Layering Your Attacks

In the past, I have published (with permission naturally) parts of Lee’s (@FMAnalysis) superb Mechanising The Play series. In an effort to explain what I’m doing, I am going to try and expand upon Lee’s work. The first topic I wish to cover concerns layering your strikeforce. What is it, why should you do it and how do you do it? These are all solid questions and questions I shall try to answer in great detail, with explanatory videos and images to back up my words. For starters, just watch the video below to get an idea what I mean by layering attacks.

What you can see here is a rather typical strikerless attack. The defence intercepts the ball and clears it towards the flank. The winger looks for a team-mate in space and finds one of the attacking midfielders in space, dropping back into the space between the lines. The attacking midfielder receives and controls the pass and holds it up, whilst his team-mates surge forward to take up their offensive positions. A quick flick-through sees the attacking midfielder, whose run has overlapped the attacking midfielders position, go clean through on goal to cap a nice move with a clinical finish.

Whilst I characterise this move as being typical strikerless, the underlying concepts and principles can and should be universally applied to any formation and style of play. The reason why my teams play the way they do is because I try to layer the attacks, attacking a defence in multiple waves, making it harder for a defensive side to maintain a cohesive defensive line and adding an element of surprise to the equation.

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Mechanising The Play; The Defensive Enganche

In the past few weeks, I have started posting content originally written by Lee (@FMAnalysis). To be more specific, I have started re-posting his Mechanising The Play-series, which is probably one of the best FM-tactics-related series I have ever read. Lee’s ideas are still relevant, regardless of the Match Engine and version of the game, because they are ideas that apply to football in general. Despite my name being listed as the author, I find it is important that you realise that the actual author is Lee Scott (@FMAnalysis). So, without wasting anymore of your precious time, I present to you the third article of a brilliant series.

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Mechanising The Play; Defensive Block

As you may or may not have noticed, I have recently started posting content originally written by Lee (@FMAnalysis). To be more specific, I have started re-posting his Mechanising The Play-series, which is probably one of the best FM-tactics-related series I have ever read. Lee’s ideas are still relevant, regardless of the Match Engine and version of the game, because they are ideas that apply to football in general. Despite my name being listed as the author, I find it is important that you realise that the actual author is Lee Scott (@FMAnalysis). So, without wasting anymore of your precious time, I present to you the second article of a brilliant series.

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Mechanising The Play; Transitions

I was recently approached by Lee (@FMAnalysis) with the question if I was interested in re-posting his Mechanising The Play-series, which is probably one of the best FM-tactics-related series I have ever read. It didn’t take me long to respond with a “FUCK YEAH!!!” Lee’s ideas are still relevant, regardless of the Match Engine and version of the game, because they are ideas that apply to football in general. Despite my name being listed as the author, I find it is important that you realise that the actual author is Lee Scott (@FMAnalysis). So, without wasting anymore of your precious time, I present to you the first of article of a brilliant series. (more…)