Trying to get away from downloading tactics & learn to create my own. Looking for any advice/critique on this one.

[Swaban]

As mentioned, im finally trying to learn to create my own tactics, rather than downloading popular "overpowered" ones from the steam workshop. 

This is what i've come up with so far, with the aim of dominating possession in a similar way to that in which we would see a Guardiola team do so. Im unsure about having both a DLP & an AP within the same team, will this cause me issues as both fight to dictate play?

any advice/criticism would be greatly appreciated!

[CARRERA]

5 hours ago, Swaban said:

As mentioned, im finally trying to learn to create my own tactics, rather than downloading popular "overpowered" ones from the steam workshop. 

I really appreciate that, the best tip I can give you is to start very simple in terms of instructions. Figure out your formation and roles first and start adding instructions step by step. Learn how certain changes do affect the match engine. Just adding 10-15 instructions right away won’t properbly help you at all to figure out what everything does

5 hours ago, Swaban said:

Im unsure about having both a DLP & an AP within the same team, will this cause me issues as both fight to dictate play?

You can play with several playmakers, as long as they are spread out in terms of position and / or duties. You did that very well.

[fwanti]

One advice is about the "pass into space" instruction (i'm not really great at the game to talk about much else lol).

If you're pressing as high as you are, you don't really have "space" to pass into. In my mind they condradict each other.

 

Another thing. If you want to press that high, you may want to remove "prevent short gk" because you want them to have the ball in the defense when you try to press them.

[Draakon]

From back to forward, my advice:

Defence

1) Use tighter marking is not bad instruction in itself, but your defenders need to be able to do that (high on marking and concentration). If not, then don't use it. I'm not sure, but I suspect it could be counterproductive with offside trap, because offside trap would instruct defenders to keep the line, but 'mark tighter' means they should follow the striker (in other words, break the line) so keep an eye on that.

2) Generally one BPD is enough. Select one (better with ball) and leave the other as CDd

 

Midfield

Generally looks good, decent roles, depending on your players. I would remove 'focus on the left/right' because it's tiki-taka - and I'd let the players sort out the best route to break down the defence. They use wings anyway if they can - there's no need to force this.

 

Wingers

Wide playmaker (AMR AP) has never worked for me and I don't like it. The main problem is that playmaker is somebody who is searched by his teammates and the ball goes through him a lot. If he's neutralised well by your opponents then it hampers your attack, because the ball is stuck on the right wing with little options to play it forward. Also, it means the 'focus play right/left' instructions pointless, because placing APa to AMR slot basically means "focus play down the right".  Use Ws or IWs instead.

 

Striker

Striker role really depends on the player you have available in this position. It could work with CFa, DLFa, AFa, DLFs, PFa etc. Because of your high pressing intention I'd go for PFa, but I suggest you to experiment with your current players and decide which role works the best.

[Tsuru]

I think this is a very important and good decision. Recently I was playing with a downloaded tactic and they I started to build my own system. I will share with you the way I like to think when I am creating a tactic.

• Modern football is a game of denying space for your opponent to attack and creating space that your opponent is trying to deny you. So how you are going to create space and how you are going to deny space for the other team? You kind of answered that question when you said you are looking for a Guardiola style, but I would be more specific here. You want to keep the ball and play patiently on the opponent´s field, ok, but how your players are moving to create that space? How the different roles and duties will interact in order to open space, create good opportunities and close the space for your opponents to create their opportunities?
   
• I like to start simple with instructions. You mentioned the Guardiola style, so this would probably be a starting pack of something like "Play out of Defence + Narrow + Work Ball Into Box + Counter-Press + Hold Shape + High DL + High LOE + More Urgent Pressing". I am not telling you to just put these instructions, it is me trying to translate the main ideas into the team instructions. There are many different ways of recreating a patient possession style and you can use different instructions for that. I think each FM manager would translate the ideas into different TIs 
   
• I like to start with the Balanced mentality. Easy, simple and you avoid overcomplicating things. It is a very good starting point so you can create anything from there.
   
• Football is highly contextual: one side of this coin is that some teams lack capacity to play on some specific ways. Sometimes the tactic is good, you set it up well, roles, duties, instructions...but your players don´t have what is necessary to play it, and you start blaming the tactic which is right and it makes sense. I really believe that the Guardiola style is very suited for a top level team, but a smaller team would probably have some difficulties - not playing it, but on keeping playing that way. How many times we have seen a good tactic that starts winning, but suddenly stops? Our opponents watch our games and try to explore our weaknesses, this is modern football. A top level team maybe could surpass this, but a less technical side would probably not. So does your team has the quality to play this way? This question is not focused on your tactic in specific, it is a question we should always ask ourselves.
   
• Football is highly contextual: the other side of that coin means that different opponents, different matches and different situations (league x cup etc.) will result in completely different matches. For this reason I like to build not just a simple tactic, but a tactical system focused on the majority of the situations I will face during a season. Normally I work with three tactics: attack, counter-attack and park the bus. I change among them depending on the opponent and depending on the game situation (if we are winning 4-0 we don´t need to be on full attack, if we score a goal we can move to counter). Of course the counter and park the bus will not be very complex tactics so I can focus on the main one (attack - in your case it would be the Guardiola one). Many people don´t like this "plan B and C" idea but as I play with smaller teams this is really necessary, I always lack the quality to force my playstyle in all matches and all opponents and expect to have success.
   
• Tactics are sons and daughters of patience. You will start with a tactic, you will test, you will win and loose and you will probably need to adjust and adapt depending on many factors. So I try to avoid changing everything after 2 matches or even after each match, unless I am really trying to figure something specific. 

Some ideas here for you to think when you are building and improving your system.