Not a Footium Blog

What the heck happened here?

SPOILER ALERT: We lost this match 6-1. More on that later but who knows how the heck that happened.

The Line Up

Our Line Up

We had to really struggle through this game. It was the end of the season, so we were rotating like crazy, had someone totally out of position playing AM, and didn’t have much energy left! The Average Squad Rating wasn’t that bad, but we had a few very high rated players and some super low rated players, so the balance wasn’t great.

Still, we did our best.

Average Squad Rating: 41

Opponent’s Line Up

Now, this team was stacked. All bronze and everyone in their right position with good energy!

Average Squad Rating: 46.7

This left us with an Average Squad Rating 5.7 worse than our opponents.

Real Life Context

This is perhaps a more familiar version of 4-2-3-1 for those who watch the game. So teams have out and out wingers as part of the 3, or others have 3 functioning as attacking midfielders. Think of Man City when they drop into a 4-2-3-1.

Going into this game, against a stronger team, we were outmatched across the park, so wanted to just see how it went.

Strengths:

• Balance. We have talked about balance a lot, but this is perhaps the most balanced formation out there. Because of the two pivots and two centre backs, there generally tends to always be good defensive cover, even if the wing backs bomb forward.
• Possession. It gives teams a great opportunity to build possession, with pivots, wingers, full backs, the attacking midfielder and the striker being able to find pockets of space throughout the pitch.
• High press. If the CF & AM’s stay forward, the press can start with 4 players and quickly win possession high up the pitch.

Weaknesses:

• Wide midfielders. This is a stretch, sure, but if the two wide players in the 3 aren’t great one or one, or have poor movement, they can become the weak links on the pitch.
• Congestion. Similar to a lot of formations with a busy midfield if they all crowd the middle of the pitch it can become incredibly congested.

The Match

Regis Town eventually came 2nd in the league and got promoted, so we knew they’d be tough to beat. However, perhaps not this tough!

We were 1-0 down in the 6th minute, and it went downhill from there. Whilst we got one back in the 25th minute (from our worst rated player), the game finished in a lowly 6-1 defeat.

Check out the stats below.

So yeah, we got battered!

Season Recap

When we’ve been going through the results, we’ve just been sharing the ones where we tried new formations (aka not 4-5-1DM, other than the once), but the season overall was slightly better than the results from the ‘new formations’!

So, we got 20 points from 54 (18 games) using our huge formation variety. In this time, we trialled many formations and this was the outcome.

This was the fun formations! The numbers are our squad rating, the opponents squad rating, and then the surplus or deficit in our squad over our opponents.

• Drew 3-3 Using 3-4-3 vs 4-1-2-1-2-WB. MV 39.2 vs OS 39.3. (-0.1)
• Lost 0-1 Using 3-4-3A vs 5-2-3. MV 42.5 vs OS 40.3. (+2.2)
• Drew 2-2 Using 4-2-2-2 vs 4-5-1DM. MV 42.6 vs OS 35.5. (+7.1)
• Lost 0-6 Using 5-2-3A vs 5-2-3A. MV 36.7 vs OS 40.1. (-3.4)
• Won 2-1 Using 5-2-3A vs 5-2-3. MV 36.5 vs OS 33.5. (+3.0)
• Drew 3-3 Using 4-3-3D vs 4-2-3-1DM. MV 39.5 vs OS 36.4. (+3.1)
• Drew 2-2 Using 4-5-1DM vs 4-3-3. MV 44.6 vs OS 44.5. (+0.1)
• Drew 2-2 Using 3-5-2 vs 4-2-3-1. MV 39.8 vs OS 41.3. (-1.5)
• Lost 2-1 Using 4-2-3-1 vs 4-3-3A. MV 38.7 vs OS 41.4. (-2.7)
• Won 3-0 Using 4-4-2H vs 4-4-2. MV 44.2 vs OS 37.5. (+6.7)
• Won 1-0 Using 3-1-4-2 vs 5-2-3. MV 40.4 vs OS 38.4. (+2.0)
• Won 3-2 Using 3-4-1-2 vs 3-1-4-2. MV 41.7 vs OS 33.9. (+7.8)
• Lost 3-0 Using 4-4-2 vs 5-4-1DM. MV 40.5 vs OS 40. (+0.5)
• Lost 3-1 Using 4-1-2-1-2 vs 5-2-3. MV 40 vs OS 38.2. (+1.8)
• Drew 1-1 Using 4-1-2-1-2WB vs 5-2-3A. MV 38.8 vs OS 39.8. (-1.0)
• Drew 2-2 Using 4-5-1 vs 5-2-3. MV 41.2 vs OS 37.6. (+3.6)
• Drew 1-1 Using 4-2-3-1DM vs 4-4-2. MV 43.1 vs OS 39.5. (+3.6)
• Lost 6-1 Using 4-2-3-1N vs 4-3-3H. MV 41 vs OS 46.7. (-5.7)

Average Squad Rating (across these 18 games): 40.61

Average Opponent’s Squad Rating (across these 18 games): 39.1

Games where we were stronger (by 2 points or more): 9

Games where we were weaker (by 2 points or more): 3

Games where we were similar (within 2 points): 6

We got 16 points where we were stronger, out of a possible 27. 1.78 PPG.

We got 0 points where we were weaker, out of a possible 9. 0 PPG.

We got 4 points when squads were evenly matched, out of a possible 18. 0.67 PPG.

Interesting that despite all the other factors, the player ratings, understandably, have a huge impact on game outcome. 2 points either side seems a good indicator but we may adjust this in future seasons. As with everything we learn, it is super intuitive.

Then we got 9 points from 12 using 4-5-1DM and our ‘classic’ formation.

Leaving us here at the end of the season:

Staying up, and coming away with more KNOWLEDGE.

See you all on the pitch!