“It’s the beginning of April 2026 in my save. It’s Saturday, April 4, 2026, to be absolutely precise. It’s my 40th birthday. It’s also a matchday and we are playing Fortuna Sittard away from home. We are reaching the end of the fourth season of the save and we as the VVV-Venlo club are doing really well. We are aiming to finish in the top three for the second season in a row and that means we will secure a place in the Europa League again. But instead of concentrating on the nearest match against Fortuna, I’m doing a lot of admin things. Why? Because I decided the upcoming weeks will be the last while we will play with the “Lone central defender” formation within this save. Four seasons is enough.”
If I would write a diary, the notes from this day of my Football Manager 2023 would (probably) look something like this. It’s just two weeks after the annual youth intake and we were out of the Europa League knockout stage with just five domestic league matches ahead. I thought about this for a while already but the final decision was made after the last match in March when we beat Go Ahead Eagles at home.
The “Lone central defender” formation will be replaced with the formation I love most of all. Mainly in real life as I used other formations in the previous ten editions of the game more frequently. I will change our shape from one central defender to three at the back. But I will try to keep very similar principles of the activity in our play as I wanted from my players in the last two seasons.
If you’re interested in what I did in terms of preparations for the tactical switch in-between seasons, feel free to continue reading this post.
#1 Creating the new tactic within the tactics screen
The most logical thing first. I created a new tactic within the tactics screen and set all the instructions etc.
The only thing I didn’t set so far was the set pieces because I wanted to play the rest of the season with the different formations and players would be in the wrong roles around the pitch within set pieces. That’s something I will edit ahead of the new (pre)season.
The tactic, roles and instructions can be different and it all can change during the next seasons as I will try to develop the 3-5-2 formation but this is what I will use at the beginning.
Creating the new tactic in the tactics screen is the first thing I did mainly because all the remaining things I did (and wrote about) are connected to it. And the following steps depend on creating a new tactic.
#1.1 Set the new tactic as the primary tactic within the training
The next step connected to creating a new tactic is I went to the training overview screen and I set the newly created tactic as the primary trained tactic. The pop-up box tells you that it affects “your team’s tactical identity, also used to influence training schedules”.
#2 Deciding about the squad for the next season
I decided to use one of the new Football Manager 2023 features - the squad planner - as a part of this tactical change. I already had the new tactic created within the tactics screen. When I opened the squad planner screen, I just switched to the “Next Season” button and selected the “FM23 3-5-2 2026” tactic. And everything was correct and well prepared to start planning the next season.
I’m not the biggest fan of this screen or I would use it every in-game day but I find it nice and useful in this exact example. I like to include some loan players for specific positions and roles. I also like to select players for different positions in both flat back and midfield lines. For example, I like to have exactly three central defenders (main one/backup/youngster) for the DCR position. And the same for DC and DCL. That means these players will play in this position and they know it.
It’s also based on their preferred foot and the side they prefer to play at. It’s also nice I’m able to create a new recruitment focus on this page if I would think it’s needed - in the right top section of the screen…
#3 Searching potential new players for specific roles
Targets for the upcoming transfer window are very easy. As I played with just one central defender in the previous four seasons, I don’t have enough central defenders which are good enough. There are two ways how I can search for new central defenders. The first one is connected to the squad planner screen I mentioned already as I can create the new recruitment focus straight in this screen.
Or I can go to the standard player search screen and I can load the search filter and search view for the central defender that I made already at the beginning of the save when I wanted to try the best possible lone central defender. The search filter parameters are still the same and the main things I want from the central defender are still the same.
I prefer searching for players on my own by setting the exact things I want to find but I just wanted to try which players will appear in the recruitment focus so I created a new one with the top priority as I want to find the potential new player(s) very soon.
#4 Changing individual training
Probably the last thing I considered as an important part of the tactical change was to change the individual training of our players. Our wide players (defenders & midfielders) are the best example. As my main roles during the first four seasons were FB(D) and W(S), I wanted to change all of these wide players’ individual training to WB(S) as I will play most of them as WBL/WBR players from the start of the next season.
I will probably use CWB(S) role but I won’t train these players for this exact role as it’s really demanding and I want my players will focus on most of the key attributes for the wing-back overall.
Players that were trained as DM(D) will change their position/role focus to CM(S) role. Some players were trained as WM(S) in the previous two seasons but that’s something that I will change as soon as I will decide where these players will play.
These position/role/duty changes were made also for our U19s team, especially since it’s already after the annual youth intake and we signed the best ones already.
What next? That’s easy - let’s play some matches and develop another tactic.
Thanks for reading.