Designing and Adjusting Tactics

Before writing this section, I’d like to tip a nod to Kristianohr and Googen who took the ’07 theories to their logical extreme. They advocated designing 14 different tactics and alternating between them until you found one that matched the situation you were in. The Rule of One mentality splits then gave you the extra advantage over the AI and you were pretty much guaranteed a good performance. A worthwhile and hugely creative contribution, but one I will not be advocating. Why? Mainly due to realism. I don’t believe that a manager could have fourteen mentality systems at his disposal. Personally, I think there are three realistic mentality systems that are used in most levels of football, which I will describe below.

Attack

A system in which the players are expected to be looking to attack more often than defend. Correspondingly, in such a system the full backs will be looking to support attacks with regularity, the team will try to exploit the width of the pitch, players will be encouraged to try the unexpected and the ball will be played into the space in front of its intended receiver.

Balanced

A system in which the players are looking to balance attacking and defensive responsibilities, carefully managing risk and reward. The full backs will support when a good chance is on but stay back if they deem it too risky to leave their position. The team will play a tighter formation than when looking to attack but not so tight that they can only go forward on the counter. Creativity will only be encouraged in the final third with most players sticking to instructions. Through balls will be rarer in order to maintain possession more comfortably.

Counter

A system in which players are looking to defend more often than attack and will rely on the counter to score. The full backs will predominantly stay back; the team will play a tight formation and stick to instructions, through balls will be rare, direct and into channels.

The above tactical systems will usually be enough to see lower division teams throughout a season with very little mishap. In ’07 the Attack and Counter were enough in themselves. However, at higher levels more tactical sophistication is required and these tactics will need to be supplemented by a further couple of options.

Control

A variety of the attack system, either using the same mentality set-up or one that is slightly more conservative. It will be more patient in build up, wider and deeper than attack to exploit as much pitch space as possible, be very creative and flair-based, often utilise a playmaker and slow tempo to guarantee almost constant possession and have everyone looking to play balls into space.

Defend

A system in which the aim of the game is not to concede. Very narrow with no forward runs, no creative freedom, tight marking, a higher than average mentality defensive line to further reduce space, keep men behind the ball and only go forward when there is no defensive risk at all.

Both the above tactics will become more useful at elite divisional level. If you are a newly promoted team with few divisional-quality players you may need to resort to the Defend tactic against top sides home and away. Once you have a world-class squad at your disposal then the Control tactic will become more and more useful as teams will play very defensively against you. Adjusting the tactics that you have succeeded with at lower levels to the more sophisticated and subtle ones for top sides is extremely important for long term success.

Designing Tactics

Stage One: Choose your preferred formation and create your set piece options. Save.

Stage Two: Decide upon your three-five preferred mentality standards. Save each tactic separately (see the Frameworks section).

Stage Three: Assign/remove forward runs and farrows/sarrows/barrows to complete the frameworks.

Stage Four: Decide upon individual instructions for each framework (see the Theorems section).