My 4-2-4

I hope to release several tactics for this years game and here is my first. I am not going to say use this and you will win every game as I myself have no interest in them. What i can say is implemented right this will earn you several good wins.

It is a basic 4-2-4 shape which looks as follows,

i chose this formation as I believe it gives a good solid shape to base your team on. With this formation you have many options in either going forward or defending. The roles for my tactic are designed for any team from Real Madrid to a Swedish 2nd division side where it has worked just as well. The player roles are as follows;

Goalkeeper > Defend

Right Back > Wing Back > Attack

Right Center Back > Defender > Defend

Left Center Back > Defender > Defend

Left Back > Wing Back > Attack

Right Center Midfielder > Advanced Playmaker > Attack

Left Center Midfielder > Ball Winning Midfielder > Defend

Attacking Midfield Right > Inside Forward > Attack

Attacking Midfielder Left > Inside Forward > Attack

Right Striker > Complete Striker > Attack

Left Striker > Advanced Attacker > Attack

Obviously these roles are not set in stone so you are welcome to change them. That being said the roles you see above have been extremely effective against side like Manchester United, Barcelona and Arsenal the second can be confirmed by Redtide who beat Barcelona 2-0 with Lyon using this tactic.

Now to the nitty gritty part and this is the bit which drove me mental with the tweaking that went on. The team instruction are as follows;

Now I will explain why I picked each of the following settings.

Philosophy - Rigid - I like my teams to be defensively stable so this was ofcourse the best available option to me.

Mentality - Control - I find this setting gives the team more freedom upfront whilst still retaining the shape and rigidness of a team on normal.

Passing - Default - I was playing a shorter passing game but i realised at times my team were trying to walk the ball in and score the perfect goal everytime. I changed it to default to allow them a plan B when the short is no longer working.

Creative Freedom - More Expressive - Of course everyone loves to play beautiful flair football, hence the only reason for giving my team more freedom.

Closing Down - Default - I simply never change this.

Tackling - More Cautious - Purely for the absurd amount of yellow cards i recieve each match.

Marking - Default - Again this allows the team options, therefore negating the weakness' of using either man or zonal marking systems.

Crossing - Drill Crosses - I found with the settings of this tactic drill crosses produce more goals then any other so stick with the successful I guess.

Roaming - Default - Just to ensure we keep the rigid shape whilst still allowing players to get forward when needed.

Finally the tactic can be dowloaded directly from this Hotfile link

In order to install you will need to extract the file using Winrar or equivalent. Once it has been unpacked place the .tac file in the following;

Documents > Sports Interactive > Football Manager 2011 > Tactics

interested in giving this a go but have a couple of questions:

what teams have you tested it with?

how did your strikers perform?

what was your defensive record like?

Thanks

Just tried this on my man utd save. 1st game friendly against benfica. used mostly my 2nd choice team and won 3-0 playing some nice football and dominating the game. will continue to test further and will give it a full season.

couple of things i did notice though were that the MCR role was set to central midfielder defend and both strikers are poachers.

should this be the case?

No, I was messing around with tactics without the aid of the tactics creator. The positions are listed in the original post

I have tested this with a few teams, Real Madrid was the first in which it destroyed all, Charlton being the lowest team and the results were a little more mixed.

So if I have downloaded the tactic should I change the roles to these and if so are there any changes to the advanced settings on the players

It was only the roles i was messing around with everything else should be fine

Ok no problem. I'll let you know how the tactic goes.