How to Play FM14: A Twelve Step Guide

This thread has been knocking around the tactics forum since Beta. As the full game is now available, just as we did last year, we're re-posting it in the General Discussions forum to to help kick start people's playing experience.

Before reading: There are many ways in which we interpret football. Some people believe that a team should always employ the same tactic, no matter the opposition, conditions, and match situation. Others believe that a tactical approach should be altered to take into account absolutely everything, giving instructions to play the ball more direct in wet weather, specific marking oppositional threats, changing formation in relation to the opposition's strengths and weaknesses, etc, etc. FM allows both playing styles, and all those in between, to achieve. The below advice is only intended to help people through the basics, after which their own preferred playing styles should begin to shine through. For those who followed my FM13 thread, very little of this will be new, although I have added depth here and there. Hopefully it refreshes your memory a little at the very least. For those reading this for the first time, I hope it stimulates the grey matter and helps with your enjoyment of FM14.

The Twelve Step Guide

1: Understand the core strategic concepts:

Philosophies/Styles: The philosophies/styles are mentality and creative freedom structures. They range from being very structured with low creative freedom, to being very unstructured with lots of creative freedom. A useful interpretation would be as follows:

As you can see, each step reduces the level of specialisation. At Very Rigid, you have five plus different jobs, Rigid four responsibilities, Balanced three duties, Fluid two focuses, Very Fluid one method. In Very Rigid philosophies, you expect players to stick to their job description, so can assign multiple specialist roles. In Very Fluid philosophies, you expect everybody to do a bit of everything, which means specialist roles are redundant.

I generally suggest the following as a good rule of thumb (consider the either/or roles as 0.5):

Please note that these are my interpretations and not hard, fast rules. If you disagree and/or want to be more creative, fire away.

2: Adapt the roles to the player. You will find that many roles do not perfectly fit a player's strengths and weaknesses. Use the individual instructions to fine tune that player's skills to the role requirements. If you find you are fine tuning everything, it might be that you don't actually want the player to be performing that role at all and another one will be far more suited to his skill set. Don't blindly trust your Assistant!! Have a look and see. As player roles stick to the player, you can have one AMR set to an W/A role/duty, but another player with a skill set more attuned to creative passing set to a AP/S. You are no longer stuck to having the same roles active for all players without making lots of fiddly changes.

3: Become aware that the strategy names are more plastic than they seem. The defensive strategy still attacks on the counter, whereas the attacking strategy can still be defensively solid. Bar the two extremes (Contain and Overload), each strategy is both defensive and attacking. A good rule of thumb is that if you want to play with a lot of deep midfielders and a short passing game, choose a less attacking strategy, whereas if you want to have high, effective wingers and a direct style, choose a more attacking strategy.

4: Focus on roles and duties and their combinations. Make sure you have one Attack duty in defence, generally but not absolutely necessarily combined with one Support Duty (note, this includes the deepest wide players in your formation if you are not using the Full Back positions), one Attack Duty and one Defend Duty in midfield, and one Support Duty (or TQ or F9) in attack. This type of structure encourages movement between the lines, which is absolutely vital for a dynamic tactic that creates multiple chance types. It also ensures a tight defensive system in which the team defends en bloc, rather than in disconnected lines. If you play a lone FC formation, ensure he drops deep by giving him a support duty, a TQ or F9 role, as other roles run the risk of isolating him, resulting in his failure to contribute to play and relying on scraps and half chances. The exception is when playing an AMC directly behind him. In such formations, you might want your forward to stay high and range across the line to create space for the AMC to move into, so an AF/A or CF/A role/duty might be a better option. Make sure you have at least one no-nonsense midfielder role to break up play and provide a solid base for possession. If you want to use a playmaker, think about whether he'll be in the best position to hurt players, or will your approach see him isolated or marked out of the game. If you want to use a target man, consider whether his flick ons and knock downs will be easily picked up by a teammate.

