Pragmatist Roll Call

[Tikka Mezzala]

Hello!

I'd like to have a thread dedicated to discussing a pragmatic approach to tactics in Football Manager 2024.

What do I mean by "pragmatic"? Well, I initially planned on using the term "defensive", but experience has taught me that this term doesn't really capture the approach. Even as a manager that favours defence-first football, I find myself having to be flexible when it comes to ideals. There are scenarios where it just does not pay to set out your stall in a 'defensive' way.

Nevertheless, the core aspect of what I'm referring to is a concern about the defensive solidity of the team. Making sure you are hard to score against, limiting the attacking threats of the opposition, and not being overly concerned about certain attacking metrics that are more relevant to all of this total football stuff people are trying to play. 

If you take more pleasure out of winning a game like the one above than having 70+% possession, 30 shots etc., then this might be the thread for you! 

Now I should be clear that this post isn't going to explain how to play this way or go into detail about how I've approached things. I am nowhere near savvy enough as a manager to offer any such explanations and advice. I will, of course, contribute to the thread if it gets going and people share their own concepts, tactics, approaches etc. In the years where I've attempted to succeed with a pragmatic approach, I've had very mixed success and have yet to enjoy sustained success. So I'm here to learn from fellow pragmatists!

So far in FM24, I've done reasonably well playing this way. I won the second division league cup with TPS in Finland before going on to win promotion, and I have won the Croky Cup and Jupiler Pro League in Belgium with Standard Liege. The season I played in Finland was hard to make judgements about, because we were expected to go up as champions and we probably made it harder for ourselves than it had to be. We clinched promotion on the final day of the season, but there were too many draws over the course of the campaign and we nearly blew it. The Belgian experience was much more positive as I returned the title to a club that had been without one in some time. My success here was based upon the flexibility I spoke about. There were plenty of games where we had to take the initiative, because the opponent was more than happy to sit back and play out a stalemate. But those big games away at clubs like Genk, Club Brugge, Anderlecht etc., were the ones that vindicated our pragmatic approach. 

Having played a couple of trial seasons and been happy with how the approach has played out so far, I'm going to embark on another save that will probably be my focus until the full release. I'll be managing Estudiantes (LP) in Argentina, a club with a culture of defensive football. I'll update the thread with how things are going and what approach(es) I'm using. But I'd love for anyone else who is attempting to play this way to do likewise! I have so much to learn about making this approach work long term. 

 

 

[Kcinnay]

Lookin' forward to it! I'm trying to construct solid, defence first, hard working, vintage Atlético-style playing teams, but in FM 24, I still don't have succeeded.

[Tikka Mezzala]

2 hours ago, Kcinnay said:

Lookin' forward to it! I'm trying to construct solid, defence first, hard working, vintage Atlético-style playing teams, but in FM 24, I still don't have succeeded.

Let us know what you're trying. I'm sure some helpful advice could be given from some of our tactical denizens. 

One of my standard approaches is to try and acquire a number of aerially dominant defensive players and then to close off the space in the central areas, forcing the opposition wide and hedging our bets that we'll deal with the balls they fire in. The key then is to try and position some players in advantageous areas for the quick counter-attacks that make or break a good defensive tactic. 

I've been reading a bit about rest-defence and how to counter different shapes. The article is here: https://spielverlagerung.com/2021/10/15/the-various-forms-of-restdefences-part-2-counterattacking/

[Cloud9]

1 hour ago, Tikka Mezzala said:

Let us know what you're trying. I'm sure some helpful advice could be given from some of our tactical denizens. 

One of my standard approaches is to try and acquire a number of aerially dominant defensive players and then to close off the space in the central areas, forcing the opposition wide and hedging our bets that we'll deal with the balls they fire in. The key then is to try and position some players in advantageous areas for the quick counter-attacks that make or break a good defensive tactic. 

I've been reading a bit about rest-defence and how to counter different shapes. The article is here: https://spielverlagerung.com/2021/10/15/the-various-forms-of-restdefences-part-2-counterattacking/

Here's a discussion on crafting defensive first styles of plays you might find useful

Edited October 24, 2023 by Cloud9

[Tikka Mezzala]

8 minutes ago, Cloud9 said:

Here's a discussion on crafting defensive first styles of plays you might find useful

Cheers!