changing my formation

I have always used a 4-3-3 formation in top eleven apart from my first 2 seasons when i used a 4-3-2-1. It has always served me well, up until the last 3 seasons. I'm thinking of changing it to a 4-2-2-2 or a 4-2-3-1 formation. I've always used the following orders, which i'm going to keep the same, Team Mentality: Attacking, Focus Passing: Mixed, Pressing style: Whole Pitch, Tackling style: Normal, Passing style: Mixed, Marking Style: Zonal. But i'm thinking of changing to a 4-2-2-2 hexagon formation or a 4-2-3-1 with 2 midfielders, 3 attacking midfielders and one striker. Which formation out of those two is the best?

You cannot use one particular formation to counter all the attacks. You need to be flexible in changing the formation to counter particular attack.

For ex 41212 ND can be countered by 451 v or 352v

Also study the table of counter formation for future use.

http://forum.topeleven.com/formation...ation-use.html

Also, when playing with attacking mentality, pressing whole pitch always go with hard tackling because with normal tackling while pressing whole pitch the opposition have more chances to win the ball and counterattack . This work good for me.

Best of luck!

Have a stable foundation you build a formation around. For me I use 4-5-1 v style mostly, but my strength is my wingers. So I am able to change formations to a 4-2-2-2 hex or 3-5-2 v style to counter opponents. In this way I don't change all my players positions to counter, only a few.

4-2-3-1 (using MC-MC, AML-AMC-AMR) is easily beaten by 3-5V-2, but not much else.
4-3-2W-1 is easily beaten by 4-1-2W-1-2 (wide diamond) and a few other formations depending on tactics/arrows.
4-2-2-2 is versatile, but isn't very defensive.

RJ suggested the 4-5V-1 because he uses that a lot. It's good because you get a lot of coverage every where and good attacking/defensive balance. I also use this formation and find it's very easy to change to almost any formation you want.

There is no cure-all formation, bank on one most of the time and change against teams that play a counter against you. So play a powerful formation for most games and if you see your opponent counters, play his counter. You cannot change to all the formations, even if all 21 players are triple position players, except 1 GK, you cannot play all the differing formations, trust me I've tried. Not possible! Remember you also need to have backups for every position you play.

I play 4-1-2-1 Narrow Diamond against most, but will play 3N-5-2 V, 3W-5-2 V and 4-5-1 V. Counter the counter!

I've decided I will stay with a 4-3-3 like i've used since season 3, I'm in my 16th season now. I've had very good success with a 4-3-3 formation, so i will continue with it. I realised the problem was i was using the same players too often over the last 3 seasons which was making their form drop, thus affecting my results, so i will rotate my squad more in future.

Bravo!