Arsenal / Tactics

The Real Arsenal 4-3-3

Being both an Arsenal fan and a football tactics fan, I’ve wanted to re-create Arsenals real life 4-3-3 tactic in FM since the 2009/2010 season started. After watching every first team game so far (as well as a bunch of youth fixtures), then trying to implement it into FM for about 6 months…I think I’ve been able to come very close to the real deal.

Now, there are a couple of important things in the real tactic that will not work in FM. One is to instruct players to cover for other players if they roam out of position. They can do it on their own (I’ve seen it a couple of times in this tactic), but it won’t work for simulating exactly how Gallas, Vermaelen and Song interact with eachother. Another one is that in reality the centre backs will stretch wide to cover the flanks when the full backs go into attack mode. This won’t happen in FM, leaving your flanks quite exposed at times.

In the real life tactic, Vermaelen and Gallas both go on forward runs, and when one of them do; Song falls back and becomes a temporary CB. I’ve tried putting both CB’s on max creativity, roam, forward run, etc…but the game will not allow the CB’s to launch forward while a midfielder covers for them. At least not at the same rate as in reality.

Another thing that won’t work is keeping the crosses down to a minimum. The match engine in FM has an abnormal amount of crosses it wants to include in every game. But in the real Arsenal 4-3-3, crosses are very rare, as players usually try to play their way into the box. Even with the touchline instruction Work Ball Into Box, the crosses in FM will still outnumber reality.

Lastly, getting Fabregas to score frequently (like in reality) is a no-go.

So keep those things in mind when using this tactic.

My goal here was to try and simulate the real tactic so that it:

1. Looks like the real deal in the match engine
2. Emulates the real life results
3. Corresponds to real life analytics

This thread is both a HOW TO re-create the real Arsenal 4-3-3, as well as the main article and download hub for the actual tactic.

Real Tactic

Arsenal are playing a wide, probing passing game – highly attacking in nature. Many players have free roles, which makes the formation very fluid. Unlike most Premier League teams, Arsenal use very little pressure on the opponent, choosing instead to stand off a little and counter if the opportunity arise.

Solid Core

The central core of the tactic is static in the sense that the roles of the central players are always the same, no matter who’s playing in the position. The central positions are:

Central Defenders
Defensive Midfielder
Central Forward

The Role/Duty of these never change, as this is Wenger’s ‘solid core’. All other players have floating Roles/Duties depending on who’s playing.

Free Floaters
Surrounding the ‘solid core’ are free floating positions. Cesc, Diaby, Arshavin and Walcott all have varying degrees of free roles, but the main point is that they’re supposed to ‘float’ around the solid core, offering passing options.

If you read Arsene Wenger – The Biography (by Xavier Rivoire), there is a lot of information about how Wenger trains his players in the passing aspect of the game. Arsenal’s passing game is about offering at least three clear choices for the player with the ball, at all times. So the reason for having floating players around the core, is to create fluid passing options.

Players

As the personality of the tactic is highly dependant on who’s playing on the day, lets take a look at the key players in the first choice squad:

Vermaelen & Gallas

Starting off with the dynamic duo, we can see that their duties are much more attacking than a traditional centre back pair. First Gallas, then Vermaelen:

Gallas is more condensed, while Vermaelen has a longer, or maybe wider, leash. If you’ve watched Arsenal games during the 2009/2010 season, you’d know that Vermaelen is a very aggressive defender in terms of anticipation. His strength is reading the game well enough to be able to come out far and stop attacks early on.

Gallas is more of a traditional defender, but he gets pushed forward by the attacking nature of the squad (just like everyone else).

They are, however, very similar in both style and behaviour, which is probably the biggest problem with the pair.

Backup Players
Sol Campbell currently comes in as a replacement for both Gallas and Vermaelen, as Wenger seems to have lost faith in Silvestre and especially Senderos (who will be sold in the summer). Djorou is probably part of the plan, but he has been injured quite a lot.

