FM 2013 Tactics Review: Vodu’s 4-1-2-2-1

Welcome back to the weekly post in which we analyse FM 2013 Tactics that you can then download if the results of the test are to your liking. This time we take a look at a 4-1-2-2-1 tactic that was sent to us by Mantorras77, one of our readers. The tactic wasn’t created by him though, it was put toghether by Vodu, a FM fanatic that has a fan site in Portuguese. Before going into Vodu’s FM 2013 tactic review, let’s recap the testing procedure for those of you who don’t know all about it by now:

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 we noticed while testing Vodu’s FM 2013 tactic:

Formation

The formation is a tweaked 4-3-3, with a defensive midfielder behind two central midfiedlers, two wingers and a deep lying forward. The tactic employs a flat back four and seems to focus the attacks on the wings considering the roles and duties of the wingers and full backs.

Team Instructions

In fact, the wing focus becomes obvious when looking at the team instructions, passing is directed down the flanks while the tactic uses counter attacks and the offside trap. The tempo is slow, ideal for keeping possession, and the width is set to the narrowest possible. The strategies and playing style are left on default but the style of the tactic is entirely shaped by the individual player instructions, it’s clear that the author put a lot of work into those. There are specific instructions for each player, too many to go through them all, but they seem to be pretty well thought through.

Average Positions

The average positions show a compact outfit, in full control of the middle of the pitch through the three midfielders. The left back dropping a bit below the defensive line might seem strange but that was probably due to his tight marking instruction, so his position did depend on what his opponent on that flank was doing.

Defending

The defending side of this tactic was very impressive to say the least, you will be even more impressed when you’ll see the numbers. When defending against positional attacks the four defenders cover the area just above the penalty box while the three midfielder and the striker form a pressing punch that often manages to snuff out the attacks before they even reach the danger area. What impressed me is that the striker does contribute to the defensive effort into his own half while counter attacks are launched through the wings.

Attacking

Normally tactics that bring lots of men in defence don’t do too well in attack. Well, it’s not the case here. The two wingers are the ones who create most attacks with good support from the full backs while the two central midfielders also give a good hand (as you can see in the screen shot above Huddlestone ends up acting as a second striker behind Adebayor). The screen shows a typical attack with this tactic, the right winger has the ball, cuts inside a bit and serves a through ball to the striker who then scores. In some cases the wingers cross the ball to the back post where the winger on the opposite flank is ready to tuck it in.

The two central midfielders, even the one with defend duty, have some contribution in attack as well. All I’m going to say is that Livermore scored the goal of the month against Swansea, check it out.

Results

The results were very impressive to say the least: won the first five games with no goals conceded an nearly beat Manchester United as well. The striker got most of the goals while we also got some from corners and free kicks as well. And that wasn’t just a coincidence, the good possession that this tactic creates did give us plenty of corners and free kicks in the opposition half, we had 10+ corners in four of those six games.

Statistics

Goals scored: 13 (2.16 per game)

Goals conceded: 1 (0.16 per game)

Shots on target for: 8.16 per game

Shots on target against: 1.83 per game

Clear cut chances for: 1.66 per game

Clear cut chances against: 0.50 per game

Half chances for: 4.33 per game

Half chances against: 1 per game

Ball possession average: 56%

The numbers are are very impressive as well. Excellent possession, huge number of chances created on average (both half chances and clear cut), low number of chances against, plus a very good ratio of shots on target (the players will rarely shoot from distance, the work the ball around the area until a clear shot opportunity arises).

Check out our FM 13 Tactics Index to see how this tactic compares to the others we’ve tested up to this point.

+

Good results and stats.

Pretty close to total football, effective at both ends of the pitch.

The defence is rock-solid, even in case of counter attacks. The screen shot below shows a breakaway for the opponents but with no chance whatsoever of creating something dangerous as their spearhead is surrounded by five of our players!

—

Can struggle when the two wingers are marked tightly, that was the case in one match and we had a few problems creating dangerous attacks since most balls are directed to the flanks.

Suggested Tweaks

No tweaks, why change something that works so well? However, the beauty of this tactic is that almost everything is set up through the individual player instructions, so you can easily alter those to suit your players if needed.

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 we already have plenty of tactics on the waiting list (enough for two months). Here’s what’s coming up in the next four weeks:

1. Vinay

2. Deano

3. Paris

4. Ryan Daly