Loath

Most of the tactics posted on this forum have been tested on rather big clubs. If not Man Utd, Barcelona or Arsenal, then at least on a Premier Division quality team.

I was wondering, how should small club tactics differ from those of big clubs. Small and big referring to the quality of players, of course.

Craigoh

i find myself in the same situation. i want to build my career from the lower leagues and progress through them. i feel a lot of the tactics here are biased towards the big clubs. as far as my little experience is concerned, i keep everything as simple as possible and play a defensive, counter attacking style of football which works well until i get in this rut where the AI works my tactics out and i cant break them down. my team dont play attacking football well at all. but i suppose this is part of the learning process. maybe an experienced lower league manager might be able to help us out. regards CRaig

Gandelf The White

The answer to this question is easy - keep it simple. In fact, don't even worry about trying to get the players to play a certain style until you've bought some real quality.

As lower league teams aren't nearly as talented as those higher up you may find it almost impossible to keep possesion. The solution - Invest in a target man. This should help immensely. Ensure that he has extremely high teamwork and workrate stats, is preferably tall, with excellent stats for jumping, and is very strong.
Another tactic you should consider is counter attacking. For small teams this works a treat as it ensure that all your players help out in defence and keep the shape until they get a good opportunity to attack. I would suggest you start every game with this box ticked and change it if it only when it doesn't seem to be working.
Like i said, these tactics are great for smaller teams however as you become successful you may notice that they don't work as well and only hold your team back from playing to their full potential.

Other than targetmen and counter attacking. In terms of tactics in general you should give all your players very clear instructions of their roles and keep it as simple as possible. (i.e. defender should DEFEND, don't worry about them helping out with the attack leave that to your midfield. Midfeild shoud be BALANCED, supporting in both attack AND defence.)

Its probably best you go for a nice and easy 4-4-2 until you move up the league. Only start to be more adventurous once you have the quality to do so. Until then, all the fancy tactics on this forum are unlikely to help you...hope you found this useful and it didn't sound like waffle

Colorado

I think reducing creative freedom is nessecery for lower levels too.

Loath

I have started to look for a true target as I have never done that with a lower league team before, and I'd like to build on the counter-attacking idea.

I'm sure there is more information already on the topic somewhere in this forum, but I'd like to ask this question anyway.

What is a counter-attacking tactic like? I know how to tick the box, obviously, but what is the best kind of a frame for it. I'm assuming long or direct passing, but what about tempo, closing down and mentality.

Barnsley FC

See my thread for a potentially good tactic (I know it is with Man Utd) but the instructions may help.

Gandelf The White

This is just what i mean about thinking too much. You shouldn't really be worrying about passing styles until you are actually in-game. Just leave passing as normal ("mixed") an see what happens. If you start to lose possesion - shorten it an so on.

Generally with counter attacking though it is best to play with fast wingers and a lot of width. Some people find it useful to set passing to "down both flanks" as well. The good thing about it us that it can work with most formations. i've posted a lot of help on these forums in the last couple of weeks so you could check out some of my recent posts for help if you wanted