The Footy Manager » Tactics

How to choose a Captain

Ruderic — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:34:28 +0000

Like any football team, in Football Manager 2009 & 2010 every manager needs a player who can lead his teammates in the field. This is the job of the team captain, a key role in every successfull team.

In Football Manager, we can identify 4 attributes that define a good Captain: Influence, Determination, Work Rate and Team Work.

Influence

Influence is the player’s ability to affect events or other players without any intentional effort. Players with high influence will be leaders on the pitch and team-mates will tend to rally around these players.

In my opinion, this is the most important of those 4 attributes. A player with high influence (18 or more) can be considered a natural leader, an example for his teammates.

Determination

High determination can be understood as a commitment to succeed. A determined player will give everything in order to win. As you can see, any good captain needs determination.

Work Rate

This reflects the player’s mental drive to work hard. A high rating will ensure a player wants to work his socks off from start to finish, but he will need the necessary physical attributes to actually be able to pull it off. Nonetheless, it is an admirable trait to have in your team.

Team Work

How well the player follows tactical instructions and works for and alongside his team-mates. A team full of players with a high rating here will work better as a unit. Players with lower ratings will slack off and not ‘buy in’ to the team ethos. You can guess that your captain needs to work well with his partners, so high team work is a requisite.

Examples of great Captains

In both Football Manager and real world soccer, you can identify John Terry, Steven Gerrard and Fabio Cannavaro as top class captains.

This was a guest article written by Ruderic To read more of Ruderic’s Football Manager stuff checkout Football Manager Debot.

FM2010 Tactic 4-1-1-2-2

Niall — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 10:56:44 +0000

Guest article written by DannyBecks:

I really like attacking teams in Football Manager 2010 so I created this tactic. This gives you that we score lots of goals, but can be susceptible to conceding too.

Team Instructions

Philosophy: Fluid
Starting Strat: Attacking.

Passing: Shorter
Closing Down: Press More
Crosses: Drill

The rest are default.

Playmaker is the CM
Target Man: The left striker.
Target Man Supply: Mixed

I have made a few advanced changes there.

Defensive line is dropped deeper
The team plays wider.

Player Instructions

Keeper:
Set to be a basic keeper. The one I have has a weakness that means he isnt great at coming off his line to sweep up the ball.

Full Backs:
Set to support. I like my fullbacks to get forward, but I also like them to choose when to. I feel the support option offers this.
They will look to support the winger, get crosses into the box and be involved.

Centre Backs:
Both set to defend, not ball playing not limited. Just run of the mill centre halves. Not scared to play the ball, but not looking to be beckenbauer back there.

NOTE: the right sided centre half needs to be the one who is the best in the air. The set peices are built around him. For me this is David Wheater, big, tall, strong and good in the air. He scored 13 goals last season, so get someone with good delivery. 34 in six seasons. I know its the wrong way there. was soon changed after our first attacking set piece

Defensive Midfielder:
He is there to defend and defend only. He sits infront of the back line offering more cover there in front of the central defenders. will score very few, but will chip in with a few assists if they have good passing ability.

NOTE: When playing teams with a devastating AMC (liverpool and Gerrard), set him to man mark him.

Centre Midfielder:
Box to Box player what you have here. All rounded, can contribute at both ends. He is set to take long shots “sometimes” as the man playing there for me does not have a favourable long shot attribute. Change it for someone had and he can be devastating, the man I had in me previous game was.

Right and Left Attacking Midfielder:
Both are out and out wingers. Set to attack. They are pushed on for a reason, to keep the fullback deep. When you break, more often than not it will be these players in behind the full back and whipping the ball across the box for a finish.

They dont need to be pacey, O’Neill of Middlesbrough did the job for me with great effect for 5 years, 28 assits in our first season. They will create a lot of chances. Finishing ability is a benefit.

Right Sided Striker:
I have this man set to “advanced forward”, but should you have a pacey striker who is a great finisher (defoe was amazing for me) then change to poacher. Both have been amazing for me. Last season my player here scored 18 and assisted 12.

Left Sided striker:
Your “target man”, he will score, he will assist and do everything. But for me, its mostly score.

Season 1: Leroy Lita 35 (Championship)
Season 2: Mido 18
Season 3: Mido 15
Season 4: Leroy Lita 20
Season 5: Jonothan Franks 24
Season 6: Andy Stewart 32

Thats how we have gone for the man in that position. Lita losing out and regaining from Mido as Mido had the better attributes for it.

In Game instructions
Set exploit the flanks.

Should you go behind, do not be scared to go overload. Especially in games you believe you should be winning. It creates a lot of chances.

