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WATCH: Can Manchester United Win The Premier League On FIFA With One-Man Defence?

WATCH: Can Manchester United Win The Premier League On FIFA With One-Man Defence?

It's quite the experiment...

Josh Lawless

Josh Lawless

When playing on FIFA career mode, or even Football Manager, playing your standard 4-4-2 or 4-2-3-1 can get a bit boring eventually so mixing things up in terms of tactics is a welcome move.

If I feel like chanelling my inner Marcelo Bielsa or Zdnek Zeman, I might opt for some weird, hipstery 3-2-3-2 system with two trequartistas, two registas, one inverted wing-back, a lone enganche and a false nine to top it off. Apologies for hurting your head with the tactical talk but there are genuinely people out there who frequently use such phrases.

Anyway, FIFA YouTuber Rich Leigh, as brought to our attention by Dream Team FC, went extremely attack-minded with one of his most recent FIFA 17 experiments.

Having started a Manchester United career mode, he set out to simulate and see if the Red Devils could go all the way and win the Premier League title playing with just a single defender.

He genuinely deployed a 1-4-5 formation, with Eric Bailly tasked with sniffing out opposition attacks on his own. He did also manage to bring in Sergio Ramos to single-handedly command the defence on occasion, too.

See what went down in the season here:

Rich did make a huge summer transfer to give him the best possible possible chance of lifting the league title, managing to bring Cristiano Ronaldo back to Old Trafford for a massive fee of £116 million.

But even with the supreme talents of Ronaldo to provide in attack, you'd think United would still struggle in the game purely because of the lack of numbers in attack. You get exposed enough when piling on the pressure and opting for 'All out Attack' in a game, having a solitary defender for a full season is next level.

Yet remarkably, it worked wonders for United.

They finish the season on 83 points, pipping Chelsea to the league title, as well as winning the FA Cup by defeating West Ham 2-1 at Wembley.

Their Premier League record saw them pick up 25 wins, eight draws and five losses over the course of the season.

Moreover, the title winners notched 75 goals in the league and only conceded 30, the joint best defensive record in the league.


Finally, despite having one defender providing hiim with protection in the whole season, David De Gea recorded a league-high 13 clean sheets.

FIFA can be very strange at times and this is definitely ones of those instances. If you want to win the Premier League, maybe playing with one defender is the way to go.

Featured Image Credit:

Topics: FIFA 17, Manchester United, Eric Bailly