We are pleased to confirm that Football Manager 2024 will remain available across all platforms until the release of Football Manager 25.

FM24 will also remain available on storefronts for purchase up to the same point, including Steam, Epic, Microsoft Store, PlayStation Store and the Nintendo eShop. Once you have purchased the game, you can continue playing it on the relevant platform after it becomes unavailable in the store.

We want to thank our licensors and platform partners for their support in making this happen for the millions of players still writing their stories in FM24.

Please note that while the vast majority of our FM24 licenses have been extended for this period, some individual club rights were unavailable for extension. As such, we’ve rolled out a small update across most platforms to remove some assets from those clubs.

We thank you for your continued patience and support.

After careful consideration, Sports Interactive have made the tough decision to further delay the release of Football Manager 25.

Following discussions with SEGA, our licensors and partners, we have agreed the best course of action is to delay the launch until March 2025. Specific platform release dates will follow once confirmed.

In our last Development Update in September[www.footballmanager.com], we explained that we needed to push FM25’s original release back to give ourselves more time to deliver the best possible experience for this first instalment in a new era of Football Manager.

This additional time has not been sufficient to ensure the game quality and experience meets your expectations and our very high standards.

In the previous blog we explained that it has been a difficult development cycle for the studio. Many things have been moving slower than we had predicted – despite everyone in the team working at an incredible pace to try and get everything done.

Timelines were already tight and, as rightly pointed out by many of your recent comments, we were simply rushing too much and in danger of compromising our usual standards. This has put an enormous amount of pressure on everyone working across the studio, who are all passionately committed to delivering the best game possible.

FM25 is the biggest technical and visual advancement in the series for a generation. We simply cannot compromise the delivery of this crucial juncture in Football Manager’s history by rushing to release it in November.

Of course, this is not where any of us expected to be seven weeks out from our release but, in the spirit of our studio values, we always consider the bigger picture – and the bigger picture here is that we need this additional time to deliver a game that we can all be proud of.

For the large numbers of you who have already pre-ordered the game, we thank you very much for your trust and support. Given the delay, however, should you wish to claim a refund, please contact your retailer.

Something you noted as missing from our announcement on 30 September was mention of Advanced Access on PC/Mac. We can confirm Advanced Access will be available ahead of the new release date and, when we are confident on how long that period will be, we will update you at the first opportunity. The new gameplay reveal will also now move to the end of January 2025.

We are intensely aware that this will be massively disappointing for you. We share that disappointment and are extremely sorry.

Thank you for reading and your patience. It means the world to us as we continue to work on creating a new era for Football Manager.

I want to begin this latest Football Manager 25 Development Update by thanking everyone who read our previous one in June[www.footballmanager.com]. We’ve been following the reaction and conversation and look forward to addressing many of your comments and observations when we start our FM25 gameplay rollout period.

In June’s blog, I revealed the first-ever FIFAe World Cup of Football Manager, which wrapped up this past weekend. I was very proud to be in Liverpool for the final couple of days of a fantastic four-day competition that I thought FIFAe did a fantastic job with; from production, the players, the broadcasting and all the content across socials - everything looked incredible in person and online.
Seeing FM in the eSports domain was really exciting - and I hope those who attended the event, and those who watched and followed along online, agree.

For me, it was pretty surreal and emotional to be sat in the audience and hear the way the presenters and pundits spoke about the life's work of the entire SI team – and the way what is primarily played as a solo experience came to life as an eSport.

Alongside the FIFAe team, we will digest and evaluate the tournament in the coming weeks to see what learnings we can take and what the future entails for collaboration between us.

Congratulations to the winners, Ichsan Rahmat Taufiq and Budi Muhamad Manar from Indonesia – what an achievement. Commiserations too to the runners-up Sven Goly and Tery Whenett from Germany, who were fantastic throughout the event. The standard of play from all 20 managers was incredibly high and underlines how truly global the FM community is.

Our last Development Update gave you a picture of our world in June, and since then we've had to review some of the things previously mentioned. I want to take this opportunity as well to update you on some further FM25 development decisions we've made, as well as some alterations to our calendar for the months ahead.


