How to create a successful tactic on Football Manager

Philosophy

Written by wellsy1498

Within Football Manager the philosophy of play is overlooked by some people and how important it is can vary between different players. Your philosophy (style) can be set to either Very Rigid, Rigid, Balanced, Fluid or Very Fluid.

The more fluid your style of play, the more your players will try to contribute to both attacking and defensive phases of play and will break from any tactical restrictions to give more flair in attack.

A more rigid style of play will make players stick to their own position and obey their tactical instructions. This will grant you more tactical control over your players and give the team more shape and stability.

Now, lets have a look at each one of them individually:

For a more fluid style, individual mentality instructions will be closely matched across all players in the team, while each player's creative freedom instruction will be higher than in less fluid styles. This means that the team will attack and defend as a unit with more interchanging of positions, while also allowing for more movement and flair when attacking. Tactical intelligence attributes such as anticipation, decisions, flair, off the ball, positioning, teamwork and creativity will be very important and defensive players should have good enough technical attributes to be able to help out in attack, and vise versa for attackers.

A more Rigid style will see your players stick to the formation set. The players in more defensive positions will be given more defensive mentalities and so they will focus on defending rather than attacking. Those in attacking positions will be given more attacking mentalities and they will mainly focus on attacking. Therefore, a more rigid style is suitable if your players’ mental attributes are lower and if they are not gifted technically. Since your players have to stick to their position, attributes such as Positioning and Anticipation are important in helping the team to keep shape. If players have high flair and creativity, a rigid style will not suit them.

In a balanced style, players mentalities will depend on their assigned roles and duties. Those with more defensive roles will be given more defensive mentalities, and the same goes for attacking players. This allows you to set a team structure whilst also allowing for more fluid movement in attack by effectively choosing roles and duties for each position. This gives you far more control over exactly who defends, who attacks, and who supports play at any point during each match simply by adjusting roles and duties according to the match scenario.