Choosing a formation | Tactics Football Manager 2016 Guide

You can pick your formation from among a dozen-or-so available ones, or by changing the arrangement of shirts on the field.

The first element that defines your tactic is your formation. You can select from among pre-defined ones, which you can modify freely. To do this, "Drag and Drop" the shirt on the pitch into another position. This way, you move the player to a new default position. You can move players around the selected fields and modify, this way, basic formations.

While selecting a new formation, remember that your players need to learn new tactic. During training sessions, you can devote more time to that, in order to ensure better communication between players, in the field and make them observe the rules. Tactic training may consist of 3 formations at the same time. Remember that each modification lowers the players' familiarity with tactic, which is why you should try to stick to 2-3 select ones and not introduce too many changes. If you modify a formation, wait for several successive matches to ensure that you made the right choice. If you lose 2-3 initial matches, this does not mean that you went wrong.

Star rating represents current skills and potential for the future. The green bar represents the player's predisposition towards playing on his current position.

Which formation you select should, mainly, depend on your team. Also, you can match formation to the previously specified tactic, but it may then turn out that you need to buy several more players, which you cannot afford. First of all, try to use the team at hand. Also, take substitutes into consideration - if you only have two forwards and six midfielders, it will be difficult to use the potential of 4-3-3 formation.

The usefulness of a player for playing on a given position is represented by the star rating, under the "Usefulness" option. This is your assistant's opinion and it does not necessarily need to be an accurate one (especially in the case of identical assessment of two players playing on the same position). Use the assistant's guidelines and, especially, the attributes useful on the specific position.

Roles

Apart from picking the position for each player, you can additionally assign a role to each one of them. This means that players on the same position (e.g. two midfield defenders), may have a bit different roles assigned to them, depending on the tactic picked by you and their attributes. To pick the role for a player, click the blue bar under the shirt on the pitch and select the role from the drop-down menu (they are provided with descriptions, in Tactic -> Player menu, you can also change roles of players and, at the same time, compare attributes required for playing on that position). It is important to set the role, because you define the player's behavior in the field, this way. For example, outside defender may be assigned with the role of the "Outside defender" where he will be participating in attacks or, in case of lack of appropriate attributes, he will only be dealing with defense ("Limited outside defender"). Also, you can assign roles with specific functions that defines responsibilities of the player on that position ("Defense", "Support", "Attack").