Building your Formation using the Tactical Instructions

I'm sure plenty of people are well versed in all the tricks and details of building your formation using the tactical instructions and this thread will be of little use to them, but it is such an integral part of the game that I am surprised it is very rarely discussed beyond individual instructions for individual players, and I think it is worth bringing up for discussion.

For this post I want to talk about what your team does when in possession, how your play and shape develops through your use of the Tactical Instructions, so things like Closing Down and Marking which are key components of the defensive shape and performance of your side will not be discussed, yet.

The reason I want to bring this up is because once you have setup your initial formation, the interplay between Mentality, Run From Deep, Roaming and Wideplay instructions in a single player, and between multiple players, and between different layers in your side can produce a huge variety of completely different shapes and playstyles. It is more than possible to have an idea of how you want to play in your head, then get one link in your team a little bit wrong through one instruction, and completely cut-off all your attacking options and completely neutralise your own team. Likewise knowing what using these instructions is likely to do to individual players, and the play it is likely to produce between players, and being able to have little ideas of detail and set them up in players, can produce a huge variety of detailed or general styles of play.

I'll start by describing the tactical instructions first.

Tactical Instructions

Mentality: Is pretty much nothing more than altering the position of your player backwards and forwards in his role, with the additional effect of your player preferring more or less aggressive passes. The tactics creator has certainly opened my eyes to just how simple this instruction is, how very uncomplicated it actually is as an instruction. Before the TC mentality was perhaps the most controversial and confusing and highly "theorised" and queried instruction in the game, but now with the TC there is really no excuse for people not being able to use it like a pro. The problem pre-TC was in my opinion the fact you had to build a whole mentality framework for your team from scratch, leading to compound problems of being able to see it at work, leading to compound confusion. That's in the past now, and mentality is a very simple and very powerful instruction for moving your players preferred position forwards or backwards on the pitch.

Run From Deep: This instruction controls how early/often your player makes attacking runs as moves develop, and because moves tend to develop very regularly in FM it is also an instruction that controls the general positioning of your player when you have possession. Using RFD to control positioning gives you far less control over specific preferences of positioning, but when combined to mentality it lets you control backwards and forward behaviour from your chosen starting position.

This combination between Mentality and RFD is perhaps the most powerful tactical tool in FM. You cannot really talk about one unless you talk about the other, likewise you cannot really try to consider the impact of one instruction without considering the impact of the other. Getting the two setup in tandem is both really easy and really hard. It is easy because it is quite simple to select a preferred starting position and then choose the level/type of forward/backwards movement you want, difficult because A: everyone comes to a football game with the perception that Forward Runs=Attack=Good and B: because those two instructions can produce a huge variety of different behaviours and tactical issues when you actually play the opponent.

Roaming: This instruction controls whether a player is allowed/told to look for space and move away from his position into gaps on the pitch. It is probably the single most powerful instruction because selecting it because you think moving into space is good can end up with your player popping up in completely useless and isolated positions. There is a time and a place for Roaming off and Roaming on, and unless you understand when this time and place is you can easilly destroy the tactics you are trying to set up.

Wideplay: Wideplay is new to FM10 and one of the more confusion instructions because it seems to be the tactical instruction version of certain wideplay PPM's that don't necessarilly all do the same thing. There is certainly a discrepancy between "Cuts Inside" which is a "with ball" instruction and "Moves into Channels" which is an "off-the-ball" instruction. As far as I can tell the Instructions "Hugs Touchline" and "Cuts Inside" control whether you wish the player to run down the outside of a player or take the ball infield, while "Moves Into Channels" tells your player to position himself wider than his starting position when making runs or taking up positions. "Cuts Inside" certainly does exactly what it says and there is no problem understanding this one, whereas the other two I am less sure about.

Next I will describe the behaviour likely to be shown by a player with a certain set of instructions.

Individual Player Example

For this example we will imagine an Inside Forward in a Mourinho's Chelsea or Guardiola's Barcelona style 4-1-2-2-1 with the following Tactical Instructions.

Mentality: Let's say about 10, quite a conservative Mentality for an attacking side.

Run From Deep: Often, we are going for heaps of penetrating runs.

Roaming: Ticked, free roles are cool.

Wideplay: Cuts Inside, for those awesome curling goals and slick one-two's.

The instructions themselves would suggest to us a player that starts pretty deep, makes lots of penetrating runs, takes up space the opponent leaves and then runs with the ball infield when in possession. This sounds really cool.

However because of the formation and the shape of the team, what is likely to happen is that our Inside Forward is usually pushed really far forward as moves continue to develop, because he keeps making attacking runs and doesn't drop back as often. We are very likely to find our player really high up the pitch, almost like a Wide Forward, and with the same marking/space/pass availability problems as a really advanced striker. And because of where our players plays in the formation, wide on the flank and pushed high up against the opponents defence, our Roaming instruction is very likely to push our player to the touchline because there is no space infield. When he gets the ball he will drive infield and attack the centre, but instead of attacking the centrebacks from a deeper position by driving through the heart of the team, he is going to start really high wide and actually run backwards and across the defensive line instead of attacking the heart of it. And because of his low Mentality, when he has the option for a pass it is likely to go back into midfield.

Common Problems

One of the most common problems or mistakes is selecting instructions that look the part without actually considering what they are going to do to your player in the team context. Extremely aggressive attacking players are very likely to find themselves pinned against defenders instead of running at them or picking up space infront of them. Players that continually make Runs also suffer from this problem, playing really high up the pitch, against defenders, looking for constant half yards of space in a clogged area instead of bombing into an acre of space at speed at the final minute from a great deep position.

Wingers in particular are a common source of this kind of problem. Told to get forward from deep positions to attack the opponent they end up playing in positions more like strikers looking for throughballs and making runs, instead of receiving a nice easy pass in a deep and wide position and then storming past a fullback.

The Link-up Example

Here I will describe some different ways of linking up groups of players using the Tactical Instructions. I will start with a basic 3 man midfield and discuss only Mentality and RFD.

Let's say you want to play a 3 man midfield, and you want a deep playmaker with a more advanced playmaker and your third man to link-up the two. Now while Playmakers that make runs can be good attacking threats, generally you don't want your playmakers bombing out of position and getting stuck tight against defenders, so you are going to give both players RFD Rare. Now you do want your two playmakers staggered slightly, so that one is deep and one is more advanced. This means you want the more advanced playmaker to have a higher mentality. Or if the Deep Playmaker starts in the DMC slot, equal mentalities.

So you setup your Deep Playmaker in the DMC slot and your Advanced Playmaker in the LCM slot, both with equal mentalities that are relatively high, and RFD Rare. This will keep both players from bombing into the centre forward positions, keep them both in playmaking positions, and keep them both seperated and staggered with one slightly more advanced than the other.

So lets say you want the RCM to shuttle back and forth between the two players, offering easy passes and a good additional link-up option between the two, perhaps even making the odd run into the box and maybe looking to get on the end of a cross. This player you need to instruct so that he stays deep but moves backwards and forwards. This player should have a lower mentality than either player, but RFD Mixed. This means he will make runs regularly, but he will not get carried upfield by his mentality. He will run back and forth regularly never quite hitting his mentality position, and usually taking up positions between both players or slightly ahead of your advanced playmaker as attacks develop. If a good opportunity presents itself he will bomb into the box. If the RCM's mentality or RFD is too high, he will play too advanced up the pitch, and play a shuttling role between advanced playmaker and forwards, or even play as an extra forward.

