Tactics

Tactics can be broken down into four categories:
 * Shooters
 * Formation
 * Tactic
 * Advanced Tactic

Formation
There are two ways to establish a formation for use by a team.

Basic
With a basic formation, players move as a unit relative to the ball, and do not react or show any particular behavior beyond trying to stay aligned with their neighbors or attacking the ball when it comes near. This is the most frequent style used by most new managers just learning the game, and works well for matches against other inexperienced managers and system bots.

The biggest giveaway that a manager is using a Basic formation is that all the players move relative to the ball in a very strict manner, and as the ball moves to the wings, players will often wind up on or outside the touch line.

Advanced
Advanced Formations allow much finer control over where players are lined up relative to the 35 ball zones. There is great potential to create highly effective formations as well as to create formations that are completely ineffective using this method. Nearly all of the top rated managers use Advanced formations for their games.

Advanced formations can be used to keep players closer to their desired positions, regardless of where the ball is. You can also use this feature to make your players act less predictably as the ball moves from zone to zone.

Using Advanced Formation Editor
On the Tactics page, select Formation. Select one of the formations under Current Formations. Assuming the basic version is the way you want it, select Advanced on the field diagram. A ball will appear at midfield. Click and drag it into another square. Now drag players to the places on the field you would like them to go when the ball is in that square. When you are done, click Save under current formations.

Tactic
Under Tactic, you can create and save tactical stances. Select one or create a new one under Tactics Registered. The four sliders on the bottom set team instructions under that tactic. The three bars on the field diagram refer to how far up the field each player group will play. (I do not know how this interacts with player positioning under advanced formations.)

The saved tactic with "Active" displayed by its' name will be used to start the next game.

Advanced Tactic
Here you can set substitutions, formation changes, and tactic changes to be made at a set time and/or game situation.

Click Add Tactic to create an instruction set. Click Send to save the set. On the list of advanced tactics, activate/deactivate entries for the next game.

Note that under Substitutions starting players are numbered by their places on the field, and each substitute goes into that position number. If you are changing formation, your players follow their position numbers. For example, if your starting formation has #9 at left wing and you change to a formation having #9 at offensive mid, your left winger will move to offensive mid.