sposfan

Hi, as a first time Canadian buyer of FM, I'm totally new to the series and pretty devoid of tactical football knowledge (pretty much ANY football knowledge, to be honest).

In any case, I've started reading up on and trying to understand tactics. I'm sur emy questions will be incredibly basic, so thank you in advance for your patience and your help.

To start with: I've started a season, just to get a handle on the game and am playing with different aspects one at a time.

Where I am now...

I've checked out personal tactics, and while I understand the basics of it, I do have several questions.

There are 3 choices in the personal tactics, Free kicks, corners and throw-ins, with each having several options. Do I want to leave these as the default, or does it pay to play with these?

For Free Kicks, some of the offensive options incude "form wall", "near/far push" and others. Do any specific positions usually form the wall? What attributes am I looking for in my wall and how many men strong should it be? Inversely, is there any particular attributes I should be looking for for players tasked with disrupting the wall, and how many of those should I have?

For corners, what is a "near post flick on"? Attack ball from deep"?

Does it actually pay to set these all individually, or just let my assman set it all and not bother with it, or even concentrate on the bigger tactics at first (formation, team instructions, etc) and leave the personal and positional instructions for later?

Is there any way to view which players are assigned to what on one screen, or do I have to go player by player and make a note manually?

Thanks in advance for any and all help in this area. I understand the basics of the sport, but it's the intricacies that take a long time. I have been watching as much football as possible on TV, but it's gonna be a long time, til I fully understand the strategies, the thinking behind them and when and where to use them.

Amaroq

(Thanks for the link from GQ, I might have missed this otherwise. I don't have much time - off to Chargers-Colts momentarily - but I'll give it a quickie:)

I went a long ways, with decent success, without really getting too involved with those. However, I didn't start having really tremendous success until I got into playing with those, and trying to get them right for my players at hand.

For me, it was more like "Who do I want not in the wall?" .. and for that I tend to choose my best Marking players, plus at least one Jumping/Heading player to help deal with aerial crosses.

For disrupting the wall, I went with Strength, but I'd love to know what other people are using.

On defending corners, I found it very useful to have high Jumping / Marking / Headers players on "Mark Tall", with one held out on "Near Post" - he'll range off the near post to head away a lot of dangerous corners that might otherwise have found a target in the six.

Near post flick - a guy who lines up between the near post and the corner-taker, and tries to get his head on the ball. He might head on goal, and score himself; he might "flick on" to a teammate, changing the flight of the ball so that the defense and 'keeper have less time to react to it. For this, you probably want a high Heading / Technique / Creativity combination player, probably with good Decisions and Jumping - I wound up letting my "best" Jumping player (usually a less technically-adept central defender) sit more central, figuring control with the head was the most important thing at the near post.

On the other hand, for throw-ins, I found it very valuable to get that big central defender with great Jumping and Heading to "Near Post", and he would score several times a season, as well as flicking-on to set up his teammates several more.

"Attack ball from deep" I haven't been using, but it would be somebody who lines up outside of the penalty area, and makes a "run" into the box late, in theory getting a step on his marker and arriving at a point at the exact instant the ball does. Not sure what attributes you'd want for it.

I wish.

sposfan

Thanks as usual!

What would you guys recommend as the best way to start learning about tactics in FM, in other words, what area to start in?

I've read pretty much every tactics thread relating to the basics I could find and printed out most of them to boot!

rashidi1

There are several good threads...Faeron started a thread discussing the defensive line which is pretty good, and has some good observations made; the FFM thread I started with football basics is another decent effort.

sposfan

Rashidi,

I've been following both those threads closely, along with one from Cleon about Team Instructions, One from wwfan on how to play fm07, seasoned alcoholic's training thread, and Dayle Wood's tactic building for dummies, and others of that ilk, but one major problem I have, not being too familiar with the actual sport is how to tell WHY something is happening. Is it because I changed a tactic, or is it something that always happens, regardless of what I did, if that makes any sense.

My goal is to try to get enough of a grasp on the whys and hows that I can possibly make my own tactics and training scheds, eather than relying on someone else, which, although they will undoubtably work better, won't help me learn the game or the sport.

I figure I'd post all my questions in one thread, rather than peppering several different threads, and some of the threads I do have questions about are also for the previous version, or locked.

I do thank you and everyone else how have taken the time to post all the tactics advice you have, I'd be drowning without them!

rashidi1

No worries ask away...and at times I may ask for a pkm which is a saved highlights file that you can get from the game of a match which will help me see your match and understand it.

sposfan

As always, thank you again for your time!