Clichy & Sagna

First Clichy, then Sagna:

Sagna is the more condensed player. Clichy generally travels further into the pitch. Sagna is focused on the middle of the field for the most part of the game, and seems to hug the touchline pretty tight.

Sagna is more of a wing back, and the reason for this is most likely that he has both Cesc and Walcott in front of him on his side of the pitch. Walcott is a very wide playing forward, and Cesc often ventures out on the sides.

On the left hand side, Arshavin and Diaby both cut inside to run down the middle, getting Clichy more area to cover. This is the reason for Clichy having a wider area of play than Sagna.

Backup Players
Eboué comes in as replacement for Sagna if he’s out, and deputizing for Clichy is both Gibbs and Traore, who are both competing for being the main replacement on the left back position.

Alex Song

Alex Song is the holding midfield player. The midfield consists of a defensive midfielder, a ‘normal’ midfielder and then Cesc, who’s free to do anything basically.

Looking at Song, we can clearly see that he has a holding role, these are his last 3 games:

…and also that he ventures out on the right quite a bit, but that’s mainly because Fabregas is usually on that side, and he covers behind him.

Against weaker opposition, he goes further up the pitch, but that’s natural since the whole team is pushed up.

Backup Player
Denilson has been put in this position when Song has been injured or away on pointless african cups…but he’s not very good in it. Arsenal really lack a natural replacement in this position, which is probably why Wenger is still so interested in buying a defensive midfielder in the summer.

Fabregas

Fabregas, shown here in 3 of his last games in a very free role:

Cesc starts out on the right hand side of the midfield, but travels all over. His personal preference is actually playing fairly deep, so he can control the game more, but this season Wenger wanted him to play much higher so that he can add something to the attack. Apparently a good move, since he’s currently equal with Pires for most goals scored by a midfielder in a season.

Backup Player
His natural replacement is Nasri, who has the same role in the same position, but Ramsey have played this position quite a lot, and Rosicky is also able to play here.

Diaby

Diaby has a similar movement pattern to Cesc, but sits slightly deeper:

Diaby has a different personality to Cesc, even though they have a very similar pattern. He keeps the ball very close to his feet, and is very quick with it, making it very hard taking the ball from him and stopping him going past you.

Backup Player
There are lots of players competing for this position, with Ramsey, Rosicky, Nasri and Denilson being the hottest tips. But there is also Merida lurking about.

Arshavin

This is also a very free player, who travels all over. These are the first 3 games of the season:

He almost drops down to a midfielder position during games. He cuts inside, and mostly operates in the AMC/AML area of the pitch.

Backup Player
Eduardo comes in as a poacher if played in this position, with Vela also being part of the backup plan. However, when we’re short of striker options, this position usually transforms into more of a genuine AML, and players like Rosicky and Nasri are often used when Arshavin is unable to play.

Walcott

Walcott has a basic wide role, waiting for through passes so he can utilize his immense speed.

Many times throughout the season, a through ball has been made far out on the right flank, for Walcott to outrun any wing backs and get an early cross or pass in to Cesc or RVP. In the later stags of the season, he started making more runs into the center of the pitch, and he’s slowly progressing to be more of a inside forward than a right midfielder.

Backup Player
His natural replacement is Eboué, who nowadays comes in and behaves very much like Walcott in this position. Rosicky and Nasri has also played in this right wing position.

Van Persie

In his Complete Forward role, his playground is the center field, to orchestrate attacks and come from a deep position. These are from the first 3 games of the season:

As he is in the same area as Arshavin, you could argue that he is a ‘false 9′ in a somewhat strikerless formation. Van Persie isn’t really a striker in the true sense of the word (like Drogba, Torres or Eto’o), he’s more of a Bergkamp type player, coming deep and waiting for any free floaters to run into the box for some sweet sweet intricate passing showdown straight into the net…well that’s the plan, anways.

Main duty here is to orchestrate an attack, with Cesc slightly behind his right shoulder, and Arshavin on his left.

