So Much For Taking It Slowly.

So much for taking it slowly. I’m sure you’ve all been there, assuming that you play Football Manager and don’t just read about it; you get on a roll and you don’t want to stop, or you hit a slump and you want to play through it – then, when you do, you get on a roll and... yada yada yada.

The next thing you know you’re feeling peckish, there’s nothing in the fridge, so you decide to pop out to the local corner shop…

Okay so maybe I’m exaggerating just a touch, but we all know what I’m getting at and that’s what happened to me (again!) as soon as we started to make a run in the early season. Last time out I covered the first seven games of the campaign, and how the tactic I created started to shape up, and from there things just kind of ran away with me.

I can largely break down the rest of the season into three chunks, along with some general notes around background information and the winter break window, so here goes..

Part 1: The Rest of the First Half of the Season

I mentioned previously that our ‘new’ shape was similar to my old 4-1-2-2-1, and that we might struggle against teams that used wide attacking fullbacks. Cue ESTAC Troyes who played just that way, we struggled for much of the first half before switching to the ‘reliable’ 4-1-4-1.... 

...at which point we webacehind and lost.

That was quickly forgotten though, as PSG came to town. An early own goal from our Keeper didn’t fill me with hope, but an equaliser from young Nacer Nadji, followed by him putting us in front in first half stoppage time, had me fist-pumping with the best of them. PSG looked bereft of ideas, with Coco tearing them apart in the Trequartista(AMCL) role, and they resorted to trying to out-muscle us. A Munch penalty put us 3-1 up, and he repeated the feat twenty minutes later as the visitors suffered the first of what would be two dismissals.

In a clear sign of how easily I get swept along with the game, I’m really not sure what went so right with that game, but the statistics alone make me very happy.

Less pleasing was the fact that Ferri, in the DLP role playing as a defensive midfielder, was still not contributing much in terms of penetration. His pass completion was significantly improved, and some longer balls were connecting, but much of his work was still very much about moving the ball around the centre circle area. It was at that point that I started to think about pushing him into the central midfield line, either as DLP-S or AP-S, but at the same time I was wary of making any massive changes to what appeared to be a good overall formation.

Behind Ferri things were much improved though, and whilst the defensive guys still tried the occasional 60-yard ball, mostly they were playing it safer.

Buoyed by the PSG result we strung together another three game unbeaten run, before coming unstuck when I played a largely second string side in the Coupe de la Ligue 3^rd round. We had plenty of chances, but a poor showing at the back – and in particular some woeful goalkeeping by Saussez – saw us mauled by visiting FC Lorient.

That knocked our confidence briefly, and a run of tough games saw us tail off a little before stringing together three good wins and a bit of payback with a 2-2 draw at Lorient in the league. Nothing’s ever quite that simple though, and we suddenly dropped form with two defeats to take us into the winter break.

(Notice two goals for Ferri vs Toulouse – adapting to playing in the MC strata)

  

The Winter Break

A quick review of finances revealed that we were losing money on a monthly wage bill of less than £250k. I guess I’ve got to accept that we’re going to struggle to attract, and hold on to, top players with that sort of constraint. It’s worth noting, however, that the Financial Fair Play summary was still predicting healthy profit by end of season, more than last season in fact, so overall the financials were not a concern; the salary pot was though.

I carried out the usual review of contracts that were due to expire (Scougall, Dembele, Mayoukou etc), and set some of them to non-renew. Scougall, in particular, had failed to impress and his perceived Potential Ability had taken a nose-dive.

Meanwhile I was working on a deal to bring in a new Keeper in summer, whose contract would be up. With Kehi definitely our best first choice, and Cognard in the wings, I decided to let go of Saussez on a mutual termination. Whilst he was a great tutor we were wasting money paying his wages, and conceding too many when he played.

Youth Development

As I was looking through the contract situation, and finding myself tempted to hold onto players based on past ‘glories’, I decided that it was time to take a proper look at our junior ranks – as a result my serious effort to focus on youth development started here. I created a ‘First XI’ squad comprising of my go-to starting line-up. Then I added in a small number of ‘key’ first team players who add depth to this when we vary our formation.

