JAMBOOLIA

Member
Joined
Feb 23, 2013
Messages
35
Reaction score
3
Points
8
Have you ever made a tactic that makes absolutely no logical sense but somehow it works and you're left asking yourself whether you're a genius or an idiot?
 
The majority of the great tactics users create and share in forums make FM sense, not logical football sense.
 
The vast majority of tactics that are considered successful in FM make no sense on paper. This is why im annoyed at this game that wants to be seen as the ultimate football manager sim, you cant use real life logic.
 
The vast majority of tactics that are considered successful in FM make no sense on paper. This is why im annoyed at this game that wants to be seen as the ultimate football manager sim, you cant use real life logic.
I agree. It's really annoying.
I've followed Pairs & Combinations for the last 3 years to develop my own tactics but this year nothing seems to work. I would never play with someone elses tactic however as a test I thought I'd look for a formation that goes against everything advised in the guides, the tactic included had 18 team instructions, 3 playmakers and consisted of 3 defend duties (including goalkeeper) 4 support & 4 attack. Worked unbelievably.. this has made me more confused. :'(
 
I've followed Pairs & Combinations for the last 3 years to develop my own tactics but this year nothing seems to work. I would never play with someone elses tactic however as a test I thought I'd look for a formation that goes against everything advised in the guides, the tactic included had 18 team instructions, 3 playmakers and consisted of 3 defend duties (including goalkeeper) 4 support & 4 attack. Worked unbelievably.. this has made me more confused. :'(
The only thing that sounds really odd is the 18 Team Instructions. Clueless is the word that springs to mind.

Anyway, Pairs and Combinations is a guide. It's not a rule book. You can use 3 defend, 4 support and 4 attack duties and it can work, but how you set up is very important.

These strange tactics 'work' but it'll almost always be exploiting something in the ME. When the next update/version rolls out, it's useless again. That's where something like Pairs and Combinations is useful. It creates a tactic, based on real world tactics and it will allow the tactic to not be one-dimensional so you can do well in most scenarios. One-dimensional tactics can work, don't get me wrong, but you need a plan B etc and users don't always know what to do when things go wrong.
 
The only thing that sounds really odd is the 18 Team Instructions. Clueless is the word that springs to mind.

Anyway, Pairs and Combinations is a guide. It's not a rule book. You can use 3 defend, 4 support and 4 attack duties and it can work, but how you set up is very important.

These strange tactics 'work' but it'll almost always be exploiting something in the ME. When the next update/version rolls out, it's useless again. That's where something like Pairs and Combinations is useful. It creates a tactic, based on real world tactics and it will allow the tactic to not be one-dimensional so you can do well in most scenarios. One-dimensional tactics can work, don't get me wrong, but you need a plan B etc and users don't always know what to do when things go wrong.
I know, I picked it up off the tactics section apparently been working the best. It is pretty stupid how these tactics work and I'm sat there thinking I'm doing everything right and we just dont perform.
 
I know, I picked it up off the tactics section apparently been working the best. It is pretty stupid how these tactics work and I'm sat there thinking I'm doing everything right and we just dont perform.
Yeah, I know it can feel unfair sometimes. Been there myself a good few years ago as well. But hey, if you did everything right, your team wouldn't underperform :p

One thing I always say is, watch as much of a match as you can - especially when struggling or setting up a new tactic. Just 10-15 mins on full shows a lot. Recently I had a 4-4-2 set up and it just wasn't happening (watching on Comprehensive) and I couldn't really work out why. In the end, I took my own advice and watch 10 mins of a game in full. Bit of an eye opener. I had the duties of my 2 strikers the wrong way around. I simple swap of my STCR and STCL roles and duties and the whole tactic 'worked'. The midfield linked so much better with the striker duties now swapped. They suddenly had passing options and were able to create space that wasn't possible before.

If you're struggling though, create a thread with your complete setup posted and a PKM or save game will help a lot.
 
To my mind, some tactic is not working basicly because your players occupy the area of each other on the field.
Finally i found that you should set some instructions only if you know exactly how it work. At the begining you'd better put everything as simple as possible, and watch ingame whether you like to add smth or not.
 
To my mind, some tactic is not working basicly because your players occupy the area of each other on the field.
Finally i found that you should set some instructions only if you know exactly how it work. At the begining you'd better put everything as simple as possible, and watch ingame whether you like to add smth or not.


I always start with very basic tactics and rarely change any default settings until I think I really know it will work or want to test something.

I always try 4-3-3 Narrow with short passing. It's my personal style.

This year I have used short passing like FM15, but was having issues with payers not passing to each other well. I switched to Fairly Narrow and they passed better simply because they were closer. I thought OK I will go Full Narrow. This did not work as my players were practically treading on each others' toes. So it seemed Fairly Narrow worked best.

Now I am having issues getting the midfield and attack to link up. There is a gap. I don't like to push up the defensive line much because I get spanked on the counter attack by small teams. I also don't like to put a player in the DM position because this seems to cause the defensive line to get pushed back allowing the opposition to pass their way to a goal. I tried moving one of my CMs into AM to help link midfield and attack. This had inconclusive results as my CMs got overwhelmed and again players were overlapping too much up front.

I'll crack it eventually!
 
Top