We previously stated that we would be confirming FM25’s release date at the beginning of September (with pre-orders starting at the same time), closely followed by our gameplay rollout period.
Firstly, we've had to shift the official announcement of FM25 to the end of September. The gameplay focus period will follow soon thereafter. Our target launch date has moved accordingly and is now scheduled for late November, rather than our usual early November slot.
The FM25 development cycle has been challenging for the whole team. We knew that moving the entire game to the Unity engine was going to be a complex endeavour. As we’ve gotten deeper into the process and gained learnings, it’s fair to say it’s been trickier than we originally anticipated. The entire dev team has been challenged in a myriad of new ways and are doing an incredible job in the process. I’m excited to eventually share our hard work with you but we need a little more time before we can do that.

As I outlined in June’s blog, we’ve consistently held ourselves accountable to the same three core questions:

• Would we do it in the same way if we had our time again?
  
• Would we have done this at all?
  
• Do we have the time required to do this to the highest possible standard, in our first cycle of a new era?

The challenges we’ve encountered in the development process over the last couple of months have led us to make another difficult decision around game content: international management will not be a playable mode in FM25, FM25 Console or FM25 Touch.

Coming off the back of a summer of tournament football and with this week even being an international break, we’ve looked really hard at international management in FM and determined that what we were planning to deliver wouldn’t reach our initial quality threshold.
We also considered the available game data. Only 5.6% of all FM24 PC saves have used the mode, which we feel validates our view that we need to do much, much better with the experience. That number is even smaller on Console.

So, rather than delay FM25 even further, we’ve paused work on that area of the game and allocated those resources to other key areas. It will continue to exist in FM25, FM25 Console and FM25 Touch as part of the wider simulation of world football, it just won’t be playable.

However, international management will remain playable in FM25 Mobile as that’s on a different development track and codebase. For all other versions, international management will return in a much more feature-rich way to FM26, FM26 Console and FM26 Touch in what will be an exciting year for international football with the World Cup expanding to 48 teams. To be clear, this will return as part of the base game and not as any form of additional downloadable content.

While difficult, these decisions are made for the good of the game and the majority of our players. We are determined to ensure that FM25, the first game in a new engine, is as good as it can be in the time we have. By pushing back FM25’s release date, we’ve given ourselves a few extra weeks of development time to try to deliver the best experience that we can for this first in the new era of Football Manager releases.

In recent weeks, I have also taken steps to free up more of my time to focus solely on development and supporting the wider team. One of our core studio values is Consider the Bigger Picture, and what’s most important right now is focusing on FM25. I mentioned in June that I’d be speaking at the Unite conference in Barcelona as part of the keynote. While we will still have an FM presence there, I will not be making the trip because I need to concentrate all my efforts on directing FM25. It’s for this reason that I will also not be attending Tokyo Game Show, an event I loved last year and really helped make our first-ever release in Japan a big success. I’ve also cancelled a trip to America which I was really looking forward to but the game, and you as the players of our games, are the bigger picture.


When we begin our gameplay rollout, one of the areas I’m really looking forward to sharing is our work on Women’s Football.

As you know, it’s been a long-term project for us and one of the biggest things we've done in recent times outside of the move to Unity. Throughout the process, we’ve been laser-focused on introducing Women’s Football to FM in the most authentic way possible. We've applied that thinking to everything we've done, as we generally do with all areas of design and development. From a gameplay perspective, being able to move seamlessly between managing men’s and women’s clubs and vice-versa in one world, one ecosystem was the number one priority - but that’s forced us to consider how various game world aspects are currently portrayed.

As such, we can now share a change we’ve made to all FM25 player profiles: a player’s weight will no longer be visible.

Through the creation of our Women's Football database, we discovered that while the weight of male athletes can change a bit month to month, women’s body types are very different from men’s and their weight fluctuates a lot more, often weekly.

This perspective encouraged us to review the wider game, much like we have with all other areas, and we’ve ultimately decided to no longer show weight for any players in FM25. A very basic measurement will still be included under the hood, but it won’t be visible on the front end anymore.


