[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Alan T

I personally felt it was easier to just coast through without understanding the Tactics prior to last year's version of FM (FM13). Once last year came out, I rage-quit so many times and almost got to the point of just not playing it anymore or buying it anymore as it became less fun.

Eventually I spent time trying to understand the tactics better, understand what I was doing wrong, and now in FM14 I seem to be doing a bit better finally.

My key suggestions are:

- Don't try to do too much. Constantly changing personal or tactics ends up causing more problems than it solves. My teams usually play pretty poorly for a while until the new players learn the system, or when changing systems it takes a bit for the team to learn it. You can look at a team's familiarity with your tactic as a sign on how well they might play with it.
- In games, even with a good tactic, you might not be playing well due to how you match up or the weather or player's morale or whatever. Use your assistant's feedback to try to figure out why that is, and more importantly what he means by saying certain things. Specific messages are repeated often through games and are a good sign on what sideline shout to use to try to help that. Even with that, try to avoid throwing out a bunch of extra shouts as it lowers the players familiarity with the system. If I have the same problem game to game where the same issue is repeatedly constantly, it might mean a review of your base tactic is in order to make small changes there.
- Try to set expectations accordingly. Here we seem to constantly hear coaches of sport teams over sell their teams, or motivate their players that way. In FM that can be pretty disastrous especially if the players start believing what you are selling. I find trying to be realistic with expectations to the board , the fans and the players keeps everyone on a more even keel.
- Try to find an assistant that helps fill the holes on what you aren't good at. If you don't do well with the player speeches, get an assistant that can motivate them well and have him do that job for you. Or whatever the case may be.

There are tons of others more granular things that I am still trying to learn (such as how to somehow beat Barcelona as I lose to them 1-0 every single time I play them).. but those basics helped me finally start enjoying the game again.

You need to adopt some of the principles of my 4-6-0 tactic (although probably not the radical shape itself). I don't have the record in front of me, but I've been reasonably successful against Barca and Madrid with it.