we have tested you can do that in the new FM 13 Tactics Index page, there’s a sortable table in there that I’m sure you will enjoy.

+

Good possession.

Good number of chances created.

Quite a few moments of flowing football created, thanks to the four men upfront. The screen shot below shows how effective the central attacking midfielder can be, while the MCs also push forward to create options for the ball carrier.

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Poor results.

Lots of goals conceded.

The two centre backs form a rather vulnerable pair, on one side because they don’t get much support from the midfielders and on the other hand because they are instructed to press, which can generate situations like the one shown in the screen shot below. The right side centre back rushes out of the line to press the man with the ball, leaving a big area behind him to be exploited by the opposition striker. Which he did and scored.

Suggested Tweaks

Defender mentalities and pressing should be changed, having one of the centre backs with more attacking mentality than the left backs is not a good idea at all.

At least one of the two central midfielders should be set to more defensive mentality, the gap between defence and midfield is far too big.

In fact, I would go and read Darren’s FM 13 tactics guide, this tactic pretty much does the opposite of what he said in there (player instructions are altered severely in some cases while Darren advised keeping those more or less in line with the default settings for each role).

FM 2013 Tactic Download

Download this FM 2013 tactic by clicking on the image below:

After downloading the tactic follow these simple steps to install it in FM 2013:

1. Put the downloaded file into this folder: Documents>Sports Interactive>Football Manager 2013>tactics

2. Start your game and go to your team’s tactics screen.

3. Click on the little arrow located to the right of your starting tactic name, move your mouse cursor over “archived tactics” and select this tactic from the menu.

I hope you enjoyed this review and I’m looking forward to your comments. We won’t be taking any more entries from you at this point because the waiting list has gotten a bit long. Here’s how it looks at the moment:

1. Poobington

2. Kevin

3. Jayshamji

4. Carver07

5. Igor

6. DavidNRAdamson

7. Torgnyson

8. Ryan Daly

9. Aleksandar Kiselinov

10. Bigmac

11. Vinay

12. Mantorras77

13. Paris