Tactical Theorems and Frameworks '08 Part 1

In writing this version of TT&F I have tried to keep things as easy to follow as possible. It might make it even longer than previous versions, and for that I apologise, but I hope it enables the information within to be more digestible than in previous incarnations. I have also added links to '07 content that should prove useful when playing '08. Most of it will be updated in time, and you might find some of it contradicting TT&F, but it is detailed and far-ranging. I hope it is all of use.
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The Evolution of FM and the TT&F Mindset

As recently as 2004, FM was in the grip of a very effective tactic. It was called Diablo and its premise was very simple. The game engine could not cope with a long forward arrow on the central midfielder in a three-man midfield, leaving him consistently unmarked when in front of goal. By setting up passing instructions throughout the team to maximise balls to the central midfielder, Diablo guaranteed a succession of heavy wins and became the most successful single-flavour tactic in FM history. It was simple to understand. It won matches at a canter. It became legend! What it wasn't was realistic! Sports Interactive’s response was simple and to be expected. In the aim of realism they reworked the engine to stop such things from happening. The age of the super-tactic was dead.

Arguably they succeeded but their quest for realism was again thwarted by the development of the back-post corner routine which once more guaranteed an excessive amount of goals. User tactics that were no more than average in design became title winners due to the ridiculous number of easy chances generated from corner kicks. Equally unrealistic, equally well dealt with by SI with the release of FM07.
FM07 polarised opinions on Football Manager like no other release. Quite simply, it became next to impossible to achieve success year-in, year-out without some degree of tactical sophistication. Yes, there were still some holes in the game engine. The problem the AI had with dealing with a lone striker target man (at least until your reputation guarantees you face a succession of massed defence tactics), the weird rebound physics when a ball hits the woodwork, defenders inexplicably touching nothing balls out for corners, world class players hitting corners directly out of play, 40-yard back headers to name but a few. However, in general terms, its engine was closer to simulating real football than any previous incarnation. It has raised the tactical bar ever higher in terms of the sophisticated thinking required to succeed season-on-season and has placed paramount importance on in-match decision making over game-engine busting tactical design. Despite the teething problems of the earlier engines in FM08, I believe 8.0.2 will raise that bar even higher.

The problem that many long-term players have had to contend with is the mind-set switch from single-flavour tactics to multi-flavour tactical packs. This transition has been long and ugly with regular battle skirmishes still taking place. The complaints generated from those struggling with the new mind-set are oft repeated. The most common is the lack of consistency, either game-by-game or season-by-season, often decried as AI-cheating. To combat that we must specify exactly what we believe the most important aspect of actually playing FM is: it is not tactical design (although that is undoubtedly important). Rather, it is decision making during a match. If you conceptualise playing FM in terms of making decisions, as you would if you viewed it as a management simulation (management is about making decisions after all) then the consistency issue fails to raise its head.

Conceptualising the game as just being about football overly attributes success to tactics or player quality. It is not just about football; it is about management and trying to simulate the management experience. Managers make decisions that change the course of matches and seasons. That is what they get paid for. That is where they stand or fall. The common complaint, arguing that real life football is not like this, holds no water. None of us are top-class managers, so commenting on how real top-flight football is managed is an exercise in futility. We simply don’t know. Being a semi-decent footballer does not make you any more of an expert on the ins and outs of management at a world class club than any of the rest of us. Unless you have lived it, you have no way of making a value-judgement. However, some of us do have experience about managing and decision making in the real world and can write with a degree of authority about such matters. Regarding those as the determiners of success in conjunction with a series of well-designed tactics and playing the game under that mind-set allowed us to achieve exceptional success in FM07. We assume this mind-set will still bring glory in FM08.

Making good decisions on a regular basis guarantees consistency, not the inherent value of any tactic or set of tactics. Good or poor decisions on a game-by-game basis will exponentially influence future results. With regards to a season-by-season basis, a tactic that works with a low reputation team and a low reputation manager will not guarantee success as reputation rises. Teams will be more defensive against you and a tactic that worked previously will have to be reworked based on the success or failure of current performance, not its historical pattern. As in financial markets, past success is not a predictor for future performance. This is not unrealism; it is the necessary reworking of a system to combat a different situation. Recognising it and making the correct decisions when combating it are vital strategies in the management armoury.

Tactical Theorems and Frameworks (TT&F), for so long my baby, now has a group of collaborators which will, with a bit of luck, make the FM08 version far superior to anything previously written. In order for us to work together, we have devised a series of assumptions to guide the testing, designing and writing process. In order to explain our exact perspective on playing Football Manager we need to make these assumptions explicit. If you do not accept the validity of these assumptions, TT&F is probably not for you.


