4-3-3-0 Strikerless

4-3-3-0

Recently I have been following a superb twitter account and blog by the name of Strikerless – ran by @merryguido. He is very much fan of strikerless formations while setting his teams up in FM. The match engine in Football Manager has always intrigued me so I decided to have a go at creating my own strikerless formations. As with the majority of tactical discussions I attempt to generate here – the team I use while creating my style is Newcastle – a team close to my heart and one I know very well, which can only assist me.

First of all my transfers, I sold Papiss Cisse for 7m, Cheik Tiote for 14m and Davide Santon for 15m, Yoann Gouffran for 5m, Steven Taylor for 5m and Mike Williamson for 1m. This gave me a pretty healthy transfer budget on top of the 10.5m I was given to secure a Europa League spot in the Premier League. I used the money (some over 48 months, naughty I know) – to purchase the following



Hopefully this will give me a balanced squad to work with, whilst clearing some of the dead wood and improving quality in areas that are going to be important, such as attacking midfield and centre back, a position where we were incredibly light, with only Fabricio Coloccini as our sole centre back.

The Shape


(dont take too much notice of the players selected)
On the face of it, the formation looks rather unbalanced with absolutely no out and out strikers in the squad, but with the player roles that I have selected, the formation should operate like a narrow 4-4-2 diamond, albeit offering more defensive cover through the centre of the pitch than the more traditional set up. The formation can be altered into a more attacking style or defensive style too – with the inclusion of the centre midfielder on Automatic – one click to CM(d) or CM(a) can change a game or decide it from the start. I usually use Moussa Sissoko in this role, as he is very capable of playing both a defensive game and attacking game. He can sit and use his strength and intelligence to sweep up opposition attacks but he can also knock players off the ball and use his pace to get in behind. It is a very important role for the team, so a good all round player is imperative in this role.

The two support strikers are your team’s main goalscorers, with the Enganche helping the midfield in creating chances. They should be fast, skillful and clever with the ball – high decision making, concentration and off the ball are huge. Remy Cabella has been the player that has scored the most goals for my Newcastle team, showing that even a traditional attacking midfielder can have the presence to get into the box and get himself a fair few goals. The attacking play will be further analysed later in the series.

First of all, we must set out a style of play that the team is going to play, I feel a short, low tempo passing game would be most useful, to take advantage of the overload of players we will have in midfield. We could then use the wide wingbacks to exploit the defence and pull players out of position, which our support strikers can run into and hopefully create scoring opportunities. It is the off the ball runs from the support strikers that are going to create our most chances, so it is important we create space for them to use to their advantage.

I have therefore used team instructions as follows – I’m normally not a fan of overloading with team instructions, but with this being such a different formation to what would normally be considered in the English Premier League, I feel the team (bar the 3 attacking midfielders) should follow strict instructions until the team is good enough to express themselves without leaving them completely open at the back.



In order to get the slow patient buildup, I have instructed every player (again bar the 3 AMC’s) to Pass it shorter, Mark Tighter and Close Down More – I have also instructed the goalkeeper to Roll it out and Distribute to centre backs. The reason for the closing down will become evident later as we discuss the defensive side to the formation, but that is for another day.

My initial results have been promising, bar a few hiccups (Stoke and QPR). The 5-0 over Chelsea was achieved with a completely different formation unfortunately – one that again we will come to in the future. I also used it in the second half against Manchester City after trailing 1-0 – so there may be something in there for usage against bigger, stronger teams that will look to control the game the way we want to.



My next task is to now play out the season, ironing out bumps that will arise when teams become familiar with the formation I am using and altering as I go along. I will post regular updates in this thread when I get the time, something which is becoming a precious commodity in my life unfortunately - but hopefully I should get time this week to update you on the attacking and defensive play that I want my team to play with this tactic.

Feel free to ask any questions.

Excellent write up, looking forward to more.

I also read Guido's blog, it is very interesting.

Good stuff pal. Good to see you back with something like this

Cool!

Some impressive results

Final standings for the season, pretty impressive. However the team did die off a bit over Christmas, before bouncing back with a 7 game winning streak to secure 4th place. I am trying to operate realistically as possible though, so the sales of players are inevitable and Siem De Jong has just went to Roma for 12m, Janmaat went to PSG for 18m too. Two good fees, though. Fringe player Haidara left too for 7.5m - a fee that cannot be sniffed at for a player that was never going to really make the grade here anyway. They have been replaced though and I have made a profit of 23m on transfer this season. Sergi Roberto has came in from Barcelona for 3.2m, Dimitri Foulquier from Granada was bought for 5m to replace Janmaat, Musa Oyewole from Brentford (16 year old regen hot prospect) for 1m, Adrien Rabiot for free from PSG after his contract expired and Jerome Roussillon from Sochaux for the backup left back position.

Hopefully by Christmas this season we shall see us up at the right end of the table again and I will get back to you with how the team is attacking and defending.

Brilliant season Not bad players you have brought in

Looking forward to more update Poe

Nice season, 4th is obviously great for Newcastle anyways. Hope it picks up even more

Is there a download for this tactic?

I like strikerless tactics. Thanks mate

I've seen and used strikerless tactics that play wingers to keep the ball out wide, but this looks to predominantly play up the middle. Did you have fears that wide playing teams would get the better of you playing three AMCs? Would you suggest playing AMCs that can transition to a wide role like AML or R in such a case?

Any amswers?

I think because he put pics up of every aspect of the formation, you could recreate it yourself in game. IDK that's just me.

I suppose I'll put a download link up in the end, but it was supposed to be a more discussion provoking thread.

Regarding the rest of the posts, they should be up sometime next week. Had quite a bit on irl atm.

You can follow the development of this tactic in this thread

http://sortitoutsi.net/careers/story/14776

but were i can download the tactic?