We also announced in June that we would be welcoming FMFC members within a reasonable travel vicinity to come to our campus in London and help with playtesting the new UI/UX of FM25. We received an enormous response to that, and I want to thank everyone who has volunteered and given us their availability. The playtesting will still be going ahead but as a result of the above milestones moving, the start date is shifting slightly. FMFC members who have applied will be contacted shortly with further date options as we begin to finalise the process.

This should be my last development update until we start focusing more on what’s in FM25. We have lots of good stuff to show you that we’re excited about but I want to re-iterate that FM25 is the first instalment in a new era for the game, one that will give us a lot more possibilities than we had with the previous chapter.

FM25 is just the starting point for what is a very exciting, long-term project.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Miles

Studio Director, Miles Jacobson, details our approach and progress so far, towards the next era of FM.

The reaction to the two development blogs we released last year showed how much you appreciated greater transparency from the studio.

Finding the right level of transparency is really important to us. Many of you have been with us on this journey for 30 years—others have joined along the way - and you are our biggest ambassadors. That’s why we share information with you when it’s available, and explain our decisions so you can understand the processes that go into making Football Manager. This is especially relevant with Football Manager 25 marking a new beginning in many respects.

Visit the Football Manager Website[www.footballmanager.com] to find out more about the latest development of Football Manager 25.

Inspired by this summer's festival of football? Test your managerial skills on the biggest stages in Football Manager 2024, now 50% off across platforms.

The discount for FM24 (PC/Mac) and FM24 Console (Xbox) lasts until 6:00pm BST on Thursday, 11th July.
The sale for FM24 Console (PS5) begins on Wednesday, 3rd July at 12:00 am local time in each region.

The sale end-times for FM24 Console (PS5) and FM24 Touch (Nintendo Switch™) vary by platform and territory – full information is displayed in the table below.
FM24 gives you everything you need to define your managerial style. Sign the tournament's breakout star, scout the latest international wonderkid, and maximise your squad's potential. Every decision is in your hands, so where will your journey take you?

To find the right edition of FM24 for you, visit our Compare Games page[www.footballmanager.com].

*The sale ends at midnight (00:00am) local time in each region on Thursday, 11th July.
**The sale ends at midnight (00:00am) local time in each region on Thursday, 16th July.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2252570/Football_Manager_2024/

In recent years, a trend has begun to emerge – the classical No.10 or advanced playmaker isn’t used in the same way anymore.

Given the importance of collective pressing and counter-pressing in the modern game, many managers don’t quite feel comfortable deploying a free-floating midfielder behind their leading striker. However, this doesn’t mean that playmakers aren’t important – in fact, they’ve probably got a more important role than ever. The main difference now is that they tend to operate in different places on the pitch.

Two of the best roles in Football Manager 2024 showcasing the evolution of the traditional playmaker are the Libero and the Roaming Playmaker. Here, Ihor Crusadertsar uses Manchester City stars John Stones and Kevin De Bruyne to illustrate how to use both roles in your latest FM24 saves.

Pep Guardiola’s deployment of John Stones as a central defender stepping up into midfield during the 2022/23 season led to the Libero role being significantly overhauled as part of FM24’s positional play changes.

Expected to defend against opposition attacks when out of possession and to receive the ball and advance it up in the pitch when your team has possession, a Libero is ideally placed to drive your build-up play from the heart of defence.

When identifying a good Libero, you need them to have strong Attribute scores for Passing, Technique, Decisions and Vision – essentially the areas you’d expect a more advanced playmaker to excel in. They also need to be good at the things a traditional centre-back is – namely Jumping Reach, Strength, and Tackling.

Unsurprisingly, John Stones is perfect in this role because he also boasts strong Attribute scores for Dribbling, First Touch, Composure, and Balance. Collectively, these will help him to ride out pressure from opposition players and comfortably transition the ball out of defence and into midfield.

When using the Libero to drive my team’s playmaking, I like to utilise a Sweeper Keeper who is comfortable on the ball and will be more likely to pass the ball short to the central defenders rather than instinctively kicking it long.

For the rest of the defence, I pair the Libero with a more traditional central defender like Nathan Aké or Ruben Dias and then make the most of FM24’s new Inverted Full-Back player role with one on each side.

