How to create a successful tactic on Football Manager

Player roles

Written by Bert

Player roles are important in creating your tactic. They give each player their role in the game, and what their mentality is. They define how your players act on the pitch, whether it’s in an expressive, attacking sense, or a cautious, defensive sense. Once you have chosen your formation, you will want to give your players their roles on the pitch.

My main point of this section is to not have too many of a similar type of player. This will hinder your team either attacking or defensively. Too many attacking players will leave you short in defence against a counter attack. On the flip side, having a team too defensive will leave your team weak in front of goal, and maybe lacking in support.

To help against this, you will need to create a balanced side. The easiest way of doing this, is by using your assistant manager, he will tell you the type of player that they are. From this you will be able to determine if a player is attacking or defensive and what role in the game that they play.

You can then build a squad around the formation you have picked and the types of players that they are. Say, for example, you are using a 4-4-2 formation. You have a general coverage of the pitch, and it is very balanced. This would also need to be balanced in the player roles as well. Ideally, you want your team to be able to dominate every area of play. To do this, let’s have a look at the three key areas; defence, midfield, and attack.

Defence

Starting with the defence, a Stopper and a Covering Defender perform very well together. One puts the pressure on attackers and makes the tackles, while the other one sweeps up the stray balls and the players that manage to slip through past your defensive line. It can also be a good idea to have a Ball Playing Defender in your line-up if you are looking to build your attacks from the back, as these players can show creativity and a passing outlet.

Midfield

In Midfield, you can have a variety of combos. The most common combination is a Ball Winning Midfielder, and an attacking Central Midfielder. Ultimately, there is no right or wrong combination in midfield, but you need to make sure that you can dominate this area of the pitch. To do so, you need a more defensive player in your midfield to win the battles for the ball, and a midfielder who will create attacks with his passing and creativity.

Attack

Your Attack is where you really get the chance to experiment player roles, as there are more unique playing styles in this area than in anywhere else. If you are using an Attack which has two or more players, make sure that their roles are all different, so as they don’t act in the same way, make the same runs, etc. The most common combination is having one Deep Lying Forward who will drop back into midfield to pick up the ball and create opportunities for himself, or for a Poacher/Target Man, who will look to get on to the end of attacking moves to score goals.

Recommended Reading:

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Make sure to read the excellent guide to pairs and combinations that will help you come up with a logical selection of instructions when selecting the roles for your team. It's updated with all new Football Manager 2014 player roles!

You can play around with this yourself and use Friendlies in Pre-Season to judge what player roles suit your tactic the most. Remember to try to keep a good balance and avoid using too many similar player roles when creating your tactic. If you can combine Player Roles which compliment each other well, your tactic is a huge step closer to being a success.