Another good and basic example is the Advanced and Deep Striker combination. One striker plays with a high Mentality and RFD Rare meaning he starts in an advanced position but does not make runs. The other striker starts deeper but he makes RFD Mixed, and will look to feed the ball to the advanced striker, then make runs past him. Once the deep striker gets past the advanced striker, the advanced striker will bomb forward and try to stay high up the pitch because of his mentality. In this way you can setup a whole series of pass-and-forward run moves simply by getting one striker to run from deep, and then getting the other striker to try and stay high up the pitch through mentality alone without making Runs From Deep when he is already advanced.

Conclusion

The morale of this story is that RFD Rare keeps the shape have designed through mentality and positioning, while RFD Mixed or Often will change your shape. RFD is great at linking up layers of your team, but is equally as good at completely destroying the basic plans you are attempting to carry out. Too much forward movement will give you seven strikers for your DLP to try and pick out, while not enough movement can make it difficult to get the ball forward from layer to layer. Mentality sets out where your players start from, where they position themselves and helps to define your shape. RFD sets out where you want movement from layer to layer and can effectively link-up your whole shape and attack the spaces in the opponent, but it can also completely destroy your shape, and prevent players from actually carrying out the roles you want them to.

Being able to effectively manipulate these two instructions, to design the right kind of movement, to create movement where you want it and prevent players moving from where you want them, is the key to designing a good formation. Learn to use these four instructions well and you can design any shape and formation and tactics you can think of. Everything else pretty much tells your players what to do with the ball, these instructions tell players what to do with themselves.

Great thread SFraser. Would you say its imperative to tactics to not only select roles but change the settings in the advanced menu for optimum performances, such as the editing you done for your Inside Forward

Wow! Superb post SFraser, as we've come to expect! Proper linking of Mentality and RFD can equal interesting, exciting and well thought out offensive routines. One thing that appeals to me is RFD rare, I used to think it was simply a 'barrow', but after giving a few players it and watching the results, it is brilliant as they stay in position and drop deep when not in possession, meaning easier control over where your players are when you have and when you don't have possession.

Nice thread, only doubt I have is with this:

"Cuts Inside" which is a "with ball" instruction and "Moves into Channels" which is an "off-the-ball" instruction.

I've seen players cut inside across and behind their fullback to receive a throughball. Of course, this could be the run from deep and their just anticipated that a diagonal run would be needed, but its occurrence is correlated with 'Cuts Inside' (if not caused by it). I guess we're unlikely to find out for sure.

SFraser, may I also ask what tactic instructions you tick and change manually. Personally, I tick all from RFD down and leave Menatlity to the role and duty so I can change Strategy in-game without too much tweaking, so I choose a deep role for a player I want to have a lower mentality then customize the rest and tweak based on the match, opponent etc.

I've seen players cut inside across and behind their fullback to receive a throughball. Of course, this could be the run from deep and their just anticipated that a diagonal run would be needed, but its occurrence is correlated with 'Cuts Inside' (if not caused by it). I guess we're unlikely to find out for sure.

You could be right. For me the stand out point is what wide players do when they receive the ball with these instructions. "Hugs Touchline" and "Cuts Inside" would seem to force the player to run inside or outside with the ball. Moves Into Channels is the one for me that is hard to pin down.

But like I said you could be right. The two instructions could control Off The Ball movement as much as on-the-ball behaviour. That is much harder to see in detail than your winger obviously dribbling infield and unleashing a thunderbolt, but that doesn't mean it is not true.

I didn't go into detail on those points precisely because I am not totally sure myself.

Would you say its imperative to tactics to not only select roles but change the settings in the advanced menu for optimum performances, such as the editing you done for your Inside Forward

It's not imperative if the TC already has the exact options you want, and even if a few options are a bit different you can still stick with the TC completely unmodified.

Personally I control RFD, TTB, RWB, etc. and leave things like Mentality/CF/Passing Style/Tackling to the TC. This way you can use touchline shouts to change your overall aggression at the game without altering individual player behaviour or without having to accept TC behaviour choices you don't like.

A combination of the two, TC + Classic is the way I go. The combination of flexibility and control is nice.

One thing that appeals to me is RFD rare, I used to think it was simply a 'barrow', but after giving a few players it and watching the results, it is brilliant as they stay in position and drop deep when not in possession, meaning easier control over where your players are when you have and when you don't have possession.

Agreed. I have seen it on many forums and in many threads, that RFD Rare is perhaps the most overlooked instruction in the game. Even the TC refuses to give RFD Rare to very advanced wide players, while in my current save I consider it essential to the performance and behaviour of my winger(s).

It's not imperative if the TC already has the exact options you want, and even if a few options are a bit different you can still stick with the TC completely unmodified.

Personally I control RFD, TTB, RWB, etc. and leave things like Mentality/CF/Passing Style/Tackling to the TC. This way you can use touchline shouts to change your overall aggression at the game without altering individual player behaviour or without having to accept TC behaviour choices you don't like.

A combination of the two, TC + Classic is the way I go. The combination of flexibility and control is nice.

Do you ever override the team mentality with individual mentalities for players. I know you say you tned to leave it to the TC but are their instances where you do change it

Great post! I usually play a 4-1-2-2-1 formation ala Barca, with my wingers on inside forward role and "Support" duty, this is the way to go. This combined with two DR and DL on wingback roles to provide width, a DMC on Anchor man, MC on advanced playmaker (Support) and the other MC as a Ball Winning Midfielder (Support) and I am unstoppable ATM!!

But this is all relative: it always depend on oposition´s formation, and pitch dimensions...for example, when I face a team playing 3 man at the back, I usually give my wingers a Winger role with an Attack duty, as I want them to split their 3 man defence and create space for my bombing central midfielders...

Great read and helpful, thanks. I look forward to your take on the defensive shape/system...

I look forward to your take on the defensive shape/system...

Seconded...

Great read and helpful, thanks. I look forward to your take on the defensive shape/system...

I might oblige. Got one eye on the Portugal match so the other is free to write about that.

Building your Defence using the Tactical Instructions

Building your defence follows very similar principles to building your possession play. You have your initial shape defined by your formation and you then have a set of Tactical Instructions for defining how you want individual players to behave. The difference here is that instead of trying to penetrate or overload or create and exploit space in the opponents defence and his lines of play, you are trying to keep the opponent from doing the same to you.

One of the reasons that building a good defence is perhaps more difficult than building a good attack or good possession play is that you are rarely dealing with situations where you tweak individual players in isolation. You are not saying "this guy would be great with a bit more/less mentality or Roaming off/on, sitting perfectly in this gap in the opponents formation" but instead you are dealing with the whole shape of your own side in unison, trying to ensure that you leave no space while also providing cover in depth against potential attacks you might not actually see untill they beat you.

