FM 23 Beşiktaş Tactic: Şenol Güneş 4-3-3 Guide

FM 23 Beşiktaş Tactic! 4-3-3 Şenol Güneş and Alternative 4-4-2 Tactics!

Beşiktaş started the season with Valerien Ismael, and true to tradition, he was sacked just two weeks after Ahmet Nur Çebi's "we stand behind our coach" statement. While his exit was put down to the players' stance against Ismael and their dislike of his style of football, some reports in the media claimed Şenol Güneş had already been counting down the days to take over and was simply waiting for results to dip. The summer transfers and squad planning weren't disastrous, but the team still hasn't found real harmony or a style of football that holds up for 90 minutes. Şenol Güneş is a coach who favors high-pressing, attacking football, but how much can he really press with this squad? And how will he compress the team's shape? We'll find out together...

When I looked at Beşiktaş in FM 23, the first player who caught my eye was Redmond. He plays much better football than his in-game stats suggest and does a lot of work down the left flank. You can easily build a solid team around a 4-3-3 formation and compete for the league title. 4-3-3 is already one of the shapes Şenol Güneş uses most often in the style of football he tries to play. Since he uses Cenk and Weghorst together, the tactic sometimes drifts toward a 4-3-1-2, though I expect Muleka to get a lot more minutes going forward and to play on one of the wings. First we'll look at Şenol Güneş's 4-3-3 tactic, then as an alternative, the no-winger diamond (4-4-2).

How Do You Set Up Şenol Güneş's Beşiktaş Tactic in FM 23?

We settled on 4-3-3 for the Şenol Güneş tactic, though I went back and forth quite a bit while building the squad. In fact, I changed my mind on several points while writing this, and I have tried to explain those below. In simple terms, this team's wing-backs need to push forward and hug the touchline. It's very possible to get good results from setups where the wingers sit narrower and Weghorst feeds them.

FM 23 4-3-3 Beşiktaş Şenol Güneş Tactic

You can freely swap out player names, especially in midfield, where you have plenty of alternatives. You could play Saiss on the left of the back line and drop Josef de Sousa into the defensive midfielder role, though Saiss can also be set up as a ball-winning midfielder or between the two centre-backs. If you want to play a classic back four, which is what Şenol Hoca will prefer, you can leave Saiss or his replacement as the ball-winning midfielder and push the wingers into attack. Since Masuaku and Rosier are especially strong wing-backs, it's worth keeping them close to the touchline as much as possible and playing the wingers on their opposite foot so they cut inside. Pulling Dele Alli into a central midfield role, with Redmond on the left and Muleka or Weghorst up front, can produce far better results than the lineup shown in the screenshot. Either way, you're much more likely to succeed in setups where the wingers cut inside and the wing-backs hug the line. Since they still have room to develop, I'd play Montero (Emrecan) and Tayyip at centre-back. Gedson should definitely take on a two-way midfield job in a box-to-box or dynamic (dinamo) role, while having a deep-lying playmaker alongside him works better. You can adjust how attacking or balanced the wingers are match to match. In setups where the wing-backs are attacking, you can even make small tweaks by keeping the wingers balanced and simply giving an attacking instruction to whoever plays in Salih's position. I'd recommend testing these match by match to find what works best. That's exactly what preseason is for!

When Beşiktaş have the ball, they should of course build play through the wings. We want to play out from the back and quickly spread the ball out to the flanks through midfield. We set tempo fairly high and passing style to standard. There's no need to open up attacking width further, since our wing play runs through the wing-backs, so there's no need to stretch the rest of the team any wider. We didn't give a specific crossing instruction, but with Weghorst on the pitch you can of course use crosses from deep, or set Weghorst up as a target man with runners from midfield adding to the goal tally. For that, you should use the "work ball into box" option.

In transition, with such a crowded midfield and so many attacking instructions, this team needs to be set up around counter-press and counter. Since we have a deep-lying playmaker and two ball-playing centre-backs, giving the goalkeeper "take short kicks" and "distribute to centre-backs" instructions will speed up our vertical passing and improve the team's passing quality.

Out of possession, it helps to keep pressing very intense and take advantage of having Weghorst up front by also pressing the opposition goalkeeper's distribution. We set the defensive line to "drop off more," though this can just as easily be left blank, since we don't want the defenders too heavily involved. With the front line pressing and the back line sitting a bit deeper, we're keeping the team's shape long (because that's how Beşiktaş are currently set up in real life). You can adjust these as the season goes on, depending on whether you prefer a more aggressive or a calmer style.

FM 23 Beşiktaş Alternative Tactic (4-4-2 Diamond)

I think our alternative tactic actually suits this squad even better than the 4-3-3 template we gave first. If you use this as your main tactic, I believe you'll get good results and stay competitive in the league. This is the narrow, wingless diamond (call it a "baklava" or an "elmas" as Turkish fans do, whatever you prefer) that Şenol Güneş likes to use from time to time. You can build a good blend around out-and-out strikers like Muleka, Weghorst and Cenk Tosun by surrounding them with several attack-minded midfielders, and since we have once again positioned the wing-backs correctly, you'll also boost their output!

In this tactic the wing-backs stay the same, except Emrecan Uzunhan replaces Montero. He's a player I really like, and if you develop him you won't need to look for a left centre-back for a long time (he's also valuable for the three-Turkish-player rule). Saiss plays as a deep-lying playmaker in a slightly more ball-distributing role, while Gedson again works in a box-to-box capacity. The most radical choice we made here was positioning Redmond as a mezzala. Redmond is excellent in the game and should absolutely be used in an attacking role. Alli plays as an attacking midfielder, with Ghezzal ahead of him as a false nine and Weghorst as a target man striker. Muleka and Ghezzal can share that role between them. By rotating Weghorst with Cenk Tosun, we have also covered the front line.

Since we don't have wingers, we set the team fairly narrow in possession and build play through the middle. Our tempo is high but our passing style is short. You can adjust the other instructions based on the team's on-pitch performance. You can also opt for high, lofted crosses.

Counter-press and counter are once again must-haves for us! Since we build from the back, the goalkeeper takes short kicks to start play.

On the defensive side, we have been a bit bolder and pushed the line up higher. Since the middle of the pitch is crowded, we're forcing the opposition to play through the center while also blocking their crosses. This way, the opposition is funneled into the middle without meaning to, and we disrupt them in a crowded area. Since our wing-backs are attack-minded, the more we ease their defensive workload, the more output we'll get from them going forward!

In both tactics, the goal is to make more use of the center while bringing the wing-backs into play. These are the two tactics we believe will bring success. See you in more FM 23 guide articles...

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To read our guide on playing as Galatasaray with the Okan Buruk tactic (which also includes an alternative tactic), just click the link !

To read our guide on playing as Fenerbahçe with the Jorge Jesus tactic (which also includes an alternative tactic), just click the link !

To read our guide on playing as Trabzonspor with the Abdullah Avcı tactic (which also includes an alternative tactic), just click the link !