#FM15 #Tactics – My CM93/94 3-3-1-3 |

**DISCLAIMER – if you are expecting a tactical analysis of any real quality, move along, nothing to see here!**

A few folks have been enquiring about my CM93/94 3-3-1-3 that has been breaking the hearts of teams in Mateliano, AR Crimea and, more recently, Italy in the last month or so of playing time. So I thought I would break it down a little bit for those that might want to try it for themselves!

As I said, this will not be the best tactical analysis you will ever see as it is not going to include screen shots in-game, lines showing anything, how we cope in different scenarios – it is probably going to resemble a 1970’s scouting report!

Firstly, the background. I am pretty poor at making tactics in the new FM (I had a decade break from playing the game seriously from about CM01/02 I think) and my tactical heyday was certainly the early versions of CM. That said, I came up with a brilliant 4-3-3 that saw my FC Carl Zeiss Jena team get promoted from the 4th tier of German football to the Bundesliga in successive seasons without spending a penny on a player – ok, we went straight back down to 2.Liga again, but it was still an achievement. Following that save I started to think back to my early days and wondered if it was possible to recreate the 3-3-1-3 that I dominated the world with on CM93/94 as QPR.

So, this is what I have come up with. It started off in Mateliano, a new “Gibraltar” type country where I won the double two years in a row and got to the second round of the Champions League qualifying stages twice, beating much bigger sides. I then took it to AR Crimea with Gvardiets, and we won promotion missing out on the league title on the last day. Finally, it is going well at Padova in Italy as I try and get the club back up from the bottom tier to Serie A, one promotion down and a good start to the second season. However, it has not been used at the top level so I have no idea!

Let me explain what I wanted to see from this tactic – other than a shed load of goals!

The tactic is deliberately narrow, so I want to see the ball moved quickly in little patterns without the need for an almighty switch from one wing to the other – there should be minimal long, diaganol passes as there should always be at least three passing options close by. If one door closes, we should be able to work the ball through the matrix and back out again.

I want to see players streaming forward, overloading the opposition defence. Of the front three, two are F9’s meaning they should move and create space for the CM/A and BBM/S to come running through. This should be really hard to mark and at times the central defenders of the opposition should be marking at least two players each.

The middle centre back should, in fact, become a bit of a playmaker for us (something Louis Van Gaal is passionate about) as he often has the ball to feet and can choose how to start the attack. He also needs to be a pretty solid, quick, good-in-the-air type as he is often isolated as the two players along side him split quite wide. The two wider centre backs, ideally, should be comfortable playing as full backs too as they spend a lot of time out there. I have successfully taken full backs and played them in that position for their pace and retrained them to be central defenders.

The CM/A is the classic @jlaspey central winger, so again you could take a winger and train them into this position.

The CM/D should be a player that is comfortable as a DLP but with a little bit more about their defensive game.

At the top of all this is the trequartista, who should, without fail be getting you 25+ goals a season.

All in all, you should end up scoring goals like you see in this clip…