I would argue that there is far more tactical thinking and strategising and planning involved in defending than in attacking. After all when you attack you are looking for your players to use their individual abilities to do something well, a good dribble, a good run, a good pass and hopefully a goal. You can instruct players to attempt these things, tweak their preferences, but really all you are doing is try to get players in the right places to do the right things. By contrast defending is all about using your shape to prevent opponents from doing this to you. Individual ability does matter, and there are always key roles for key defensive players, but the most important aspect of defending by far is how you design your shape, your team wide cohesion of pressing/dropping off/marking, and how you design backups and safeguards and key roles into your shape.

I will discuss some basic and generic systems for defending commonly seen later in this post, but first I would describe the instructions.

Tactical Instructions

Mentality: A very important instruction for defending. Works exactly like I explained in my first post, but in this context you use the positioning of players to design depth and shape for your defensive system. This instruction combined to your starting formation essentially sets out the shape you want your team to use when you are defending and attacking. Like the combination of Mentaity + RFD work together to produce attacking depth and movement, so Mentality combines with Closing Down and Marking instructions to define defensive depth and movement.

Closing Down: Essentially controls the desire/extent to which your players attempt to pressurise the man with the ball. The higher Closing Down is, the more a player is happy to leave his defensive position to get close and tight to the player with the ball. This instruction doesn't control a player desire to attempt to win the ball, but to get close to the player with the ball and defend against him from short range. Darren Fletcher is a good example of a player that chases and harrasses an opponent with the ball, without necessarilly diving into a tackle at the first glimpse of the ball. Paul Scholes would be a good example of a player that also gets really tight really quickly but has a habit of sliding, kicking and tackling whenever he see's a glimpse of leather.

Tackling: This is a crucial instruction for defending, not only in terms of individual player instructions but also in terms of entire team defensive tactics. How and where you use this instruction defines what you are trying to do defensively, it defines your entire approach to defending. The instruction itself tells a player to either attempt to win the ball at the earliest opportunity, or to effectively back-off and refuse tackles untill what seems like a unfailable opportunity to win the ball. The instruction does not take into account the players ability, so exceptionally good tacklers with immense physical strength are very likely to win the ball regularly even with only slight opportunities. Vidic is a good example here, regularly seeming to somehow manage to get a toe to the ball with the most risky of challenges from the most risky of positions. Someone like Scholes who attempts similar challenges will give away free-kicks and Penalties.

The reason this instruction is such a tactically definative instruction is not because of what it does to a single player, but because how identical settings effect entire lines, groups or key players in your whole defensive system. If you are trying to defend from the front you cannot tell your forwards to back-off because it defeats the whole point giving opponent defenders the opportunity to measure a pass. Likewise if you are trying to contain the opponent infront of your five man midfield, telling them all to dive into tackles like Gattuso completely defeats the point. How you set up your Tackling depends upon and defines your entire defensive tactical approach to a match. It is a game defining setting.

Marking: Another crucial set of instructions coming in two forms, but I will admit that I am not entireally clued up on the nuances. The first marking option comes as a choice between Zonal and Man Marking. This is a pretty fundamental choice in terms of defending and while the actual specific behaviour is clear, it would requires pages to discuss the implications and tactical subtleties of the decision. Perhaps the best way to sum up how important this choice is, is to explain that Catennacio was a primarilly Man Marking system with a sweeper that everyone described as "anti football" untill "Total Football" came along and freed the game of football from this intense man-marking system. Then after "Total Football" came the evolution of Catenaccio into a Zonal Marking form, the Zona Mista, specifically designed to deal with "Total Football" and is the basis of the modern day Zonal Marking back four.

The basic principle of the immense and furious evolution of defending the Man or defending the Zone is all about shape, which is the basic issue of defending. Is a specific, individual player better at defending against certain opponents despite the possibility of being lured out of position, or is a highly organised and well drilled shape of multiple players better at defending against certain opponents? The truth of the matter is that the theoretical question is irrelevant, that modern defences have evolved to be capable of both and to use both at the same time in the same match.

In FM you quickly learn to keep specific man markers outside of your shape if you must keep one opponent quiet. This doesn't mean you cannot employ Man Markers within your shape, but it means you cannot rely upon a single defender both keeping shape and keeping an opponent quiet unless you have designed this defenders potential absence into your shape.

The second Tactical Option, Tight or Loose Marking applies to both Zonal and Man Marking and defines the distance you want to keep your defenders from the opponent. Tight Zonal means your defender will get close to the player that enters his zone, Loose Zonal means he will keep his distance and a more "shapely" position. Likewise with Man Marking, your player will either get tight, or leave some distance from his mark. This instruction is important both for dealing with specific opponent abilities and for attempting to maintain shape while marking if it is necessary. It is a particularly big deal when faced with the threat of overloading in Zones or particular areas of the game.

Summary: Altogether there is a staggering amount of options and detail in your defensive instructions, and rightly so because defending is perhaps the most tactically demanding aspect of the game. The very fact that defending requires the astute combination of shape, cover, isolation and defeat of specific opponents, requires that there is a large amount of possible behaviours not only for individuals but for the team. You can defend with individuals, with layers, with groups, with the whole team. You can focus your defense on the ball, on specific players, on potential areas of exposure and again on all these issues simultaneously.

When defending it is a ludicrous task to attempt to micro-manage individual player defensive issues in perfect detail across the entire pitch like you might do when attacking. When defending what you need to do is have ideas of shape and cover and depth in your mind. Of using your team to force the opponent to play football where you want them, to force them to attack you where you are strongest, and to defend against them with strength where they are strongest.

I really enjoy setting up defences and discussing defences in FM, it is the most tactically rich area of the game although not perhaps the most exciting.

Individual Player Example

I discussed an Inside Forward with some cool looking but ultimately flawed instructions in my last post. This time I will try and explain a rock solid "Cover Centreback" playing in the Nike Defence of Cover + Stopper CB's.

Mentality: Say average for his nearby defenders is 10, I put him around Mentality 7.

Closing Down: Say average for nearby defenders is 10, I put him around 8.

Tackling: I put him at Light.

Marking: Zonal Loose.

This "should" produce a Covering Defender that sits deeper than the rest of the defence but not too deep as to produce huge gaps behind the fullbacks for the opponent to exploit, does not get tight to any runners in his zone and keeps his distance, while he sprints over to anyone that has the ball behind the defence using his body as an obstacle without commiting to a challenge, allowing teammates to get back and defend.

An alternative setup would be low Closing Down, Hard Tackling for a sweeper that stays central and tries to win the ball that comes close to his deep centre position. This would be a "second goalkeeper" but would be horribly exposed if a couple of opponents get him isolated. A great setup to have behind a deep sitting defense though.

Common Mistakes

By far the most common error I see in defensive related topics on these forums is people thinking that the job of defending comes down to the instructions given to Centrebacks and DM's. If you think defending is a 3 player job then you have got the entire game of football completely wrong. It is easy to make mistakes in defending and so there is not much else to write about here, other than this glaring and fundamental and complete flaw in perception. This is easilly the single biggest and most prevailent error I see in people playing FM.

The Team Example

This is what defending is all about, the ability to build an entireally cohesive and rock solid strategy for defending against the opponent with multiple layers of redundancy combined to defense in detail. For this example I will use the 4-1-4-1 formation as it offers examples of everything I have talked about, and I will assume that all the player really cares about is defending.

