If you want to control the posession, you want fluid atleast. Also diciplined makes your attacks easier to read for opposition.
Play ball thru center is kinda pointless. You got attacking playmaker there, so ball will most probably go thru him anyway. Always try to not overcomplicate things when making a tactic.
When playing the control game the fullbacks becomes very important in attack, specially when using inside forwards at the wings. You got 1 defensive midfielder and 2 central defenders that should be able to handle stuff that comes at them so I would maybe have a look at the fullbacks so they most of the attacks covers their full wing. They make a lot of troubles for opposition defense when using inside forwards since their fullbacks cant both follow your IF and FBs.
Dont just say "I want to play 4231, so the players better play it". Just because it doesnt look like 4231 on tactic screen doesnt mean that it wont look like it once on the field.
1 problem many have is that they dont read up enough on what the roles and different mentalities does for positions.
I'll give an example on that. I have a tactic called 2-5-3 barca goalscoring uploaded here. The plan from the beginning was something like what you try to do here but with more closing down, because, well its barca. Couldnt get inside forwards to produce enough, didnt score enough and was to be honest pretty dull with 1-0 and 2-1wins mostly.
So, I decided to change. First I decided that I need the fullbacks to give even more attacking options. So they became wingbacks, leaving only 2 central defenders and 1 def mid. Still, I had bloody messi and neymar flanking suarez and goalscoring just wasnt good enough. So after some testing and planning, and reading up on trequartista which I never usually use, I decided that using both Messi and Neymar as treqs was worth a shot. Treqs roam for space when opponent have the ball and doesnt work defensively, so in defense I pretty much had 7 players, but when we won the ball both messi and neymar would be free to get passes, which made problems for opponent. If he want to use his fullbacks offensively, he will leave a 3vs3 situation and we all know what happens if messi-neymar-suarez gets 3vs3. In game tho it looks like a 4-2-3-1 due roles.
You can also go down and micromanage stuff, but hard first season since u have to take the players u get. Big forward, use him as target or crosses from sideline. Fast forwards, maybe early low hard crosses. Problem is that many teams comes with 1 big and 1 small, specially in english lower leagues. But can always have same tactic twice so some learns faster and have 1 suited for different players.
Thats all I can think of now. The most important is that you need a greater plan, and then a plan for each part of the team and get them to work together and both work in attack and defense. Many just plans how stuff gonna look at attack and then wonder why they concede goals.
And best tip ever if you want to get great at making tactics and understand how the great tacticians thought when they made tactics. There you can read about how ancelotti had to do some thinking making room for 3 10s in milan for example. Is a search box to the right, teams of the decade gives many intresting reads.
Link:
http://www.zonalmarking.net/
These tactics I managed to get working with Deportivo a few years ago
http://www.zonalmarking.net/2010/01/22/teams-of-the-decade-14-milan-2002-07/ which was very intresting.
Anyway, just keep going. Sometimes you just feel helpless in FM, and sometimes there really isnt anything you can do. But there is amlla tricks too, like watching preseason games from behind your goal and watch full game so you see how the team moves and where there is a lot of green.
Ok, now I'm done. GLHF
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