Assumption One: Definition of Formation

A formation is the basic framework deciding the position each player generally takes on the field of play. Thus, a 4-4-2 will have four defenders, four midfielders and two attackers. Likewise, the Chelsea/Bolton formation has four defenders, one defensive midfielder, two central midfielders, two wingers and one centre forward.


Assumption Two: Definition of Tactics

Tactics, and tactical instruction, operate within the basic formation framework of a side. A 4-4-2 at home will thus differ heavily from a 4-4-2 away. In the home formation, the wingers may be asked to hug the touchline, support the attackers and be given a fair degree of freedom to be creative. In the away formation, they will be asked to tuck in, support the full-backs, and be ready for quick breaks when the reward outweighs the risk.


Assumption Three: FM Tactics

When designing tactics, one slider tweak difference alters the tactical instruction but not the formation. Thus, when talking about tactics in the rest of this thread/article, we talk about them in the context of one formation. Sir Alex Ferguson nearly always sends Man Utd onto the pitch in a 4-4-2 but individual and team instructions differ from match to match, situation to situation. When we talk of tactics, it refers to these kinds of instructions, not to changing the formation.


Assumption Four: Changing Tactics

No team, no matter how good or how poor, ever goes through a match without some switches in tactical strategy. The extent to which these tactical changes work defines the course of the match. They may not be recognisable to the casual viewer but they happen nonetheless. This applies to in-match management in FM. Playing the same tactic all game in the belief that because your players are superior you will inevitably win and/or failure to recognise and change your tactics when things are obviously going against you will not bring you titles. In-game decision making is absolutely vital to TT&F tactical theory and to be successful with our theories you must learn when and how to apply each tactical change.


Assumption Five: Why Teams are Successful

Teams are successful due to a combination of four things: good tactical management, good man-management, good transfer policy and availability of funds. Failure in managing any of the above is likely to lead to a season of poor performances and disillusionment. Translating this to FM; it is easy to succeed at three and four, but one and two cause difficulties. We assume you are all capable of managing transfers and can all recognise good players relevant to level, so we will not waste time on describing how to achieve this. Suffice to say, you need to have roughly the right calibre of player for the division. If you have that our tactical theory will help you to over-achieve. If you are seriously short of the right calibre of player, you will struggle. If you make perfect decisions in most circumstances you can survive with poor players, but it will be difficult. We promise no miracles. We will focus on tactical design in this thread/article and develop a sister thread/article, Communication and Psychological 'Warfare' 08 (CPW) to outline our approach to man-management.


Theories and Falsification

‘And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner.’ Captain Barbossa, 2003

Without trying to be too polymath in writing TT&F, having already borrowed from market theory and Pirates of the Caribbean, we must now turn to the scientific philosophy of Sir Karl Popper in order to explain the ramifications of theory writing and their application.

The TT&F theories are tentative, correctable and dynamic, in allowing for changes to be made as new data is discovered, rather than asserting certainty. Through empirical testing they have been found to work consistently well for prescribed match situations. However, there are many instances that are not ‘obvious’ when watching a game that will seem to make the theories invalid. Before outlining our theories, we would like to make clear certain conditions that will falsify the theory and may not be observable at first glance. A falsification is simply a condition that makes the proposed theory at the very least uncertain, at the most invalid.


Falsification One: Player Condition

If players are being over-trained and/or are tired then the tactics will not be totally effective. If your training schedules result in players being less than 95% fit pre-match on a regular basis it is your training rather than the tactics that is causing poor performance.


Falsification Two: Team Talks

If the team is poorly motivated, overly relaxed or put under too much pre-match pressure then the tactics will not be totally effective. If your players regularly fail to perform to standard in either half then it is likely you have made a bad team talk. This can usually be rectified at half time with a swift boot up the backside. However, a poor half-time team talk will leave you little option but wait out the match with a defensive mindset.


Falsification Three: Over-Confidence

Once a team has gone on a long winning streak they will inevitably become over-confident and produce a bad half, no matter the quality of team-talk. Recognising this, switching to a conservative rather than expansive tactic and remedying the performance with the half time team talk is vital for continued success.


Falsification Four: Squad Personality

If a squad is full of low determination douche-bags or temperamental whiners even the best-laid plans will falter. Make sure at least you have one high determination leader to maintain in-match focus.


