Welcome to Football Manager 2023 – Recommended Default Tactics Guide.

Players who only want to use one of the pre-existing/default tactics can plug and play without making one.

Introduction

This will eventually include a complete list of all the recommended formations and default tactics you can use when creating a new tactic. I will test the effectiveness of the different tactics and update the list as the testing progresses.

What is the best way to test?

I manually create the saves and choose the tactic to test. Then, I go on holiday until the season ends. The assistant manager is instructed only to use the chosen tactic and not to allow any players to be sold.

I also instructed the staff to make players with poor match sharpness available to the reserve team and to set up friendly matches for reserve team members if there are no regular matches.

If I get enough, I will test top leagues in England and Wales, Norway, Finland, Finland, and Norway. This will allow me to test a wide range of player and team quality, and hopefully, the data I get will represent how well a tactic works for any club you wish to play with.

NOTE:

This was the reason I started testing it with the worst teams in each league. So, none of the strategies look very good right now. This will improve as more and better teams are added to the test.

Results

The Top Five

All tactics were tested in 213 matches. This is 6 seasons with the lowest-predicted teams in the English or Scottish top tiers. This means that it is not a very solid data set and that it could change as testing continues with other team.

Tactic	Formation	Media Prediction	Goal difference	Points
Gegenpress	4-2-3-1 DM AM Broad	7,00	-0,10	1,32
Vertical Tiki-taka	4-3-3 DM Wide	5,17	-0,32	1,18
Gegenpress	4-2-4 DM Wide	5,17	-0,41	1,13
Gegenpress	4-3-3 DM Wide	4,17	-0,60	1,07
Control Possession	4-3-3 DM Wide	3,17	-0,54	1,05

Media Prediction is the difference between where the media predicted a team would end and where it ended up. A positive number indicates that the team was in a better place than predicted. A negative number means that the team was in a worse spot than predicted.

Honourable Mention

You can check out:

Tiki-taka – 4-2-3-1 DMAM Wide

It wasn’t perfect with its 0,84 points per game, but it’s still a good tactic if the club isn’t on fire.

Categories

Here’s a quick overview of the best, worst for each category.

Points

Gegenpress 4-2-3-1 DM AM Large	1,32
Catenaccio 5-2-3 DM Wide	0,23

Goals scored per match

Gegenpress 4-2-3-1 DM AM Large	1,62
Park the Bus 4-3-3 DM Wide	0,30

Goals Against Per Match

Control Possession 4-3-3 DM Wide	1,53
Catenaccio 5-2-3 DM Wide	2,75

Goal difference per match

Gegenpress 4-2-3-1 DM AM Large	-0,10
Catenaccio 5-2-3 DM Wide	-2,33

Media Prediction

Gegenpress 4-2-3-1 DM AM Large	7,00
Route One 5-3-2 DM WC	0,00

Position

Gegenpress 4-2-3-1 DM AM Large	9,00
Park the Bus 4-4-2	16,00

Matches won per season

Gegenpress 4-2-3-1 DM AM Large	12,67
Catenaccio 5-2-3 DM Wide	1,33

Matches drawn per season

Gegenpress 4-2-3-1 DM AM Large	8,83
Park the Bus 4-3-3 DM Wide	2,83

Matches Lost Per Season

Gegenpress 4-2-3-1 DM AM Large	14,00
Park the Bus 4-3-3 DM Wide	30,83

 

The Whole Table

If you’d like to see the data for all 29 tactics, I have uploaded a beautiful snippet from my spreadsheet. Sorted by average points per match, it’s here.

 

Hope you enjoy the Guide about Football Manager 2023 – Recommended Default Tactics, if you think we should add extra information or forget something, please let us know via comment below, and we will do our best to fix or update as soon as possible!