5: Look at the team comparison page to determine how strong / weak your team is to the divisional average. Consider using the tactical adjustments to take advantage of / cover for this (e.g. if you have a very slow or lazy team, stand off more, whereas if they are quick and hard-working, press more). Although this will become less and less important as you shape your squad to a preferred style, the advantages gained from understanding how your team shapes up against divisional rivals could be vital when taking over a new club.

6: Use the team instructions to develop and save a favoured playing style, which should also suit your team strengths / weaknesses. For example, a highly technical team can sit deep and counter at pace, so using retain possession, pass into space, run at defence with a counter strategy may be worthwhile. A less technical but more physical team might want to impose themselves in a different way, so consider using more direct passing, hit early crosses, get stuck in with an attack strategy. There are all kind of possible ways to shape a playing style. At times you'll have a good enough squad to pick a style of your choosing, at times a style might be forced upon you. You might want to change styles on a match by match basis. There's no hard and fast rule. Just try to be logical in your combinations. Examples of different defensive styles can be found here. Examples of different attacking styles can be found here (deep possession and rapier countering a la Barcelona) and here (British fast-paced, direct winger attacks). Both are for earlier versions of FM, but should still be highly relevant to FM14. If you wish to partake in an FM14 thread about developing a playing style, then this thread on Arsenal is a fantastic place to start.

7: Before each match, consider looking at the weather conditions and the opposing team's formation to determine your match strategy. It can be very difficult to counter attack on a heavy, chewed up pitch, so you might have to abandon your preferred style and play an uglier game. You might want to expose an opponents lone wide player formation and exploit the flanks or look for overlap. You might be happy with your starting system. Although it's ultimately up to you how much you wish to adapt things in such circumstances, be aware that a lack of flexibility can sometimes be costly.

8: Look at the opposing team formation or player condition / skills and consider using OIs to counter them. You could use OIs to counter dangerous players or stop crosses coming in, or to target unfit, slow or cowardly players. Be wary of setting too many OIs as that can harm your team's overall structure.

9: Play the match dynamically. During the game, don't be afraid to change things up through shouts and strategies if things are not working. Do it logically rather than willy nilly though. For example, assuming going more attacking equals more goals might be a bad move, especially if the opposition is sitting deep and packing the final third with defensive players. If you see such a pattern, you might find that sitting deeper and countering will produce more chances than becoming more aggressive, as it will pull the opposition out a bit more. Once you've scored, decide whether you want to push for more goals or hang onto a lead and change things / keep things the same based on that decision. Over time, you'll learn to trust your in-match decisions and develop a system that works for you. You'll know what to change, when to change and when to trust your team to just get on with it.

10: Realise that team talks are contextual. They do not relate to the scoreline, rather how expected the scoreline is versus the quality / reputation of the opposition and the football you actually played. Sometimes you can be delighted at 0-0, at other times, if you've scraped a 2-0 lead with very few chances against a poor team, warning the team against complacency is required. React to what you think should have happened, not the scoreline. It's worth noting that although team talks and media interactions generally do not have a huge influence on how a match plays out, they can do. Sometimes a good motivational strategy will result in a player having the game of his life, and vice versa. Consequently, it can be worthwhile carefully considering your motivational strategy before key games, as it might make a subtle but vital difference during squeaky bum time.

11: Never stop learning. I worked out why my pass into space strategy wasn't working when I employed an attacking strategy. Watching through the match after a dour 0-0, it became obvious to me that everyone was rushing so far forward that my main deep creators were my BWM and FB/S. Not ideal. However, with a less aggressive strategy, my main deep creators were my AP and W/S, which was what I wanted. Hence, I abandoned the attacking strategy and played on the counter as a standard approach, changing my roles and shouts if I ever decided to play more aggressively (usually because of the weather / pitch conditions). If things aren't working as expected, there are always clues in the game if you watch closely enough.

12: Finally, if you get stuck and frustrated come to visit the tactics forum and explain your problem. As long as you are clear and detailed, then it is very unusual for us not to be able to help. Good luck and play well. Remember, we are here to help. We all want you to enjoy FM14 as much as we do.

