Tactical advice

[Bexleygooner]

One of the common themes throughout this forum is how different the ME is, and how it relies much more on your tactical nous. I'll be honest, I'm not the best tactician in the world, but in past FMs I've been able to get away with that, often finding one formation and making it work regardless of the opposition.

So this time around, I'm forced to start looking deeper, and I know I have to change the way I do things. So I've got some questions, which if anyone could answer and offer me advice, I'd be very grateful.

1) do I rely too much on shout-outs in matches? When I play, I pay zero attention to I dividing player instructions, but instead throughout the game will rack up several shouts, which I will then remove and add depending on what my assistant advises me.

2) the for action I like to stick to is four at the back, two in central midfield, then an advanced midfield trio consisting of two wingers (or inside forwards) and an attacking midfielder, with a lone striker up front. Can anyone advise me the best way to set these up, particularly the roles of the full backs, the two central midfielders and the striker. I tend to have one of my two midfielders as a DLP (Arteta), but should the playmaker role be held by someone more advanced?

3) is there really any point in playing offside anymore? If you tweak the centreback's roles, offside automatically deselects anyway, and in the modern game, thanks to mr van Niistelroy a few years back, attacking players have become more savvy at beating the trap.

4) man-marking or zonal? Man to man seems to allow for more fluid movement, but of course usually leads to a leaky defence.

Like many, I am deeply frustrated with things at the moment, but I know I need to improve the human element to the game. I've been playing since CM99/00, and it would be a shame to lose the passion after all this time. So please help if you can.

[jthewonder]

Due to the massive amounts of bugs in the ME, the best advice i can give you is to exploit those bugs. Playing counter attacking football with a 4-1-2-2-1 or 4-4-2 seems to work the best, since dribling in the middle of the field or through passes currently are close to non-existant. Check the match engine/teamtalk bugs forum and you can problably find some more info that might help, other than that i read a post from sigams dude saying a ME fix might come early next week. Hope this helps