For the home tie with Hertha Berlin I decided to go with the 4-2-3-1 that I’ve been tweaking, which I’ve go to the point of operating with a narrow attacking line and (vertically) offset midfielders. It’s still a work in progress, and I’m looking to use some of the principals of the more defensive formation – i.e. dominating the central third of the pitch (vertically) and encouraging the opposition onto the flanks.
The intention is mainly to utilise this where an opponent is light in the DM area, with the striker and a pair of attacking AMC’s looking to wreak havoc whilst an advanced playmaker sits a little deeper to orchestrate the moves. Where the DMC zone has a couple of players present, which would hamper that playmaker, then I tend to try and play ‘around’ them by deploying the familiar 4-3-2-1 and getting attacking wingbacks to overload the flanks along with our wide AMs.
I’ve got the individual player options set up such that the positions in the AM line swap to reflect the player placed there – any of the slots becomes SS-A when Marvin Ducksch is dropped in, AP-S for Jon Williams, etc etc. This allows me to mix things around on the fly with minimal work; I love this feature, the best thing I’ve seen in the tactics module for FM14 and I suspect that some people are not even aware of its presence, let alone its versatility.
The idea with the offset central midfielders is to effectively find a mid-point between the DMC and MC lines. Back when I played 4-2-3-1 on FM12 I deployed two in the MC slots, generally a BBM-S and a DLP-D. Once I’d strengthened that Blackburn Rovers squad to the point where we were title contenders this was fine, but against high quality opposition it was possible for us to get caught too high up the pitch – or for the deeper playmaker to become isolated and spend a lot of time passing the ball back and forth to the defence.
I toyed with the idea of dropping them both back to the DM line, but always felt that this would exaggerate the issue of being withdrawn from the attacking players. By setting the Karlsruhe version up with a BWM-S at DM, and a DLP-D at MC, I’m looking for them to generally end up playing fairly close together, and somewhere 'in between' the traditional strata. The Ball Winning Mid will provide a degree of cover, but will chase down opponents so it’s important that I deploy two of our stronger options at DC, and you’ll note that I tend to keep one of the wingbacks sitting a little deeper.
As with the 4-1-2-2-1 it’s those wingbacks offer the only real width, encouraging the opposition to utilise the flanks as our midfield lines apply pressure through the central areas. I’m not expecting the same sort of defensive no-go zone that @JLAspey’s tactic produces, but it’s a similar principle in a more attacking tactic.
I’ve actually toyed with the idea of making it even closer to the 4-1-2-2-1 by dropping the right-hand AM-A back to CM-A and setting him up as a Central Winger. I’d then make the wingback on that side more conservative, and free up the one on the left a little – and switch the other two AM roles around. Something like this...
...but enough of that for now, I could keep playing with variations ad infinitum, and drift off at all sorts of tangents again. It’s on the drawing board though, so feel free to offer any thoughts.
As we have back-to-back fixtures with Hertha Berlin, who we were well fancied to beat on our home turf in the league, it felt like an interesting time to give the narrow 4-2-3-1 a whirl. If it looks good then we can repeat the experiment at their place, in the second round of the DFB-Pokal. They do employ a pair of DMC players, but it would be a good test of our quality to see if we could find a way through that heavy defensive block.
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| Left: Hertha Berlin passing map. Right: Karlsruher SC average positions |
We won the game comfortably, and actually did see a fair amount of fresh air on Hertha’s passing chart immediately in front of our box. For the sake of clarity, it should be noted that Hertha had a man sent off on 31 minutes – resulting in much of the game being played with a 4-2DM-2-1-1 shape, featuring wide men in the midfield line, once again playing into our hands.
If anything the DMC/MC combination are still sitting a little deeper than I’d envisaged, but they’re contributing to that defensive block as a result; with the AM-S dropping a little deeper we’re getting a nice connected channel through the middle of the park. I may look at switching the DLP-D to DLP-S and finding another role for the AM-S, but I’m not unhappy with the results.
However the match stats don’t tell the full story, look at the above ‘Average Position’ map for us and notice the two highlighted strikers.
Mitrovic started the match, and played for 68 minutes as the Complete Forward (A), registering a single shot (on target). Micanski came on as his replacement, played 22 minutes plus stoppage time, fired in 5 shots, put 4 on target, and scored with 2 of them.
Granted all three of the changes came late in the game and, having played a long time with 10 men, I suspect that Hertha had accepted their fate by then and gone into damage-limitation mode – I’ve connected all three subs to the players they replaced – no changes were made to roles or mentality, so it's reasonable to assume that we did spend the latter portion of the game camped in their half.
