If you’ve been following these articles so far, I have set up a counter attacking tactic inspired by José Mourinho and it has beaten Barcelona at home. Not a bad start. However, beating Barcelona requires very different tools to beating Sporting Gijon. If you’ve ever wondered why one week you can beat the best teams and then fail miserably the next, this is the article for you.

One of the major criticisms I have seen on the forums over the past few years with Football Manager is that there is no “consistency of results”. The argument is that a good, solid tactic which beats one team one week can lose miserably the next. This shouldn’t be.

While I understand the frustration, hopefully my own experiences early on in my career at Real Madrid will help highlight some of these issues. I beat Barcelona in the last match. My next one against Almería resulted in a 1-0 defeat.

Unión Deportiva Almería 1-0 Real Madrid CF

On the left is the diagram from the Barcelona match. On the right is Almería. From this situation, we conceded the goal. Note how in the Barcelona match everyone is in the right position to defend the potential cross from the winger. Henry (Barca #14) has been forced back and the midfielders are being stopped from making any penetrating runs. In the Almería match, however, the situation is much worse. Playing on the counter, the opposition’s midfielders are pushed much higher. My defensive midfielder (Xabi Alonso, #5) is well out of position, leaving the Almería MC free on the edge of the box (Almería #25). Crusat, the winger (Almería #6) jumps the challenge, crosses to the MC and with the yard of space the midfielder has time to set his shot and scores.

Just look at that defensive line, though. The two centre backs (#18 and #21) are on each other’s toes, both marking the striker (Amería #11) and ignoring the goal scorer (Almería #25). All of this caused by Xabi Alonso’s frustration – his poor positioning forced him to close down the winger, pulling him out of position and leaving a massive gap in the centre to be exploited. Partly we must blame the marking system in Football Manager – but mostly this is a problem caused by my tactical system.

Once again, let’s look at the Barcelona match on the left and Almería on the right. Barcelona’s midfielders are pushed closer to our midfield line – clearly they want to get the ball more and create more attacks than Almería. In the Barca game, we have roughly three against three as our men look to run into the channels – in the Almería match we have three attackers against five defenders, and Ronaldo (#9) and Higuaín (#20) have temporarily switched positions in a vain attempt to find more space.

Were we playing a more possession oriented game this would be fine – Xabi Alonso (#5), Lassana Diarra (#10) and Marcelo (#12) would all be in perfect positions to receive a ball, lay it off and work out where to move next. But I’m not. I’m playing on the counter. So, we look to move the ball forward. A ball is lofted to Kaká (#8) to try and bypass the DMC (Almería #22) and MC (Almería #23) who would easily intercept a ground ball. Kaká misses out, so a counter is quickly launched. And look – the red arrows show the space the MCs (Almería #23 and #25) have to run into. They have the time and space to pick out the penetrating pass. The ball gets to their left winger (who has got the jump on our right back, Sergio Ramos #4) and they cross the ball. Somehow, they hit the woodwork and the ball is scrambled away.

Smaller teams require different tools

A quick analysis of the match stats shows this in sharp relief. Approaching this game in the same way as the Barcelona match caused great trouble. Almería’s stats look remarkably similar to ours from the Barca match – we were played and beaten at our own game. They had few long shots, less possession, more chances, hit the woodwork twice; in effect, they made far better use of their possession than we did. And that’s a no-no if we want to be Mourinho.

So, how do we solve this problem? Clearly a few changes need to be made. So, I have created another tactical style, again inspired by The Special One.

The Tactics

I chose to call this a “dominate” tactic as opposed to the “counter” tactic I used against Barcelona, but dominate may not be the right word. Essentially, Mourinho likes to defend from the front when playing certain sides. Against AC Milan in the derby last season, he lost Sneijder early to a red card. Where most would have moved to a 4-4-1, attempting to hit Milan on the counter, he set his Internazionale side out in a 4-3-2, keeping the pressure on the ageing Milan team and forcing them to be defensively sound. They were pinned in to their own half, afraid to burst forward for fear of leaving gaps. Inter duly won the match.

Similar principles apply here – keeping a roughly similar formation, but putting more emphasis on driving the opposition back. This will require a bit more possession play and better use of the space on the pitch; but done properly it should allow the side to keep control of most matches. Once the scoreline forces the opposition to come and attack us, we can switch to our classic style and hit them on the break – hopefully allowing us to grab another goal or two.

And so, we have this. A purer 4-2-3-1, with two MCs (Lassana Diarra and Xabi Alonso) and a proper AML (Drenthe) rather than a ML. Ronaldo will be encouraged to attack more as a proper third forward to accompany Kaká and Higuaín. And the two MCs will be required to play the ball a little more – so Diarra becomes a central midfielder (albeit still with a defend duty) while Xabi Alonso moves his playmaking duties slightly further up the pitch. For now I will keep use full backs not wing backs. And I will still require the team to close down and mark the oppostion’s full backs and wingers at all times.

So for the second time, I cracked open the creator and created a tactical file with the following settings:

Team Instructions

Philosophy: Rigid
Starting Strategy: Attacking
Closing Down: Stand-off more

All other settings on default.

Player Instructions

GK: Goalkeeper, defend (First choice: Iker Casillas)
DL: Full Back, automatic (Álvaro Arbeloa)
DCl: Centre Back, defend (Pepe)
DCr: Centre Back, defend (Raúl Albiol)
DR: Full Back, automatic (Sergio Ramos)
MCl: Central Midfielder, defend (Lassana Diarra)
MCr: Deep Lying Playmaker, support (Xabi Alonso)
AML: Defensive Winger, support (Royston Drenthe)
AMC: Attacking Midfielder, attack (Kaká)
AMR: Inside Forward, attack (Cristiano Ronaldo)
FC: Poacher, attack (Gonzalo Higuaín)

Also for “defending corners” all players with the “back” instruction were changed to “man mark”.

Theory and practice

Once more, I will attempt to put sound theory into practice but it’s not always so simple. My results over the next few league games will help refine this plan and help get the team to play well in these situations. This will probably require a bit more tweaking since it will rely on a balance between attacking movement and sound defensive principals. Difficult to pull off.

In the next match, I played AC Milan at the San Siro, so this seems like a good time to dust off the “counter” tactic. The next article will cover my first three matches in the Champions League – Milan (A), Bordeaux (H), Rubin Kazan (A). A good mix of attacking and defensive strategies needed, so another excellent chance to show you why one tactic might work one week but be completely inappropriate the next.