What we have here is first of all two lines of four and this should form the basis of your entire defensive strategy. How you choose to use these two lines of four in your team defines how you defend. Fail to use them as two sides of the same coin, fail to relate one line to the other line properly, and your defense is weak. We also have two players in "between the lines" positions. The DM and the Lone Striker. These "between the lines" players can operate independantly of your shape if you so choose, and can carry out key jobs and key roles. Alternatively they could be used as integral components of each line, providing an intensely strong defensive "peak" at the centre of each defensive line. The important part here is that you begin to see and imagine defensive shapes and defensive systems, you begin to see layers and defense in depth, you see shape and width, you see regions of key threat and areas of relative safety.

When defending the most important part of the pitch bar none is the goal mouth. Followed by the Centre of Defense of the goal mouth, followed by protection and defence of the centre of defence. All defending is a matter of protection and layers. The further the opponent is from goal, the wide he is from goal, the safer is your goal. The reason you defend in depth is because if you dont then a single pass, run and dribble defeats your 10 man wall. The wall you present needs to have multiple layers so that no single event can defeat your defence, so that you can actually defend against a decent move. The further forward you start designing your defence, and the more layers you add to it without compromising strength of each layer, the more solid your defence becomes.

In this example we are commited to defending. That is the premise and I will now describe how to set it up.

We start off by choosing a deep D-Line and Narrow Width in order to keep most of our team deep and keep most of the space on the pitch wide. This pretty much means the opponent can only have good fun playing football near the centre circle or on the touchline, which is all good stuff for us.

We then continue by recognising our two lines of four and our two "between the lines" players. In this example our "between the lines" players will be used as man markers. The CentreForward specifically marks the key link-up man between defense and midfield, while the DM specifically marks the key link-up man between midfield and attack. Even if both players never win the ball, they will cause huge disruption to the ease of playing the ball through the key outlets, and cause huge problems for these players trying to receive the ball and get it under control. If the average defenders or average midfielder dont play inch-perfect passes, studs are going into these playmakers thighs. Likewise any passes they play will have to go either side of our markers bodies.

This leaves our two lines of four.

Because we are defending resolutely, we use our midfield four as a shield for our defense. It's job is to present a massive wall between the opponents midfield and their attack. By telling our midfield four to Loose Zonal Mark, Low Closing Down, Light Tackling we make completely sure that our midfield four retains their positions as a tight line of players facing the opponents midfield. This means any forward pass from the opponent can only go through the gaps between midfielders into tiny little areas.

We can keep this line, or we can do something slightly different which disrupts the line but adds extra defense in possibly key areas. We can tell our wingers to tight man-mark the opponents wingers. This will produce space down the flanks, but the flanks are generally safer than space through the middle, while we make sure the opponents key wide outlets are constantly marked by players of similar pace/physical ability. If we do leave gaps out wide, this will encourage the opponents midfield to pass wide, which is a good area for us anyway.

With our midfield four providing a wall, our DM man-marking the opponents AMC, our FC marking their DM, they have very little opportunity to provide beautiful defense slicing throughballs. Their playmakers dont have space or time, and their midfielders are facing a wall with limited gaps.

This means our defenders can quickly step forward and instantly try to win any throughballs.

However we do not wish to leave gaps through the middle.

So what we do here is employ a Stopper Centreback to instantly challenge for any throughballs that by-pass the midfield. Tight Zonal Marking, Hard Tackling, High Closing Down. He will immediately charge forward and attack the pass receiver. Because our midfield is producing a wall against the opponent, his chance of winning a throughball is immense.

In conjuction with the Stopper, we use a Covering Centreback whose job it is to drop deep and sweep up behind the Stopper incase he somehow manages to fail to win the ball.

The crucial element in the back four here is the Fullbacks. We set them to Tight Zonal Marking, Low Closing Down, Hard Tackling. They will tightly mark and hard challenge any player that runs into their position and receives a throughball, but they will not run towards someone that already has the ball, but will instead back-off and provide cover.

This is important because the Fullbacks work alongside the Sweeper to provide an additional, "reverse" shield for the Stopper. The midfield provides the wall. The stopper attacks all passes past the midfield, the Fullbacks hard tackle any passes into their zones, the sweeper drops deep. The Fullbacks therefore fullfill two roles of A: hard tackling any quick passes into their zone and B: dropping off and covering the stopper with a deep three man "sweeper shield".

With this defensive setup we man-mark the key playmakers in the opponents team, we provide an unmovable 4 man wall infront of their midfield, and we then defend with a combination of instant aggression and layered depth if the ball gets past the midfield.

It is because of how difficult it is to get passes through our midfield that our defensive setup works. If it was easy our stopper could be skinned, our fullbacks skinned and our Cover CB outnumbered and isolated. Because it is incredibly difficult to get good passes past our midfield, our Stopper/Fullbacks will cause havoc to the reciever while everyone else gets into a position to cover. Crucially however our Fullbacks will not charge into wide areas whereas the Stopper charges into AMC areas. The Fullbacks will retain shape while the Stopper attacks all passes infront of the back line.

I really hope I have made sense here. It is quite a bit harder to describe the defensive system for an entire team than to explain how to get one midfielder behaving reasonably well in an attacking/possession context.

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Absolutely amazing SFraser, couldn't you have made this two days ago when my team had a 2-0 advantage in the Europa League and I had to go all Mourinho-esque ? So many things seem to avoid me in this game and I'm trying now to think of every possible combination that theoretically works!

Does what you have said work when not playing with a DMC? ie just a regular 4-4-2? I suspect it's just I have interpretted what you've said incorrectly, but my defence seems to be getting pulled all over the place and leaving huge gaps for strikers to mae full use of.

Does what you have said work when not playing with a DMC? ie just a regular 4-4-2? I suspect it's just I have interpretted what you've said incorrectly, but my defence seems to be getting pulled all over the place and leaving huge gaps for strikers to mae full use of.

From what I could boil down SFraser's post, it sounds like you need one layer of "shielding" and one layer of "last defence". The former is a disruptive nuisance to opponents, aimed at thwarting clever passes or runs; the latter is aimed to kill dead any advances that move toward goal. A DMC or AMC would specifically mark out a key linking player. SFraser can correct me if I'm misparaphrasing his good work.

I was just thinking about how this would apply to my 4-2-3-1, or a 4-3-3/4-5-1...

i love you

Fantastic post. Just what I was looking for after the wheels are starting to come off my Sheff Weds Promotion game. I've played FM10 for just over 360 hours now and it never gets boring!

Wow, that post opened up my eyes about defending. I understand the theory, though it will take a while, probably, before I can get it working in practice. But at least I know where I´m going now.

That's easily the best post I've seen on defending. You even do a great job of describing the different marking options, the effects of which cannot be deduced without experiential knowledge

Proof Sfraser's system works!

Tell us what you did to achieve that great result, Sheffield Sunday!

So SFraser you are saying that only thing that i need to change is RFD, RWB, And maybe TTB?

tnx

SFraser, how would you apply the 2 lines of four when using a 4-1-2-1-2 diamond? Would you ask the two central midfielders to close down more often on the wide players, allowing the AMC to sink back into the midfield?

