Tactical instructions for FM10

"Passing Style: By changing the length of passing, the team can dictate whether they play more direct, using longer passes to try to reach goal as soon as possible, or whether they prefer shorter, possession based football.

Creative Freedom: Creative freedom instructs the players how much of their own decision making, flair and creativity they are allowed to use on the ball and with their choice of passes and shots. More disciplined sides will tend to stick more to the game plan and be more defensively sound, but will struggle to break down the opposition if they cannot use their own intelligence to do something unpredictable.

Closing Down: How quickly or aggressively the team will press the opposition. The higher the closing down setting, the sooner the players will attempt to chase the player with the ball. This can be useful for putting the opposition under pressure, but can lead to the defence being pulled out of position if the other team are good at holding on to possession and switching the ball from one wing to the other.

Tackling: This setting dictates how hard the players will go in for the tackle. Easy tackling means the player will jockey the opposition player and not go sliding in unless he is relatively sure he can get the ball. Heavy tackling means the player will go in hard as soon as he gets a whiff of the ball. Easy tackling teams will hold their positions and make it difficult for the team to be broken down, but are likely to get far less of the ball as a result; hard tackling teams can win the ball back quickly and intimidate the opposition, but will concede far more free kicks and yellow cards. More aggressive teams will use more hard tackling instructions, more cautious sides will use more easy tackling.

Marking: Marking options are difficult to explain in real world concepts because Football Manager as yet has not quite sorted out the real mechanics of the system. Essentially, zonal marking strategies will look to mark the opposition player who comes in to the player’s “zone” on the field. Man marking strategies mean that each player is assigned a particular person to mark. In Football Manager, however, man marking tends to be a more aggressive zonal marking system, whereby a player will stick to the man who enters his zone, but stay with him until the danger is cleared. The best advice with marking is to experiment with which settings work best. For more in-depth analysis of the inner-workings of Football Manager’s marking, please refer to future Tactical Bible articles.

Crossing: When choosing crossing options, the game will either assign a mixed setting to allow the player to choose the best cross, or it can use the settings you specify here. Drilled crosses will tend to be aimed for a player at the near post to direct into the net; floated crosses will tend to be aimed at the far post for a tall player to head in.

Roaming: Finally we have the roaming settings. By setting more roaming, the game assigns more roaming instructions to the forward players to allow them to find their own space and be more creative. This can be useful for teams with a lot of highly skilled forward players, and the roaming instructions will typically be given to the most attacking forward players first. More attacking strategies will naturally add more roaming instructions than defensive ones."