I read somehwere abount countering formation for top eleven as follow:

To win against this 4-4-2 classic formation and beat it you need to keep the midfield whilst being strong in attack, what I’d recommend is a 4-5-1 V formation with attacking arrows on the DMC to effectively turn him to a MC when you are attacking.

————-ST—————
AML———————AMR
———MC——-MC———
————-DMC (UP)———
DL—- —-DC–DC———DR

If you are losing add arrows to both sets of wingers to give you an extra edge.

Orders:
Mentality: Depends how many you want to win by, go for an attacking against weaker teams and vice verse for stronger.
Passing: Mixed
Pressing: Own half without offside trap, full pitch with fast defenders and offside trap.
The others do not really matter, just make sure your opponent has no AM when you do the offside or counter attack.

I use 4-5-1V against an opponent using 4-4-2 Classic but lose 0-4 even though I follow exactly as above. The only reason I can think of is my opponent is either token buying player or he's using cheat code because we are in Level 3 but his average quality is already 35 and most of his players are 5* players. (he must bought alot of scout players the season before. My average quality is only 21.) My league is a 1 team league because of this opponent. He is undefeated and scoring goals like mad 48 against 1.