Interesting read, I just had a question about runs from deep. In my game I have turned Portsmouth into the best side in England and we have won the last 2 league titles, during this time I played a view variations of 4-2-3-1. However the AI has now started playing a flat back 5 against me with either 2 centre midfielders and 3 strikers or 3 centre midfielders and 2 strikers, this has led to my inside forwards being pressed up against the opposition defenders as in your example with no space for any movement.

My question is have I got to the stage where I need to turn runs from deep down to rarely on all my most attacking players? Until now I have just been picking a formation and selecting roles aside from removing long shots I have't really tweaked a lot behind the tactics creator.

Regards

@ Sfraser - I already asked one question in SFraser's schedules

Can you please make a pure 4-3-3 tactic?

GK (sweeper)

DR(wingback-automatic) DC(cover) DC(stoper) DL(wingbackautomatic)

MC(DLP-support) MC(BWM-def) MC(AP-att)

FC(Poacher) FC(DLF-att) FC(Complete F-att)

I am Man Utd for the past 10 7 sesaons and have following players that I wolud like to play in specific positions:

GK: H. Loris, M.Delac

DL: D.renan, newgen

DR: J.Mattock, newgen

DC: Sakho, Otamendi, Evans, Wilson, Curtis

MCd: Sissoko, Sandro, newgen

MCs: Fabregas, L.Bender, newgen

MCa: Anderson, Geourcuff

FCp: Aguero, newgen

FCd: Rooney, Dzeko

FCc: newgen-like torres

Thank you very much

Ok I am trying this out now on my AFC Telford save. Let's see how it works out , 4 months on holiday mode and I will get back to you.

nice one frase, but your emphasis is all on defence (which i'm not against) but i would like to hear your view on width/passing/defensive line contribute to balls being played to the right players

SFraser, how would you apply the 2 lines of four when using a 4-1-2-1-2 diamond? Would you ask the two central midfielders to close down more often on the wide players, allowing the AMC to sink back into the midfield?

Well you wouldn't really apply two lines of four in a 4-1-2-1-2 diamond. In theory you could get the AMC to drop into the middle, maybe push up the DMC and make a flat four but in practice as the game ebbs and flows you will be left with a huge gap between your midfielders most of the time causing serious problems to your midfield wall, and very likely to be caught in the horrible defensive position of having a DM and AMC in a line from goal to goal which is pretty much completely useless as a defence.

What you would look at here again is the shape of your side and how you can translate that into a solid defence. You have a DM and two Centrebacks which is a good, solid shape for defending against counter-attacks, has a nice arrangement of players for controlling the middle of the pitch and is the ideal shape for adding "layers" to in a diagonal fashion which protects the channels outside the centrebacks and forces attacks down either side of a "pyramid" shaped defence. Ideally you would have two Wingers/Inside Forwards which you could integrate alongside your CM's and Fullbacks into a rock-solid three man "guard" of the flanks the opponents are forced into, that can close ranks quickly and tightly and win the ball with numbers off the wide players receiving the ball you have forced into the wide areas through your "pyramidal" defence of the centre.

By virtue of my graphical artistry you may just be able to make out the point in the following image:

The white triangles show your defensive shape, or your defensive "walls". They denote the areas you wish to keep the opponents playing outside of, show the areas and positions you are attempting to funnel the opponents into. They show the players you are using to keep a solid defensive shape and the sort of shape you wish to keep.

The black triangles and the black circle show the areas of prime opportunity and of prime tactical position to attempt to win the ball back aggressively. They show the prime areas of the pitch to win the ball back when your organisation and cohesion is solid, and they also show the arrangement and positioning of the players that will assist you in winning the ball back.

You can see that the white triangle shape of your formation automatically tends to funnel players right into the heart of the black triangles, which you can also see by the arrangement of players in that triangle is a prime defensive position to win the ball back. Players funneled into these areas are going to find themselves trapped between the touchline, fullback, winger and central midfielder with plenty of cover defending the gaps between these players. This is where you want the opponent, and this is where you attack him to win the ball back. It is a brilliantly sweet position to put an opponent in terms of your defence. Even with fullbacks overlapping, it is a tight and congested and packed area of the pitch where aggressive ball winning defence hardly disturbs your overall shape and gameplan at all.

If you want to learn to defend well, these are the sorts of things you should learn. The tactical strengths and weaknesses of formations, the defensive "tricks" and opportunities and critical tactical components of formations.

Now you will see that there are two white triangles, one containing your back three, the other containing five additional players that overlap with black "aggressive defence" zones. You will also see that only your Wingers/Inside Forward fall outside these white triangles and sit only in black zones.

The white triangle containing your "back three" is a crucial defensive element. This is the heart of your defence using this shape, and you have no real cover for it in terms of depth. This zone must be an immovable wedge sitting right at the heart of your team that defends every ball into the area, but never leaves their zones, never breaks up or apart, never goes charging to closedown players. This element of your team must play as a complete unit and is the heart of your layered triangular defence.

The second white triangle is likewise crucial. If you are playing against the bottom of the league club in a home game at your ground, these players will be high up the pitch, pressing hard, leaving your back three to defend and control the pitch on the counter. If you are playing away from home in the European Cup, these five players become the fundamentally crucial aspect of your team fulfilling the dual roles of keeping deep shape and providing an additional defensive "layer" or "shield" of cover for your Centre of the Defence while carrying out highly organised, well disciplined, well integrated tactical pressing of the opponent in the key black zones. These players become the fulcrum of all your play, behaving in principle like the "modern" day version of the winger and CM's in the traditional 4-4-2. These five players have to integrate shape keeping and cover with critical tactical pressing with defensive duties and with attacking duties. They must be able to counter at speed and recover at speed, press high up the pitch when building sustained attacks, drop deep into their covering roles when under sustained pressure, and provide the crucial and critical tactical pressing of the key black triangle zones.

This zone of black triangles overlapping with white triangles is your modern day midfield. Which means that your two Wingers are your modern day strikers.

Now as for your specific 4-1-2-1-2, the only fundamental difference is that your "strikers" are pushed higher up the pitch and more centrally, which means that your key black triangle hard pressing defensive zone is under-manned but at the same time your opponent is very likely going to have to keep one or both Fullbacks deep to cover your significantly greater counter-attack threat. And if you tight man-mark his Fullbacks with your Strikers then not only will you have enough players back when he starts chucking players forward, but your strikers will be in the prime position to exploit the fullbacks when you counter-attack, especially if they play quick passes off your AMC/Lone Striker who should be sitting somewhere around the edge of their DMC and at the tip of the opponents defence.

Be under no illusions that this defence is weaker than a 4 man wall + 4 sweepers + dual man-markers that I posted earlier, but it is not an all-out-defensive system. It is a very highly organised, balanced defensive system ideal for meeting the threat of Wingers/Inside Forward type formations and is ideal for when you think you are relatively equally matched with the opponent, or stronger in key areas. If you are stronger than the opposition, you can start throwing bodies forward from deeper in "waves" while also sitting right outside their penalty box with this shape, winning the ball in all areas high up the pitch.