I appreciate that the Serbian will take time to settle, particularly as there’s a language barrier to overcome, so I’m trying to remain patient. That being said, the massive difference in those stats has to bear some analysis – so I settled down to watch (comprehensive) highlights a second time, focusing entirely on the striker, and watching Micanski’s spell first so that I could get a feel for what I should be seeing in Mitrovic.
In general terms there’s lots of good lateral movement from Micanski, always prowling back and forth between Hertha’s two centre-backs. Sometimes he drifts into an offside position, but for the most part he seems happy to sit on their shoulders. When we lose the ball he’s quick to come deep, leaving Ducksch the furthest forward in the Shadow Striker role – but when we regain possession he’s quick to resume his position, pressing onto the back four as he waits for the supporting players to push on.
The Bulgarian’s first shot comes from a simple set piece. An indirect free-kick on the right is played short, and Micanski makes a quick run to lose his man and meet the subsequent ball – turning to test the keeper.
His first goal gives a good idea of his intelligence, and knowledge of the way his teammates play. A cross-field pass from Kopplin sees Williams make a run into the right channel, Micanski (circled) holds his position on the shoulder of his marker whilst the Hertha fullback moves out to close down Zimmerman (CWB-R) as he receives the ball.
As Zimmerman feeds Williams, everything falls apart for the defence. Micanski’s marker elects to press Williams, whilst the striker checks back a step and then jogs forward – the Hertha fullback spots the danger but is too late to do anything about it.
The numbers in attack helped here, causing the Hertha defence to have to second-guess themselves, but Micanski played a big part by having the awareness to do very little until the key moment.
His next chance is a simple one to see, as we switch the ball from left to right flanks Micanski holds his position 14 yards out – dropping off the back four slightly as they retreat. Receiving the ball in space allows him to turn and shoot, although the defender puts himself in the way.
Goal number two is a simple one, but again an example of clever movement as Micanski takes up a position behind his marker’s shoulder. When Mares’ cross comes in the defender moves to intercept and Micanski tracks him on the blind side – waiting for him to miss; he duly obliges, simple finish.
There’s nothing massively impressive about the Bulgarian’s play here, no driving runs or blistering bursts of pace, no little tricks to go past a man, it’s all about intelligent movement; often less is more.
With these examples to work from I then went back to watch Mitrovic’s performance and see if anything stood out. There are bright signs, in fact as early as the second minute it was the Serbian who came deep to collect the ball, and then turned a pass around the corner for Ducksch to run onto and test the Hertha Keeper. A couple of minutes later he gets on the end of a cross and produces his ‘shot’ on goal with a weak header.
There are a number of occasions where Mitrovic gets himself into similar positions to Micanski, but when the final pass comes he often appears to choose the ‘wrong’ run – going left as the through-ball goes right, allowing the defence to easily pick it off. I would hope that, given time for him to settle and gel with the squad, he’ll start to show the same sort of intuition as Micanski. In the meantime switching form a ‘support striker’ kind of role, to something more ‘selfish’ might help – if it encourages him to hold a more predatory line.
Against Schalke we win a penalty, and with our designated taker not playing Mitrovic is handed the ball. He duly scores, but again it’s his only shot of the game – having been set up as a Complete Forward (Attack). We were in more defensive mode for that one though, so I let it slide.
Having sat out the Champions League game in favour of Micanski, he returns to spearhead our narrow 4-2-3-1 against Borussia Mönchengladbach – this time deployed as a Poacher. Three shots, two on target, in a 70 minute run is more promising and he looks much more positive in his forward movement.
‘Cracked it’ I thought, until he turned up the next day complaining about an inability to settle in Germany. A leave of absence is offered and accepted, I just hope that he returns in a more positive mindset. Unfortunately, with the window closed, we’re not in a position to bring in another Serbian player to help him out, but I did find a coach from his home nation who I managed to bring in to add to our ranks. I’ve no idea whether it will help (or whether it even has any chance of doing so), but I’m willing to blow a couple of thousand pounds a week to try.
LOOKING AHEAD
So with one new signing looking like a potential tick in the ‘failed’ column (can’t you tell I’m an optimist?), how about another?
Ultimately my goal is to do what many other FM bloggers and writers have done, and to get Karlsruhe developing excellent players in-house. We’re not there yet, although we do have some decent prospects on the books – and we are seeing some good signs from the likes of Hasek, Bednar, Mares and Braun who've already made it into the senior squad.