Falsification Five: Ruined by Success

This is a somewhat personal theory, but it has held water on most previous editions of FM. If you achieve consistent success over a 5-6 year period you will need to refresh your squad. Selling and replacing some of your top players should see a renewed drive for success. If the team is getting stale you will see more last minute comebacks and low scoring games, no matter how many good tactical decisions you make.


Falsification Six: Poor Morale

If you have made a series of bad decisions and results have gone against you the team’s morale will drop. This will affect the type of tactic you should choose, partly because the players will make mistakes, partly because other teams feel they can beat you. So, on a bad run, don’t try to follow the rules. Be a little more conservative, slowly turn defeats into draws, draws into wins and then be expansive again.


Falsification Seven: Media Interaction

Poor media interaction can make players nervous. Having a plethora of worried players in the side will make expansive tactics more risky. If a lot of players have reacted negatively to your media interaction, consider being more cautious than you would normally.


Falsification Eight: Squad Gelling

If your squad is full of new players it will perform below expectations. It takes roughly 15 games for a squad of new players to start gelling. Check with the Assistant Manager to see how well the squad has settled. Some teams are flaky at the beginning of the game (famously West Ham in '07) which will make managing them more difficult.


Falsification Nine: Manager Reputation

Usually only a problem when starting a new game, a low reputation manager will struggle to have any influence over a top class side full of seasoned professionals. Performance will suffer until some level of reputation has been achieved.


Falsification Ten: Bad Luck

Occasionally you will lose a match you should have won despite making a series of near perfect tactical choices. Maybe the AI manager did so too, which negated your decisions; maybe the AI keeper had the game of his life; maybe two goals went in from massive deflections; maybe a misplaced back pass was intercepted for a goal; maybe their grunt midfielder scored a once-in-a-lifetime 35-yard scorcher. The key is recognising whether it is a one off lightening strike or a consistent pattern. If it is the first, don't panic into changing things. If the second, then you will need to do something and quickly. Once again, making the right decision at the right time will be key.


If all of the above are taken into consideration when choosing tactics, then the following sections will provide a rough set of guidelines to tactical design and tactical decision making for various scenarios. All of the above can detrimentally affect the success of any tactic, no matter how well designed. If you manage them well and reduce the instances of their occurrence then TT&F tactics will bring sustained success if applied to the requisite match situations.


Designing and Adjusting Tactics

Before writing this section, I’d like to tip a nod to Kristianohr and Googen who took the ’07 theories to their logical extreme. They advocated designing 14 different tactics and alternating between them until you found one that matched the situation you were in. The Rule of One mentality splits then gave you the extra advantage over the AI and you were pretty much guaranteed a good performance. A worthwhile and hugely creative contribution, but one I will not be advocating. Why? Mainly due to realism. I don’t believe that a manager could have fourteen mentality systems at his disposal. Personally, I think there are three realistic mentality systems that are used in most levels of football, which I will describe below.


Attack

A system in which the players are expected to be looking to attack more often than defend. Correspondingly, in such a system the full backs will be looking to support attacks with regularity, the team will try to exploit the width of the pitch, players will be encouraged to try the unexpected and the ball will be played into the space in front of its intended receiver.


Balanced

A system in which the players are looking to balance attacking and defensive responsibilities, carefully managing risk and reward. The full backs will support when a good chance is on but stay back if they deem it too risky to leave their position. The team will play a tighter formation than when looking to attack but not so tight that they can only go forward on the counter. Creativity will only be encouraged in the final third with most players sticking to instructions. Through balls will be rarer in order to maintain possession more comfortably.


Counter

A system in which players are looking to defend more often than attack and will rely on the counter to score. The full backs will predominantly stay back; the team will play a tight formation and stick to instructions, through balls will be rare, direct and into channels.


The above tactical systems will usually be enough to see lower division teams throughout a season with very little mishap. In '07 the Attack and Counter were enough in themselves. However, at higher levels more tactical sophistication is required and these tactics will need to be supplemented by a further couple of options. In '08 it may well be the case that even lower level teams will have to use more sophisticated tactics as the AI gets smarter, so it would be well worth having a Control and Defend tactic designed from the outset.


Control

A variety of the attack system either using the same mentality set-up or one that is slightly more conservative. It will be more patient in build up, wider and deeper than attack to exploit as much pitch space as possible, be very creative and flair-based, often utilise a playmaker and slow tempo to guarantee almost constant possession and have everyone looking to play balls into space.


Defend

A system in which the aim of the game is not to concede. Very narrow with no forward runs, no creative freedom, tight marking, a higher than average mentality defensive line to further reduce space, keeping men behind the ball and only going forward when there is no defensive risk at all.


