Plenty of us love Football Manager. With the increase in numbers from the free week during the current situation there will probably be plenty more that get the addiction. It makes us dress up in suits for finals, and sometimes smash screens, but we love it all the same. We all love different things about Football Manager too, and all play in different ways. Some of us fight from the non-leagues up, others go straight to the top. Some wheel…
False Nine’s in football have become one of the most mainstream striker roles in history. Ever since Vincente Del Bosque used the role in the 2012 World Cup to win the competition, more and more teams have been using this role in their team; some to no avail, and some have toppled giants. But what is a False Nine and where did it come from? Who is considered the best False Nine? How can it be implemented correctly into Football…
This articles continues my guided series on crafting the ultimate 4-3-3 Possession Tactic. I have been enamoured with this formation in FM20. I believe it offers the perfect balance of attack and defence while maintaining high possession. Possession has always been important for me when creating tactics although I have never been a fan of possession just for the sake of possession. Thus the main of this series is to find ways to optimize possession with intent within the limits…
Player Traits (or Player Preferred Moves – PPM’s as they used to be) can have a huge impact on your Football Manager experience. Just like in the real world, from the Premier League to non-league, in FM20 what a player prefers to do can change the way your tactics actually work. You might be telling your player to do one things, and they might be trying something completely different. Perhaps more importantly though the right moves or traits can change…
Only a few years ago, under Arsene Wenger, Arsenal was playing some of the most attractive football in Premiership. Over the course of his long stay, the visionary Frenchman changed the club DNA significantly. The Gunners went from playing boring park-the-bus to fast-paced short passing possession game. Before Pep’s Manchester City, there was Arsenal’s elegant Tiki-Taka-style that was making waves in England. Wenger turned English football on its head with his brand of attractive football that focused on technical ability…
It seems that midway through the life-cycle of every Football Manager game there comes a time for change. It is usually when long-running saves start feeling stale. And a new challenge is needed to keep the game fresh. Sometimes it is a matter of changing up the tactics. The recent major Match Engine update has made me realize that my tactics were not doing what I wanted. We were winning games, but not in the way I wished. So I…
After two seasons playing variations on the Allardyce 4-5-1 (4-3-3) system, I decided it was time for a change. Considering we had grossly overachieved with Red Star Wrexham and gotten into the Championship ahead of schedule, I am faced with the daunting prospect of avoiding relegation. Given that we’ve already mastered the dark arts of defensive, pragmatic, resultism football, where else could we go? How does a team of shithousers get even shithousier? After a few days of reflection, the…
In the past, I have put a lot of emphasis into playing football “the right way”. In my FM18 save, I played Total Football with Ajax, the founders of the Cruyffian way of playing. A year later, I was experimenting with Arrigo Sacchi’s variant of total football in my save with Uniao de Madeira. In my current Moneyball save I have gone with a spin on the Hungarian Golden Team’s fluid style, an attacking 4-2-4. A change was required. I…
It’s that time of year again. Football Manager release their January update and everyone looks for a team to manage. We have 5 teams to manage with FM20’s January Update that might be worth trying out. Due to the release of the updated January database, it would only be right if we gave a few suggestions. Unfortunately, Football Manager already released their own version of this. However, I have decided to go with 5 teams, instead of 10 and…
As mentioned in my previous articles in this series, I wanted to achieve success playing pragmatic football. Considering we’ve taken Red Star Wrexham from the VNL to the Championship in just three seasons, pragmatism doesn’t quite cut it as a good description. To use a term attributed to our lord and saviour Big Sam, we can only call it one thing: Resultism. If pragmatism is the acceptance of who you are and making the best of what you’ve got, resultism…