Someone once said:
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
Even if it is used mostly in the business world, the same is true in Hattrick. However, in this blog, we have only insights about the tactical usage by formation types. And who knows? If you like the subject, I might publish another one, not only with stats, but going deeper into the details of how tactics really work in Hattrick 😉
We took almost 1 million matches from our database and created the following graph (click on it for a bigger image):
At a first glance, it is obvious that the 3-5-2 formation is the most popular choice for the tactics Normal, Attack on Wings, Attack in the Middle, Pressing and Play Creatively with almost 50% of their usage. On the other side, 5-2-3 is the least favourite in most of these cases.
The Counter Attacks tactic is the only one that is well spread among 3-5-2, 4-4-2, 4-5-1, 5-4-1 and it is also on top of the 5-3-2 lineup with 21% usage.
Pressing, in a similar situation, is a common tactic for 3 formations starting with 3-5-2 and then 4-4-2 and 4-5-1.
Oh my… The lovely Long Shots… with 36% on 5-5-0 lineup and 3-5-2 and 4-5-1 with almost 17% each.
We could say that we have two groups of tactics. Group 1 with Normal, Attack on Wings and in the Middle that have a single dominant formation while group 2 with Counter Attacks, Long Shots and Pressing are popular on more than 3 formation types.
What do you think? Can one use a tactic from the first group with more formations effectively or is it really easy to adapt a team from group 2 with so many different lineups?
Please fix the ME!
Curiously I miss the 433 formation, the one I loved playing counter attack with.
Obviously, not everyone is knowing what he is doing. e.g. counter attack with 253 ; )
What a cool data set. Have you guys looked at winning percentages for formation x vs. formation y? I’ll bet that would be interesting to look at, especially if you could factor in things like possession +/-, etc.
Very nice graph!
But, please fix the ME, as you promised…
Great job, anyway!