I had a tactic that worked well sometimes, but struggled on others. The answer was small tweaks.
I set my team to a quick tempo and solved the "loitering on the ball" problem. Short passing on dry days is also a neat idea.
If the opposition has more than 3 chances in the first 10 mins I know I am about to go behind, so tweak the passing accordingly. If I'm set to short, I change it to direct; if tempo is set to slow, I change it to quick or normal.
Little tweaks throughout the game break up the opposition's rhythm when they are having a spell of good pressure. On the other hand, tweaking too much too often WILL result in defeat.
Example of a small tweak: I've recently started closing down and tackling hard the opposition's central midfielders / DMCs (esprially Fabregas and the like; they can't cope with it!). Off the back of a dismall December 2010 I'm in March 2011 and defeated only twice in that time.
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