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Tuesday 9 February 2010

Queens Park Rangers - 4-4-2 Diamond formation 2012

Due to the interest being shown, in particular by Shafique, I have decided to show the latest setup for the formation I will be using for this season.


The formation is known as the 4-4-2 diamond. This really came about because I noticed that my central midfielders I had at the club, seemed to be split into two main groups, natural defensive midfielders, and natural attacking midfielders. It made sense therefore use that tactic in the previous season, especially with the siging of Jimenez.

Our success with this formation, which seemed to give us plenty of attacking options from the wings and through the middle, had been remarkable, which shaped my signings for the new season. One of the things that we'd been lacking was a striker who could take charge of crosses into a crowded area.

My two new strikers are Gilardino and Cardozo, both have superb heading skills. It made sense therefore that they play as a poacher, in particular Cardozo, who has the ability to create a lot of problems for the opposition defence. The other striker position, will largely be set as Advanced Forward, which Fatih Yucel, Scocco and Balanta can all play, as well as Gilardino. This gives me lots of options for which strikers I use as a pairing for any particular match.

The attacking midfielder is set up with the Attacking Midfielder role, with attack duty. In fact Jimenez could play the trequartista role, so I might experiment with this at some point.

My left and right midfielders are now set as wingers, with the attacking duty. They can quite easily be pushed forward to be attacking midfielders if I feel we need to push the opposition even harder, with little danger of conceding.

The defensive midfielder is set with that role, but with support duty, which suits Sunny particularly well. Rafa is more suited to being defensive, and if he's giving the ball away too often, I will change the role so that things are tightened up more.

The backline has not changed, with the fullbacks still set as Full Back, with automatic role, so they can head forward to provide overlap when trying to get crosses into the box. The centre backs are both set as Central Defenders with Defend duty.

The keeper, is still set as a Goalkeeper, as neither of my keepers are properly suited to play as sweeper keepers.

This setup seems to suit the attacking strategy very well against weaker teams, dropping back to standard against the other teams. It should be rare that I will feel the need to go counter attacking, although with the pace we have, this should still work very well.

During a match if I ever feel the need to go defensive to protect a lead, I will usually sacrifice a striker and bring on a 2nd DMC, usually with a defensive duty. This proved to be useful a few times last season, and still gives us good attacking options.

It's well worth spending time to check out all the different options available for each position, to try and make sure you have a player set for the correct role and duty. You could quite easily end up with a very good player appearing to be very mediocre if you don't set them up correctly. It's also important to think about this when you make substitutions during a match as well. In general you seem to be rewarded for tactical consistency, or at least only making changes that will not cause the team confusion, because they get used to being able to find a player in a particular position when looking for passing options.

7 comments:

Kevin said...

Hi Ziggy
Thanks for sharing details about your tactic it has sure served you well. Intersting to see you used the word natural which came up in an email conversation between Johnny and I. Seems that word is more important than I first thought.

TheZiggy said...

Thanks Kevin. It definitely works best if a player is a natural in the position you play them. If a player is accomplished in a position, then they will often still perform well.

I had been playing Clement Grenier quite a bit on the right wing, which he does fairly well, but moving him to his natural position as an AMC seems to have brought the best out in him.

It all depends on the players you have, because sometimes you have make a compromise.

Anonymous said...

thanks TheZiggy for sharing the tactic that you used which produce really impressive result with QPR. i'll give it a try and tweak it a little bit to suit the players of mine.
p/s: it's an honour for me when you mention my name in your post. lol

regards,
shafique

Laxeyman said...

Hi Ziggy, interesting tactic there. Do you change it against the big teams? Or do you keep it the same? I also want to ask you is Fatih Yucel a regen? It's just I can't find him on my game.

TheZiggy said...

Shafique, you were the reader showing the most interest in what my current tactic is.

Laxeyman. I tend to keep the formation the same against the big teams. What I tend to do against them, is start with the standard strategy, and use the touchline shouts mostly to change things. If we're struggling to stop them running on to throughballs, then I might think about going counter attacking. Against weaker teams who pose little attacking strength, I sometimes start with the attacking strategy. If my scout tells me that a team likes to try and counter attack, that's not always a good idea though. I'm afraid Fatih Yucel is regen. His attributes during the season I bought him can be found at: http://culshock.net/fm10/Fatih-Yucel-January-2011.jpg I've never seen a regen striker this good before at such a young age.

Laxeyman said...

The Ziggy, thanks for that I wasn't able to work out why he wasn't on my game especially if he's so good for you. I agree with you that I haven't seen any better attributes than that for someone so young. Is he even better now? And also how much did you pay for him? Was it 4.3 million like on the screenshot? If you got him for that then it's an outstanding signing.

TheZiggy said...

Laxeyman, the odd thing is, he hasn't really improved since then, which is a touch disappointing, but I can't complain too much, with the number of goals and assists he's provided in his two years. I actually paid £3.3M for him, so an even bigger bargain.

I was so lucky that I happened to have a scout in Turkey at just the right time who spotted him. So far almost all my signings have worked out really well. The only disappointments were Lung jr getting all upset, and Martin Stranzl not being consistent in the centre of defence.