Playing against the psycho midfield teams

[Dell19]

My season is likely to come down to one match. They will probably get a high inadequate midfield whilst I can probably only get a high weak midfield so that battle is pretty much lost whether I MOTS or not.

His attack is generally weak but this week he had a wing at passable whilst his defence is generally weak.

My team will probably get an excellent and a passable wing attack and then inadequate/passable defence.

So in theory my team should win but this is a critical game and I am curious what other teams (especially the scorer trainers) do when they come up against a midfield only team. Also I'm not sure whether to MOTS as the game before this and the match after it would be potential opportunities to gain points.

[akots]

Don't know but I have used a lot the Team Analyzer tool in Hattrick Organizer and it gives a very reasonable predictions. Can experiment with that and see how it goes. There are few way you can tweak you lineup:

1) Try 2-5-3, both central defenders offensive and two forwards defensive, wingers towards middle.

2) Try to improve the defenses by playing 4-3-3 with winger towards middle and both midfields defensively. it can be done with 3-4-3 as well and might be even more efficient.

3) Either way, forget about wingers at all imho. When I'm putting a winger in a game, I'm always losing to strong midfield team. Wingbacks though are very useful.

But this is a problem. I'm facing 4 midfield only teams in the league and losing half of the times. The wingers seems to be the key. If they use 2 strong wingers and you have good wingbacks, it might be a good idea of playing without winger (WTM should be played by a playmaker then).

Don't know, hopefully you can win that. :)

[Dell19]

Personally I like having the offensive winger since they changed the contributions of wingers as it allows me to have a decent attack rating to support my central attack and I don't think a WTM would allow me to win midfield.

Everything else is up for discussion but I'm unlikely to play a non standard formation and I will definately play 3 forwards as I would rather go down than lose training.

[akots]

Well, obviously you are not winning midfield but you are decreasing the gap and sufficiently. I have also liked wingers offensive a lot but the actual results of many tries and lost games suggest the opposite. For example, many midfield teams play both wingers offensive. They need it to compensate for lack of the third forward. That actually opens a window to get at them in some area where they are not as strong as they might think. Which is improving defense and midfield. When you have 3 strong forwards, you still get a very reasonable attack rating at least in the middle and on wings it can be at least weak very high or inadequate very low or low. That might be sufficient to score a few goals. Then, you don't need to have excellent attack to score against weak defense, passable would be completely OK, even inadequate should be fine unless you are extremely unlucky. However, each level up in midfield makes a huge difference. Similarly, each level in your defense makes difference as well because of his not so strong attack.

[socralynnek]

Is 4-3-3 with CA an option?
A midfield-only team often has one weak side attack, especially after the recent change, which could lead to nice CA chances. If there CD is bad then you could even push your side attack with FTW, especially if your CA is strong enough with 2 players.
Or play regular 3-4-3 with three strong attack sides, so even 40% posession could give you enough chances if you score them all.

[arne1]

I agree with socralynnek on the counter attack option, it gives me nightmares. And since I can be considered as a midfiled only team, it will probably give all those midfield only persons nightmares.