In this set-up, the Libero will step up to the defensive midfield position when we’re in possession and will effectively act as a Deep-Lying Playmaker, regardless of whether you use a Support or Defend duty.

With the Libero stepping up, the two Inverted Full-Backs will tuck in and form a solid back three with the other central defender you’ve selected.

Further forward, by using a Defensive Midfielder or a Ball-Winning Midfielder at the base of your midfield, the Libero will form a double pivot with them in front of your back three. As such, you’ll have a 3-2 shape at the base of your tactic; an essential component in most progressive possession approaches.

Flipping the idea of a traditional playmaker on its head, the Libero allows you to successfully build up from deep without sacrificing any defensive solidity.

Having someone like John Stones at your disposal opens doors for playing with a Libero but you need a pretty specific Attribute profile for that role to work properly. So, how can you find a new home in midfield for your team’s designated playmaker?

One of the modern game’s best passers and most creative talents, Kevin De Bruyne is a great playmaker but he’s rarely acted as a traditional Number 10 in recent seasons. Instead, he’s often played a bit deeper and wider, operating in a role that allows him to press, defend, score and create a bunch of high-value chances for his teammates.

Here, FM24’s positional play changes once again take centre stage to level up the abilities of the Roaming Playmaker role.

In possession, a Roaming Playmaker will now push up from central midfield to take up a position behind your striker, thereby taking on an active role in your build-up play.

What’s exciting is the fact that they’ll do this from a starting position in defensive midfield too. If you’ve got a mobile, hard-working player, you can use the role to build your team around someone who will battle hard to win the ball and then push play up the pitch and drive chance creation when you’ve regained possession.

The tactic below indicates the kind of ‘total football’ approach you can achieve in FM24 by using the Roaming Playmaker in a deeper position.

Another approach can be to use an Advanced Playmaker in a central midfield position. Whether you go for a Support duty or a more Attacking one, this player will be more involved in pressing when your team is out of possession but will then drive forward when you’ve got the ball back.

Kevin De Bruyne is perfect here because it makes the most of his skillset and ensures that he’s involved with all phases of play.

Using the Advanced Playmaker role in central midfield also gives opposition defenders a dilemma. They can choose to move forward and try to mark your player but doing so runs the risk of leaving gaps for your attackers to exploit. Alternatively, they can stay back and end up giving someone like De Bruyne loads of space to roam around in and the time to pick the perfect pass to a teammate.

In the screenshot below you’ll see that I’ve opted for another aggressive role in the Mezzala next to De Bruyne. Using Phil Foden in this way helps us to get more players forward for De Bruyne to create chances for, while the use of two Wingers and Fairly Wide Tactical Instruction helps us to stretch and overload the opposition defence.

A final alternative route of using a playmaker is by deploying one on the flank.

The Wide Playmaker has been one of my favourite roles in FM for a few years now because it’s a role that increases the player’s time with the ball and decreases the chances of them being marked out of the game by the opposition.

To illustrate this with Manchester City, I’ve got a tactic using a 4-4-1-1 formation. Here, Rodri and Bernardo Silva stay fairly central, giving De Bruyne plenty of space out wide. Deploying him on an Attack duty opens up space for penetrative overlapping runs from Kyle Walker at Wing-Back.

So, there you have it, four different ways that you can use playmakers in FM24.

While the old-fashioned No. 10 playmaker might not be in vogue anymore, the art of playmaking has not been abandoned and you have several options to make your playmakers more versatile and valuable than ever in FM24.

Happy managing

Ihor Crusadertsar

Having players who can perform two different jobs at the same time can be an absolute game-changer for your tactics in Football Manager 2024. Few player roles fit that bill better than the Complete Forward.

Expected to lead the line but also link up with your team’s other attackers, the Complete Forward could be your top scorer or best playmaker in any given game. This makes them an ideal role to unlock your team’s full potential but also one that needs a special, well-rounded player to do it well.

In this guide, Rock’s End FM shows you the skills you need to look for in a Complete Forward and how to make the role fit into your tactics.

Let’s start with the basics: what is a Complete Forward?

