4-4-2 Orders

[Lars]

What are the best 4-4-2 classic orders, in your opinion?

[Dennis Janosch]

I wonder about this too. Of course it depends on the opponent, as there is no perfect orders for any case. But is there anything really proven right? I really don´t like how anything in T11 is just guessing. One tells you to play this way, another tells you the opposite. It always just depends on perception, on how he personally was succesful in his own case of matchups. As soon as three players agree on a thing a patch changes everything. You can´t really track statistics to see what works well as every match has a different opponent with a different formation. And even when doing friendlies for testing you always see a different performance. I wonder what we really know for sure.

Towards your question:
I tend to play offensive as my opponents are usually weaker. Sometimes a normal playstyle even seems to get me more goals, but it may have been a matter of the opponents orders or just luck. In general, offensive against weaker seems to get me more goals (not really suprising). The default orders are giving me good results, but that may be due to team strength. I go easy on orders and only use them when I think they´re useful. The obvious stuff. If the opponent goes for the middle and exposes his flanks I go "down both flanks", and vice versa. If the opponent has no DL/DR I put red arrows on ML/MR. If the opponent has no Wingers I put red arrows on DL/DR to bring weight to the midfield. If my players are way better in defensive stats than the opponents offensive stats I go for whole pitch pressing to force mistakes. Still I can´t tell for sure if it helps, only know they are tired faster. I have tested a lot. Tried to always field the counter-formation on every single opponent. I analysed opponents down to single players stats, reviewed his last ten matches to see what formations he did good or bad against. Just to see a standard 4-4-2 with default settings gave me better results. Again, I wonder what is really known.

[Lars]

Thank you for your answer, appreciated! I posted this thread as I'm not so sure if I'm doing good with my tactics. I played 3 matches (2 friendlies) against 4-4-2 with my team, which is also 4-4-2. I lost 2 of them against equal teams and tied against a team with 40 average (Mine is 47).. I also noticed that my players score 6's and 5's.. I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong here..
my orders: 4 red arrows, ML,MR,DL,DR. Attacking, down both flanks, own half, normal, mixed, zonal. No force counter attacks and no offside trap. Any tips?

[Dennis Janosch]

Sounds good but I would only go for the flanks if they are really exposed. Usually the middle is a bunker anyway in that case. Otherwise I would just go for mixed passing prior to flanks. Gives you more possibilities and doesn´t exclude the flanking. It just doesn´t exclude the middle either. Worked good for me. As mentioned above, I only put arrows on players if it´s really worth the extra miles to run. But all this is only guessing, not knowledge.

[Lars]

Alright, thank you! Do you know when to choose for short passing, mixed passing and long passing? And when to choose for force counter attacks or playing the offside trap? The pro's and cons aren't clear to me with these two

[Dennis Janosch]

I wish I knew. Personally, I use counter attack only when playing defensive. Which happens maybe one time per season. I try to imagine what makes sense. But in the end, this is a game engine that runs on mathematical calculations, not on sense. Offside trap might work like: -10% chance to create a goal chance, but when creating one +5% to score from it. If I programmed it. As I did not, it might work like whatever. Sorry, I really don´t know.

[Lars]

Do you know if it's true that every formation needs different orders? I used to play 4-5-1 v-style against 4-4-2 as I heard it was a ''counter formation'', I always lost..

[Dennis Janosch]

V-Style was, but is no longer a counter formation for 4-4-2. So far I read from others. I´ve read a lot. Wanted to improve myself in the tactics part. I´m eager to learn. I wish there was a better feedback from the game. You can look at perfomance and statistics and try to read from it. If I only had 2 goal chances but both were successful it might have been no good tactic even if I won 2:0. It´s been just luck or individual player strength. Sorry I really don´t know much for sure. Maybe some of the veterans may help out here?

[Lars]

I know how you feel, eager to learn but nothing makes sense Became second last year because I drew a team that was waaaay worse than me with 5-5.... Weird things happen in this game =]

[Dennis Janosch]

I´m unbeaten for 65 league matches right now. I tied a match against a team 10 levels weaker which was my only draw in that period. And it´s good that way. I neither expect, nor want any team to win every single match because they are better. Everybody should lose against weaker teams sometimes. It hurts when it´s an elimination match, but it´s still good that way. So far the game mechanics work excellent. But I wish there was more feedback to learn from. I´m only season 5 and I know competition will get stronger with higher levels. I want to learn before that happens.