Magician's Survival Mentality

Hello, I have been using this three-tactic system in my short Sunderland save.

My goal is to win. It doesn’t matter how much possession I have or how many goals I score. You only need one more goal than your opponent to secure the three points.

Tactics were adjusted based on observation made during the save until November. Then the core remain the same till the end.

The idea is simple: stay compact and counter-attack, especially against the bigger teams.

Playing strictly attacking football with Sunderland wouldn’t be the right approach. I stick with standard passing, allowing players to choose the most appropriate pass for the situation.

There are three tactics: I have called them simply Defensive, Base, and Attacking. It makes it easier for those using them to understand the approach.

Rule of thumb
When you are a good team stick to Positive and Attacking mentality.

When you are the underdog, play with a Positive or Balanced mentality. Use an Attacking mentality and tactic only when you need a goal or when playing against a weaker opponent.

In this save, when I played against teams in the top six, I started with “Defensive”. It is not a Defensive mentality tactic; it is defensive because it uses a low block and a low defensive line, so when your team decides to counter-press, the players do not leave a lot of space to exploit.

When you are evenly matched, I would stick with a Positive mentality in most matches. However, the mentality will change depending on the opponent or match statistics.

This is why you need to watch the match stats view and the match momentum view. They will indicate who is in control and what you need to do — whether that’s changing the mentality of the current tactic, adding different tactical instructions, or switching tactics entirely.



There are some individual instructions added to players, so you will need to remove them if the player is not suitable. Mainly it is the DMC who has “Take More passing Risks” added, as Xhaka has very good vision and passing ability. The rest is pretty basic as I want influence the match from the main panel so they don’t interfere.

















There have been quite a lot of yellow cards. I lost three matches after hard tackles in the 90th minute, resulting in penalties. So you need to remove hard tackling towards the end of the match when the score is close. I have checked in the Gscout and this can be a result of the hidden “Dirtiness” attribute that some of Sunderland’s defensive players have.

Sunderland is an average team with a couple of injury-prone players, as well as a strong group of African players, which can be an issue in January as they travel for AFCON.

I can upload the save if someone wants to continue the journey. There is £50 million in the bank for transfers. I haven’t bought any players, but I sold a couple of backups and paid significant transfer fees that were agreed previously mostly due to appearance in first team.

They have secured a Europa League spot.