In the latest instalment of our MFL tactics series we’re looking at 5 at the back formations. In my previous testing, we have focussed on 4 defender formations with them being the more commonly used tactics this season. In fact, I haven’t played against a team running with 5 at the back in any of the testing I have done to date.

I’ve gone with playing against a 5-2-3 as the particular variation of 5 at the back we’re going to test against this time. Testing against a 4-3-3 showed we struggle defensively against three forwards so this seemed like potentially the toughest formation for us to play against. Although, I’m hoping we might have some success in controlling the game against the 2 man midfield.

This time we’re going to look at how do against two different opposition, one a bit better than us, and one slightly below our level. This will give some insights in the drop in results we can expect against stronger sides. We’re going to test two different tactics against each opposition, so let’s take a look at how we’re going to set up first.

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My Tactics

4-1-2-1-2 – 616 Overall

4-2-3-1 – 615 Overall

I’ve got one of the defensive midfielders, Marcelo Domingos, with less positional freedom to shield the backline. I’ve left fellow DM Lombardo with standard positional freedom, I want him to move to some degree to help link the defence to the attack. I have more positional freedom the CAM to allow him to get involved as much as possible.

In terms of team instructions, we’re dropping pretty deep in defence. I want to prevent opportunities for the opposition to get in behind us if at all possible. I also don’t want to leave big holes in between the lines, so we’ll also be playing pretty compact. Going forward we’re playing a little bit wider to try and exploit any spaces that might be left by their wingbacks when they push forward.

Stronger Opposition

The opposition in the first round of testing is the Taj City Titans. They’re a pretty decent side at 654 overall and are 40 points overall above our 4-1-2-1-2 tactic. I found them through running some random friendly matches to get a sense of my tactics against a variety of opposition. They’re a little higher overall than I’ve tested against so far which we’ll need to bear in mind when we look at the results.

Looking at the team, they’re really solid overall with all players being Limited+ players. There’s two uncommon players in the side at LWB and a great looking 68 rated centre forward in Bryan Young. Their pace in the forward positions really stands out with the two wingers and ST having 71, 76 and 81 pace – comfortably faster than our defenders. Overall, they look to be a really tough challenge.

This was a truly awful set of games for the Motherwell Eagles. We were comprehensively outplayed in just about every game we played. The Titans scored just under 2.5x the number of goals as us and averaged over 3 goals a game. We did manage to scrape 3 wins and 4 draws from the 30 game sample size but we definitely deserved to lose the majority of the games.

When looking at xG unsurprisingly it’s very much the same story. The Titans accumulated around 2.5x the xG as us and averaged almost 2 xG more than the Eagles on a per game basis. When we look at the individual games, we led in xG in just one of 30 games. In fact, we only managed to stay within 1 xG of the Titans in 4 of 30 games.

Not to go on too much, but the Titans obviously dominated in shots as well, taking 300 more than the Eagles and hitting the target over 100 more times. They combined volume with quality as well, averaging 0.17 xG/shot. For our part the shots are obviously really low, but if there is any positive we did at least create reasonably decent chances at 0.15 xG/shot.

Watching the games, the speed of their forwards was evident. Like we saw facing the 4-3-3, they were able to get in behind us with long balls and create plenty of quality scoring chances. On top of that they created plenty from controlled possession as well. Their width opened up options for through balls and crosses that created strong opportunities in the box.

Moving to the more defensive 4-2-3-1, performances have improved to some degree. However, we were still very much second best. We made it up to 5 wins and 8 draws from the 30 games, although we were much luckier in converting xG than the Titans. The results are still very poor but at least they’re better than the 23 losses we suffered with the 4-1-2-1-2.

The improvement isn’t quite as clear in terms of total xG. We still gave up twice as much xG as we created and the Titans averaged 1.2 more xG per game than we did. We managed to win the xG battle in 3 games and tied one more. In total we managed to stay within one xG of the Titans in 12 of 30 games, a pretty good improvement on the 4 games in the first sample.

In terms of shots, we have managed to limit the Titans a little bit with the tactical change, cutting out over 100 shots and 60 on target. However, the 434 shots taken by the Titans still isn’t great. We also managed to drop the quality of their chances slightly which is nice to see. For our part, we took slightly less shots (about 0.5 shot/game on average) for about the same xG/shot.

