Not a Footium Blog

It’s 4-3-3 time, baby!

With all the excitement of someone who writes a blog about NFT Football teams, I was pretty excited to get to try out 4-3-3. In my many years of playing other well known football franchises, I’ve always had a love hate relationship with 4-3-3. Sometimes I’ve managed to pull it off to perfection, and sometimes I’ve floundered around wondering why I bother.

In real life, some of the greatest teams of all time have used 4-3-3, with attacking masters showing off their true class. However, when it goes wrong, it can look extremely static and easy to play against.

The Line-Ups

Our Line Up

We opted for 4-3-3D, as we felt we good get a better squad out doing it this way. The two DMs mean a more defensive outlook overall.

Average Squad Strength: 39.5

Opponents Line Up

A 4-2-3-1 DM, a very narrow formation which is absolutely stacking the middle of the pitch with players.

Average Squad Strength: 36.4

So we had a stronger squad, with our average squad strength being 3.1 higher.

Real Life Context

I mean, it’s 4-3-3 isn’t it. Used by Johan Cruyff, Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp; it has been around since the 70s and was one of the most revolutionary formations to ever come out of football.

This defensive variant has two defensive midfielders, as opposed to just the one. This provides more cover for the back 4, but potentially generates less chances.

Strengths:

• High Pressing. Sometimes called ‘heavy metal football’, it allows teams to press extremely high and badger the opponents into making a mistake.
• Possession dominance. With the midfield triangle, it allows teams with creative players to absolutely dominate the middle of the pitch.
• Flexibility. As we see with teams like Liverpool, the full backs are provided opportunities to push on, either overlapping or underlapping to create overloads on the pitch.

Weaknesses:

• Defensive frailty. If the full backs push up high, it can leave the remaining defenders exposed.
• Drain on players. Due to the need to press high, and the amount of getting up and down the pitch players will be doing, you need players with a lot of stamina!

Against such a narrow opposition, I was really worried about them overloading us in midfield and dominating possession.

The Match.

In what I thought was us finally turning the table, we scored FIRST!

However, this was soon to change, with our 1-0 lead in the 6th minute turning into a 3-1 deficit by the 70th minute.

Getting desperate, I thought of my footballing heroes; Sean Dyche, David Moyes & Wayne Rooney and went for the most brexit ball, stupid tactics I’ve ever gone for. We went ultra-attacking, and got 2 goals back in the 82nd and 86th minute, even pushing on and nearly getting a winner.

3-3? Not bad!

You can see from the stats (we’re on the left), that we had less possession and made far less passes than our opponents. I think they dominated through all the players centrally, and it was only from the tactical shift that we saved the game.

See you all on the pitch.