1. Yes. Although 9.3.0 rewards short passing a little more than it should (ideally, in my imperfect view anyways) so it might be worth shortening players' passing just a little bit more than you'd think worthwhile. The control tactic is pretty much 'universal' and seems very robust (set the defensive midfielder ie the one on the right centre to forward runs rarely to make it a little more defensively solid). Others need more tinkering depending on your players although they will still function, it will be a little more hit and miss if you don't take into account your players and the level of football you are playing at.
2. No idea. The tactics as they are here are designed to be the starting point - they were done just to give people a solid platform from which to start tinkering. I'd suggest that ideally you'd just want good, solid players for the level to get above average results with this set - or at least more than meet board expectations without doing much of anything other than basic tailoring to your level of football. It's a classic 4-4-2 so you'll want two solid centre-halves who can mark and head a ball, two fullbacks who are defensively solid but able to get forward when you want to attack, two wingers who can cross a ball or do something useful with it otherwise, a midfielder who is defensively minded to partner one who is more attacking and your strikers can be anything as long as at least one of them can score and one of them has a bit of skill about him.
All the best,
Zeb
---------- Post added at 06:06 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:55 PM ----------
I wouldn't have thought they'd work particularly well in any league outside the traditional 'northern' leagues (ie Scandinavia, Britain, France, Germany) without a lot of work. Primarily because the pressing will be too intense but related is the need to maintain possession which usually means having more in midfield than a 'traditional' 4-4-2 gives you. Hot climates produce technical football which keeps possession because it's far too hot to be running around trying to get the ball back.
Against teams better than mine, I wouldn't usually start with attacking. I'd play a counterattacking defensive tactical variant or at best a 'standard' variant. Once the match is underway, if my players were doing fantastically well and dominating while not under any pressure, I'd consider ramping the pressure up a bit with an attacking variant for 10 - 15 minutes to see if I could nick a goal.
If you're 2-1 up, you have three basic options. Shut-up-Shop (ultra-defensive), Defensive (counterattacking when appropriate to see if you can get another) or a Defensive Control variant (trying to keep possession but still being more defensive than standard but more attacking than a defensive variant). Whichever I'd choose would depend on who I was playing and how my team was playing that day. If I was darned lucky to be ahead and the match had a fair way to go, I'd play defensive with counterattacking. If there were 5 minutes left and I was very lucky to be ahead, I'd shut up shop. If I was whipping them but didn't want to push my luck too much, I'd play a defensive control variant.
That sort of question and how you answer it is more about you as a manager. I personally wouldn't consider the fourth option unless I needed to win by more than one goal (for whatever reason) and that's to keep attacking and get another goal...
