Not a Footium Blog

Into the final straight now! We’ve been rattling through formations so we’re getting close to the end. Can’t wait to do the final recap for you all!

The Line Ups

Our Line Up

I’m not sure if it’s just my natural instinct, but generally I’ve avoided quite attacking formations during my Footium journey. Our B Team plays 4-3-3D so we’ve always enjoyed the protection of having some extra DM’s.

Average Squad Rating: 42.7

Opponent’s Line Up

Another tasty 5-2-3 formation to go up against!

Average Squad Rating: 43.7

This leaves us with a slight deficit, of 1.0 less than our opponent’s.

Real Life Context

It’s 4-3-3 baby! 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 variation is a super attacking version, with an AM and two additional wide forwards.

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!
• With this specific variant, you are going to invite pressure on your defence. It’s as simple as that.

The Match

We didn’t use a balance mentality for this one! Instead, given it was such an attacking line up anyway, we set our mentality at attacking to try and take advantage of this formation.

We scored really early on, in the 8th minute using our powerful new striker. They pushed back, equalising in the 41st minute.

We kept plugging away, with a goal in the 69th, but sadly this wasn’t a lead for long, as they equalised in the 71st!

Stats are below.

Against a slightly stronger team, playing a good formation, I was really pleased with this. We didn’t just hang on in the game, we performed well and attacked a stronger team, coming away with a point.

See you all on the pitch!