Player Review

Prolog:

I tried Larsson (Hawk) as a single upfront striker in a 4231. Now you might think "well, of course that's not going to work out that great" but hold on a minute. I played with Mertens as single striker for a while. I prefer Strikers who can dribble and hold the ball this way before playing a deadly pass, usually to my CAM, or create chances themselves with dribbling or by being in the right spot at the right time. So Mertens worked out great because he had all those attributes but at 42 Strength, I just had issues with him against opponents who defended well. All I needed was someone similar to Mertens at around 700k or lower (PC) with Strength of at least 65 or more, ideally 70+. Larsson seemed to work as he was taller, had 71 Strength on Hawk, good Dribbling Stats, high Aggression and good Pace as well as strong finishing. Or so I thought.

Because Larsson did not only not work out, he made my entire team worse.

Why I didn't like him:

Larsson should be good off the ball but he wasn't. In fact he was all too happy to make himself unavailable by making bad moves when I needed an outlet. Most of the time I had to play with 10 men. His trait says he tries to beat the defensive line, but he only ever tried when there was no way to play him in or on the wing, I will get to that. So it's no surprise he only scored 14 goals for me in addition to 16 assists in just under 60 games. Horrible. Mertens trippled this by the way.

Larsson also has incredibly disappointing finishing considering the price. I always like to reference how a player does against de Gea because de Gea ist a monster in this year's Fifa. For example Dybala is so good it doesn't matter whether someone has de Gea or not, he will score. Larsson however scored 1 goal against de Gea, whom I must have faced at least 20 times in the Weekend League. He scored it because the net was almost empty. I tried a lot of things with him: Low Drivens are just not fast enough, normal shots not precise enough, finesse shots either go wide or into the reach of the keeper. Of course he did score a few goals so he didn't always fail but my thought was: I have an Icon now, I will convert more chances. The opposite was the case. At times he actually does have a very powerful seemingly unstoppable shot. But this is so inconsistent I can't really take it as a given.

And then there is his passing. It's really hit and miss, sometimes he bottled easy passes which was an annoyance. But then again he did manage to create a few chances and make a few key passes, even though his stats wouldn't suggest this as much. So his passing really isn't all that terrible. It's just worse than the ability I was hoping for.

His ultimate downfall however in MY way of playing was the fact that even though his dribbling is actually quiet good, he only has 3* Skillmoves. Now Larsson has the trait "tries to beat defensive line" which makes him a great outlet for passing it down the wing and looking for a teammate or get inside. You might not like doing this and want him to stay central and only poach the goals in which case read what I said before. Having this trait does make him prone to those runs however and you then just need the 4* skills even if you don't plan on using them as much for a simple reason: you will be predictable otherwise.

So Larsson made runs down the wing and if he actually got the ball which didn't always happen because, as I said, he wasn't doing so great off the ball, he was stuck. So I had a choice of playing to him and go on to hope that I would somehow find a teammate (but the passing isn't great) or get past (but he is predictable) or ignore him. In which case I was down to 10 men basically.

Now if you, like so many others, play a narrow 2-striker-formation, you should probably play him on hunter and it should work out alright. After all he isn't all that expensive and it's nice to have an icon. But if you play 1 striker and a your game is a little more demanding: STAY CLEAR.