Tight marking
If you tick this box when you loose possession each outfield player will stick to his man tightly. Tight marking is best coupled with a defensive man-marking game, as most players will track back and stay on their man. However if you play an attack minded game then you should not tick this box and couple it with zonal marking, letting your players mark whoever may venture into their zone of the pitch.

Play Offside
Tick this box to implement the offside trap within your defence, particularly effective against defensive teams playing a direct/long ball game or when you are at home on the attack. To make this work you will need defenders with decent positioning, teamwork, anticipation, decisions, concentration and maybe even some pace. You will also need a goalkeeper with good communication and command of area attributes to boss your defence around. It is also highly recommended that you position your defensive line at least to normal, but you should also take your defenders and the oppostion's attackers speed into account.

Counter attack
When playing defensive and against an attacking opposition, usually away from home, it can be highly effective to tick this box. You will need to be playing a defensive/normal mentality to draw to opposition into your half, so when you retrieve the ball, you can make a quick/direct counter when they still have men forward.

Use Target Man
Ticking this box will make your team look for opportunities to pass to your designated target man. You should either have a fast target man, the one that will look to latch on to long balls played over the opposition's defence, or a big target man that will look to get flick ons from direct/long balls, and bring other players into the attack.

Use Playmaker
Ticking the playmaker box will make your team look for opportunities to pass to your designated playmaker – much like the target man. However, unlike the target man the playmaker is usually a midfielder built around a team that plays more of a short/mixed passing style. Your playmaker should be the man dictating tempo and making clever passes that will slice open the oppositions defence. The playmaker will need good decision-making, passing, creativity, technique and anticipation.






Marking
Use this box to set individual marking instruction. This can very useful if you’re not playing an extreme style of play (attacking/defensive) and want certain players to man-mark and others to mark in a zonal system. If your whole team is set to man-marking, you should probably have at least one defensive midfielder that is set to zonal with high closing down. Playing with a loose-zonal system, your defenders should probably be set man marking, because their mentality will usually be low normal/defensive. Also, setting your wingers to man-marking can add extra cover on the wing, because they wont be marking players that come into their zone, which could be further up the pitch, they will marking either the oppositions winger, the attacking full-back or the wing-back.

Tight Marking
Setting individual tight marking instructions is linked to individual marking. Once again if you’re not playing an extreme style then you should be setting individual marking, according to mentalities. Defenders should be set to tight marking so they constantly try a stay on their man. If you have set your wingers to man-marking then ticking tight marking will make this even more effective, ensuring that your wide man stays tight to his man and tracks back.

Hold up ball
Setting players to hold up the ball will make a player keep the ball from the opposition until other players have recovered from defensive duties and become available to pass to. Either a big target man or a defensive midfielder (or a midfielder with low mentality) should take this role. Using the target man in this role will mean he is collecting the ball from a long kick or a clearance and will hold the ball until wide men and midfielders have made forward runs to receive the ball. Using a defensive midfielder will mean he has probably just won the ball himself or received it from a pass, he will then hold the ball until your other players have regrouped and are available to receive the ball.

Free role
This role should usually be given to attacking midfielders, left, right or centre. Giving this role to a player will give him the freedom to roam around the field, often overruling defensive duties and arrows. The advantage of this role is that the player you have assigned to a free role with pop up in around the opposition box often creating and scorings goals. Be careful not to assign this to too many players or you could find your midfield and defence out-numbered.  Like any other position, each player has a rating of how good he is at it; unfortunately, the free role position is a hidden attribute. It may be useful to test out how good a player is in the role during friendly matches.