NB: For further and deeper insight into fluidity/rigidity, passing styles, formations and getting your full backs working, please read this post: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/366111-How-to-Play-FM14-A-Twelve-Step-Guide?p=9150212&viewfull=1#post9150212

Make this sticky and close the thread? That way this can be noticed easily.

wwfan, quick few questions about team instructions...

1) Does exploit the flanks make the same changes to central midfielders as FM13, likewise for exploit middle?

2) Is play through defence removed because wingers etc dribbling can't be turned off?

3) Does hassle opponents still increase tempo? or are the tempo options now the only way to increase/decrease it?

I think this thread is better bumped by people posting rather than a sticky. People quite often miss the stickies unfortunately.

Also wwfan - make my Nantes team not crap!

You have to be ready to help yourself first, Neil. No more obsessively narrow tactics.

A remark related to step 2: Upon actually getting to play the thing now myself, I fully understand some concerns posted by people. I fully support the move towards real-life tactical concepts that are made an inherent part of the ME and code. However, the way it is implemented post TC can be confusing as well, from a usability point of view.

For instance, you're lining up this anchor man. From his role description you know he's supposed to keep it simple with his passing – and from reading these forums you know that SI have started to isolate roles and code beavior inherent to those roles. You tell your team to "Go route one", and the anchor man to "pass shorter". In the process, you've applied a line of instructions interlinking with each other, possibly canceling each other out in parts, or adding up, in any case: they interact. The question is then: what's the bottom line for this anchor man inherently playing a simple game, operating in a team encouraged to "go route one" and told to "pass shorter" (notice the relative rather than absolute instruction) himself?

This thread is excellent. Thank you wwfan.

Just skimming at the moment due to the lateness of the hour, but will read fully later. I learnt heaps from just the first point. Thanks.

Incidentally, I too am playing obsessively narrow with my current Ostsiden team in the Norwegian second. This was mainly due to the fact they had no full backs or wingers, but suffice it to say I struggle with defending crosses. What's the best way to maintain a narrow style yet deal effectively with this? I play an anchor man and ball-winning mf as cover but I don't really want my cenetr backs drawn out too wide.

wwfan, quick few questions about team instructions...

1) Does exploit the flanks make the same changes to central midfielders as FM13, likewise for exploit middle?

2) Is play through defence removed because wingers etc dribbling can't be turned off?

3) Does hassle opponents still increase tempo? or are the tempo options now the only way to increase/decrease it?

I'm not sure and, to be honest, am trying to avoid this micro-technical questions as they deflect attention away from the concepts and back to the sliders, which kind of defeats the point. I can find out the answers if you are desperate to know, but please play around for a few days before you consider if it really matters.

This thread is excellent. Thank you wwfan.

Just skimming at the moment due to the lateness of the hour, but will read fully later. I learnt heaps from just the first point. Thanks.

Incidentally, I too am playing obsessively narrow with my current Ostsiden team in the Norwegian second. This was mainly due to the fact they had no full backs or wingers, but suffice it to say I struggle with defending crosses. What's the best way to maintain a narrow style yet deal effectively with this? I play an anchor man and ball-winning mf as cover but I don't really want my cenetr backs drawn out too wide.

It might be worthwhile setting up specific marking with your AMCs to get them to track out wide and support their FBs. It's only a theory, but I think that the kerfuffle around overpowered crosses relates largely to very narrow formations. It's possible that there's an ME issue that is stopping narrow players from getting out wide quickly enough, thus leaving the FB hopelessly exposed. I certainly haven't been hammered by crosses.

wwfan - I've never got on top of philosophies, just keeping it balanced.

As a lower league manager my squad s tend to be rather humble on the old football intelligence side. On the other hand, with the modest technical abilities I mostly give them generic roles. So if the players all have generic roles but they don't have much technique, flair of decision-making capacity, should I go for rigid or fluid?

Excellent post - very interesting read thanks!

I think this thread is better bumped by people posting rather than a sticky. People quite often miss the stickies unfortunately.

