Tactic Centre

On this page, you’ll find everything you need to know to get started with football manager tactics, including:

• What tactics are and why they important.
• The different types of tactics and how they work.
• Tips, tools, and best practices to succeed with a tactic.

Have a look through our tips and various threads of data so you can create an awesome tactic for your club.

What is a tactic?

A football tactic is essentially plan for your team to follow to achieve a specific goal. This is normally identified through the strengths of your team, for example a tall striker with great heading will require crosses being bombarded into the box.

There are two traditional ways to build a tactic. You will have an ideal idea in your head that you shoehorn players into. Or alternatively you will use your players to create a tactic that suits their strengths. Both approaches have their merits, it depends on your squads resources, most top sides can play different styles of football.

Why is a tactic important?

Tactics are important to every team, as without them their is no end goal. Their is no structure to build your team around. While their are rumours that Real Madrid did not train in the Galaticos era, they still followed a pattern of play. Tony Pulis on the other hand builds structured teams that follow a strategy.

• Gameplan: A tactic creates a gameplan, it helps your team to understand their role and what the team are trying to achieve.
• Organised: It organises players into their roles and duties, so they know what is expected of them in defence and attack.
• Methodical: Taking a structured and methodical approach will help consistency as their is a plan in place.

Types of tactics

There are many types of tactics in football, a lot of managers play different ways, but essentially they all belong in a category. Everyone has a preference to the way they want to play. So these are the different styles of tactics:

Longball

This is the sort of tactic you would find from a Tony Pulis side or a Sam Allardyce side. It’s not about holding the ball, it’s about using the limited time you have with the ball to great effect with devastating counter attacks. Set pieces will be important as they are a free cross or shot.

Possession

This is the style of football which is extremely popular with the big clubs. They want to hold onto the ball and move it around. The art of this style is to move the ball around in dangerous areas, unlike Swansea who used to move it across their back line. The art of this style is use possession as a form of attack and defence, keeping the ball away from the opposition, so they can’t use it to score.

How to build a tactic successfully

In my opinion, if you want to build a tactic successfully you really want to analyse your team first. Look at how you will score goals, are the strikers strong at heading or finishing, are they fast? Once you get an idea of how you will score goals you can look at how the assists will come in. If you have big target men, have you got quick wingers that can cross the ball?

The list goes on, but I believe successful teams work from the goal backwards. When looking at the defence have you got slow or fast defenders, how high will the defensive line be? There are a lot of factors at play, but be careful that your defence and attack are not disjointed.

Tactic Tools

There are plenty of tools out there on the web, all of which can be useful whether supertactics or explanations of football strategy. Look at some of our blogs regarding tactic building:

• Day One at Man Utd

Get started with tactic building today

Get started today, building your own tactics with the advice we offer on this site and let us know how you get on. Leave a comment and some feedback so we can help you in the future.