wwfan

The best thing to do is point you here: Unofficial Tactics Bible. I would suggest starting with my thread (Tactical Theorems and Frameworks '07) as it is the most all-encompassing and then moving on to the specialist ones when you have your head around that.

Welcome to FM. It WILL take over your life!!!!

Dayle Wood

Tell us a little bit about your tactic mate and I'll see if I can help.

wwfan

My instant (and by no means highly tested) take on the new engine is that closing down needs to be adjusted as heavy closing down gets murdered by quality sides. It is useful to close down up front against good sides, but not at the back. That may be your problem. If you want to upload your base tactic I can have a look but no promises I can sort it out

Cleon

keep things simple to start off with and use the team instructions sliders wisely. Keep things global for now until you get a good base for a tactic sorted.

If you need help with your current set up, try and be as detailed as possible by listing team and player isntructions, as well as letting us know why exactly you think things are not working. What sort of goals do you let in, etc.

Dayle Wood

Hi mate Firstly decide on the tactic you want... a 4-4-2 is a simple one to set up as a beginner but it's up to you.

2. Look at your squad and decide where you need to strengthen it. Do you have backup for when your main players get injured? If not think about buying or loaning in some players.

3. Set up your team instructions for your tactic. Generally you could set the tactic up twice, one as an attacking 'home style' formation and one which is more defensive and used against tougher sides than you.

Home

a) a slower tempo, shorter passing game is a good bet. play wide, focuss your passing to wings or mix. not much time wasting, and have an attacking mentality of around 12-15. Defensive line lowered to draw team out.

b) individual instructions are important too. Start with your centre backs and fullbacks and make sure they have lowered creativity, zonal marking (tight optional), higher closing down (especially the fullbacks who will cut out dangerous crosses to you box area), lower mentalities (use rule of 2 if you want), and basically make sure you have built yourslef a solid backline that is cohesive and works in conjunction with each other.

Then move on to your midfield... wingers will make forward runs often, decide if you want them to cross from deep or byline (which is better for wingers), where they will focuss their crosses, and how much they will close down. Your midfielders: one will be more defensive minded and will not go forward as much so he will have a lower mentality and will try through balls, hold up the ball and possibly dictate the tempo if he has good stats in passing, decisions, creativity.
The other will be more attack oriented and will make forward runs more often and look to link up with your strikers.

Finally your strikers... if one is tall get your wingers to pass to his head, if one is fast get him to make forward runs and so on.

Basically with individual instructions set up what you want each position to achieve (use the tactical articles at the top as reference to help you out) but make sure you look at each player playing in those positions and be certain they can carry out your instructions effectively. If someone has lousy long shots then put this on rarely, if they can't pass very well don't have them on through balls as much, if they are bad at crossing put it to rarely etc etc.
This attention to fetail will make all the difference to your tactic.

Next go through and check who will be your captain (influence, age, time at clubt), penalty takers (penalties), corner specialists (corners), free kick specialists (free kicks) and throw ins (long throws).

Set up your set pieces.. ignore this and you will miss out on goals you wouldn't otherwise get. Freekicks can be made more effective by getting taller players to go forward and aiming your kick at best headers. Corners can be made more effective with tall headers (2 at most) attacking the keeper. Players with good off the ball skills can attack the ball from deep. There are threads dedicated to corners so have a look around for what suits you.

Your away tactic or more defensive minded tactic will be more narrow, faster tempo, counter attacking, passing focussed through the middle perhaps, more time wasting, defensive line more forward to limits the other teams space.

hope this helps.

Smac

Yes, its the same game.

My advice is this:

1. Replay one, or a set of matches many times, to get the feel for what works, what doesn't. This is considered, rightly, cheating, but to learn to improve tactics its your best bet, IMO.

2. Keep in mind that what works against a certain team at a certain time may not work against others. Notice weather, morale, venue, team gel (a special hair product), and especially the formation and style of the opposition.

3. Have patience for your team to get familiar with each other and with your tactics. This means several things to the manager: Early results should be inconsistent with a new team and might not reflect very much on your tactics at all (unless they are terrible). Testing a tactic once, although by far the easiest thing to do, is also the least informative. Finally, rotating players too much will not allow them to gain the kind of working relationships that make for cup winners.

4. Try playing a Chelsea or other highly mercenary and professional team. The players will be much more capable of following your tactical instructions and you will thus be better able to see what each instruction really does. Then, after seeing the possibilities, go back to a LLM side with knowledge, but leave the expectations for a few years down the road!

5. Take all tactical advice with a grain of salt. Usually people forget to mention that success is a mix of tactics, personnel, team talks, team morale, team gel, opposition style (varies league to league), team ranking (affects how others play against you), etc.. While certain tactical ploys may work generally for a team, this means that sometimes they won't work at all for some teams and situations.

Good luck!