Interesting read, I just had a question about runs from deep. In my game I have turned Portsmouth into the best side in England and we have won the last 2 league titles, during this time I played a view variations of 4-2-3-1. However the AI has now started playing a flat back 5 against me with either 2 centre midfielders and 3 strikers or 3 centre midfielders and 2 strikers, this has led to my inside forwards being pressed up against the opposition defenders as in your example with no space for any movement.

My question is have I got to the stage where I need to turn runs from deep down to rarely on all my most attacking players? Until now I have just been picking a formation and selecting roles aside from removing long shots I have't really tweaked a lot behind the tactics creator.

Regards

That's very possible. The key indicator of whether or not you need your Forward players to play greater link-up football is how advanced your midfield and fullbacks are when they play most of their football. And indeed whether or not you are attempting to find runners that are bombing from those deeper positions past your forward players.

If you find your attacking players being pressed hard against the backline and being pretty un-findable by your advanced midfielders, it is because there defence is far too tight and well organised to find runners with the ball from deeper positions. You need to find runners with the ball from close range, advanced, short pass positions so the defence has no time to react and so you can exploit whatever little gaps they have in their formation with late/deep runs past your marked forward players.

Sfraser great thread is a fab read!! I have one question if you could help me out id be really grateful. I have been playing a 4-1-2-2-1 with chelsea and i have my dm on deep lying playmaker support with RFD rarely and i play my mlc as my advanced playmaker support which also has RFD rarely, my mcr is a box to box with RFD mixed. The good side to this is my midfield 3 have a good shape its just when we attack i never seem to have enough men running forward. My def mid and mcl hold there positons with there RFD on rarely. I have been thinking of trying to give my def mid & mcl an attacking mentality with RFD rare to try and get the a little further forward what do you think? I have my wingers AMR & AML on RFD mixed as i find RFD often means they just bomb forward and dont really offer any options.

Long Post

Thanks a lot! So if I read this correctly and merge it with your theory on the Trequartista/Complete Forward striker pairing on another thread, Playing the front strikers as a TQ/CF pairing would give you the shape needed to cover the white triangles, provided that I play my AMC in the hole with high closing down? It sounds like, in theory, that would also solve the whole problem of the AMC being easily marked out by DMC since the TQ would drop deeper.

Another great post, which helped me alot.

Could someone give me a link to the thread SportzNut23 is talking about?

I've been trying to develop a tactic with a trequarista, so it seems usefull to me

Never mind I found it

Another great post, which helped me alot.

Could someone give me a link to the thread SportzNut23 is talking about?

I've been trying to develop a tactic with a trequarista, so it seems usefull to me

Never mind I found it

Where? Which tread is it?

This one:

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=209126

I really hope I have made sense here. It is quite a bit harder to describe the defensive system for an entire team than to explain how to get one midfielder behaving reasonably well in an attacking/possession context.

You certainly did make sense, great post.

i'm not finding the phrase to quote SFraser, but leaving player's mentality/closing down/creative freedom on default values and also team instructions is a good option, is working very well for me

First of all, this is a fantastic set of posts by SFraser so well done.

But some of what you are saying here seems to be at odds with what I see being done in the tactics creator. In the TC you can set your team to play "Very Rigid" which entails very specific mentality settings and low creative freedom all the way to "Very Fluid" which is "global" mentality settings (i.e. all players mentality set to team mentality) and high creative freedom. However, you define mentality as setting (1) a player's 'vertical' position on the field relative to his 'starting' position and (2) how 'aggressively' he will look to move the ball up the field.

If what you say is true, wouldn't that make the "fluid" settings within the tactics creator the most rigid in terms of the team playing with 2 flat lines of 4 in a 4-4-2 (barring RFD instructions of course)? The TC seems to indicate that changing from "Rigid" to "Fluid" settings can affect the degree of movement of the players in your team but what is defining the freedom of movement from the initial position in this case, Creative Freedom? If that is the case, how is it any different from the Roaming setting?

As an aside, I personally find Creative Freedom to be by far the most confusing setting in the FM tactics system. Can anybody point me to any good articles on exactly what the CF settings modify? I've read that it is a modifier on the Flair attribute but that doesn't really clear it up much...

But some of what you are saying here seems to be at odds with what I see being done in the tactics creator. In the TC you can set your team to play "Very Rigid" which entails very specific mentality settings and low creative freedom all the way to "Very Fluid" which is "global" mentality settings (i.e. all players mentality set to team mentality) and high creative freedom. However, you define mentality as setting (1) a player's 'vertical' position on the field relative to his 'starting' position and (2) how 'aggressively' he will look to move the ball up the field.

If what you say is true, wouldn't that make the "fluid" settings within the tactics creator the most rigid in terms of the team playing with 2 flat lines of 4 in a 4-4-2 (barring RFD instructions of course)? The TC seems to indicate that changing from "Rigid" to "Fluid" settings can affect the degree of movement of the players in your team but what is defining the freedom of movement from the initial position in this case, Creative Freedom? If that is the case, how is it any different from the Roaming setting?

It would seem that way but it's not at odds with the TC, it's just that the TC uses those phrases to define certain philosophies that may or may not correspond to your own idea of "fluid" and "rigid".

"Rigid" in the TC means lots of seperation of mentalities, meaning players are set in very distinct positions. Well developed "Rigid" formations can be incredibly "fluid" in terms of movement and overlaps, but the crucial point is that within a "Rigid" framework you have far more control over specific moves.

"Fluid" in the TC means very close together mentalities, meaning players do tend to congregate in similar layers of play, but it also means that the whole team is more or less "linked" into the same level, meaning they all play a very "fluid" game by dropping into different zones and advancing into different zones and anyone can end up anywhere. You have far less control over the specific details of moves, but you also tend to find far more "fluidity" of moves because players are not seperated and isolated and distinct.

"Rigid" means seperation of mentalities meaning greater control over behaviour. It does not necessarilly mean defensive stability or "rigid" and "immovable" defences. It could infact be the most weak of all defensive systems because players are spread out and prone to becoming isolated. "Rigid" means control and not strength.

Likewise "Fluid" can be the most defensively sound as the opponents meets huge walls of very close ordered players. "Fluid" defences and DM's and MC's very often swap roles and cover each other and drop deep into the back four or press an opponent while another covers. "Fluid" in this respect means less seperation, less direct control, more independant but group-like behaviour. It does not mean your defence or attack is like water and weak and easilly penetrated. Some of the best defenses you can build necessarilly MUST be fluid.

It would seem that way but it's not at odds with the TC, it's just that the TC uses those phrases to define certain philosophies that may or may not correspond to your own idea of "fluid" and "rigid".

"Rigid" in the TC means lots of seperation of mentalities, meaning players are set in very distinct positions. Well developed "Rigid" formations can be incredibly "fluid" in terms of movement and overlaps, but the crucial point is that within a "Rigid" framework you have far more control over specific moves.

"Fluid" in the TC means very close together mentalities, meaning players do tend to congregate in similar layers of play, but it also means that the whole team is more or less "linked" into the same level, meaning they all play a very "fluid" game by dropping into different zones and advancing into different zones and anyone can end up anywhere. You have far less control over the specific details of moves, but you also tend to find far more "fluidity" of moves because players are not seperated and isolated and distinct.