The Complete Forward can operate across the entire final third of the pitch. They need the strength and anticipation to outmuscle opposition defenders and make late runs into the box, as well as clinical finishing instincts. They also need to be able to drop deeper to create space and contribute to your build-up play, playing passes in behind to teammates in the wide channels.

In FM24, the Complete Forward is available with two duties – Attack and Support. Each option has its pros and cons, with the Attack setting pushing their focus more towards goalscoring and Support prioritising collaboration with the rest of the team.

Finding such a jack-of-all-trades isn’t easy but there are some key Attributes that you can look for. From a Technical perspective, Dribbling, Finishing, First Touch, Heading, and Technique are key, as are Off The Ball, Composure, Anticipation, and Positioning from a Mental side. Having decent Pace, Acceleration, and Agility aren’t essential but they’re a nice bonus.

To round their profile out, the stronger their Passing, Teamwork, Vision, and Determination Attributes, the better.

Having taken a look at how the role works work and the key Attributes you need to look for, I’ve taken charge of two Bundesliga clubs to show the role in action in FM24.

Few players in the FM24 database are as perfect in a role as Harry Kane is as a Complete Forward.

Having initially burst onto the scene as a clinical finisher, Kane has evolved his game over time to become much more than that for club and country. Technically sublime, smart on and off the ball, and incredibly hard-working, Kane has the physical tools to make an impact across the final third.

However, even the best and most well-rounded players in the world will struggle if they’re not backed up suitably by their teammates.

I’m using Kane as a Complete Forward on Support and to make that role shine, you need two things: players who can supply balls into him and players who can receive them from him.

The below screenshot shows how I’ve set up FC Bayern for this experiment, with Kane leading the line in a fairly traditional 4-3-3.

As you can see, we have a good mix of passers and runners that will all work around Kane. The Wing-Backs will provide width and crossing options, while having both wingers inverted will give us both close-range passing options and darting runs that Kane can pick up when he drops deeper. In midfield, the Mezzala and the Box-to-Box Midfielder will both arrive late into the box, giving us more passing options and attacking threats.

Now we have our tactic assembled, let’s put it to the test on Matchday.

In possession, Kane drops into the pocket and effectively becomes an auxiliary midfielder. In the screenshot below, taken from a game with SV Darmstadt 98, you can see him in line with the other central midfielders.

However, he will still lead the line. In this second shot, you can see him pushing the defensive line back, thereby creating more space in the box for both him and our onrushing midfielders to drive into. As it happened, he opened the scoring from this passage of play, heading home a Serge Gnabry cross.

In this third example, you see him in full flow having picked up the ball from deep. On this occasion, he dribbled forward from a counter-attack, drawing some of the opposition defenders out of position and opening up a run in behind for Leroy Sané, who doubled our lead.

Kane was man of the match in this game and one of our best performers throughout the entire season.

As FC Bayern are a team that typically dominates possession, the Complete Forward on Support is an ideal role. In most games, FC Bayern will have to break down opposition teams who tend to sit deeper and look to play off turnovers. The Complete Forward offers you more flexibility in your tactic as their roving position opens up more avenues for attack, stopping your offence from becoming predictable and giving the opposition defence more to think about.

Some teams, however, will have less of the ball from game to game and will be more reliant on their strikers to shoulder a greater scoring responsibility. In this instance, you need to opt for the Attack duty.

The Complete Forward on Attack offers you a striker who can run into space, hit it long, or head it home while also offering a partner for creative midfielders and attacking wingers.

Perfect for illustrating this duty is VfB Stuttgart’s Serhou Guirassy, a sensation during the 2023/24 season. The Guinean forward has a skillset every bit as complete as other strikers but his playing style – based on strength, pace, and smart movement - lends itself better to him being the focal point of the attack.

As boss of VfB Stuttgart, this is how I’ve set up:

Contrasted to the previous example, the Complete Forward sits higher up in the pitch, allowing us to bring in Enzo Millot to sit in behind as a Number 10 who can drive the team’s playmaking efforts. Guirassy will get plenty of service from Silas Katompa Mvumpa and Maximilian Mittelstädt in the wide areas, while Mahmoud Dahoud will offer an on-rushing threat from midfield. Simply put, the Complete Forward in this example opens up room for the rest of the team to operate in, whereas Harry Kane was the cog that the rest of the team centred around.

