I'm glad to hear you're getting nice results. You're board of directors will soon worship you
Honestly, I actually don't know how to put my tactic up for download. If someone can tell me how to do it, of course I can put it up. Anyway, I don't think my tactic is that special really.
Here are a basic summary of the most important points:
Team instructions:
1. I play with an attacking mentality(16-17)
2. I play with the creative freedom slider set in the middle.
3. I often start playing short passing combined with a little more than normal playing tempo. If I am feeling confident of winning I slown the tempo down to save energy. Also, If I'm not getting the desired result when it's about 20 minutes left I sometimes alter to direct passing and quick tempo to chase the game and to play a more of a gambling game.
4. Mostly I play with a very deep defensive line(often to as far left as possible on the slider scale). Remember, the defensive line only states where your defence starts pressing your opponents when in your own half(according to SI). Sometimes if I am confident of dominating chances and possession I will set my defensive line 5-6 notches higher, though always stay in the deep bracket. I do this sometimes when I feel superior and will shrink the space for the opposing team and hopefully win most of the second balls.
5. Closing down is set to maximum. I will tone lower this when sure of victory, to save legs.
Individual instructions:
I have set my defenders to the default instructions(clic on a player's name and you find a button in the top right corner named "set to", then choose position you want to set. Sometimes I lower my defender's closing down to rarely, because in certain games I want my four defenders to hold their line and don't drift out of position. I also choose to set my fullbacks to defensive mentality in some matches. So basically, the important thing here that is different to team mentality, is that mentality is defensive and closing down is low.
I also have one midfielder that is set to default defensive midfielder, but with maximum closing down(different to the default).
My other midfielders and forwards will be set to team mentality, but with tweaked instructions regarding passing style, forward runs, longshots etc. depending on the player's characteristic.
Finally, I often play a narrow 4-4-2 diamond at home. One creative midfielder behind the two strikers, two hard working, albeit skillful box-to-box midfielders and a defensive ball-winning midfielder.
Away from home, or against a very, very strong opposition at home I play 4-1-3-2. The only difference here is that I tend to replace my creative, often physically weaker attacking midfielder to a more hard working player if I have one.
So to summarize my conclusions, I can say that, as I said in my initial post in this thread:
I was getting penalised time after time by a team hitting long balls over my defense. I had set my defensive line at the same level as my mentality slider(Asmodeus suggestion, worked well, I have heard in FM 2006). This was clearly not working. So, I tweaked my tactics and changed two things as described earlier:
1. I set my defensive line as deep as I could
2. I maximised closing down on my attacking players.
I was pleased to see that my team was still compact and solid when playing with a deep defensive line when opponents had the ball in my half of the pitch. Also, maximising closing down on several attacking players led to my team winning the ball more often and reducing space and time for the opponents.
I was amazed to see what a winning streak I started on. Scoring goals, but foremost, conceding very, very few goals. I'm that kind of manager who wants to build my team from the back with a solid foundation. Especially, wanting my defenders to fall back when opponents enter into our half, thus killing all space between goalkeeper and defenders.
A long reply comes to an end with the conclusion, that I achieved my aim of building a strong defensive unit, reducing the dangerous space that I before adjusting my tactics, often conceded to the opposition.
Cheers guys, feel free to comment.
Anders, Sweden
Linear Mode
