As I promised from the beginning of the season I am publishing the first Football Manager 2010 tactic that I’ve been working on and testing since the beginning of the Notts County career. I guess it’s still far from being perfect but I really hope that I can improve it with your feedback. 
The formation is a balanced 4-4-2 system that looks quite traditional:
Let me give you a bit more details about each role.
Goalkeeper – set to goalkeeper – defend, my current goalie is a bit too slow to be an effective sweeper keeper.
Full Backs – set to full back – automatic, their main concern is defending but they do go forward and send in some crosses once in a while.
Centre Backs – set to central defender – defend.
Right/Left Midfielders – set to wide midfielder – attack, they are one of the keys to the tactic, they go to the byline and cross into the box very often. You will need players with good pace and dribbling to get past the opposition full backs easily.
Right Central Midfielder – set to advanced playmaker – support, he is the creative midfielder that tries through balls for the strikers and passes behind the defense for the two wingers. This role should be given to your most creative midfielder.
Left Central Midfielder – set to ball winning midfielder – support, he’s the muscle in our midfield but he gets chances to shoot from outside the box quite often.
Right Striker – set to poacher, he’s the one who bangs it in 
Left Striker – set to target man – attack, he receives most of the balls and tries to find a solution to pass to the poacher or to the midfielders. Has to be a strong striker with good ball control and passing attributes. I use Sabrin Sburlea for this role and he creates lots of chances by holding the ball and then passing it through to the poacher.
Go to the next page to read about the team instructions and to get the download link.
Lye (395)
Sears (333)
martin (261)
Ravenie (183)
TheZiggy (111)
eddie eddie (110)
Ahmed Shah (65)
Good tactic in your previous posts.
I am not good with tactics so my advice may be awful but may be the defensive line is to far back and not close enough to the midfeild and the can not get the defense right.
Or it could be that your closing down nedds to go up because they can not get close enough to stop them as quick as possible or it could be that you are not attacking enough in your staregy.
All these may not be right but I think they are but as I said at the start I am not very good with tactics.
Good luck.
Thanks for the suggestions Eddie. Actually what you pointed out is my main concern too, the gap between the defensive line and midfield, but when I tried to get the defensive line higher up there was always too much space behind the line and as my defenders are rather slow the opponents could create much damage.
The only other thing I can say is that deal with it until jan and then buy quicker defenders or do some training to get them quick or just lift them ever so slightly so that they are still back but are a bit more foward as well so that you do not let in as man.
Sorry for posting again but I had to answer what you said.
Thanks for posting again Eddie
I would also need a quick goalkeeper that could be a decent sweeper keeper to come out for the balls that are sent behind the defense. Anyway, I will try to continue tweaking until I’ll get the perfect defensive line depth for the players that I have.
Hi enjoy this blog, what’s the name of the skin you are using to allow background pictures? Good luck with the rest of the season.
Thanks for the comment Kane. The skin that I’m using is called “Vitreous”, I’m going to make it available to download right here on the blog pretty soon.
Dude, thank you so much for posting this tactic. I’ve been playing with Malmö FF from the Swedish premier division Allsvenskan and have won the series two years in a row, dominating it, but have struggled immensely in european competitions – Ever since I started playing with your strategy, compensating my centerbacks slow speed against fast international strikers by setting the defensive line low, I am actually able to get amazing results. I’m in a group with Werder Bremen, AZ Alkmaar and Inter and I have beaten both Werder Bremen and Alkmaar already thanks to you!
@Stabby
Best of luck mate and keep us up to date with you results!
I’m very happy you found the tactic useful. With Alkmaar and Werder beaten you might go for the trophy, you’ll be the next Sven Goran Eriksson
Hi Johnny,
It is really so nice to read you again
In test of time with this tactic, I think u will face some injury problems and/or u will see that the players are not developing enough in traning. I mean this is a difficult tactic for players.
From my point of view, you may try to have one support and one defend in midfield (let say two central midfielders with one support and one defend duty)and one support and one attack in frontline (poacher the banger, advanced forward or a complete forward for support, depending on player’s attributes) This will create a more effective pass link in midfield.
Generally, I think that we all need three tactics to play the game. The first tactic will be the “scoring until 30th minute”. This one is the starting tactic for home games. GK Def, FBs Attack, CM Defend, CM Support, Wingers Att, Poacher Att, FC support. Put the poacher infront of the supporting midfielder in 4-4-2. Fluid, Attacking, Push up, more aggressive, expressive, press more, zonal, default crosses, more roaming. Down both flanks, no counter, play offside. With this tactic team usually scores in the very early first half. English style…
After finding the first, I change to a more controlled tactic in order to balance the game tempo, and protect players from fatigue, injuries and unnecessary cards. This is also the starting tactic for away games and only FBs are now set to support. Balanced, Control, all others set to default (esp. marking), mixed, no offside, no counter. I would like to say the counter style is optional here. When u are playing an away game with Manu vs. Arsenal you may start with counter, but Stoke no counter.
3rd tactic is the counter tactic, FBs set to defend, the negative version of attacking for all settings, through the middle, no offside trap, tick the counter.
Mentality of FBs is key. So in home games we start with 5 att., away 3 att., counter 3 att. but 2 additional players with defensive duties.
