retired_cmamsen

I'm trying to get to grips with the tactics in the game. I have tried to read a few other peoples views on how tactics should be set out and although a lot of it makes sense and is very interesting, after a while I end up even more confused than when I started (too much information at once I think) and on top of that I don’t really want to just copy what someone else has done so I decided to try to forget it all and start from scratch and try to figure some of it out for myself.

Below I've typed out my thought process for setting up my back 4, all I want to know is am I on the right sort of track here? Am I doing something stupid or am I missing something obvious? I guess I've tried to use a common sense approach.

I'm playing as Welling United of the conference south. As they are poor players I'm just trying to set up a back line that defends and keeps its shape, no frills or clever stuff, I'm thinking cr*p players need fairly simple instructions.

I've gone with a slightly defensive mentality for all 4 defenders and given them very little creative freedom (the same for all 4 players to try and keep them in a fairly straight line). I'm asking them to play fairly direct passing so that they get the ball away from the danger area fairly quickly (I don’t want them passing it between themselves at the back as I want to minimise the chance of a mistake).

For the players that have reasonable tackling stats I've given them 'normal' tackling and for the poorer tacklers I've given them easy tackling, the thinking being that the poor tacklers will only challenge when they are sure they can win the ball so we don’t give away needless free kicks.

All 4 defenders have above average closing down, the thinking being that they will mostly be playing against poor players who will make mistakes and lose the ball fairly easily under pressue. To accompany this I've given them all zonal marking and 'no' to tight marking. I've left the defensive line fairly neutral as I don’t want to be caught out by pace as none of the defenders are particularly quick

As I've mentioned, these are (very) poor players. All I want them to do is concentrate on defending, so they all have run with ball, forward runs, play through balls and long shots set to rarely. If the full backs have (relatively) good crossing stats I'll set crossing to mixed and cross from deep

Does that sound like I'm on the right track? Or am I missing something fundamental? For example Am I confusing the players by giving them a defensive mentality but then asking them to close the opposition down?

retired_feliciaoda

sounds good, a lot more than i usually do!! Have you played any games yet? Update us with the match results when you play and then we may be able to help more.

retired_cmamsen

I've actually played 4 seasons now

1st season - Conf South, 2nd place, won the playoffs
2nd season - Conf National, 20th, survived by 2 points
3rd season - Conf National, 21st, relegated, 1 point from safety
4th season - Conf South, 3rd, lost play-off semi on penalties

So I think I'm doing ok-ish, in the 4th season I think I had the best team in the division by far. The reason for my original post was to try and get an idea that I'm thinking about things the right way, I don’t want to know exaclty how to set my team up but if someone can see that I'm doing something stupid (maybe one of my instructions contradicts another and could be confusing my players) I don’t think I'm getting the most out of my players and wondered if theres one area that its obvious where I'm going wrong

One difficulty I have is knowing if my theories as to why I tell a player to do something are intepreted by the player in the same way? For example, for my full backs, if I set forward runs, long shots, cross ball and run with ball to rarely but set through balls to mixed (as he has good passing and creativity stats) I want that to mean that if the full back is ever in an advanced position and my striker makes a good run I want him to try and find him with a good pass most of the time (in that situation) but how do I know the player is not going to interpret that as most of the time when I get the ball look for the striker and try to put him through, whether he makes a run or not and no matter where I am on the pitch?

Or am I overly complicating it for myself?