From the watching the games, it feels like we cut out some of the balls over the top that lead to great opportunities. The drop in xG per shot probably reflects that. However, there still was some of those opportunities that lead to goals. The Titans continued to create well in more controlled possession and it’s unclear whether part of this is just due to the difference in talent between the two sides.

Weaker Opposition

For the second round of testing, I wanted to look at team a bit closer in overall to us and see how that affects the results. Enter Bydgoszcz Rzeczni, part of the Rio de Acero Sports Group, and coming in slightly below the Eagles at 602 overall. I reached out on the Ramble discord for a team to test against near our overall and owner Nurquidi98 kindly responded with the perfect team for this experiment.

The team is pretty well balanced, with every player at least 50 overall. One of the 50s is at CB, but as one of three his weaknesses should be hidden more easily than in a back 4. They have a ton of pace in the two wingers, 76 and 86 on the pair. But a little less speed in their centre forward, 66 overall, still enough to outpace our centre backs in a foot race.

Well the results are certainly much improved against the lower quality opposition. We won 12 games, drew 6 and lost 12 of the 30 game sample size. There was a one goal difference between the two sides over the sample, so the results seem a pretty fair outcome.

Looking at xG it’s a little less impressive for us. We trailed in xG by 8.02 over the sample size and we outperformed xG by 13.16 compared to 6.24 for Rzeczni. On a game-by-game basis we led in xG in 14 of 30 games. There wasn’t too many massive outliers in the sample either. Rzeczni lead by 2.25 xG in one game, but otherwise every game was within two xG.

The shots allowed are much better than against the Taj City Titans, down from 541 to 347. The quality of opportunities dropped nicely as well from 1.72 down to 1.40. However, going forward we’ve performed very similarly. Having slightly more shots (257 v 242) for a marginally more xG/shot (0.156 v 0.159) – not quite the improvement I was hoping for with the change in overall.

Part of that likely comes from how the two oppositions have their sides set-up to play. Bydgoszcz Rzeczni play much more of a possession game than Taj City Titans. Despite the significant drop in overall, they averaged over 55% possession compared to 52% for the Titans. That safer approach to passing could well be a factor in us not seeing more of an increase in shots taken.

Switching over to the same 4-2-3-1 tactic, we again saw a reduction in the number of shots taken by Rzeczni, down from 347 to 288. Unfortunately we actually gave up slightly better opportunities from 0.140 up to 0.155. The net result is a drop in total xG of 4.02, not particularly significant on a per game basis.

Going forward it was a pretty similar story to in the first set of tests. We took slightly less shots with this tactic, down by 25. The quality of chances remained really similar dropping very marginally between the two (0.159 v 0.157 xG/shot). I shakes out to a drop of 4.48 xG over the 30 game sample – very similar to the drop seen by our opposition.

The results actually looked really good as we managed 13 wins, 10 draws and just 7 losses. But, this is coming off the back of a perfect storm of xG variance. We outscored our xG by 15 goals, whilst Rzeczni scored 11 less than theirs – pretty big outliers on both sides. We only won the xG battle in 12 of 30 games. Although there were no extreme outlier games with an xG difference of over 2.00.

Conclusions

From this set of testing, we can see the effects of changes in the oppositions’ overall on our results. It’s a pretty dramatic shift between the two sets of results going from a team 40 points above us to one 10 points below. The results against the stronger team will definitely temper my hopes in competitive games. Winning a league without a team near the top in overall seems a tough proposition – at least with my tactics..

The findings are a little bit muddled given the obvious tactical differences between our two oppositions. The Taj City Titans gave us a little more possession than Bydgoszcz Rzeczni and had the speed up front to take advantage of the space behind us. Rzeczni had a little less pace up front and controlled possession a little more. Given we know that pace in a front three is a weakness from our testing against a 4-3-3, the difference in approach may also have contributed to the difference in results.

Whatever the cause, the 5-2-3 is certainly an issue for the tactics I’m currently playing. The underlying metrics showed Bydgoszcz Rzeczni were the better side against us even if we got some solid results in the testing. The balance of getting enough men forward to create strong chances against a back five without being exposed at the back is quite challenging. Improving our defensive performances will be a big focus in my testing with the Season 6 match engine.

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