Someone Bought a Football Manager Tactic for £20, Here’s what Happened 

Football Manager is a game built on randomness and things happening that you don’t expect, which makes it so funny when someone tries to see you certainty. The whole game is built on chaos and blind faith, so the idea of paying £20 for a “guaranteed” system already is a massive flashing red flag. However, one creator had to see what the tactic was actually like and paid the exorbitant £20. Shoutout to Holdmyheim who took one for the team and paid the money to make a brilliant video. However, if you haven’t watched the video, I’ll get into exactly what happens.

 

The Idea

In the clip, HoldMyHeim puts a £20 tactic through its paces as part of his “HMRC of Football Manager Tactics” series, which seems dedicated to auditing whether these systems are genuine masterstrokes or complete nonsense. From the moment the shape appears on screen, he isn’t convinced. In possession, it looks like a tactical fever dream: a lopsided Christmas tree of bodies, advanced wing-backs flying on. In defence of the tactic so far, this is exactly the sort of shape I love crafting and I’m glad the tactic hasn’t just gone for a stale 4-2-3-1 

However, Holdmyheim’s verdict here is brutal from the outset. Even before the results come in, he is sceptical. The instructions do not seem especially special, the out-of-possession shape looks badly congested and there is a general sense that the whole thing has been designed to appear clever rather than actually function well over a season. That instinct turns out to be right.

 

The Results

Testing the tactic with Burnley, he gets a result that would be embarrassing for a free Steam Workshop download, never mind something that costs actual money. Burnley finish 19th, the team goes down and he gets sacked. Worse still, the system apparently is not even fun in failure. It does not produce goals, it does not produce entertainment, and it does not offer the kind of chaotic all-guns-blazing nonsense that can at least make a bad tactic memorable. It just collapses. I’m starting to feel like paying £20 for this tactic is a donation rather than anything that will benefit you.

Holdmyheim sums it up perfectly… imagine paying £20 to finish bottom of the Premier League. Football Manager has always had a thriving industry built around miracle tactics, game-breaking systems and “must-use” downloads. So when you know that you can do a lot better with any other downloaded tactic for free, it would make the failure with a £20 tactic a lot more irritating.

That is not to say every shared or paid tactic is automatically rubbish. Plenty of creators put serious work into testing shapes, roles and match engine behaviour, and some community tactics are excellent. But there is a world of difference between someone sharing a well-built system and someone selling the illusion of expertise.

HoldMyHeim’s final rating says it all. On his scale, where one means rubbish and ten means great, this tactic gets a zero. It’s hard to disagree. 

 

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