How does it work in practice? Well, the Complete Forward is our furthest forward player while we’re in possession, pinning the opposition central defenders back and opening up space behind.

This high positioning means that Guirassy gets a higher volume of shots per game, as he has less ground to cover to join attacks. The screenshot below shows him about to get on the end of a Woo-Yeong Jeong cross to open the scoring against Eintracht Frankfurt.

On Attack duty, Guirassy is much more active in both the pressing and counter-pressing aspects of our play. You can see this illustrated by the heat map below - if you’re looking to regain the ball as high up the pitch as possible, this is a role you should be thinking about using.

Despite its high quality and ability threshold, the Complete Forward is a role that can adapt to many teams and styles of play. With the right player in it and a suitable tactic supporting, the Complete Forward could be the difference between a title triumph and a near miss in your next save.

Happy Managing,

Rock’s End FM

The Premier League, the pinnacle of domestic football, is defined by iconic on-pitch events and memories spanning more than three decades. Behind each memorable moment was a football manager…

The same is true of every great Football Manager story.

Now, thanks to a multi-year partnership, you’ll be able to create your own iconic Premier League moments and history in future editions of Football Manager.

From the 2024/25 season, all 20 Premier League clubs will be fully licensed in future FM releases with official logos, kits, and player photos featuring across our suite of titles.

So, whether you’re attempting to mastermind the futures of Liverpool or Arsenal, chase European football with Crystal Palace, or maximise Ipswich Town’s return to the big time, you’ll be immersed in English top-flight action like never before.

Further information on the Premier League’s in-game integration with Football Manager, as well as partnership activities between the studio and the league, will be revealed later in the year.

Developing tactics and recreating the styles of football’s leading coaches is one of the most enjoyable aspects of playing Football Manager.

In Football Manager 2024, you have more creative tools for expressing your tactical philosophy thanks to the player rotation changes that have been added..

These rotations see players take up a different position while in possession than they occupy while defending, such as an Inverted Full-Back tucking in as an additional central defender or Central Midfielders pushing forward to join the attack.

Making the most of these rotations will allow you to implement positional play principles in your tactics and become a more dynamic attacking team in every career. In this blog, Dan Gear explains which roles trigger these positional rotations and shows them in action.

Positional rotations are largely reserved for your central midfield players, but there are also a few defensive roles that are crucial for pursuing positional play. These are:

• Inverted Wing-Back - During the possession phase, a player using this role will move into defensive midfield
  
• Inverted Full-Back – A new role for FM24, this is geared towards those players that tuck in to become an extra central defender while in possession
  
• Libero – Following some upgrades for FM24, a Libero can now play in any of the three centre-back positions, and in each one they will look to move into defensive midfield

• Half-Back – Now usable in both single and double midfield pivots, a player in this role will look to drop back into central defence while you’re in possession
  
• Segundo Volante – An aggressive role, players deployed as Segundo Volantes will push right up as an extra ‘Number 10’ just behind the strikers when your team is attacking
  
• Roaming Playmaker – Whether they’re used in defensive or central midfield, Roaming Playmakers will push up to become attacking midfielders during the possession phase
  
• Box to Box Midfielder/Mezzala/Advanced Playmaker – All of these roles will look to push up from a starting position in central midfield to one just behind the strikers. The same is also true for Central Midfielders used on an Attack duty

Now, you might be thinking that if all of your central midfield players push up, you’ll have a lot of overcrowding in the same area of the pitch.

Well, the players in FM24 are intelligent and aware of the movement of their teammates, meaning that this doesn’t happen.

To illustrate this with an example, let’s say you’re using a 4-2-3-1 formation and you’ve chosen to make one of your midfield pairing a Mezzala.

As the image below shows, the originally central Advanced Playmaker will acknowledge the Mezzala’s forward runs and will shuffle across to the left to accommodate them.

In this instance, your wide player will now stay closer to the touchline in order to accommodate the forward runs of the Mezzala, effectively making your formation a 4-1-4-1.