Also wwfan - make my Nantes team not crap!

As I already said, it's you who is crap!

I'm not sure and, to be honest, am trying to avoid this micro-technical questions as they deflect attention away from the concepts and back to the sliders, which kind of defeats the point. I can find out the answers if you are desperate to know, but please play around for a few days before you consider if it really matters.

Nah I'm not that desperate thanks for the feedback.

I think that individual instructions are there to overide the team instructions. He would simply ignore the "go route one" instruction and pass it short.

It's hard to tell as there are multiple factors now at work. In terms of passing, for instance, you have:

a) the framework layed out by the mentality chosen (an anchor man in an attacking strategy is/used to be encouraged to play simple short passes to team mates nearby, the same player in a defensive strategy used to be encouraged to clear the lines)

b) the role picked, obviously, and now roles are starting to get isolated so that there is role behavior inherent to that role (for the most obvious of this, see the half back who drops between the CBs, something impossible to replicate in older FMs with the sliders)

c) the team settings (some of which sound quite drastic, such as "go route one")

d) the individual player settings

Whilst it's probably best to let go of that kind of thinking due to the different coding and the UI, as argued by wwfan in his latest post, it still makes you think about how for instance such an extreme team modifier such as "go route one" would be able override something. At the end of traversing that sequence of instructions (see above), you might have but a very fuzzy idea of what a player is actually encouraged to do when you get there.

Furthermore, in terms of instructions I'm missing "pass to feet" and "play through defense". Given that their counterparts "pass into space" and "run at defense" are still there, it doesn't make sense that they were taken out of the game, in particular as this means that there's less influence over general style of play, unless you tweak individual players to dribble less/play less risky manually, perhaps.

Also the concept of mentality (used to be philosophy) is hard to grasp, but that is a matter of documentation, the general idea itself and the translation of those real-world ideas into FM. Players are and will be prone to pick that depending on gut feeling (Barcelona? I'm going fluid! -- No idea- I'm staying with balanced). Balanced appears to be a default due to the way it is described in the in-game text. When if you know the history behind the mentalities, you know it is one that arguably is one of the more distinctively different ones, rather than the default one, the middle ground (due to the mentalities that used to be split based on duties, something none of the other mentalities would do). Assuming this wasn't changed, mind. As for the documentation, wwfan's description is a lot better in this regard.

wwfan, as always great thread. Thanks for making a FM14 edition.

13 - wait for the patch

) Great post mate, thanks.

wwfan - do you tend to have 3 tactics using the same formation such as 4-2-3-1 or different formations such as 4-2-3-1, 4-3-3 and so on. What things in General should we consider with each approach? Maybe I'm too hung up on the tactic familiarity bars.

wwfan - do you tend to have 3 tactics using the same formation such as 4-2-3-1 or different formations such as 4-2-3-1, 4-3-3 and so on. What things in General should we consider with each approach? Maybe I'm too hung up on the tactic familiarity bars.

I train three tactics in different formations, but tend to use one adjusted to the match conditions (am I at home, am I favourite, what's the weather like, what's the opposition formation) through team instructions. I only really change strategy in the last 15 minutes of a match.

How did you know?! I've got far too many good AMC's and no wide players

Time to give wingerless tactics some love in the next ME update...

Updated the OP with a link to some further great advice on the mechanics of fluidity and rigidity, passing styles, formations and getting your full backs working.

Think this will be useful for my current saves. Good stuff.

Updated the OP with a link to some further great advice on the mechanics of fluidity and rigidity, passing styles, formations and getting your full backs working.

I just want to say as a fan of the game for the last 10 years that the post wwfan is talking about here is absolutely essential reading and you would do well to consume it's contents and ask questions.

I agree of all of this but I do miss the sliders. The sliders gave you much more possibilities. Is there anyway I can use the sliders? In FM12 you could choose what to use. I liked that.

I agree of all of this but I do miss the sliders. The sliders gave you much more possibilities. Is there anyway I can use the sliders? In FM12 you could choose what to use. I liked that.