"Rigid" means seperation of mentalities meaning greater control over behaviour. It does not necessarilly mean defensive stability or "rigid" and "immovable" defences. It could infact be the most weak of all defensive systems because players are spread out and prone to becoming isolated. "Rigid" means control and not strength.

Likewise "Fluid" can be the most defensively sound as the opponents meets huge walls of very close ordered players. "Fluid" defences and DM's and MC's very often swap roles and cover each other and drop deep into the back four or press an opponent while another covers. "Fluid" in this respect means less seperation, less direct control, more independant but group-like behaviour. It does not mean your defence or attack is like water and weak and easilly penetrated. Some of the best defenses you can build necessarilly MUST be fluid.

Thanks for responding.

I am willing to accept that this is the case but I am still confused as to the exact mechanism that defines fluidity vs. rigidity.

"Fluid" defences and DM's and MC's very often swap roles and cover each other and drop deep into the back four or press an opponent while another covers.

What exactly instructs the players to swap roles and cover open space in this fashion and why doesn't this happen as often when one defines a more rigid set of mentalities? Is the unwritten assertion here that it is not only a player's individual mentality that defines his decisions and movement but ALSO how that mentality relates to the mentalities of the players around him? If mentality only defines vertical positioning and aggressiveness of decisions I don't see how the behavior of the players could be different...

Sorry to keep banging on about this but I think that there is still an element of what you are saying here that I am not grasping!

I am willing to accept that this is the case but I am still confused as to the exact mechanism that defines fluidity vs. rigidity.

Fluidity and Rigidity define general ideas of organising Mentalities in your team. Each position on the pitch has a multitude of possible roles and duties which can influence Mentality. A Fluid philosophy tries to keep Mentalities for your team closer together which brings your players closer together, while a Rigid philosophy will try to keep Mentalities distinct which keeps your players seperate and in more distinct roles.

Under a Rigid philosophy your Striker could have a very high Mentality in one role, a very low Mentality in another. It is still possible to keep your striker more in-tune with deeper players, but the range of Mentality options will be much wider. In a Fluid philosophy you will still have different Mentalities for different roles, but the overall range of Mentalities between extremes will be much close together.

Under a Rigid philosophy the extremes of Mentality will be large, obvious and produce very distinct behaviour for each choice. Under a Fluid philosophy the differences will be subtle, there will be a much lower range of Mentalities, and the extremes of Mentality will be much closer together producing a much more subtle effect with players playing very close together but in slightly more or less aggressive positioning tendencies.

What exactly instructs the players to swap roles and cover open space in this fashion and why doesn't this happen as often when one defines a more rigid set of mentalities? Is the unwritten assertion here that it is not only a player's individual mentality that defines his decisions and movement but ALSO how that mentality relates to the mentalities of the players around him? If mentality only defines vertical positioning and aggressiveness of decisions I don't see how the behavior of the players could be different...

Positioning defines positioning, not behaviour. Players are automatically and constantly in a state of motion, with different abilities and different contexts defining movement. Seperating mentalities exaggerates differences in roles, it instructs players to play their game in different areas of the pitch. Identical mentalities instructs players to play their specific games in roughly similar areas. The variations in attributes, other instructions, specific positions in the formation, the ebb-and-flow of the game, the movement of opponents and teammates and everything else defines how they actually behave.

All mentality does is put players in rough positions. You can exaggerate or reduce the "average" distance between players using mentality and this has a powerful enough effect on playstyle and performance to be considered worthy of it's own TC "section".

No instruction is the be-all and end-all of player behaviour, nor indeed are all instructions for all players that only things that control behaviour. Mentality is powerful, but it is not some kind of absolutely powerful almighty instruction. It is just the rough, general position you want a player to try and hang around in, which is quite an important thing for football even if that's all it is.

thanks SFraser

I'm sure plenty of people are well versed in all the tricks and details of building your formation using the tactical instructions and this thread will be of little use to them, but it is such an integral part of the game that I am surprised it is very rarely discussed beyond individual instructions for individual players, and I think it is worth bringing up for discussion.

For this post I want to talk about what your team does when in possession, how your play and shape develops through your use of the Tactical Instructions, so things like Closing Down and Marking which are key components of the defensive shape and performance of your side will not be discussed, yet.

The reason I want to bring this up is because once you have setup your initial formation, the interplay between Mentality, Run From Deep, Roaming and Wideplay instructions in a single player, and between multiple players, and between different layers in your side can produce a huge variety of completely different shapes and playstyles. It is more than possible to have an idea of how you want to play in your head, then get one link in your team a little bit wrong through one instruction, and completely cut-off all your attacking options and completely neutralise your own team. Likewise knowing what using these instructions is likely to do to individual players, and the play it is likely to produce between players, and being able to have little ideas of detail and set them up in players, can produce a huge variety of detailed or general styles of play.

I'll start by describing the tactical instructions first.

Tactical Instructions

Mentality: Is pretty much nothing more than altering the position of your player backwards and forwards in his role, with the additional effect of your player preferring more or less aggressive passes. The tactics creator has certainly opened my eyes to just how simple this instruction is, how very uncomplicated it actually is as an instruction. Before the TC mentality was perhaps the most controversial and confusing and highly "theorised" and queried instruction in the game, but now with the TC there is really no excuse for people not being able to use it like a pro. The problem pre-TC was in my opinion the fact you had to build a whole mentality framework for your team from scratch, leading to compound problems of being able to see it at work, leading to compound confusion. That's in the past now, and mentality is a very simple and very powerful instruction for moving your players preferred position forwards or backwards on the pitch.

Run From Deep: This instruction controls how early/often your player makes attacking runs as moves develop, and because moves tend to develop very regularly in FM it is also an instruction that controls the general positioning of your player when you have possession. Using RFD to control positioning gives you far less control over specific preferences of positioning, but when combined to mentality it lets you control backwards and forward behaviour from your chosen starting position.

This combination between Mentality and RFD is perhaps the most powerful tactical tool in FM. You cannot really talk about one unless you talk about the other, likewise you cannot really try to consider the impact of one instruction without considering the impact of the other. Getting the two setup in tandem is both really easy and really hard. It is easy because it is quite simple to select a preferred starting position and then choose the level/type of forward/backwards movement you want, difficult because A: everyone comes to a football game with the perception that Forward Runs=Attack=Good and B: because those two instructions can produce a huge variety of different behaviours and tactical issues when you actually play the opponent.

Roaming: This instruction controls whether a player is allowed/told to look for space and move away from his position into gaps on the pitch. It is probably the single most powerful instruction because selecting it because you think moving into space is good can end up with your player popping up in completely useless and isolated positions. There is a time and a place for Roaming off and Roaming on, and unless you understand when this time and place is you can easilly destroy the tactics you are trying to set up.

Wideplay: Wideplay is new to FM10 and one of the more confusion instructions because it seems to be the tactical instruction version of certain wideplay PPM's that don't necessarilly all do the same thing. There is certainly a discrepancy between "Cuts Inside" which is a "with ball" instruction and "Moves into Channels" which is an "off-the-ball" instruction. As far as I can tell the Instructions "Hugs Touchline" and "Cuts Inside" control whether you wish the player to run down the outside of a player or take the ball infield, while "Moves Into Channels" tells your player to position himself wider than his starting position when making runs or taking up positions. "Cuts Inside" certainly does exactly what it says and there is no problem understanding this one, whereas the other two I am less sure about.