Alternatively, let’s say you chose to play a 4-2-3-1 with a Segundo Volante on the left and a Ball-Winning Midfieder on the right.

Here, the Segundo Volante will push up and on this occasion the player behind the striker will move to the right to once again create a strong 4-1-4-1 shape.

The same is true when you make use of the defensive player roles that shift their position during the attacking phase.

In the example below, we’re playing a 4-3-3 with an Inverted Wing-Back on the left of the defence. In this instance, the Defensive Midfielder will move across to the right to form a double pivot with the Inverted Wing-Back that pushes up.

Now, if you pull it all together in a wider tactical shape, you’ll see that your team’s starting formation will look quite different as your players look to progress possession up the pitch.

As the arrows on the screen below show, you’ll effectively have a 3-2-4-1 shape when you’re attacking. This opens up more passing lanes and gives you a greater ability to play through the lines, which in turn means you’re going to be much more effective in exploiting gaps in the opposition defence when you’re counter-attacking.

Now we’ve gone through the theory, let’s see how we can implement these player rotations and positional play principles in practice with a real team and tactic. Here, I’ve chosen to use Italian club Bologna.

In this first scenario, I’ve opted for a fairly simple 3-4-3 tactic. The formation makes the most of some of our most talented players, namely Victor Kristiansen, central defender Riccardo Calafiori and clinical striker Joshua Zirkzee.

I’ve kept it on a Balanced Mentality as the player roles chosen are attacking enough on their own, while I’ve only selected a few simple Team Instructions as I want the players to focus on their natural games and moving around the pitch in the way the roles intend them to.

As you can see from the screenshot below, Lewis Ferguson, Michael Aebischer and Jhon Lucumí all rotate into more advanced positions when we’re attacking the opposition.

In that instance we failed to score. When play restarted and the opposition were looking to progress possession, they all moved back into their starting positions to give us better defensive cover.

In the second example, I’ve used a 4-2-3-1 similar to the one outlined earlier on. From what we know of the positional rotations, the shape I’ve picked should see Aebischer push up and join Ferguson as a second attacking midfielder in a four-man unit behind Zirkzee.

Further back, Calafiori is playing as an Inverted Full-Back, meaning that he’ll push across and Lucumí and Sam Beukema will adapt accordingly to form a back three.

In terms of Mentality and Team Instructions, everything reflects the first example as all rotations and shifts are automatic. You don’t need to add any extra player or team instructions, you only need to understand which roles rotate into which areas and how you can make space for them in your tactic.

To take the previous example a bit further, you could make Stefan Posch an Inverted Wing-Back rather than a Wing-Back. You’ve got enough ability in the wide areas with Riccardo Orsolini and Jesper Karlsson, so you can instead use Posch in a capacity that makes him an extra ball receiver in midfield and more effective defensive cover should you lose possession.

As you can see from the screenshot below, Posch has moved up and across to form a defensive midfielder pivot with Nikola Moro, who has moved across into the space that Aebischer has vacated by pushing up.

Hopefully the information provided here will have given you a greater insight into how FM24’s positional rotations work in practice and how you can make the most of them to build more fluid tactics in FM24.

Happy managing,

Dan Gear

Being tactically flexible is one of the most important characteristics any manager can have. Having the insight to change your approach mid-game when things aren’t working or employing different game plans for different opponents stops you from being predictable and can keep the positive results coming.

One of the best ways to do this is by setting up different tactical approaches for home and away matches. Here, Rock’s End FM dives deep to show how you can do it in your latest FM24 careers to gain that extra edge with a newly-promoted team.

So, at this point, you’re probably thinking: why should I use different tactical approaches for home and away matches? Surely my team should just focus on one approach in training?

Well, the idea between using two separate tactics depending on where your team is playing is that it allows you to make the most of two different situations without giving away too much in any direction.

For home matches, you have more of your fans behind you, and on the pitch you’re likely to get more possession than you do away from home. This means your players will have a bit more time on the ball and therefore more space to generate attacks.

Conversely, when you’re away from home, you’ll be pressed harder by the opposition. This means that you’ll have less of the ball but when you do regain possession, you’ll likely have more avenues for direct counter-attacks.

With this in mind, you can prepare and create different tactical approaches to help your team exploit these gains and cover for any deficiencies in terms of personnel. Doing this will help you to clinch more key points, securing your spot in that league for another season and allowing you to focus your wider efforts on long-term squad-building.

To put this approach to the test, I’ve started a save with Sky Bet Championship team Plymouth Argyle. They won Sky Bet League One in 2023 but are considered to be one of the higher division's weaker teams when you begin a career in FM24.

When reviewing the Plymouth squad, it’s clear that the Pilgrims have a lot of quick attacking players with high Work Rate Attributes. This lends itself fantastically to a counter-pressing approach that will allow us to recover the ball higher up the pitch and take advantage of space when the opposition are in transition.

However, adopting such an aggressive approach does mean that we’ll naturally leave a lot of space in behind, which the division’s better teams will be able to exploit. How can we reduce that risk when we’re playing away and at our most fragile?

Creating a new tactical slot, we’re going to set up our away game plan. We’ll keep the same defensive structure as the home tactic but we’re going to adapt our formation to a 4-4-2 by making our number 10 a second striker. This will give us a more compact shape for the longer periods of play when we’re out of possession and defending. We’ll also drop our wide players back, which will allow them to start their runs in more space and from deep. It also means that they’re closer to our full-backs, which should give us more defensive cover.

In terms of our instructions, we’ll look to defend deeper and invite pressure, as this will create gaps in the opposition's defence that we can take advantage of with quick, direct transitions. To achieve this, we’ll drop our Mentality and Line of Engagement, and also stop Counter-Pressing in favour of regrouping quickly.

A key factor to bear in mind is that between our two tactics, we’ve maintained a lot of our original setup instead of opting for a completely different shape. By doing this, we’re making sure that both tactics make the best possible use of our players.

It is always worth thinking about the individual skillsets of your players. Different players will play roles differently, so there’s a lot to be gained by shifting who plays in each position from game to game.

With that all figured out, let’s put our approach to the test and jump into the season.

Just like in real life, our first game as Plymouth Argyle boss in FM24 is at home against another relegation candidate in Huddersfield.

Given that it’s the first game of the campaign and we’re playing at Home Park, we start the match with our home tactic. Our high press kept us in control of the game early on and secured us plenty of key chances in the opening minutes.

We scored midway through the first half thanks to striker Ryan Hardie and had several opportunities to extend our lead. We failed to make the most of them and were ultimately punished by a goal on the counter late in the second half as the match finished 1-1. While it wasn’t the result we wanted, the Shot Map of the game makes for impressive viewing and shows early promise for our home gameplan.

Our second game was away against Watford, a leading playoff contender at the beginning of the season. We used our away tactic for this game but made a personnel change. Instead of deploying him out wide, where the Inverted Winger (Support) position would have made him less of a scoring threat, we pushed Morgan Whittaker up as a striker to partner Hardie.

We ultimately end up being unlucky in this game, losing 3-1. Our xG was very similar to that of the Hornets but they ultimately proved more clinical, sealing victory with their third goal in the 89th minute. We never looked particularly outmatched against a stronger team on paper, which was encouraging, and despite sitting deeper we created some decent chances.

The positive signs from our first two games are reflected in our next two matches. At home against the highly-fancied Southampton, we create more chances and limit them to just two shots in the entire second half as we won 3-2.

That gave us our first win and our we got a second in our fourth match of the season away at Birmingham City. Whittaker scores off a quick transition to put us 1-0 up in the first half and another quick counter proves decisive in the second half, with Whittaker grabbing his second from the penalty spot after we capitalised on them committing too many men forward. That secured us a 2-1 win and put us up to seven points after four matches – far from the form you’d expect of a relegation favourite.

On its own, using differing tactics for home and away matches won’t save you from relegation. However, it is a useful tool to play to your strengths and help keep the opposition guessing. For teams that aren’t blessed with enormous resources, it can earn you a few extra points, which could prove crucial in a tight relegation race, and give you the platform to build from and push ahead.

Happy managing,

Rock’s End FM