Quote Originally Posted by Tactician View Post
Hahaha.

Jokes aside, I never lost to a 4-5-1(V) and 'never' lost to a 4-3N-3 (though I did lose one in testing accounts, but that does not count), even against stronger ones, but this is not really by chance. I even defeated a strong and very active 4-5-1(V) (not passive, that is not the one that would sit back and wait for counter-attacking opportunities, but attacking and pressing like Barcelona) 4-3 way back during the early weeks of the associations. For me, when I see an opponent with 4-5-1(V) or 4-3-3, it is like the win is almost in the bag. Sure, there are still some doubts at times, but those two formations are among the ones I mastered on how to beat them.

Nik (4-5-1(V)) and khris (4-3-3) never faced me, and khris (4-2-3W-1) never faced me. But if ever I had to face those 3, I would be more worry about the 4-2-3W-1 than the other two. I learned a bit how to deal with the 4-2-3W-1 too but lack practice against it. But, nowadays, in this game, it seems that formations do not matter much like before, and even quality on its own, unless you have large quality differences. Many formations can beat many other formations by other means other than the base positioning of players according to the formation used itself.

I would like to mention something though. It was Nik that showed me how to play with 4-5-1(V) in this game (I mean the defensive and counter-attacking style) when I was in L2. At that time, I did not have much knowledge of the game, and that little bit that Nik showed me did help me to win some things.
Tactican, the thing that makes the 4-5-1v difficult to play against is that there is an alternate tactical setup to it. I usually play it the same way Nik does, however in addition to the one Nik mentioned, there is an attacking V. It's setup with something like attacking/hard attacking, short passing (usually), high press, force counters on (I saw your post about the weird orders of force counters + attacking working in this game, and it seems to in the case of this tactic as well).. So when you setup against the "V" managers (especially if it's an opponent one isn't familiar with) are in the dark about figuring out the opponent, more so than they would be if they face other formations. If I know my opponent is playing 4-5-1v, defense + counters, i'm going to have a higher success rate, than if I'm in the dark. But this is the one formation (more so than others), that could be playing defense, normal or attacking. It's a very difficult read.