“I like to control games. I like to be responsible for our own destiny. If you are better than your opponent with the ball you have a 79 per cent chance of winning the game…for me it is quite logical. It does not matter how big or small you are, if you don’t have the ball you can’t score.” (Rodgers, 2012)





Brendan Rodgers' philosophy is one that is admired across the globe. His beliefs of how the game should be played has lead to some revolutionary football in the Premier League, first with Swansea, and currently with Liverpool. He believes in getting all the little things right. Keeping the ball is very important, and off-the-ball movement is clearly visible in this system. Defensively, he likes his team to put a lot of pressure on the opposing team. If you put your opponent under pressure, they have less time and space to work with, which may force them in to making mistakes. When his team has the ball, his players play a nice, flowing passing game with the ball always moving, making it impossible for the opposition to predict the next move. A master tactic in creation!

Formations

As you can see, there are three different formations. You must be wondering, "why are there three different tactics? Surely they can't all be the same system!" Well the thing is, they can. I see formations as how your team sets up for matches. Your system,style is defined by your Team Instructions, which will be discussed next.

4-5-1: Brendan Rodgers' big-game set-up. He uses this formation when he plays bigger teams such as Man Utd, Man City, etc. This formation's main strength is it's three-man midfield system. It is a very good set-up for games where you just want to keep the ball and stay solid.

4-2-3-1: This is BR's set-up for playing similar/weaker teams. It's main strength is the midfield triangle again, but this time it provides more attacking movement for when you are looking to put pressure on your opponents.

4-2-4: This is BR's set-up for playing games where you just need to score goals. Having two strikers and two advanced wide players provides great attacking threat and is a nice tactic to use against table-strugglers.

Team Instructions - The Playing Style

These are the team instructions, these are the settings which defines how your team plays it's football. This is where you create your style of football, where your master plan for success comes together. For each formation, these team instructions are the same. My belief is that you shouldn't play your style depending on who you play against, but how you set up (your formations).

Philosophy: This is how your team acts through each phase of the game. With a very fluid style, your attackers will help defend and your defenders will help attack. This helps with passing options, causing problems in your opposition's defence, and you have more players defending when needed too.

Strategy: This is how you take on your opponent. With Control, you will look to take control of the ball and move it around. This strategy is very good for a "passing team", which is what this entire system is looking to create.

Passing Style + Tempo: This is how you pass the ball and how quickly you play your football. Short passing is good for keeping possession and creating "passing triangles" to get around your opposition. A high tempo means you move the ball around very quickly, making it impossible for the opposition to get anywhere near it.

Creative Freedom: This is how free your players are to do their own thing. A more expressive creative freedom means that your creative, flair players will look to spark something special and do something extraordinary.

Closing Down: This system uses high pressure to close down opponents. This gives the opposition players less time and space on the ball and forces them in to making mistakes.

Marking + Tackling: Zonal marking is important to keep your defensive shape. This means your defense will always look strong and stable. Default tackling means your players will tackle as they are used to. This means they will still go to win the ball, but they won't do many reckless, leg breaking challenges.

Defensive Line + Width: The defensive line and width are pretty normal to keep your defense in shape. Your defense will look solid and in line, with no gaps.

4-5-1 - Player Roles

4-2-3-1 - Player Roles

4-2-4 - Player Roles

Touchline Instructions

These Touchline Instructions aren't necessary but I like using them to emphasis our style of play.

Results

As you can see, our results with this system have been fantastic. Our four best results of the season are highlighted. Needless to say, we won all four competitions we were entered in this year. There were some nervy moments but we went undefeated through the whole season, which is not easy. We played some fantastic football, as you can see in the screenshots below.

20/3/2013 1-0 Win vs Chelsea (H)



20/4/2013 3-0 Win vs Everton (H)



11/5/2013 7-0 Win vs Crystal Palace (N)

Author's Note

I highly recommend this system to those looking to play an attractive style of football, while still controlling the play. Be warned, it may take a while for your team to get used to this system. Also, I cannot guarantee that this tactic will be the best possible tactic for you. A tactic's success depends on the players used in this tactic. This is just a different way of playing which will hopefully bring you success.I hope that you enjoy using this system and I hope you have success with it. Any criticisms you may have are welcome, I am always looking to learn where I can improve. Thank you!

