retired_ginac227

I once started an attempt at explaining my tactical philosophy that I call "Tactics Scaffolding", but because of lack of internet access I never continued on my project.

Part I

Tactics Scaffolding is based on 2 principles:

-Formation as the foundation for any tactic

-Creating, not setting, the mentality

To elaborate on these principles:

Formation as the foundation for any tactic

If I want to play offensive football and encourage attacking I start with setting my players in an offensive formation. Lots of forwards and attacking midfielders, rather than trying to tinker with settings and instructions to make a defensive midfielder or wingback join the attack. Ultimately a formation with 3 forwards and 3 attacking midfielders will play more offensively than a formation with only 2 forwards, regardless of how many of the other players you set to forward runs often and attacking mentality.
In the opposite situation, when I want to play defensively, my first option is to remove forwards and attacking midfielders and add defensive midfielders. With a formation with 3 defensive midfielders I don't have to experiment with different settings and instructions, the defensive mentality is already established in the formation.

Creating, not setting, the mentality

So, I have my formation for playing attacking or defensive or balanced football, now I want to adjust my settings to maximize the effect. I leave the mentality slider alone, firmly fixed somewhere in the middle and instead look at the other settings and instructions. Here are the key settings that actually have more of an effect to your team's behaviour than the mentality slider:
Width - Pushing forward = Wide, Defending = Narrow. It's fairly simple, either you tell your players to explore opportunities to use open areas or you tell them to stay close to their original position (set by your formation).
Creative Freedom - Where width sort of creates a larger zone for each position to operate in, creative freedom allows players to move into completely different positions. Lots of creative freedom means a better chance to create opportunities but also a higher risk to get caught out of position. Beware of too much creative freedom on too many players, the opponent will slam you with counter attacks.

For part II I will evolve a little bit on the other sliders and give some examples of the creation of tactics using the tactics scaffolding theory.

retired_abjanicki

how much success have you had using this philosophy?

looks like quite a good idea though

retired_ginac227

It can be hard to measure the amount of success with the style of play I have. I've never applied these theories to a top club, only to lower leagues.

I do perform quite well with any sort of squad and can stay far above expectations. In my view my greatest advantage with this theory has been my ability to adapt to different game situations. Depending on how I want to play I get the team to perform according to my plans. Meaning that when I'm behind one goal I can get the team to attack and create chances, but not always score, and when I'm ahead I can get my team to play defensively, but not always manage to avoid a lucky goal or costly mistake, but these things happen in football.

retired_janellewood86

While I change my mentalities to a RoT, I think I follow you. I also think I actually do this, but never really thought of it that way.

With all my players having an individual mentality, I very rarely play with the team mentality to any great degree. Never more than 3 notches from centre, certainly. I move attacking and defensive based on width, defensive line, time wasting and, to a lesser extent, tempo and creative freedom.

I must admit that if I want more attacking I keep exactly the same settings but move my wingers up to FL/R, or my fullbacks to WBL/R, which seems to fit your scaffolding theory.

It's brought a few good results to me over the years. So while I fiddle a little bit more with mentality with you, I can really relate to this style of play.

:thup: