Welcome to the Aston Villa FM26 team guide! They are on the edge of greatness since Emery took over, can you push them on?
With the Aston Villa FM26 team guide we are going to look at the best players, effective tactics, wonderkids and transfer tips.
By the end of this guide you will have comprehensive understanding of how to manage Aston Villa.
This is our first step to creating the Aston Villa FM26 team guide, the board and supporter expectations. We need to use their expectations as a guide in building our own tactical style. Ignoring their expectations will bring unnecessary heat on us, which is something we don’t need.
Starting with the board expectations we can see that they are only interested in the recruitment of the team. They do not see the value in buying player over 28 and they want to buy players under 23 who are ready for the first team. Basically you are free to do what you want tactically.
Now let’s look at the Villa fans expectations. It would appear they want to have attacking football and entertaining football, don’t we all? What this means is that we have a choice between the two attacking styles, Gegenpress or Tiki Taka. They are also the two styles that are seen as entertaining because of the chances they create.
Want to try this with a different team? Check out the West Ham version here.
This is the next step in the Aston Villa FM26 team guide, identifying who are key players are. Once we have filtered who they are, we need to map out a formation using their best positions. This means we will be playing to our strengths.
Let’s look at the talent pool available. We have a great keeper in Martinez which is a relief, a world cup winner! Looking at the rest of the key players it looks as though we could form a 4231 with DMs or MCs. This may depend on if the players can play both and what the full backs can do.
Let’s move on to the youth prospects and wonderkids. We haven’t got any 5 star rated talent unfortunately, but do have a number of players at 4 stars.
This means we have a lot of players who are able to develop further. After looking at the depth, it looks as though a 433 maybe the key. Although we have an AMC we only have one, which is on loan. We can now play both the MC and DM in the same team.
While this is not an essential part of the Aston Villa FM26 team guide, I thought it would be a good idea to include the wonderkids. The reason is to highlight who they are so you can pay special attention to them and blood them in your team. Here they are:
Remember if you develop these guys to the best of ability, you could end up with a world beater.
This is where the Aston Villa FM26 team guide comes to fruition, building a tactic. The way that we do this is use all the information that we have gathered from the previous sections. This will give us a tactic with solid synergy with the club and the players.
The first thing to mentioned is that we have selected the Gegenpress tactical style. This was because of the board and supporter objectives at the start of the guide. These objectives gave me a good direction to follow so we can be competitive this season and maybe spring a surprise.
The formation was chosen because of the best positions of the key players and that is our out of possession formation. My in possession formations tend to be very attacking. In this case the MCs are moving up to attacking midfield, the DM and the full back are moving to MC. The other full back then steps over to create 32 resting defence.
This defence set up is there in the 32 to stop the counter and also help progress the ball up the field. Then the attack is 5 attackers stretching the defence, attacking the half spaces and dragging markers.
This shape works even better if you use the High Performing 433 transition model.
As the Aston Villa FM26 team guide has suggested, Villa have a good team with a good level of depth. The only area I can see any real need for investment is the right wing or AMR.
Here are a few suggestions based on the above:
The challenge I see for Aston Villa is to beat PSR. I think introducing a recruitment model where you buy players under 23 and then develop them would help. This would keep wages down and potentially make money, each bid would require you to ask yourself profit or performance.
Aston Villa are going to be a fun team to manage as they do have a very underrated squad. The right manager could come in with a plan and use this foundation to build a team that will challenge for the league. The other idea is to introduce a new recruitment strategy and take a couple of steps back fora couple of years.
I tried half a season with Villa and you can see the results below. We are fourth and the third highest scorers in the league. The defence is doing it’s job and a minimum investment in reinforcements would help that.
Whatever you choose to do have fun with it, push the team outside of it’s comfort zone see what results you get. All the best for now Villains!
Aston Villa use a 4231 formation in FM26, mirroring Unai Emery’s real-life setup. It transitions into a 325 when attacking and a 433 when defending, combining control, compactness, and fast vertical play.
Aston Villa’s tactical style in FM26 is a Fluid Counter-Attack — compact defensively, quick in transition, and efficient in possession — though they can also play Control Possession when facing weaker sides.
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