EDIT: OK the title is a bit clickbaity. It would be better to say "the most game breaking tactics won't save you from relegation or win you the Champions League".

Check out https://fm-arena.com/thread/8922-understanding-the-results-of-fm-arena-tactic-testing/

The good folks who run large tests on FM to find the 'best' tactics do so on normalized leagues. That is, all teams are equally as strong. This means you can isolate the impact of tactics and tactical instructions as well as attributes on equally strong teams.

What happens when you apply these findings to a real game situation (that is, teams aren't equally strong)? Turns out: The effects of 'meta' tactics largely disappear!

Their interpretation is: Player strength matters a lot more than tactics. I mean... that's not surpriging. But I want to say that is not the full story. The natural interpretation for me is that the whole talk of 'meta' tactics, and downloadable game-breaking tactics, should be seen for what it is: Game-breaking behaviour doesn't work the way you think it does. Game-breaking tactics don't rescue your recently promoted team from relegation. Good teams are good and bad teams are bad, and middling teams get hit by variance.

The actually interesting question is whether anythign the player does in the real game impacts the variance. Personally and of course anecdotally, I do think my finely honed tactics have an impact. Deciding to play my all-round fine striker as a DLF rather than a AF does seem to impact the match engine and the highlights I see, and I'm led to believe even the outcome, no? In other words, does my finely honed tactics optimally using the skills of my players matter? Does it matter that my high workrate high aggression midfielder plays as a BWM or a B2B? Unfortunately, no one has tested this so far.

The other thing that one has to wonder is whether these tests measure anything we do in the game. Isurely wouldn't use either tactics tested with a bottom of the league team! Too complicated, and you're opening yourself up to counters. I wish they tested very differently.

In the end, these "real life testing" results from FM Arena do appear to kind of disprove their mindset of 'meta' tactics. The supposedly huge impact of some and neglicible impact of other instructions largely appears to not happen in 'normal' play.

This shouldn't be hugely surprising. Player quality matter. Probably being able to well fit the tactics to your players also matters. Being able to critically think and choose a good play style matters too, I contend. Do I wish the match engine was better? Yes! I wish we were able to try out new stuff even at the highest level fo the game - it's currentyl almost impossible to do an Athletic Madrid and do really good with a counterattacking tactics. That's bad and I wish it was better.

In the end, my takeaway here is that, to me, FM is a story generator rather than a perfect simulation where I can be literally Pep. And that's fine (even though I wished the engine was better). I find players that want to play for me, I try and form them into a cohesive tactical unit, and I enjoy what happens. I recommend people do that too.

P.S.: I do not want to dunk on FM Arena and other testers. They found their hobby, and that's great! I do think and hope they have a lot of fun and enjoy it. But those who come here and say "instruction X doesn't matter, FM Arena tested it!" should take these things into account before they give such advice. And I do wish the tactics testers would test a bit more of how the game is actually played rather than trying to isolate stuff. For example, I'd be super interested in what they find for actual lower-league play.