I'm really losing my way with FM. I've just started my 4th season with Spurs. I generally finish around 4th place and usually win the FA Cup or League Cup each season. But I'm trying to challenge for the league but I'm struggling. When it comes to the big games my team usually do well, but they slip up too often against the lower teams. So I've started approaching those games differently. I was away to Fulham and started off with 'Contain', something I've never done before. I had us set to counter attack and 'More roaming'. At halftime we were leading 2-0, so I thought I'd keep things pretty much as they are. The start of the second half they were level. So I decided to go more attacking and straight away went 3-2 up. Then went back to slightly more defensive. With about 10 minutes to go and probably even more defensive than before my defense were all over the place, on a counter-attack! and they equalised again. It ended up 3-3.
I've decided to start experimenting, so I reloaded and played the game again. This time more balanced. We went 2 up again and they managed to pull 1 back but we held on to a 1-0 win. I can't help thinking it doesn't make much sense. The first game played defensive and scored 2 goals. Second game played slightly more attacking and scored 2-0 goals. I know that's football, but it's not helping me understand the tactics of this game.
I've started paying a lot more attention to what the other teams players are doing. I played Man City and knew Tevez would be running things so had him tightly marked, closed down etc. But they have so many good attacking players I was unsure what to do with them all, apart from having the wingers closed down as usual. Tevez was still dragging my defense all over the place so I got Palacios to man mark him as well. In my experience from doing this before Palacios isn't that great at doing this job, but something worked because Tevez was kept pretty quiet for the rest of the game. Spurs ended up having a lot more of the ball and a lot of attempts on there goal, even getting a penalty which we missed and it finised 0-0. But I was happy because I had not conceded for once.
Then the next game was against Bolton and we lost 2-1. I'm getting so fed up with my team conceding goals, especially against lower teams. I got to the point last night where I couldn't be bothered playing anymore. I'm sure I will be back though.