Unrealistic possibilities. This debate has had it's day; SI have completely removed them for FM14. They're history.

Unrealistic possibilities. This debate has had it's day; SI have completely removed them for FM14. They're history.

It's sad to hear this. This was such a great game, it might still be, but I feel something is missing.

I still think the new system badly restricts creativity but after reading what wwfan wrote I've bought the full game and will give it a try.

Damnit still suck at this game, better to quit for a while , its just really frustating and i dont seem to get better.

Making steps with a club is impossible in this game for me, i am staying at the same level...

And sinds the latest ME-''patch'' I got the feeling that my players dont now what defending is but ey its a great game right..........................

Nice thread, thanks

I find threads like this very useful and will help a lot of people playing the game. I agree mostly with point 11 as you should continue to learn as you go along. The problem is though the game doesn't really offer any scope for learning about a tactic. As you have shown the only current way of seeing errors of a tactic is within the match engine which isn't the best way and moreover is likely to put off those who just want to have a plug a play approach to the game. A better approach would be the incorporation of some sort of tactical analysis tool once you finish creating your tactic. The tool could then create a summary of the weaknesses and strengths of the tactic you create with a brief explanation of each element. That way you could eliminate errors within your tactic before you even kick a ball. For example if you made a 442 with the 4 midfielders on attack duty the analysis tool could then say something along the lines of:

+ The tactic offers great support for the forward line from midfield leading to potentially more chance creation for the forwards

- The tactic will create large gaps between defense and midfield which the opposition may exploit on the counter

I feel this would really help people who perhaps are frustrated by the fact they can't seem to know why their tactic doesn't work. Better explanations in game would make things a lot more forgiving.

I think the right balance needs to be struck between spoon-feeding and asking the user to work things out. When unsure, SI has to tilt towards the latter or the game just becomes a "follow these instructions to win" snoozefest. Not saying they've got the balance right, but can understand why less is more.

When unsure, SI has to tilt towards the latter or the game just becomes a "follow these instructions to win" snoozefest.

The fact that people enjoy watching sport despite having absolutely zero ability to influence the result would seem to argue against that. I think you under estimate how much people just plain enjoy seeing their team win as a passive observer. Lets face it FM is pretty much shallow as it gets as a strategy game, I think very few people actually play it for that element, I suspect mostly that it's just cathartic for sports fans who otherwise have to wait a year of real time to get another roll of the dice on a season.

The fact that people enjoy watching sport despite having absolutely zero ability to influence the result would seem to argue against that. I think you under estimate how much people just plain enjoy seeing their team win as a passive observer. Lets face it FM is pretty much shallow as it gets as a strategy game, I think very few people actually play it for that element, I suspect mostly that it's just cathartic for sports fans who otherwise have to wait a year of real time to get another roll of the dice on a season.

I try not to make any assumptions as to how people want to play FM. I'm just talking about the logic of making a game with some level of challenge, which is what SI are trying to do. Given that's always been their long-term goal and given the continuing success of the series, I trust they know what they are talking about.

I also don't think it is as shallow as all that. If you break the ME, then it's very shallow. If you stay within its parameters to ensure a fair playing field, then it's quite sophisticated.

I just want to say as a fan of the game for the last 10 years that the post wwfan is talking about here is absolutely essential reading and you would do well to consume it's contents and ask questions.

I agree. The Hand of God's argument takes you beyond the relatively limited advice I give here and gets you thinking of complexities in tactic structure. It's illustrative of the sophistication that still exists in tactics creation even without the sliders.

Very helpful, thanks alot.

I am what many would refer to as "tactically challenged".. so this is perfect for me!

I usually player with lots of "specialist roles" like Deep lying playmaker, Ball winning midfielder, Trequartista, Poacher and Targetman and sometimes also an Advanced Playmaker and then I use a Fluid or Very Fluid team setting. According to this that is wrong.. and with my limited success I will try to build a new tactics based on this thread and see how it'll turn out.

