OK, I will make a bit of light here.

Do counter formation works? YES! Or that's what the developers told me.

The issue is from us because we don't know to much and is impossible for a manager to rule a proper test to see which formation works and most of the tutorials and guides, including mine, are made by managers with strong teams, over the general quality of our opponents so we just can suspect if something is good but that's not 100% sure.

But after many years, I meet few people and I decided to learn them a little more and to all I suggested to play with the same tactic and they won great trophies.

If somebody can do a proper test and prove me that X team can beat Y team, vs same quality on players head to head not just general quality, 8 times from 10, I buy him whatever he wants from shop.

To be honest the games have so many "factors" that in my opinion, not even the developers can do it.

But at the end, one thing is for sure, you clearly need less resources: money, tokens, boosters (maybe).