Now that this 4-3-3 has been made less-effective, I'm wondering where to turn. The offside trap is going to have been hit hard.
I think what I will do is go with this:
To those who are uneducated in the wonderful word of tactics in the past decades, this is the Catenaccio from 1947.
In 1947, Nereo Rocco became the new coach of Triestina, a small club in Italy's Serie A. Triestina was then only barely surviving in the league. Rocco's 'Catenaccio' system saw Triestina shooting up to second in the league later that season.
Catenaccio at its most attacking is played with a 1-3-3-3 formation. The most important part of the catenaccio was the focus on defence. Though not as outright defensive as the verrou, this defensive alignment was also important -- it led to football's darkest era (in Italy, anyway) when sterile, goalless matches were produced.
Three of the centre-backs had man-to-man marking duties, and the libero (continental name for sweeper), the free man. Obviously Managerzone tactics don't stretch as far as individual instructions, but it could be worth a pop.
This libero would have no marking duties, and would patrol the backline to cover up in case a fullback made a mistake. Almost all of the game was spent with long balls probing the defence, or sending only the forward line to attack, so that there would be enough players left to defend if a counterattack from the opposition developed. At its most defensive, a catenaccio team can even play with a 1-4-3-2 or 1-4-4-1 formation.
This is the W-M, which I was talking about earlier:
I would wager that it is similar to your 5-3-2 tactic, Mutt. Especially at the back, 3 centre-backs, and 2 centre-halfs. I would think that your attacking midfielders and strikers were set out differently.
Perhaps something like this?
This, in real life, was also a tactic created to deal with the offside trap. The 1925 amendment of the offside rule meant that an attacking player need only keep 2 opponents in front of him and not 3 as stated before. This made the offside trap a much more challenging proposition. If one defender made a mistake, then the goalkeeper would be left on his own to defend the goal... Unsurprisingly, the number of goals scored in the English First Division rose by 43%, from 1,192 to 1,703. Something which we may see a rise in Managerzone - Goals.
The perceptive Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman, along with his captain Charlie Buchan, devised a system to stop this problem after a 7-0 drubbing by Newcastle. They noticed that it was the centre-forward doing most of the goalscoring. Thus, the centre-half was pulled back to become the stopper, or the centre-back. To fill up the gap created in midfield, the two inside-forwards were pulled back to create a four-man midfield which the Italians called the magic square. The team thus had the general shape of a W of defensive players and an M of attack-minded players, giving rise to the name W-M. The typical W-M centre-forward was brawny and could score well.
This is the aforementioned 2-3-5, which England won the World Cup with, although also similar to a 4-3-3. Another modification to the 2-3-5, implemented by Vittorio Pozzo, 1934 coach to the Italian World Cup team. It was meant to be the Danubian style, with which the Austrian team were destroying all opposition, but he had no playmaker - his centre-half was more of a defensive type - and thus no source of attacks. This problem he solved by pulling the two inside-forwards back into midfield to start off the attacks and to act as playmaker. His centre-half then took on a more defensive role. This meant that his attack looked somewhat like the M of the W-M formation which I mentioned earlier.
I would expect more dribbles with the modified simulator. A player with a high speed attribute who sits in 'the hole' is going to cause havoc. He'll be breaking the offside trap very easily as he won't pass, but dribble through at speed. He could murder the Catanaccio. However if you have a fast defender, then send him back at sweeper to deal with this.