I agree. The Hand of God's argument takes you beyond the relatively limited advice I give here and gets you thinking of complexities in tactic structure. It's illustrative of the sophistication that still exists in tactics creation even without the sliders.

Except his entire understanding of how mentality and fluidity interact comes from fiddling with the options and looking at the sliders in previous versions. If they didn't exist, and you dropped him in FM14 with no experience of the series, it would take a very, very long time for him to know how the two affected one another, and he would probably just rely on the descriptions instead. Since that's the only feedback SI have offer as of this version, unless you watch hundreds of full games.

Quality thread..... simple but detailed.

I am what many would refer to as "tactically challenged".. so this is perfect for me!

I usually player with lots of "specialist roles" like Deep lying playmaker, Ball winning midfielder, Trequartista, Poacher and Targetman and sometimes also an Advanced Playmaker and then I use a Fluid or Very Fluid team setting. According to this that is wrong.. and with my limited success I will try to build a new tactics based on this thread and see how it'll turn out.

wwfan.. I love you.. Like 100% bro-love!!

This was my last season:

This is the current season. And I ***** you not.. you changed my tactics based on what I read here after the fourth match in this season and I've won every single match since then!:

wwfan.. I salute you

Except his entire understanding of how mentality and fluidity interact comes from fiddling with the options and looking at the sliders in previous versions. If they didn't exist, and you dropped him in FM14 with no experience of the series, it would take a very, very long time for him to know how the two affected one another, and he would probably just rely on the descriptions instead. Since that's the only feedback SI have offer as of this version, unless you watch hundreds of full games.

I fully accept that the in-game description of fluidity and how it works could do with some TLC.

wwfan.. I love you.. Like 100% bro-love!!

wwfan.. I salute you

That's some turn around. Congratulations.

A remark related to step 2: Upon actually getting to play the thing now myself, I fully understand some concerns posted by people. I fully support the move towards real-life tactical concepts that are made an inherent part of the ME and code. However, the way it is implemented post TC can be confusing as well, from a usability point of view.

I agree. The whole thing with the roles being obscured is something that really needs to be improved in the new tactical system.

- We need to be told explicitly how the various roles differ from each other. How exactly does an Anchor Man differ from a Deep Lying Playmaker, for example?

- Which player instructions are activated for the various roles per default? I'm guessing an Inside Forward always has the "cut inside" instruction activated - but why can't I know for sure?

- How do active player instructions interact with the active team instructions? Potential conflicts beteen player and team instructions should be shown, just like they are internally for the two.

- Which non-instruction behaviour is baked into the various roles per default?

I totally get the whole "don't spoon feed" argument and the need for magic/mystery to the game in order for it to seem like football and not just a bunch of number min/maxing.

But it makes no sense that I as a manager can give my player a specialist role and tell him to "play like an Enganche", without the actually knowing what exactly that entails.

These things need to be communicated much clearer to the player. Until we have a perfect match engine, we have no way of knowing whether something happens because of our instructions, or whether it happened because the match engine is wonky. With no proper feedback, it's really hard to learn from your experiences and tweak things accordingly.

I need to know exactly what I'm instructing my player to do in order to evaluate whether he does it properly or not, and whether the instructions should be tweaked. Trial and error doesn't work when I'm not sure of what exactly I'm trying.

A great guide wwfan.

I have 2 things that I would like to add.

1. This guide should be in the game manual to help the countless players that do not visit these forums. (sorry if it is, I buy online)

2. Do you remember years ago when there were preset tactics? they were from famous tactics from great teams in years past.

Basically a player could select a premade tactic from say Brazil 1972 (just using this as an example) and with a click of a button the players formation and tactics were set to this, this could help a lot of people if it was now in the game.

Now I would not use either, as I said I buy online and do not use the online manual, also I enjoy making my own tactic but I have read on lots of forums that people are really struggling with the tactics and both the things I have listed would give them a great foothold in the game to get started, from there they can change the odd thing to see how it goes and get a better feel for the tactics.

On a personal point of view I have changed my specialist roles a little after reading this thread.

