Friendly tips that worked for me

Hi FM community,

I just feel to share some tips i feel have worked for me since playing fm 2010 and all previous fms' since 2006 excluding 2008. First and foremost, you should spend your time assesing the players you have in your team and what roles your players will play and if they will fit into your preferred system(if you have one that is...). This would mean not automatically playing a 4-4-2 if you havent figuered out that not all your players play best in that system i.e. theo walcott is a winger(not a very good one) but maybe his attributes allow him to play better as a striker. Also, arshavin can be deployed as a winger but is best utilised as an attacking midfielder so using a 4-3-1-2 might be best etc. An example for me is managing everton. Taking into account they do not have brilliant wingers you could adopt the idea of having your midfielders based more centrally and avoid the use of wingers altogether using the aforementioned 4-3-1-2 formation. This would enable you to also have and idea for future player purchases so you would, in this example, know you are not looking for wingers anymore just AMs, CMs and DMs.

With regards to the tactics this is more something of personal preference, however, i do urge that you never try to over-do anything because you then make it hard to pinpoint where you may be going wrong if it all fails. some tips are to:

Buy extremely fit players if you close down or press a lot

Buy strong, athletic, tall and creative players if you player play a target man

Buy high concentrating and good marking defenders/players if you play man marking

When creating team tactics take into account the technical and physical stats of your players but also their mental attributes as obviously very few players are good in all the right departments.

My most favourite part in FM like most people, i assume, is the transfer window, and buying the best players is not always the best option. What tends to work for me, so i usually do good business, is (considering my system/formation) to "attribute surf" as i call it. I know its simple, but this is when i basically look for a player with attributes/stats related to what i need a player to do on the pitch. For example, if you have a defensive midfielder that has 20 tacking, 19 heading and 18 marking that's all good, but for me, he then needs to have good concentration, work rate, composure, strength, positioning, anticipation and speed or have the ability to develop well in these areas. If you buy a player with good stats and wonder why he may not be playing good sometimes it is a possiblity that he is lacking in these such areas and therefore does not have the ability to follow your instructions on matchday(lower league teams especially).

So to conclude i guess what i am saying is that you have to build your team around players that work well in your system and build a trend in the way you manage and develop your players. My other main advice is also not to change your tactics every match as this just is almost pointless IMO. If you do it because nothing works for you and your using your players as best you can then i guess its down to the bugs and the way the game is coded. Well i hope this is useful to some people i'm only sharing from my experience. My ideology is to be patient. It is the only virtue to be good at this game!