[retired_jissca812]

I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored, that’s all I ever seem to say when I load up Football Manager these days. And on the odd occasion when I do start up a game, I end up giving it up very quickly. For me, it seems to take one bad result, and that’s me taken the disc out, not to be played for another couple of weeks.

Needless to say, I have never been very successful in Football Manager games that I start. Despite the thousands of new games that I’ve started, I only finished two seasons in FM 2005. That was successful though: I managed to get Rangers to the Champions League quarter-finals, beating AC Milan at home and getting a draw at the San Siro along the way. Football Manager 2006 was even worse. I only completed one season over the thousands of games I started, winning everything with Manchester United, and winning the World Cup with England. I don’t feel happy with my achievements, I wish I could have finished lots more games and achieved much more. Much of my frustrations come from tactics.

Now, before you think that this is a yet another thread criticsing the game and tactics, it is not (just how many of those are there these days?). You’ve got to hand it to SI, this is definitely the most realistic and fun simulation of Football Management out there. Nothing else comes close, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that SI were the only competitors out there.

No, tactics are most definitely realistic in the game. What frustrates me is that I’ve no real base to work from for my tactics. I don’t know what philosophy I want to work from. I don’t know what sort of style I want to play with my teams. I don’t know what sort of instructions to give my players. And when I do make a tactic, I keep changing it before I’ve even played a match, thinking I’m making it better because the other one was all wrong. And, when I get a bad result, I’m on the thorums again looking for Answers.

You might thinking from that that I want the best tactic and to dominate for years to come. No, that is the thing that I most definitely do NOT want. Otherwise, why play the game? Why play if you know that you’re going to win anyway? I would enjoy the challenge of trying to overcoming a bad patch of form, it’s just the creating of solid tactics in the first place that gets me.

I have to admit that it’s the sliders that are getting me. Now, I sort of know what the sliders mean, but not really. There’s several theories out there: slider apathy, ROT, etc. But I really don’t know which one to use. I don’t know how to apply the sliders to the abilities of my players. I want to get the best out of them, but don’t know how. I’m hardly a newbie: I’ve been playing CM/FM since CM 02/03 on the Xbox. While that is a lot shorter than some people on the forum, I still know what FM is about. The game tips say not to overdo creative freedom, and I can see the sense in that. But what if you have 11 Ronaldinho’s? If you have two creative strikers and a creative midfield, surely it would be okay to give them creative freedom.

So, you might conclude from this that I want a discussion to create the best tactic ever? No. There is not such thing as that anymore. No longer can you create one tactic and have it dominate forever. And I’m glad for that. You have to actually use your brains and think now. You actually have to adapt your tactic to your opponents.

The thorums have been rather quiet recently, haven’t they? Far too many “what is da bestis tackic?” and “how do you win with Chelsea?” threads. So I wanted to create a bit of discussion.

I wanted to create a discussion about how people create their tactics, and how they go about using the sliders to match their players abilities. How you do go about creating your tactic? How do you go about moulding the tactic around your players? How do you use the various sliders to get the most out of your players? How do you decide what slider is what with each player? How do you decide what to use for mentality, closing down, creative freedom, passing style for each player? What philosophy do you use? If no philosophy, then how do you create your tactic? Do you change your philosophy when you change teams? If so, how?

For what it is worth, I’ll start with my philosophy. I tend to use Asmo’s slider apathy theory. For my Man Utd team I give my defenders low mentality/high closing down/passing style. I then give my attackers low passing, high creative freedom, low closing down etc, played at a high tempo with plenty of width. It gives me some good results, but then there are a few hiccoughs and the cycle continues.

I hope that this thread generates a good discussion, and I hope it is useful for pro’s and newbies alike.

[retired_elpata]

Theres already threads covering these aspects of the game already and people giving their opinion, tips etc. Read the unofficial tactics bible thread uptop and everything you asked is covere din that.