2. Do you remember years ago when there were preset tactics? they were from famous tactics from great teams in years past.

Basically a player could select a premade tactic from say Brazil 1972 (just using this as an example) and with a click of a button the players formation and tactics were set to this, this could help a lot of people if it was now in the game.

Yeah. They weren't very good.

When we were developing the TC, I ran a little trial of some of the tactics of yesteryear in FML. We ran a league with various people using mock ups of The Pyramid, Catenaccio, Zona Mista, Swissbolt, The Danubian School and Total Football. Interestingly, the more modern the formation, the better it did.

I know that Ov added all these formations to the TC, or at least theorised how they'd look, but they've never made it into the game proper. Without a very simple way of accessing them, everything would be horribly confusing. Furthermore, why would you have such archaic formations in the game?

Catenaccio still works really well imo.

Used to use it all the time in FML to destroy those engine exploity tactics everyone relied on.

I've posted this in the same thread over at tactics forum, but given that more people are viewing this one, I'll repost it in here.

I'm not seeing many through balls like in Football Manager 2013, so I was wondering is it because of my instructions or have they been toned down?

Anyway what passing setting do I choose If I want for exaample my Deep Lying Forward (Support) to play through balls to my Advanced Forward given that they make the partnership in my attack? Do I choose More Direct Passing, Shorter Passing or something else?

At the moment it's set to More Direct Passing, but I'm not getting the desired effect like I did in Football Manager 2013.

Love this thread. I've always used a lot of specialist roles in combination with a fluid or very fluid fluidity, without realising they completely contradict each other. Will try to fix that this evening when I get home (looking forward to it already!). Also interesting to read that in order to play a short passing game, you're better off playing less offensive. To put it bluntly: According to the way the game is made, Barcelona and Arsenal play defensive?

Later today I will go looking for some tips about how to make my fullbacks perform. Despite getting decent results in most games, ALL my fullbacks have a form of 6.5 or there about, while the rest of the squad has a form of above 7.

Oh and will add an Attack duty to my defence!

Love this thread. I've always used a lot of specialist roles in combination with a fluid or very fluid fluidity, without realising they completely contradict each other. Will try to fix that this evening when I get home (looking forward to it already!). Also interesting to read that in order to play a short passing game, you're better off playing less offensive. To put it bluntly: According to the way the game is made, Barcelona and Arsenal play defensive?

Later today I will go looking for some tips about how to make my fullbacks perform. Despite getting decent results in most games, ALL my fullbacks have a form of 6.5 or there about, while the rest of the squad has a form of above 7.

Oh and will add an Attack duty to my defence!

I wrote a thread about my interpretation of Barca a couple of years ago that argued Counter was the most natural strategy for them and that they were far more rigid than fluid.

I know that Ov added all these formations to the TC, or at least theorised how they'd look, but they've never made it into the game proper. Without a very simple way of accessing them, everything would be horribly confusing. Furthermore, why would you have such archaic formations in the game?

Personally I would not use them but there are a lot of players that actually want to just play and buy/sign players, I have read on a lot of forums about people struggling with tactics and saying "nothing works", now we both know that not to be true but if they had some sort of say 4 or 5 default settings just to get their feet wet, they may then find a formation that gives them the initial foothold to start to build their own tactic.

I can imagine how daunting it must be for a brand new player to come into the game now, I know there is FMC but they still need to know the tactic side, or at least I think that is how FMC works.

I think it would just be a good idea if you and the other guys from the tactics side made a few pre-made tactics that would get either newer players or indeed older players that struggle with the new tactics and give them a little start in the game.

I've found that for me adding instructions just makes things worse, been playing balanced/standard with the only instructions being for the winger M R/L to cross to centre from byline.

This match was a bit mad, John Terry hattrick from 3 loose balls from set pieces but still murdered Arsenal.

http://imageshack.us/f/20/d91n.png/

Same idea

http://imageshack.us/f/268/zlg.png/

As i said basic as you like.

http://imageshack.us/f/844/rt4l.png/