Work has just been finished on upgraded training facilities (now ‘Great’), and the Board have agreed to a 10 month project to uprate our Youth Facilities from ‘Good’. After that it’ll be Junior Coaching and Youth Recruitment that I look to boost as well (both average at present). In the meantime I continue to scout widely and look for young(ish) talent to bring on board and help to boost our senior side. One player I’ve been tracking for a couple of years is Dinamo Bucharest’s Dorin Rotariu.
Recently there have been a lot of in-game news stories around him being offered new deals and repeatedly turning them down. With around a year left on his current contract I decided to bite the bullet and make a bid, before other clubs could start to offer him Bosman deals. At £2.5m (plus another million over three years) it’s not a small fee for a player who clearly had no intention of signing a new contract, but if he develops as he is clearly capable of doing then we should be looking at a fine wide player (when we play with one!) for seasons to come. He also looks to have the ability to slot into at least one of our AMC roles.
His ability to speak English, with me as an English manager and several English speakers in the squad, should reduce the chances of a repeat of the Mitrovic situation when he joins us in January.
ONWARDS AND UPWARDS
Finally an update on our season so far, as we arrive at the Winter Break. Following on from last time, we continued to switch around between our three core tactics as and when it suited opposition formations and levels of ability; by early November, aside from the 1-2 defeat in Madrid, we were unbeaten in all competitions.
In the Champions League Olympic Marseille produced a similar sort of showing to Milan last year, allowing us to pretty much dominate them, whilst Juve appeared to be the class act of the Group – even then we were able to take a couple of points off them, and would have had more but for a 75th minute equaliser in the away fixture.
In the German Cup we edged out Hertha Berlin, following our demolition of them in the league (detailed above), setting up a December 5th trip to 2.Bundesliga opposition.
The Bundesliga itself was the big story though, and our tinkering saw us drop just 8 points from our first 12 games. I was mindful that Dortmund were very late in our fixture list this time around, but we had a couple of games before then in which to further impose ourselves; Jürgen Klopp’s side, meanwhile, had already suffered four defeats and sat 6 points adrift of our top spot. Even Bayern, in 2nd spot, had lost a game – leaving just ourselves and Hoffenheim (W7 D5) undefeated after twelve, and facing each other next.
Mitrovic arrived back ahead of the tie, and I was delighted to see his information screen indicate a positive reaction to the arrival of our Serbian coach. Result.
Deployment of the ‘defensive’ tactic promptly killed Hoffenheim’s unbeaten record, with goals from Zimmerman, Ducksch, and ‘Jack’ Bauer inside 35 minutes being enough to keep us on the top of the table for another week. Mitrovic made his entrance late on, and responded well, but in this formation he’s very much a supporting role so the lack of efforts on goal continued.
The same starting XI (and tactic) then went on to secure a superb win against Atlético, in front of our 15,157 European fans (Seriously – Every. Single. Home. Game.). Rather than showing the full Passing Chart for the visitors, what’s probably more telling is just to show their completed passes – and then compare that to our own successes. That sort of security in the central areas goes a long way to underpinning our results.
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| Completed Passes : Atlético Madrid (left) & Karlsruher SC (right) |
So far, so very very good; and then the run was over, and Bayern were back in their place at the top of the table.
I almost sleep-walked into the defeat. Coming off the back of the Atlético result I was almost entirely focused on the impending visit of Dortmund, and after Freiburg were awarded a penalty we struggled to open them up for an equaliser – they just seemed far more hungry, particularly in defence, than their league position would have suggested. Fortunately, before the ‘big game’ in December, we then had a cup tie which served as the ideal confidence booster for the team and, hopefully, for Mitrovic who bagged a hat-trick.
A draw against Dortmund never feels like a poor result, although we had chances to finish them off. Draws are an issue for us though – despite having lost only one league game all season the point here saw us drop to third place behind Wolfsburg. As if to prove a point we then shared the honours once again, in Marseille, although that was enough to secure our qualification from the group with a game to spare.
All that remained was to see out the last couple of games of the pre-Christmas league schedule. Two clean sheets, six goals, six points, and Mitrovic starting to show improved confidence to take on chances himself. Not a bad way to leave things going into the break.
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| Highlighted games are those where we deployed the narrow 4-1-2-2-1, either on a Defensive mentality or otherwise. |
(A quick word for Dennis Mast, who has barely seen first team football this season, but who has scored three times for us).
So that's where we leave things for now - unless, of course, you follow me on Twitter; in that case you'll already know the outcome of the season, but why not pretend you don't and wait for the end-of-season update next time?
As ever please feel free to drop a comment about anything you see here, or collar me on Twitter : @flipsix3_FM
Cheers!
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