Next I will describe the behaviour likely to be shown by a player with a certain set of instructions.

Individual Player Example

For this example we will imagine an Inside Forward in a Mourinho's Chelsea or Guardiola's Barcelona style 4-1-2-2-1 with the following Tactical Instructions.

Mentality: Let's say about 10, quite a conservative Mentality for an attacking side.

Run From Deep: Often, we are going for heaps of penetrating runs.

Roaming: Ticked, free roles are cool.

Wideplay: Cuts Inside, for those awesome curling goals and slick one-two's.

The instructions themselves would suggest to us a player that starts pretty deep, makes lots of penetrating runs, takes up space the opponent leaves and then runs with the ball infield when in possession. This sounds really cool.

However because of the formation and the shape of the team, what is likely to happen is that our Inside Forward is usually pushed really far forward as moves continue to develop, because he keeps making attacking runs and doesn't drop back as often. We are very likely to find our player really high up the pitch, almost like a Wide Forward, and with the same marking/space/pass availability problems as a really advanced striker. And because of where our players plays in the formation, wide on the flank and pushed high up against the opponents defence, our Roaming instruction is very likely to push our player to the touchline because there is no space infield. When he gets the ball he will drive infield and attack the centre, but instead of attacking the centrebacks from a deeper position by driving through the heart of the team, he is going to start really high wide and actually run backwards and across the defensive line instead of attacking the heart of it. And because of his low Mentality, when he has the option for a pass it is likely to go back into midfield.

Common Problems

One of the most common problems or mistakes is selecting instructions that look the part without actually considering what they are going to do to your player in the team context. Extremely aggressive attacking players are very likely to find themselves pinned against defenders instead of running at them or picking up space infront of them. Players that continually make Runs also suffer from this problem, playing really high up the pitch, against defenders, looking for constant half yards of space in a clogged area instead of bombing into an acre of space at speed at the final minute from a great deep position.

Wingers in particular are a common source of this kind of problem. Told to get forward from deep positions to attack the opponent they end up playing in positions more like strikers looking for throughballs and making runs, instead of receiving a nice easy pass in a deep and wide position and then storming past a fullback.

The Link-up Example

Here I will describe some different ways of linking up groups of players using the Tactical Instructions. I will start with a basic 3 man midfield and discuss only Mentality and RFD.

Let's say you want to play a 3 man midfield, and you want a deep playmaker with a more advanced playmaker and your third man to link-up the two. Now while Playmakers that make runs can be good attacking threats, generally you don't want your playmakers bombing out of position and getting stuck tight against defenders, so you are going to give both players RFD Rare. Now you do want your two playmakers staggered slightly, so that one is deep and one is more advanced. This means you want the more advanced playmaker to have a higher mentality. Or if the Deep Playmaker starts in the DMC slot, equal mentalities.

So you setup your Deep Playmaker in the DMC slot and your Advanced Playmaker in the LCM slot, both with equal mentalities that are relatively high, and RFD Rare. This will keep both players from bombing into the centre forward positions, keep them both in playmaking positions, and keep them both seperated and staggered with one slightly more advanced than the other.

So lets say you want the RCM to shuttle back and forth between the two players, offering easy passes and a good additional link-up option between the two, perhaps even making the odd run into the box and maybe looking to get on the end of a cross. This player you need to instruct so that he stays deep but moves backwards and forwards. This player should have a lower mentality than either player, but RFD Mixed. This means he will make runs regularly, but he will not get carried upfield by his mentality. He will run back and forth regularly never quite hitting his mentality position, and usually taking up positions between both players or slightly ahead of your advanced playmaker as attacks develop. If a good opportunity presents itself he will bomb into the box. If the RCM's mentality or RFD is too high, he will play too advanced up the pitch, and play a shuttling role between advanced playmaker and forwards, or even play as an extra forward.

Another good and basic example is the Advanced and Deep Striker combination. One striker plays with a high Mentality and RFD Rare meaning he starts in an advanced position but does not make runs. The other striker starts deeper but he makes RFD Mixed, and will look to feed the ball to the advanced striker, then make runs past him. Once the deep striker gets past the advanced striker, the advanced striker will bomb forward and try to stay high up the pitch because of his mentality. In this way you can setup a whole series of pass-and-forward run moves simply by getting one striker to run from deep, and then getting the other striker to try and stay high up the pitch through mentality alone without making Runs From Deep when he is already advanced.

Conclusion

The morale of this story is that RFD Rare keeps the shape have designed through mentality and positioning, while RFD Mixed or Often will change your shape. RFD is great at linking up layers of your team, but is equally as good at completely destroying the basic plans you are attempting to carry out. Too much forward movement will give you seven strikers for your DLP to try and pick out, while not enough movement can make it difficult to get the ball forward from layer to layer. Mentality sets out where your players start from, where they position themselves and helps to define your shape. RFD sets out where you want movement from layer to layer and can effectively link-up your whole shape and attack the spaces in the opponent, but it can also completely destroy your shape, and prevent players from actually carrying out the roles you want them to.

Being able to effectively manipulate these two instructions, to design the right kind of movement, to create movement where you want it and prevent players moving from where you want them, is the key to designing a good formation. Learn to use these four instructions well and you can design any shape and formation and tactics you can think of. Everything else pretty much tells your players what to do with the ball, these instructions tell players what to do with themselves.

This is very intresting SFraser and you are a tactical genius. I have a few question which i am hoping you can answer. I am playing a 3 man midfield with Arsenal Song has the DMC and Fabergas and Diaby as the two advance midfielders. I will set fabergas to attacking playmaker with support duty, Diaby will be my box to box midfielder also with support duty and Song has my DM or Anchor Man. I would like to have the exact set up as you with Deep Lying Playmaker in my DMC slot Fabergas would be the advance playmaker with support duty and Diaby would be the midfielder who floast between the two with the lower mentality.

Do you think that Song would be suited to the position of Deep Lying Playmaker (would you put this player on defend or support duty) or should i buy another DMC and sell Song what do you think. I have read on the forums that sometimes having two many playmakers can make the formation fall apart, could you let me know your thoughts.

Would having my advance playmaker on RFD rare not make him less effect in the game and who would you recommend has the primary playmaker in the 3 man midfield (i.e advance playmaker or DMC acting as the deep lying playmaker)

I am edging towards using the Nike Defence which has a mentality of 9 for MCd and MCa as mentality of 12. I am now confused. The post states that both the Deep Lying Playmaker in DMC slot and Advance Plamker in LCM should be on the same mentality and the other midfielder should be on the a lower mentality than both players.

This is where the confusion starts because I am not sure if the Nike Defence set up mentioned in TT 09 will suit this formation.

Sorry about the long post SFraser but has you can see I am rubbish at building tactics and really need your help

I just had to say (and a shameless bump because everyone should read this thread), that this probably the single most impressive post (SFraser's) I've seen on these forums. I picked up three new/different things and they all made me think about my tactical set up in a different way... that's surely the sign of a master at work

SFraser R.I.P.