Not a Footium Blog

Now, you all know my opinion on 4-5-1 DM. I blame it wholeheartedly for our relegation from Division 6. Obviously, it couldn’t possible be down to me, or the players, or the mentality. Just the formation.

So now, it was time to try the more attacking version of the formation and see if could do any better.

The Line Ups

Our Line Up

I have always kind of felt this formation looks a bit like a house when it is laid out on Footium like this? Just me? Ok.

One thing to note is that when this formation is set up, it shows the AM’s as RAM and LAM. I’d be curious to see whether in future Footium creates these as specific positions, although I expect they’d have such low utility it wouldn’t be worth people having them for only a couple of formations.

As in other formations, we have strength in some areas but are weaker in others. Our AM’s would definitely be doing the heavy lifting.

Average Squad Rating: 41.2

Opponent’s Line Up

Another team sporting the might 5-2-3. I know a lot of players have referred to this as GOATED (unlike the real GOAT, Lionel Messi), but interesting to see if it can pull through here.

Average Squad Rating: 37.6

This puts our squad with an Average Squad Rating 3.6 higher than our opponents.

Real Life Context

When we’re looking at Footium’s version of 4-5-1, it’s perhaps a bit less flat than you may see in real life, with the midfield being made up of 2 AM’s and a CM rather than 3 CM’s.

In terms of a more applicable real life version, we have seen teams like Sean Dyche’s Everton drop into a quite defensive 4-5-1 and see really good results with it. Before they got rid of him, that is!

Strengths:

• Width. As the midfield can cover the entire width of the pitch with 5 players, it offers a lot of width across the entire breadth of the turf.
• Variance. Given the ability of the midfield in particular to adapt, it offers various routes of attack. The wingers can come inside or push on, the midfielders can drop deep or bound forward, and the lone striker can even drop in to free up space.
• Defensive stability. Particularly off the ball, it is incredibly strong as a defensive unit.

Weaknesses:

• Isolation. Both the striker and the wingers may become isolated at times.
• Transitions. Particularly if the team is stuck in a low block, as only the CF will be left forward, it can make it difficult to transition at pace.

The Match

Going into this, I fancied our chances quite strongly, but this may be one of those circumstances where formation has a big role to play in the results.

We had a higher rated squad, but we’ve seen already that 5-2-3 can punch above it’s weight in a few circumstances.

In classic Marrouck Villa form, we went 1-0 down quickly. In the 3rd minute, to be exact!

We fought back hard, going 1-1 in the 16th and then 2-1 up in the 73rd. Sadly, we couldn’t hold onto it, and it finished 2-2 with an equaliser in the 81st minute from them.

Stats are below!

I mean. Look at the shots. We had more possession, more passes, more corners, more free kicks, more penalty kicks and more yellow cards. But the main thing is THE SHOTS. 22 shots.

I think a lot of times we would win this game, but this time, sadly, it was a draw. Still, could be worse, you could be

See you on the pitch!