On the other hand as you may see in tactics creator, the standard nature of 4-4-2 is more attacking than standard nature of 4-3-3 Dutch (Barcelona)style. And a 4-5-1 of Zico or Daum is more defensive than 4-3-3 Dutch of Rijkaard or Guardiola by nature. For me, it is also true in real football. That means, for ex. if you find the first goal in an away game and survive until 70′s with a balanced 4-4-2, you may change to a standard counter or again a balanced controlling 4-3-3 by bringing in a DM for Fsupport.
For attacking corners, I put DC chall. the keeper, poacher stand on far post, the small DC attack to near post, all others go forward, except fbs. Corners to 6 yard box, freekicks to center. fbs take the throw ins and mid. are set to stay back.
This is what I am using at the moment, but you know there is no complete correct or total false in football, it is the attraction of the game
Please share your ideas,
All best,
N.Celal
Hello Celal, I’m very happy to see you back here with your thorough and extremely useful comments. I’m not a fan of using multiple tactics to be honest, I always try to use one tactic and dictate the tempo of a game. Sometimes I have to adjust it to match the opponent but most times I do that through the individual opposition instructions.
Anyway, since your tactical comments are always very detailed and interesting I would strongly encourage you to post your tactics and tactical thoughts in the forum, we could start a nice debate over there. Again, it’s very nice having you back, I missed your comments a lot
I’m manager of Fiorentina, this is my first 11 (4-2-3-1)
GK: Frey (10/10)
LB: Vargas (8/10)
CB: Zapata (udinese) (8/10)
CB: Gamberini (6/10)
RB: Srna (shakhtar) (8/10)
CM: Montolivo (9/10)
CM: D’Agostino (Udineese) (7/10)
LOM: Jovetic (8/10)
ROM: Nani (man utd) (7/10)
COM: Vukcevic (sporting) (10/10)
CF: Gilardino (10/10)
what do you guys say about my first team?
i recomnend you all to buy Simon Vukcevic in Sporting Lisaboa! he is not so expensive, and he got like (20) in longshots. he is just amazing!
I’m 4 in the italian serie A and came 1 in my CL grup with Real Madrid, Liverpool and Wisla Krakow in! sry for my bad english.
You have a solid first eleven there Anton and seems like a very attacking one too. I wish you good luck and maybe you can keep us up to date with your results, you can do that in the forum too.
Nice I’m also playing with Notts Co! I’m in March 2010 and my 1st eleven is: Gk: Schmeichel LB: Bozovic CB: Soley CB: Edwards RB: Mattock LM: Culio CM: David Sanchez CM: Ozkhan ST: Magera ST: Rusic I’m 3rd place and I know I needed a better tactic to play better. Thanks, I’m trying it now!
Oh and RM: Ianis Zicu
BTW, what do you think of Ricardo Vaz Te. His stats don’t look that good but he scored 20 goals for me!
Mihai, you have a solid first eleven there, let’s see if the tactic works for your players. About Vaz Te, I thought about signing him at some point but gave up because I found better targets.
Yea so I just played and from 3rd place I won the league in the last match! I had lots of wins, some draws and 1-2 losses. Very good tactic though. It was clearly an improvement. Now I’m looking to sign Yssouf Kone. I think he is Premier League quality, even in RL there were rumors of him signing for Everton or some other team. And he is dead cheap, transfer listed for 400.000 euros! Check out players from Romania, in my game the teams just transfer list them for dead cheap!
I already have a few Romanian players, Dananae, Sburlea, Parvulescu… I also had Mitea but sold him a while ago.
Maybe Go For Mutu If He’s Not Too Old And If Youve Got Room For One More Romanian Pleyer:P
He is available on a free transfer now but I don’t think that he has what it takes to play in my team. I don’t like him too much in real life either, he’s rather phony and not a team player.
Yeah He Was A Drug Dealer
I’m sorry to say but this didn’t work so well in the 3rd league. I got beaten 6-0. Now I’m looking for another tactic since I’m not good at making my own.
I’m not using this tactic anymore but there’s one thing you should keep in mind: you have to use the right players for a tactic, there is no such thing as a “wonder” tactic that works anytime anywhere.
Too bad, I now made my own 4-1-2-1-2, decent tactic but I still got beatetn by Nott Forrest 2-3 in JPT.
Does this tactic work well for Liverpool?
I´m testing this tactic with my Rochdale league 2 game,10 played,7 won,one tied and 2 lost.
I found a way to scored lots of goals from corner kicks:
I tell the player to shot them to the near post, then i tell the best three heading players to go for a near post flick, to attack the near post and to challenge the keeper.
i also tell the best long shot player to lurk outside the area, it´s working very good for me and i recommend trying it.
here is an article i wrote about it:
http://footballmanagerfansstories.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-to-set-pieces-for-attacking-corners.html
@Mariano
There are lots of ways to score from corner kicks, I use a different approach and there are several more, you just have to have the right players for each situation.
Thanks Johnny,
Do you know any web site or post where i can learn more specifically who to set the set pieces for corners, free kicks and throw ins?
much thanks
@Mariano
I don’t really know any but you can have a look at FM-Britain maybe they have such posts.
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