My DMC is my sweeper and I rarely use three DCs. If I play with 3 D, I usually have them wide. I don't consider 3W + DMC inappropriate even against AMC + 2ST. I am worried about being outflanked by DL/DR with forward arrows.

Today I played against a formation so ridiculous I had a hard time countering it.

4-2W(DMR/DML)-1-1-2

I wanted to see how it worked out for him in the past, but in his first match he had an asymmetrical formation and got beaten 2:3, so that was no help.

I countered with 3W-1-3N-1-2, short, down middle, attacking, thinking I could just ram it through. Up arrows on DL, DR, one ST, AMC, down arrow on the other ST. I had a substantial Q advantage as well.

Well, nothing worked for 65 minutes. Possession was 62/38 me and I got complimented by the ass man on passing working out. But most live episodes that were shown was him attacking and my D just barely coping.

I noticed that my AMC was struggling. He is a low 4*, a holdover of a misguided attempt two season ago to acquire fast trainers, and should really be more of a mascot at this point. But he is the only AMC on the team, so he gets starts. Long story short, I swapped him for a star AMR and swapped the middle MC for an AML, ending up with 3W-1-2-2W-2, a hexagon variant I guess, changing focus passing to mixed. At 75' and 0:0 I cranked it up to hard attacking and was finally able to generate a goal. My DL (with an up arrow) scored from an MC. I dialed down to normal and scored another: ST from AMR.

In the end I feel I got lucky and basically pulled it out on Q differential, because my initial formation and orders were a miss and wasn't it said that you can't really affect the outcome by making changes during? It looked like I turned the match around, but it was too close for comfort.