Both the above tactics will become more and more useful at elite divisional level, although may well be required earlier. If you are a newly promoted team with few divisional-quality players you may need to resort to the Defend tactic against top sides home and away. Once you have a world-class squad at your disposal then the Control tactic will become more and more useful as teams will play very defensively against you. Adjusting the tactics that you have succeeded with at lower levels to the more sophisticated and subtle ones for top sides is extremely important for long term success.


Designing Tactics

Stage One: Choose your preferred formation and create your set piece options. Save.

Stage Two: Decide upon your three/five preferred mentality standards. Save each tactic separately (see the Frameworks section).

Stage Three: Assign/remove forward runs and farrows/sarrows/barrows to complete the frameworks.

Stage Four: Decide upon individual instructions for each framework (see the Theorems section).


Adjusting Tactics

Recognising when your three tactics need to become four or five (when being promoted or finally becoming world class) is more of an art than a science. The common discernable problem of when you should switch to Control in ’07 was the superkeeper/one-shot-one-goal AI. Once that started to happen a more patient tactic was required. When to use Defend was a lot easier to make out. If you started being dismantled on a regular basis and/or couldn’t see out matches at the highest level, then Defend was the best/only option. The more quickly you recognise the limitations the less frustration you will suffer.


Making Decisions

As I iterated earlier, quality decision-making is the absolute key to succeeding at Football Manager. Management is all about making decisions. If you consistently make good decisions you will more often than not do well. If you regularly make bad ones you are likely to fail. The following section provides some guidelines.


Pre-Match Common Sense

You are playing Arsenal away. No matter how good a squad you think you have, Arsenal away is a difficult game. Don’t be over expansive and decide to attack from the off. Arsenal are likely to rip you apart if you do that. Careful and cautious wins the race. Be happy going in level at half time. Try to frustrate them and win it once they have played themselves out.


Pre-Match Odds

The pre-match odds offer you an indication of your chances to win. If they are heavily in your favour the likelihood is that the opposition will be playing defensively from the start and Control is the best option. If they are roughly equal, home and away considerations come to the fore. Attack at home, Counter away but be prepared to change tactics (often to Balanced) if things get sticky. If the odds are heavily against you the best chance is to soak up pressure and try to score on the Counter or Defend for your lives from the outset if you are serious underdogs.


The AI Formation

Looking at the AI formation can often help in choosing a tactic before kick off. In a 4-4-2 the AI may be playing with long, short or no forward arrows. If they have long arrows, they are playing aggressively. You can choose to Counter if you think they are stronger than you or you are playing away, or decide to impose your own game onto them if you are much stronger or playing at home. Short farrows means you should be a little more aggressive. No farrows means you should look to Control the game.

In non-4-4-2 formations it is much harder to read the AI from the outset. Common sense and pre-match odds will be your only guidelines in this situation. However, once you start the game the match itself can offer vital clues.


Using the Match Stats

If you have made the right tactical decision then the passing and possession percentages will be in your favour. At home the advantage should be significant; away closer, but you should still have the edge. Likewise, the AI should be struggling to break through your defensive line and thus most of its shots should be long range and/or off target. Unfortunately, the statistical variations only kick in between 10-15 minutes into a game. You might already be a goal down by then, so learning to read the match by watching the 2d is also required, both for the first 15 minutes and the last third of the match, when the AI will start to change tactics.

If you are using a fast tempo, direct, counter attacking style, these stats may not be so much in your favour and you can be happy with slightly less possession. However, if percentages are seriously against you look to change things fast.


Reading the Match

The AI changes its system all the time (quite how much was discovered by Abramovic in '07). Spotting what it is doing is absolutely vital for consistent in-match performance. Is the AI playing tight and quick, heavily pressing, putting your 6-yard box under constant pressure? Is the space in front of your back-line being exploited? Are AI attackers consistently breaking through your defensive line? Are you failing to create well-worked chances, snatching at shots, losing possession too quickly? Then something is wrong tactically and you need to fix it. It might be you need to switch from Attack to Control in order to construct better-worked moves. It might be you need to change Counter to Defend to kill off a game. Hoping for the best is not an option. Making quick decisions under pressure is where you earn your virtual money.


Recognising a Bad Team Talk

On occasion, your team will look like they are playing in treacle. Players will look slow and lethargic, mistakes will creep in, possession will be lost all too easily and the opposition will create more chances than you are expecting. This is either down to complacency, poor morale or a bad team talk (or a combination of the above). You will need to abandon your tactic when this happens for a more defensive one to reduce the risk of misfortune. You can then alter the perspective during the half-time team talk and resort to your preferred tactic for the second half.