Help with 4-2-3-1 formation

[Adam T. Brown]

My formation is as follows

Dr (red) dc dc dl (red)
Dmc (red) dmc (red)
Amr (blue) amc (blue) aml (blue)
St

Attacking
Short passing
Whole pitch
Zonal

I was shooting for a chelsea-like attacking formation, just want some thoughts on if I should change any orders or arrows

So as you'll quickly see below, I have a little extra time tonight to ramble...and in the grand scheme of things I'm a newbie compared to many of the contributors...you've been warned that we might all be dumber and have wasted valuable time after reading this hot mess of a response from me... :P

And spoiler alert: I currently LOVE this formation and I wanted to share about it too. I was originally going to post this in the 4-4-2 counter discussion because of how I start off but I like it better here because of the mention of the 4-2 dmc-3w AM's -1 which is where this ultimately ends up.

Anyways, I'm at level 5 at this point and have been dominating all the way through. I don't spend personal money on the game, not because I don't want to support the game, but because I'm not yet able to. But I plan on doing so down the road, mostly so I can say thank you by doing it. Until whenever that day might arrive for me, I farm whenever I can and until the game forces me to stop. So my MC's have DMC and/or AMC eligibility, and my wings all have M/AM/ST eligibility on their preferred side of the field. DC's are R/L/C and wing D's are D/DM on their preferred side plus DC. ST's have One on One, AM's have long shooting (shadow), Mid-wings have dribbling, MC's and DMC's have playmaking, wing D's have wall and central D's have aerial. This gives me full flexibility that many others may not be able to achieve so keep this in mind if you're more casual and trying to translate any experience you read in the forums to your situation. I strongly sympathize with those that can't spend AND those that have more important responsibilities that limit the time able to be spent on farming. I still have a TON to learn but I do know that manager smarts outweighs any of the fancy bells and whistles that spenders and farmers put on their roster. It just happens to be that, in my experience, the extra investment in the game by spending or farming or both will often times push the manager to also invest more work and energy in to developing the manager smarts as well than one otherwise may have invested.

My main base formation had been the 4-1-4-1 since I first started playing the game, which was often deployed as a 4-5-1v either through arrow use or actual player placement. Against the quality of opponents I had been facing, it was a strong counter to many of the styles deployed. Opposition was more aggressive, experimental; overall, a little more reckless than I'm seeing currently. With man marking, I could absolutely have my way with weaker opponents, especially the over aggressive ones. When I started playing teams 3 and 4 levels higher than my own level, the difference in quality really started to show in the Cup during my level 4 season and the styles in all competitions started to get more patient providing fewer counter attacking opportunities. Margins of victory QUICKLY became too tight for my taste and I started to work on a new base formation to use against these opponents (while still also deploying the 4-1-4-1 when it better fit).

I gravitated to the 4-1-2-1-2 ND towards the end of my level 4 season, which is basically a more conservative 4-3-3, and all of it's variations. I've found that the 4-3N-1-2 was extremely successful against level four quality opponents in 4-4-2's (which might not be the case against higher level opponents--I have no first hand knowledge of level 10 quality or higher--but I would think this forum info is being digested mainly by lower level quality managers and is being provided by those in the double digits or higher).

Not being one to sit on my hands, with the success of a second base formation, I wanted to try to find ways to combine the 4-1-4-1 with the 4-3-3 during this first week of my level five season. The result has been this 4-2 DMC - 3W AM's - 1 that you're asking about. The two DMC's and the AMC can be deployed as the 3 MC's in the 4-3-3 and the two wide AM's with the lone ST can be deployed as the 3 ST's in the 4-3-3. It's so easy to make it work like a 4-4-2, 4-5-1v, etc. It's so flexible.

So I guess my point is that in my mind for my roster make up, level of quality, and opponents level of quality that I currently find myself in, there are no particular instructions that should be used for this hybrid formation. And yet, it still has become my preferred (though not exclusive) and highly successful formation at my current opponent quality level across all competitions. Instead, for me, it all depends on whether I need to use a base counter formation against a stronger opponent rather than the hybrid or if I want to use the hybrid formation to disguise the base counter formation that I'm trying to execute against my opponent. This way I'm changing my formation each game without actually changing it on the surface.

For example, if I want to deploy a 4-1-4-1 vs a 4-3-3 and the 4-3-3 is also high quality AND over aggressive without being reckless (because they can be at a higher quality), I would actually use a variation of the 4-1-4-1 base to better defend and squeek out a win. This mainly happens during Cup play and RARELY happens in league and champion league play.

But, continuing the hypothetical, if I want to deploy a 4-1-4-1 against a COMPETITIVE 4-3-3 opponent that was one of three other types (which is the type I face more often than not at my current level): close to equal quality or weaker quality or stronger quality yet wasn't going to be at the match/minimal managerial adjustment, then I will deploy the 4-2 DMC-3w AM-1 and manipulate the style to mimic the intentions of the 4-1-4-1 base I would have deployed against a much stronger opponent. This way, I'm not only properly countering my opponent but I'm also causing them to freak out about a seemingly non-conventional formation that they don't realize is actually being played as a different counter formation each game. The in game freaking out part is an added bonus while they experiment with instructions to try to figure out how the heck this is all playing out. This formation disguising fun of mine might come to a quick end with the game shifting soon from the current text based highlights to the visual display of the game action. I would hope the visualization would unmask my arrows/instructions that are shifting my formation.

So I rambled, my laptop battery got low, my eyes started to burn...ugh, sorry! I'm too committed to the reply to just delete it but I don't have the endurance to go back and make sure what I wrote was at all coherent. Sincere apologies. I hope that I at least made someone think for a little bit (and hopefully not in the "what the hell is he talking about?" type of thinking) more so than I beat up the readers brain with the rambling. And please keep in mind that I don't expect this type of trickery to work at higher quality or to even work once game visualization has arrived.

Regardless, when next season starts, I know that I'll again remind myself that I'm a newbie and know nothing and I'll again adjust and try to find a new tactical approach to winning like I have done at the start of each of the past five seasons. And that, as I try my damnedest to exit stage left, is just one last way for me to cop out to the original question about preferred instructions for this formation: no formation dictates the instructions, rather, a million other factors better dictate what those instructions should be.