Backup Players
His natural replacement is Arshavin (due to the complete forward role), but the russian doesn’t like this central position very much, and has a hard time in the premiership with the tall strong centre backs. Therefore, Wenger has opted for Bendtner in this position instead. A backup player will probably be signed for this position in the summer, with Marouane Chamakh being the leading candidate.

Building in FM: Formation

In real life, Arsenal is playing a wide 4-3-3 variant, but unfortunately FM won’t allow any halfway steps between positions. So we’re stuck with either having the wingers on level with the striker (as ST’s), or out on the wings (as AMR/L’s).

Ideally, the wingers would be somewhere in between those positions, but we have to adapt this to the match engine. The front three will look more like the front of a 4-5-1.

When it comes to the central midfield position (DM), the realistic position here would be halfway between MC and DM. Once again, it looks more like the real deal when he’s in the MC position.

First picture is what the tactic should look like in FM, and the other picture is what we end up with:

Building in FM: Team Instructions

Wenger has always been interested in total football, and you can see some of it in the way Arsenal play. Before going to the new 4-3-3 formation in 2009, he used to have a very fluid 4-4-2, where the wingers would interchange with the forwards and wing backs, and often end up in the forward positions, scoring loads of goals (like Pires, Ljungberg, etc).

Philosophy is always Very Fluid, and the reason is the in-game description of the Very Fluid setting, which describes Arsenal perfectly:

“With this philosophy, all players are expected to contribute to all phases of play within a very fluid system. Attackers must be able to defend and defenders must be able to attack, with players relying on their reading of the game and each other’s movement to shift in and out of each phase at the right moment. The team will be encouraged to play free-flowing football with players allowed high levels of creative freedom.”

Starting strategy is either Control or Attacking, depending on the opposition, but I tend to just keep it on Attacking.

Arsenal play a probing passing game, so set it to Shorter.

It also allows players to be more creative, so put it to More Expressive.

Primary Playmaker is always Cesc, of course.

In the advanced tab, we need to tweak a little. We need to instruct the team to focus their passing through the middle, to better emulate the passing statistics compared to reality.

We have to put Cesc as the target man, with an instruction of run onto ball, in order to copy his real life attacking behaviour and goalscoring tally.

We also have to force an offside trap, as FM will disable it if the defenders are set to differing roles/duties.

We force the tempo down to slowest, to get the probing effect.

Lastly, we put the counter attack to NO, otherwise we’ll get too many long balls to Van Persie. Don’t worry, the team will still counter attack even though this is turned off.

In the end it should look something like this:

Building in FM: Player Roles/Duties

Now we can get down to details. It is hard doing a 100% accurate role distribution, since we haven’t really seen the first pick squad play together much this season. This would be Wenger’s first choice squad if everyone was healthy and at full fitness:

Diaby and Walcott are the only two not regarded as automatic first choices, as Diaby shares his position with Rosicky/Nasri/Denilson/Ramsey (in that order) and Walcott is sharing his position with Eboué and Rosicky. Also, player roles would change depending on what player is playing, but I’ll go through that in every section.

Manuel Almunia

Role: Goalkeeper
Duty: Defend

Lets start with the keeper. Almunia is an irrational guy, to put it mildly. Sweeper Keeper/Support seems to be a good representation of his behaviour in real life, but in the game we have to set him to a regular Goalkeeper/Defend to make it seem realistic. Remember to set his distribution to short throw, as he almost always throws a short ball to Clichy for a counter-attack.

Gael Clichy & Bacary Sagna

Role: Full Back
Duty: Attack

These two are the hardest to get right, weirdly enough. In reality, they’re very attack-minded players, so we set them to attacking full backs in the game.

In Dial Square, I’ve managed to get them very close to real life behaviour. First Clichy:

And then Sagna:

I’ve also tried keeping their crosses down, by having them rarely cross, and if they do; cross from deep. I also always have the Work Ball Into Box instruction, but they still cross much more than in reality.

