I think a free chain or two might help, but I think I also favour giving the first feat(s) from multiple chains instead. And shortening some chains in the first place. If you give a Fighter, say, Power Attack, Leap Attack, Imp Bull Rush and Shock Trooper for free, he'll make a great charger - but then he'll probably spend his regular feats on more charging feats, because that's his one good tactic. If you gave him Imp Trip, Imp Disarm, Imp Grapple, Imp Unarmed Strike and Imp Overrun, he'd be (slightly) resistant to losing his weapon and have 3-4 different viable options on top of his regular attacks. This might not be all that strong (indeed, he could do this anyway but it's better to focus his feats) but most crucially it would give him options; he still has his regular feats to become very good at one thing, and you can always buff him in other ways too (I wouldn't actually give him all of those by default but maybe a selection from a list or something).
Giving him more than one chain would be an alternative I suppose. Or hell, take a leaf from the "F&K Tomes" (a bunch of stupid overkill homebrew ) which has each combat feat automatically progress through a whole chain; it's not all that different an idea. You could pick a chain every so many levels, and each time also get the next step in the previous chain(s).
By the way, "Goad" is already a feat. A Fighter bonus feat, IIRC (though I may be wrong).
Giving him more than one chain would be an alternative I suppose. Or hell, take a leaf from the "F&K Tomes" (a bunch of stupid overkill homebrew ) which has each combat feat automatically progress through a whole chain; it's not all that different an idea. You could pick a chain every so many levels, and each time also get the next step in the previous chain(s).
By the way, "Goad" is already a feat. A Fighter bonus feat, IIRC (though I may be wrong).