FM Editor Live is a simple real time editor for Football Manager 2013.
It's the evolution of FM Real-Time Financial Editor and has been produced due to popular demand for a more advanced free editor.

Like its predecessor, FMEL has a very straightforward interface and works very fast.

Exclusively available from fmscout.com

This tool is released for FREE, as we feel you shouldn't be forced to pay for 3rd party tools of a game.

Released: 13 February 2013 - v1.3
Updated: 2 April 2013 - v1.3.6

Redistribution Policy:
People who want to put FM Editor Live 2013 on other sites, you may link back to this very page but you cannot host any files yourselves. Thank you!

Features

FMEL allows you to search for the club and person of your choice and edit:

Clubs

• Reputation
• Chairman Status
• Training Facilities
• Youth Facilities
• Transfer Budget
• Wage Budget
• Overall Balance
• Kit Colors
• Heal Team (Injuries)*

Persons

• Birthday
• Nationality
• CA / PA
• Foot (view only)
• Attributes (view only)

* Heal Team not only heals injuries but also changes the player's condition to 100% and clears his jadedness.

FMEL is a simple editor that allows you to quickly adjust information of clubs and persons. It should be safe to use it, but at any case make sure to keep a backup of your savegame before using.

Requirements

► .NET FRAMEWORK 3.5 (standalone offline installer) or higher
To find out if you have .NET Framework 3.5 installed, you can use Framework Detector (free tool).

► Patch 13.3.3 (International + Russian)
To use this version of FMEL, you must have your game updated with the 13.3.3 Patch.

Please note it won't work with the Korean or Asian editions of the game.

If you have one of the mentioned special editions of FM13 and you want to help us add support for it, please follow the instructions outlined on this topic.

This is FMEL for Windows.
If you're looking for a similar tool for Mac, please check out MacAssistant RT (another exclusive tool we release).

How to use

1. Extract the downloaded FMELv1.3.zip in a folder of your choice.

2. Run Football Manager 2013, and load your save game (or start a new one).

3. Run FMEditorLive.exe (ALT+TAB to desktop first if you're running FM full screen).

4. Click the "Load Game" button.



5. Enter club's name in the Search input box and hit Enter.



6. Double-click on the club's row. Edit what you wish in the 4 tabs available (Information, Finances, Kits, Teams) and click Save.






Double-click on the person's row. Edit birthday and/or nationality and click Save.

Credits

This tool is an FMScout.com and Moddingway.com association.
BIG thanks to Stelios for being awesome enough to make this possible!
Logo by Stam.

Changelog

v1.3.6
- Support for 13.3.3 [International+Russian]

v1.3.5
- Support for 13.3.3 [International]
- Improved Persons loading (internal)
- Fixed an issue with some team colors

v1.3.4
- Support for 13.3.2 [International+Russian]
- Added Heal button at Player Screen
- Fixed an issue where FMEL would crash if you load another game on FM and don't press Load Game

v1.3.3
- Fix for Player's screen on localised Windows

v1.3.2
- Fix for Player's save

v1.3.1
- Support for 13.3.2
- Added Player Current/Potential Ability
- Added Player Foot L/R (View only)
- Added Player Attribute (View only)
- Added configuration file for changing search list columns
- Added support for multiple screens (Clubs or Players)

v1.3.0
- Support for 13.2.3
- Renamed to FMEL
- Added Training/Youth Facilities on Clubs screen
- Added Team tab on Clubs screen with "Heal Team" functionality
- Added support for Persons screen through search
- Added Persons screen with Birthday and Nationality editing support
- Fixed wrong finances (Transfer Budget, Payroll Budget) for non-active teams
- Added Nation loading support
- Added Current GameID and Date loading support

v1.2.0
- Major part of source code rewritten
- Redesigned Club form
- Added Club Reputation
- Added Club Chairman Status
- Added Club Kits editing
- Added support for Currencies (UKP, Euro, USD) and Salary View (Weekly, Monthly, Yearly)
- Added Preferences

v1.1.0
- Support for 13.2.2

v1.0.0
- Initial release, support for 13.1.3
- Added Balance/Transfer Budget/Wage Budget read/write support.