How to manage Set-Pieces on Football Manager

Introduction

Set-pieces have always been a key part of football. They can often decide who wins and who loses in a match. A well-worked set-piece routine could see your side score that all important title-winning goal, but sloppy set-piece preparation could see your side concede defeat. Set-piece preparation is just as important as player preparation these days. If you do it well; you’ll prosper.

For this guide, I will show you what I believe to be effective set-piece routines for attacking corners (short, near post & far post), defending corners, attacking free-kicks (short & direct delivery), defending free-kicks and throw-ins (short & long). These are not the only ways to set up set-pieces, they are just recommendations of my own. Of course, it all depends on how you set your team and who you have at your disposal. These are merely suggestions which I will provide thorough explanations for.

For each routine, we will use a standard 4-2-3-1 formation. This has proved to be the most popular setup for FM players over the last few years and so it seems appropriate to use it as an example. Of course, you can use any other formation in the world but for the purposes of this article, let’s use it as our example.