You’ve had a dynamite transfer window, shipping out the deadwood and bringing in players who fit your budget while raising the key attributes for their positions relative to their predecessors. Your top player all rate favorably to their peers on other top sides in your division, positioning you as one of the most talented teams — if not the most talented — in the league. So why are the results not matching the attributes?
The first step to fixing what ails your club is admitting that you’re not just “getting FM’d” over and over and that, instead, there is something wrong with your tactic. The second, much bigger and much more challenging step is figuring out how to fix it. If you find yourself in this situation, don’t worry, we have you covered. With this guide, we’re looking at some of the most common problems Football Manager 26 players encounter with their tactics and offering tips on how to fix them to turn all that red and yellow on your fixtures list green.
You’re Setting Opposition Player Instructions But Their Stars Are Still Running Roughshod
Opposition instructions can be a useful tool for managing a game, allowing you to identify a potential problem player and incorporate ways of shutting them down into your gameplan. Unfortunately, many players misunderstand how to best use them and can end up causing even more harm than good.
This can be particularly harmful when relying on advice if you don’t have assistants truly worth listening to. In the early stages of my current save in the English sixth tier where transforming my defensive record was as simple as ignoring any advice and only making instructions I deemed fully needed.
A big mistake to look out for is putting tight marking on players with the tools to leave your defenders lost at sea, as noted in a video with FM Streamers Zealand and BustTheNet using Erling Haaland as an example attacker. An opponent with good pace and off-the-ball movement wants nothing more than to have a defender nearby, allowing them to drag your players out of position, then beat them for pace with clever runs. Instead, consider making their life miserable once they have the ball with some hard tackling.
Your “Defensive” Tactic Is Looking Even Leakier Than Your Offensive One
Any fan of football has probably had the experience of watching their team dominate a game, only to fall back into a defensive shell when they take the lead and inevitably concede under the unrelenting pressure they welcome. Despite this, it’s a common error to make this same mistake in Football Manager and has cost many a manager points they never needed to fumble away.
If you find this happening with your side, consider adjusting your lines of engagement. The back line may benefit from playing further out still, with the players on more defensive mindsets to remain locked in on locking up. More so, you should be hesitant to lower your front line of engagement too far back. This puts the pressure on you, allowing other teams to simply camp out in your half and pick and prod until they find their way through.
Your Best Players Are Floundering While Worse Ones Succeed
There are few things in Football Manager more frustrating than seeing one of your highest-rated players completely failing to live up to the billing on the pitch, and there are two important things to understand if you’re dealing with this. The first is that the star ratings are not hard-coded based on a player’s attributes, but rather an assessment provided by the staff member assessing them. This means that if your staff is not good, their assessments may be wrong, and your player may not be as suited to that position as you think.
The second thing to consider is that no player is an island on the football pitch. Simply plugging a player into their preferred position and preferred role may not be the best way to use them. What you’re asking of them in terms of special instructions and team tactics, as well as how what you’re asking of them interacts with the roles around your player and the players in those roles, is just as important. If a “worse” player keeps performing better in a role, it may just be because they’re the better option.
You’ve Given Detailed Instructions But Your Team Keeps Losing
The tactics screen in Football Manager is overflowing with possibilities, presenting you with micromanaging opportunity after micromanaging opportunity for your squad. While it’s important to make use of your team’s instructions to tweak and adjust your tactics, both generally to suit your team’s abilities and to respond on a game-by-game basis to the opposition you face, one of the biggest mistakes new players make is overdoing it.
Not every tactical option needs to be tweaked and pushed in every tactic you make. Your football players are (virtually) living athletes, and sometimes it’s best to let them play. Sometimes, less is more, and dialing things back to a tactic with less going on can allow your players to get more done when the rubber hits the road. Sometimes pulling back to a standardized tactic and then tweaking in select areas can be just the refresh your squad needs to perform at their best and start winning games.
Success in Football Manager is all about learning by doing. Through trial and error, you can identify what works and what doesn’t, find solutions, and ideally keep improving performances match-on-match and season-on-season. If you’ve struggled with any of these problems, these tips can hopefully help you right the ship and get the results looking the way you’d like as your team pushes on toward championship glory.
