Attack wins matches,defense wins championships!

[Tactician]

So the rule of thumb is—
-If you're the favorite: attack and grab a lot of goals. Low press and zonal marking to save energy. Use offside trap and 3 defence and maybe a DMC too if required. Two strikers are also ideal
-If against evenly matched opponent: play your natural game.
-If they're the favorite: Park the Bus, but keep the ball. Defensive, mixed and short passing, no CA force, low press, man-to-man marking (it's extremely helpful to defend, tho zonal can be used to save energy). And of course a suitable formation, like 4-5-1V, 5-2-2-1 or 5 defence/4 defender+1 DMC (5-6 players in own half)

Yes, those are good guidelines.

Consider the situation where you are the stronger team. Take into consideration that you can attack in many ways (different strategies from the combination of attacking and other orders to the combination of normal or defensive and force-counter attacks. You have to choose what is more appropriate and also an appropriate formation.

If you are evenly matched or close to in terms of quality, tactics, form and other effects including the so called hidden ones will play a significant role too. You can use whatever mentality you want as long as it is suitable, but may be the extreme ones (hard attacking and hard defending) should be avoided for the duration of most of the match.

If the opponent is stronger, a defensive approach is more suitable but that does mean you must use 4-5-1(V), 5-2-2-1 and so on. You can still force counter-attacks if your defence will be enough to deal with the attacks. The catching point in there though is what if the opponent pushes most of his defenders forward? This could turn out to be the 'big fish'. If your players that will be in your own half can still deal with it, that is ok, if not then you will definitely have a lot of trouble and will concede goals. This is why Abhinavsharma has said that to use 4-5-1(V), you need players of quality as he probably noticed that it is not working as expected; I will add to that: you definitely need players of good quality at the back if you intend to force counter-attacks, and the overall average quality the players that will be waiting in your half must be better than those that you allowed to come and attack deliberately; this can be done by either having significantly more players in your own half than those that will come and attack you despite being of lesser quality or you can have the same number but then will definitely need better quality defenders. Else, in other words, forcing counter-attacks is an invitation for 'suicide' or 'auto-kill'.