Keep defense clean

I recently started a new game. I selected to play English Premier and I picked Derby with my goal for this first season being to save the team from relegation.

After a series of friendly matches, I came up with the following tactic. You can see some of the players I managed to sign during the summertime transfer window as well. No editor or other kind of cheat was used by the way.

Here is my tactic, which could be described as defensive I guess. I thought it would be more realistic for my team to try and keep the defense clean, in order to minimize the goals conceded and build upon this principle. But let's take a closer look.
As you can see, there are 3 central defenders, 2 back wings that go further back and 1 defensive midfielder. That makes a total of 6 defensive players. Then we have 1 central midfielder, who could go a little forward under circumstances and 2 wingers. Finally, we got 1 striker who can move to the right or to the left (depending what foot is his best).

If you have a winger that can play as a striker too, you can try using the alternative version of the tactic shown on picture (b).
If one of your central defenders can play as sweeper, you can use the alternative version of the tactic shown on picture (c).

The individual player instructions only involve giving the order to your goalkeeper to have full defensive mentality, lowest creative freedom possible, closing down to own area only and distribution to "defender collect" if your keeper has low kicking.

OK, and now time to show you the team instructions, check picture (d)
Now, on match day, if you score first, you can change the "Time Wasting" setting to normal if it's still early, and put it to "Often" if you are winning and close to end of game.

In addition, at the beginning of each match, in "Opponent Instructions" I choose to always close down and tight mark all opponents except their defenders and keeper and also set all to hard marking and show onto foot to be their stronger foot (I check that from the "Positions" tab for each player).
So far, I'm using this tactic in the last 4 games, I snatched a draw with Man City away (1-1) and Man Utd home (0-0), I won Arsenal home (2-1) and I won Birmingham home (3-1). Before I used this tactic I got a draw with Everton away (0-0) and a big loss to Tottenham away (1-3). After six games, I stand in 8th place. I hope this tactic will help me to finish above the relegation zone.

If you download the tactic, make sure to unzip the .tac file at My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2008\tactics