Football Manager Guide to Rotating Tactics

Football Manager guide on how to create variations of your tactics and how to rotate them over the course of the season.

Prior to FM22, I was a one tactic kinda guy. Like many of you, I had my 4-3-3 Gegenpress and it worked all season long, 90 minutes 50+ games in all competitions. Thanks to SI deciding we were all having too much fun, two factors changed in FM22 to ruin that: the new fatigue system and a smarter AI. Because of this, I’ve gone from being a one tactic wonder to using all three slots on my tactics screen for different matches and scenarios. As there are still plenty of people in the community with two common complaints (“My team suddenly lost form in midseason” and “my players are exhausted in October”), I’ve written this guide to how I create variations on my tactics, and how I rotate them over the course of the season.

The Basics

Essentially, I still play one tactic but with three variations. I call these variations Attack, Control and Defend, and while there are crucial differences that have very different effects in game, they’re still largely bound by my core philosophy. This means I can adapt to changes without compromising my tactical principles. Also, by keeping your changes relatively simple, your players gain tactical familiarity quicker as they aren’t training three radically different tactics at once.

You can use any of the three variations as your “main” tactic, and the other two for specific situations. For the purposes of this article, I’ll be using my Parma save as an example, where I use my Control variation as my main tactic.

Control

As I’ve said, this is my bread and butter tactic for Parma. This is ideally how I’d like to play every game, as it adheres to my philosophies of controlled possession build-up and counter-pressing to regain possession. The intensity is average, so it wouldn’t be too demanding on my players to use this for every match, but over-reliance on one tactic like this makes you predictable and the smarter AI will figure you out pretty quickly.

Attack

This is my first variation, Attack. At first glance, there isn’t a huge difference, but you’ll notice I’ve raised my tempo from lower to higher and increased how often I trigger my press. I use this variation late in games when I need a goal, against defensively-minded teams, or even in games where I’m the underdog and believe the opposition might be complacent. While I’m still passing the ball short and keeping my crosses low, there’s a greater influence on moving the ball forward quickly. This is achieved with the higher tempo, removing the look for overlap instructions (more on that here) and removing ball-dominant roles like the DLP. Depending on your formation, you might also choose to change formation to go more attacking. For example, you might move from a 4-4-2 to a 4-2-4, or a 5-3-2 with wing-backs to a 3-5-2 with wide midfielders. These are the sorts of minimal changes that allow your players to retain familiarity while having drastically different outcomes on the pitch.

Defend

This is my final variation, and where you’ll spot the biggest difference between this and my main tactic. I’ve dropped to a more defensive formation, and changed some player roles and changed my out of possession team instructions completely. This is mainly for defending narrow leads, facing much bigger teams, or sometimes late in the season for seeing out games where I’m completely in control. This is the lowest intensity by far and is handy for letting your players take a breather in game. The goal of this tactic is to be hard to break down, which I achieve by keeping my line of engagement low and keeping my lines compact. The anchorman also occupies the space between my defensive and midfield lines, making it hard for the opposition to find space in this area. While defensively this is radically different from my other two variants, it retains familiarity by keeping my attacking instructions very similar to my Attack variation. Not only does this keep your familiarity high, but it encourages counter attacks to make sure I make the most of limited opportunities.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it, by using these three variations of one tactic in different matches and situations, I’m able to manage player fatigue and AI understanding of my side far better than in my days as a one tactic wonder. I hope you’ve found this useful and can take some tips on how to add variety to your own tactics.