Tactics

As any embittered managerial veteran will tell you, there is no such thing as a perfect tactic. You can keep the same system successfully for a while, but sooner or later teams will get used to your strategies and try to counteract them. After many tactical failures and disappointments, I�ve finally settled on a 5-3-2 system, and it seems to work fairly well.

The best tactics are those that can be modified on the fly with the minimum of disruption to your players. The 5-3-2 allows you to push your players back and forward in a wide variety of combinations, without disrupting the overall shape of the formation. For example, if I�m playing a superior team, I can drop a midfielder back to a DMC to provide extra defensive cover. If I�m dominating a match but not converting enough chances, I can push a midfielder up to an AMC to support my strikers going forward and provide extra passing options.

Of course, to make any formation work, you need the players to implement it. For my kind of 5-3-2, I rely heavily on talented wing backs (D/DM L or R), so if your team doesn�t possess these in any tangible number, then this isn�t the formation for you. An alternative would be the 3-5-2, which uses wingers rather than wing backs, but can leave you short at the back. One way around this would be to play one or two defensive midfielders in the central three midfield roles, so that these can be pulled back to defend.