Not a Footium Blog

If I see 4-3-3 one more time it may be the end of me…

I’ve been grinding through these formations back to back to back, but getting through multiple versions of 4-3-3 one after the other (and having wildly different results each time) was certainly a struggle!

The Line Ups

Our Line Up

By this point, we were having to use at least one player out of position as we were desperately struggling for CM’s at this point. A few games after this, one of them even got injured, which didn’t exactly help our cause!

Average Squad Rating: 41.5

Opponent’s Line Up

5-2-3 AGAIN! Out of curiosity, we had a look, and at this point, we’d come up against 5-2-3 a grand total of 10 times on our formation journey. That was out of 23 matches so far. Or around 43.5%! I’m not sure if we were coming up against way too many compare to the normal state of affairs, but it felt like a lot!

Average Squad Rating: 37.5

This was a really weird one, as they had that amazing CB, but then a reserve player in CM. Not sure if Metamask had screwed them over!

This left us with a +4.0 advantage on the old squad front!

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 uses a False 9. If you were to pick out a particular real life example, you’d maybe be looking at Liverpool with Bobby Firmino playing up front.

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 5-2-3, I was hopeful of performing well in the middle of the pitch, but maybe could face some difficulties getting through a back 5.

The Match

I think by this point in the season, we were already struggling! For the record, we still are.

So, we were very pleased to beat these lot 3-0!

Stats are below:

We went for an attacking mentality, and clearly it paid off!

Really excited to have great stats and win this game.

See you all on the pitch!