Not a Footium Blog

Formation 2, Electric Boogaloo!

As part of our wild and wonderful journey into formations in Footium; we are today using the very exciting 3-4-3A!

It’s the 2nd formation of the season, and relatively similar to our first formation, but with some minor changes.

The Line-Ups

Our Line-up

We have a very strong AM and DM, as we have invested heavily into the 4-5-1 DM formation.

Average squad strength: 42.5

Opponents Line-up

These opponents had strong CB’s, several bronze players and a good CF.

Average Squad Strength: 40.3

So, we had the stronger squad, by some distance. So formations wise, this is really interest.

Real Life Context

We can take some lessons from real life when it comes to Footium formations. When it comes to 3-4-3, we’re looking at some interesting advantages and downsides.

Strengths:

• Width – wingbacks/wide midfielders can roam forward and create chances from wide positions.
• Balance – essentially you have 5 offensive players (forwards and wingers), and 5 defensive players (pivots and centre backs), making it numerically and incredibly balanced formation.
• Fluidity – the formation is fluid. Forwards can become inside forwards, wide midfielders can drop into a 5 if needs be. It offers a lot of variety.

Weaknesses:

• Speciality players needed – if your wingers aren’t strong and up to scratch, they will struggle.
• Midfield defensive support – due to only having two central midfielders, there is not as much defensive support as other formation coming from midfield.
• Counter attacks – due to a lack of width from the defence, and the tendency of wingers to get forward, 3-4-3 can be vulnerable itself to wide formations and counter attacks.

The difference between 3-4-3 and 3-4-3A is the transition between having two CM’s vs a DM and an AM. This can lead to more gaps in the midfield.

Against 5-2-3, I was really worried about their CM’s overriding the gaps in our midfield, and their wide players attacking us on the counter attack.

The Match

Basically, we lost 1-0. We chose a balanced mentality. These are the stats.

It was a very tight match, with very even stats across the board. Ultimately, we went down to a narrow victory with a better squad against a weaker squad, but a weaker squad in a formation that was effective against 3-4-3A on the day!

See you all on the pitch!