Thomas Vermaelen & William Gallas

Thomas Vermaelen Role: Ball Playing Defender
Thomas Vermaelen Duty: Stopper

William Gallas Role: Central Defender
William Gallas Duty: Defend

Vermaelen has an important role to play in emulating the real formation. First off, he’s a Ball Playing Defender with a Stopper duty, often coming far out to head away any high balls. Second, he has instructions to run with ball, forward run, long shot and roam from position.

Gallas is set to CB/Defend, and is the more defensive of the two CB’s.

Alex Song

Role: Ball Winning Midfielder
Duty: Defend

Compared to real life, this is how he behaves in Dial Square:

Abou Diaby

Role: Box To Box Midfielder
Duty: Support

Diaby has a similar role to Cesc, but slightly deeper. RL comparison:

We set him as Box-to-Box so that he travels deeper down the pitch.

Cesc Fabregas

Role: Advanced Playmaker
Duty: Attack

When it comes to Fabregas, he is an Advanced Playmaker with an Attack duty in the real 4-3-3. This is the way Wenger employs him, even though he’s had a couple of other roles throughout the season, especially when playing with both Song and Denilson.

Here is the comparison to real behaviour:

To emulate his coverage of both flanks, we would have to set him to swap with Diaby during games, but unfortunately this creates some weird behaviours from Diaby. When he swaps positions, he takes over Cesc’s playmaker role as well, and he gets superpowers in that position = not very realistic.

Cesc will venture out on the different flanks, but not as much as in the above comparison (which was made with the swap instruction active).

Theo Walcott

Role: Inside Forward
Duty: Support

…is usually way out on the right flank, so be sure to instruct him to hug the touchline. Walcott has started to make better runs into channels in the later stages of this season. His role is now Inside Forward/Support. Comparison:

Remember: if you use Eboué in this position, change his role to Defensive Winger/Support to avoid him being to offensive in nature.

Robin Van Persie

Role: Complete Forward
Duty: Support

The focal point of the offensive line. He is a pure Complete Forward/Support, and will do that job very well. He comes very deep to get the ball, as you can see in the chalkboards earlier in the article.

Here’s the comparison:

Andrey Arshavin

Role: Inside Forward
Duty: Attack

Arshavin is set to Inside Forward/Attack, and has a ‘Cut Inside’ instruction to keep him more central.

Here’s the comparison:

If you’re using Rosicky or Nasri in this position, change the duty to support. If you use strikers, you have to position them higher up the pitch (next to Van Persie), and then do the following changes: Eduardo needs to have a Poacher/Attack mentality, and Vela needs to have a Deep Lying Forward/Support mentality.

Using in FM: Touchline Instructions

Always tick Work Ball Into Box and Retain Possession at the start of every game. That will create the ‘pass ball into goal’ behaviour common for Arsenal.

At the start of the season, Arsenal were very cautious when it came to tackling and aggression, but now at the end of the season they have shaped up in this department. For some matches you could tick ‘Hassle Opponents’, and maybe even ‘Get Stuck In’ if it’s against Hull ;).

Remember though, Arsenal are top of the fair play league, so getting too many cards will not be very realistic.

Using in FM: Other Details

Remember to put Cesc as corner taker for the left side, Van Persie as corner taker for the right side, and Sagna and Clichy should do all throw-ins on their respective sides.

Corner set-up is emulating real-life behaviour from v1.7.9+.

Unfortunately we can’t make Cesc kick-off together with Van Persie without changing the formation to a 4-5-1…but now we’re touching on insane detail territory. Cesc does now, like in reality, kick off with Van Persie.

Download Tactic

The one called Dial Square Academy is for the Reserve and Academy teams, and it’s a less complicated version of the main tactic, without having the RMC position set to playmaker/target man, and without the Complete Forward role for the central forward.

Dial Square v2.2
Dial Square Academy v2.2

Work by Mantralux