Success

I got middlesbrough promoted from the Championship first season through the play offs after having 10 points deducted.

4 seasons of stead improvement in the premier league saw me end up winning it in the 5th season, along with the league cup.

Download

4-1-1-2-2 (An attacking 4-4-2) (1432)

All Out Attack – Getting that late goal

Niall — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 10:13:15 +0000

Just a quick post that some of you might find useful but we have all been in that situation when we are chasing a goal (or two) with 15/20 miutes to go and we really need a goal.

I just thought I’d share share a couple of the things that I do that get some decent results.

Set though balls to often for all players.
Increase the amount of players making forward runs.
Set team mentality to ‘all out attack’.
Up all mentalities by a few clicks.
Move creativity three quarters of the way to the top NOT right to the top. That gets too messy.
Set tempo to fast.

If you get the goal you are after make sure you revert back to your original tactics because you’ll leave yourself way open at the back.

Football Manager Ultimate Training Schedule

Football Manager 2008 – Set Piece Tactics

Niall — Sun, 25 May 2008 14:33:03 +0000

I generally manage lower ranks sides who to compete really have to punch above their weight so set pieces are very important for some of my sides because at times I’m not going to score any other way. So in this little article we’ll have a look at set piece tactics.

First off we have to ask what is a good corner strategy?
Try to have three big targets in the box, one on Near Post Flick-On, the strongest on Challenge GK, and a third on Forward. Add to that a real shooter on “Attack Near Post”, and somebody with Headers and Finishing at “Stand on Far Post”, and you have four goalscoring threats plus a good Ian Rush like poacher.

Likewise, your throw-in instructions can make a huge difference; get somebody with 18+ Long Throws as your throw-in taker, put a big defender on Near Post, two Long Shot specialists on Lurk Outside Box, a striker on Default, and a fullback on Go Forward. Works a treat; all five are threats to score.

As for Long Shots, you need space to pull it off – so if you have tight-marking and high closing down all over the pitch, neither your players nor the opposition have enough space to really make it work. If you dropped that to loose marking, low closing down, I bet you’d see a lot more – both for and against.

What kind of a player makes a good freekick taker?

The first conclusion I came to was that although composure IS important, it is nowhere near as important as it is when taking penalty kicks. In my view, the composure attribute is, (believe this or not), more important than the penalty attribute when deciding the result of a spot kick.

With free-kicks, there are other options to consider and all of these affect the outcome.

Should the player shoot, tee up another player for a shot, cross, play wide left/right, or our old favourite, pass back to the GK from just outside the opposition area. Affecting this decision would be decisions, creativity, flair, and possibly anticipation.

If he shoots, which part of the goal does he aim for. I would say that decisions and free-kicks affect this.

If he decides he is going to shoot, and he knows where he wants to put it, does he blast it or try a delicate placed shot. I suppose what affects this is decisions, free-kicks, technique and maybe any PPM’s that are applicable.

Once he has decided that he will shoot, what part of the goal he will aim at and whether he will blast it or place it, we have the following attributes to consider that will effect the outcome. Finishing, free-kicks, long-shots, technique and composure.

As always your thoughts are welcome!

[ratings]

Football Manager 2008 – Tactics

Niall — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:24:59 +0000

I’ve had several emails from people asking for some tactical advice for Football Manager 2008 (Worldwide Soccer Manager) and have finally got round to sharing some.

The system I’m currently using is with West Brom and is a rather odd 3-3-1-2-1 formation. As odd as it looks it has really helped me punch above my weight in the Premier league with a couple of fantasic wins away Liverpool, Chelsea and Man Utd as well is domination at home.

The main keys to this formation are to have at least one very strong centre back, a strong defensive midfielder and good attacking midfielders. I score most of my goals from my two attacking midfielders with my forward acting not as a target man just more of a pain in the backside, chasing down balls etc…

Much of the this formation it geared up into stiffling the opposition and then hitting them on the break. While you may not finish the season at the highest scorers in the league the way I see it the results are the thing that matter.

As your team progresses you can add quicker and more skillfull players into the same formation and be even more effective. I’ve had this formation for four seasons now the side is getting better and better as the years tick by.

What I end up doing if I’m trying to close out a away game when I’m in the lead is change the tempo to as slow as you can go, passing to short and time wasting to as high as it goes.

To download the tactics go to http://www.niallwalsh.net/wp-content/uploads/3-3-1-2-1.tac

To install simply place the .tac file in My Documents/Sports Interactive/FM 2008/Tactics

I’d be interested to hear how people get on with these.

What do you want to see from Football Manager 2011? How can they make it better?