How Important are the Tactics in Top11?

[pcmacdaniel]

Very good question OP.

I would have to say, tactics are very important. But i'd have to add-in match preparation and quality as play a role as well.

Testing the importance of tactics often has some pitfalls.

1. Several wins are because our opponents suck. They either aren't active, don't have 40%, low win bonus, etc... If my win bonus is $16.8M and my opponents is $0. If my training bonuses are 10-10-10-10 and my opponents are at 2-4-4-2, I should win regardless of what my tactics are.

2. We don't have a control group. I don't know the opponents orders. So if testing, I can't be 100% sure of what strategy i'm testing against unless playing a friend.

3. Nordeus hasn't told us how the source code is programmed. Because of this, we can't be 100% what the relationship between variables in the programming code is. It's very possible, that even if we know the opponents orders, that we can be testing the wrong variable and be drawing a conclusion off of a flawed experiment.

A few trends I've noticed of late are.

1. Attacking, high pressing setups I've had success counter-attacking effectively against.

2. Defensive, counter-attacking teams, I've had success playing a possession based game while applying a low press and the offsides trap and can normally win handily.

I'm going to emphasize this because last season I played an active gold 1 manager in the CL quarter-finals. He won the first leg 1-3 and decided to play 4-1-4-1 2nd leg. Clearly, he was parking the bus 2nd leg, so I went to my 4-5-1v, normal/flanks/short/off/low/normal/m2m/on and won 7-0. It isn't the only large scoreline where we just obliterated a defensive bunker w/ that setup as well.

3. Most my defeats/draws are against balanced formations. This could be due to either the formation being more stable, or the formation being more flexibile so lower probability of an educated guess of the opponent's orders being correct.

4. My strongest rivals at my level have had the upper hand on me recently. However, for several seasons before last season the upper hand was mine. I tanked in level 31, but haven't tanked since and am now in level 40. So they've had plenty of time to study my tactics and identify a tactical pattern. Key was last season when I lost a league match 0-2 and CL final 0-2 to Galatasaray S.K. I have one defeat in league this season, 2-3 against Kutluhan. In level 37, I beat Kutluhan in league 8-1, and beat Galatasaray 4-2, 5-0, 9-1 (lvl 38, CL semi), 2-1 (lvl 38, CL semi-final) and 4-0 before his two wins against me. I believe it's tactical and they've switched up their orders against me. Both Galatasaray and Kutluhan are in the same association, which is in Gold 1, so they are probably communicating strategy about league rivals between each other.