RTFM!

You know how you get used to something that always works the same way? It feels comfortable, safe almost. You understand what's going on and that brings with it a sense of order.

Of course, when that certain something suddenly stops working it brings with it a sense of extreme frustration and key bashing anger!

Which is what I've been experiencing with FM09 and the tactics editor.

Editing tactics comprises creating a basic positional picture of the formation, providing overall team instructions, and then modifying individual settings to suit particular players. To a certain extent the positional and individual elements have been independent; the former used to indicate where on the field your players will start and move when your team has possession or not, and the latter to tweak how certain players may deviate from the norm for your team tactics.

With FM09 these two are now linked a lot more closely, a change I was unaware of and didn't pick up from my cursory 3 second scan of the manual.

In previous FM versions you could add a forward or backward arrow (farrow or barrow) to a player to indicate that they may run forward when you have possession of the ball or drop back when you don't. In this version that arrow is directly linked to the "Forward Runs" setting on the individual instructions screen. Which probably makes more sense.

So don't get annoyed or frustrated when your carefully crafted tactics seem to alter themselves while you're still creating them. Like I did. Grrr.

Oh, and RTFM. :-)