BStraz85

I have the opposite problem.

The opposition always seems to score pretty much every match within the first 4mins of the game.

Also, a lot of the time. If either my side or the opposition are winning 2 or 3 nil at half time. The opposite team will go on to either draw or win the match.

retired_w0lfpack1

Alternately, if its really "in the last minutes", what do your players' Condition attribute look like, compared to the opposition, in the 80th minute?

If your first-sixty-minutes tactic is exhausting your defense, its no wonder that, no matter what you do, they're scoring in the 80th.

Personally, I don't have JustinCase's problem, I've had a perfectly good defensive tactic which doesn't seem to be too vulnerable for each of FM'05-'07 (I've not perfected it for '08, but I expect to).

The key has been balance:
- defensive mentality but not extreme-defensive;
- time wasting but not extreme time-wasting;
- a few players still allowed to attack, but more players kept back;
- counter-attacking on
- direct passing
- fewer forward runs, more 'run with ball' instructions
- adjusted corner-kick, free-kick, and throw-in instructions to keep my defenders back at all times

retired_halfshell69

The one change that made the most significant difference for me was tweaking my full backs. When the AI uses its "wonderful" 4-2-4 i used to just change mentality, tempo, counter att etc, but i found that they kept scoring, much tweaking later i found i'd left my full backs set to mixed or often on forward runs.
If you reduce forward runs for the full backs to rarely this should help quite a lot.... or at least it did for me.