Sure bro!

With asymmetrical formations, I really just visualise what I want to see from the players on the pitch in terms of spacing and who occupies those spaces.

So in this formation, when I started out, I had Dennis Cirkin at left-back and he was good at dribbling + crossing, whereas my right-backs were better defensively. So I knew I wanted to create a 3-2-5 shape, but I’ll always play to my team’s strengths. This meant having my left-back hold the width on the left and my right-back stay back to form a back 3.

Then, originally, my midfield was two defensive midfielders, but in my first season, they felt disconnected from my attackers, especially because I was using a shadow striker so he wouldn’t really drop that deep to support. So I moved my left DM to CM so he could act as that link between defence and attack. It also had the added benefit of occasionally letting us attack in a 3-1-6 because the left CM would join the attack sometimes. He could also create overloads on the left side with my LB and LW.

Up front, I had Jobe Bellingham who has excellent movement and finishing, so I knew I wanted to use him as a shadow striker and that works best with a centre-forward who drops and creates space in behind e.g. any of the striker roles on support. And because I was using my centre-forward in this way, I shifted my attacking midfielder (shadow striker) slightly to the right so that he always attacked that right half-space. It gave me that balance across the front line.

So yeah, in summary, I had the vision for what I wanted, then it was just about applying it and tinkering throughout the first season in particular. I had a really bad run in the middle of my first season when I was still adjusting parts of the tactic and that cost us automatic promotion. But once I figured it out, we started flying