Tactic Building - Southampton

[Tshinanu]

So as far as I can remember, I've always relied on using plug & play tactics on Football Manager, I'm smart enough to handle transfers, getting the right people, setting the right training, managing the finances, coaching, and what not but I've yet to be able to create a solid tactic. I seem to give up pretty easily and rely on plug & play tactics but then I end up feeling cheap about it, as if my accomplishments were really someone else's. In turn, I'd really like some help in building a tactic. I think in FM 13 I didn't have as much trouble because from my knowledge, the game didn't really rely on player instructions as much, it was mainly formation and a bit of team instructions. This year, from what I'm seeing, it relies fully on player instructions and the formation/duties/role seem to have less effect. That's a bit more intimidating since overall that's a lot more to worry about as well and a lot more finer details you have to pay attention too. I do believe that building my own successful title winning tactics will be the key to me getting a long term 5 year + save on this game so this will be my attempt to do so.


My team is Southampton as you can very well tell and fortunately I have the benefit of not having been raped by the upper leagues yet (Lambert, Schneiderlin, Lallana, Shaw aren't on their way out yet). I very much love this team so I don't expect to make any changes, the most apparent movements necessary at the moment seem to be getting a starting CB alongside Lovren (Fonte and Yoshida aren't starter worthy). I've picked up Balanta so often it feels kinda' cheap to get him again, same goes for Doria, anyone have any English alternative? While I'd like to keep most of this team, only ones really guaranteed to stay are James Ward-Prowse and Luke Shaw. But really, only immediate improvements I feel the need to get are at the GK position and the CB position. De Bruyne, Lukaku, Pogba, are on my shortlist of guys I'd love to acquire if I make it big enough in time but that's pretty farfetched.


Onto tactics. We have a lot of awesome central midfielders, before I rage quit yesterday, I something like this: A strikerless 4-6-0 possession based tactic. They all had the necessary stats for their roles but I dunno, maybe I messed up on player instructions or team instructions had things like shorter passing/retain possession/play through the middle/work ball into box/play out of defense/lower tempo/push higher up/get stuck in/play narrower. Dont remember my player instructions exactly.


Ramirez - Lambert - Lallana
Schneiderlin - Ward-Prowse
Wanyama
Shaw - Fonte - Lovren - Clyne


SS (A) - T (A) - SS (A)
BBM (S) - BBM (S)
A (D)
FB (A) - CD (D) - CD (D) - FB (A)


Rodriguez was being trained to join the crew at AMC too. I did the formation this way because I felt it took advantage of Southampton's amazing midfield but got too my first game against Zenit where we were the favorites and they had a 60/40 advantage in possession against it. Admittedly, I didn't modify the tactics for Zenit because I wanted to see how they stood on their own and it was embarassing.


Whoever's willing to help, I've decided that a possession based tactic may not be what I want, I'd like to have both a counter based and an attacking centric technique that will allow me to get at least 20 shot attempts per game and hopefully 10 on goal. I'm not hoping for a one season euro league qualifications, I'm going to attempt to be patient, surviving to midtable and not getting fired is my target for all seasons until I figure out my title winning tactic.


Again, any help would be appreciated.

 

[Tshinanu]

Gonna start off by using the recommended formations this time around. I've got a 4-4-2 (Diamond) as the first one recommended, outlawing this since it only utilizes two central midfielders (A DM and a AMC), and instead of AMR/AML's to cope, it has MR/ML's which I'm not really a fan of. The other two were 4-1-2-1-2. The last plug & play tactic I used utilized this so I'm familiar with it. The other tactic is 4-3-1-2, I'm biased with this since it has 4 central midfielders. I remember reading however that having 3 CM's wasn't a good idea and thus I'm not sure I'll be rolling with this, maybe I should move one of them to AMC and have a 4-2-2-2 although that would leave a gap in between my defence and midfield right. Also I'm concerned that not having wingers would hurt the counter/attacking game I'd like to execute. I've added both nonetheless but I'll focus on 4-1-2-1-2 for now.


Was going to attach pictures of both formations and the attached players but cant as a new member yet, Lallana isn't on due to being down the bench and Ward-Prowse gets an auto-starting spot. I could sell Schneiderlin to make room for Lallana (in my original Southampton file I sold Shneiderlin pretty early) but I'd like to raise his value before I sell him if I sell him.

 

[Tshinanu]

First thing I did was move my formation's philosophy to being fluid (I assume this is best if I'm using Wing Backs who will be playing the role of wingers that way they don't stick to the defensive line?). I also changed it up to Counter mentality. First instructions were More Direct Passing, Pass into Space, Float Crosses. Since I'm trying to get the ball up fast, I figured Direct passing was only logical, not sure about pass into space. As for Float Crosses, my two WB's (Clyne & Shaw) have decent to solid crossing (which will only continue to grow) and my two strikers, Jay Rodriguez and Rickie Lambert are both 6 foot +. With that said, I did change Clyne/Shaw's roles to Wing Backs and duties to Attacking. I also decided to give Jay Rodriguez a poacher's role, and gave Lambert the Target Man role. Lambert is perfect for the latter, he's 6 foot 2, has all the right attributes and I think he'll improve Rodriguez in that way and allow him to get the ball into the net.


EDIT: Forgot to add that I set my first few player instructions for now, told my WB's to get forward and cross from deep.