Secondly I created a similar line-up comprising the best young prospects we have in each of the same positions. For the purposes of this exercise I went with our current primary shape, but we have enough versatility that each line-up should be able to adapt.

There are areas in the U19s where I have a serious surplus of talent of course, and whilst some of the younger prospects would be left ‘just’ plying their trade here, I also carried out a major review of loan players to try and get some competitive action for those with the ‘strongest’ personalities.

Finally I expanded from 24 to 29 by including either other strong youth prospects, or current first teamers who occupy a position with less strong options in the youth ranks. Those names will remain in contention, but only until their deals run out, and they will be in competition with the ‘preferred’ youngsters for a spot. I mostly tried to ‘sideline’ anyone whose contract is up in the summer, and for who an extension is unlikely.

Here’s  a ‘squad depth’ chart showing my First XI (Blue), other Key players (Black), Youngtsers (Red) and the other contenders for places (Grey)

Guy Bertrand, at 15, wouldn’t be getting many appearances but with a lot of seriously big teams starting to sniff around I wanted him to know that he features in our plans, if I could find a start or two for him then all the better. 

That exercise was quite revealing in terms of some of the players I’ve brought in (often at a decent price), partly that’s down to us still predominantly operating with a lone striker, which in turn has been a product of our extremely strong attacking midfield lineup. It’s also interesting in terms of some of the youngsters who look good but are probably going to struggle to ever break through.

It felt like it was important to take this approach during the second of the season, if I want to seriously develop my youth. It’s all too easy to fall back on the ‘usual suspects’ from the bench. Bira Dembele is a good example, a solid player who had been edged out since the arrival of Jorgenson and the retraining of Amofa; whilst he could still do a job the reality of the situation is that he’s not going to be here beyond the summer, so there was little point constantly preferring him over some of our youngsters who have the scope to be better than him.

That being said, Amofa is something of an exception. He’ll definitely retain at least a Rotation role (on paper, if nothing else) for as long as he can be a worthwhile factor in the squad; his Resolute personality is something I need to imprint on a couple of youngsters. He would get enough game time to keep him happy, but there was a suggestion that he’s going to be angling for an improved contract deal – a proper balancing act is required there.

So that was my senior ‘squad’ going into the second half of the campaign, although that’s obviously a big number to manage. In reality most of the youngsters would continue to play for the U19s on a fairly regular basis, however I find that having them in the senior squad encourages me to include them on the match-day team-sheet more frequently.

Wheeling and Dealing 

Predictably the attempt to bring in my future Goalkeeper target failed, for some reason the player involved decided that he’d rather sign a new deal to stay at Ajax and see how things develop there. Some people, no sense of adventure! With Saussez departed I finalised a deal for Georgiy Buschan on a free.

Not the outstanding talent that I’d been hoping for, but he’s someone who would push Kehi for starts and in the longer term give us a good option against Cognard. As a short term (18 month) deal I was happy that, should he not settle (or should he stagnate, as others have – I’m looking at you Mr Scougall), we weren’t going to be stuck with him for years.

The second half of the season starts

The French Cup gave some youngsters a good chance, and a solid win saw us through, but drawing PSG next time out wasn’t what we wanted. Our priority remained the league of course, and with 34 points already in the bag we were looking at a similar situation to last year – where we could play without any real fear and try to impose ourselves on the top half of the table once again.

Feeling like everything was sorted and settled for the rest of our season, transfer deadline day came around and threw me back into disarray. Suddenly Ajax transfer listed the Keeper I’d been after, literally two weeks after giving him a new deal. Now I was left with the choice of forgetting about him and probably losing any hope of signing him in the future, or potentially overloading our ranks. The problem being that he looks to have the makings of a world class keeper, and I really didn’t think we could pass up the opportunity.

Of course deadline day is never a good time to try and do a deal from scratch, particularly when you also have a match, and despite Ajax agreeing a fee we couldn’t get around the table to talk contracts. That left me pondering whether to make a move for him to come over in the summer, which will mean displacing at least one of our current crop – but at least it would give me time to manage that.

Part 2 : Turning Coco into Silva

Nope, not the world’s most ambitious and flawed attempt at alchemy, but rather a significant rethink on how to utilise our key provider. It was early in the second half of the season that a Twitter retweet sent me here to a really interesting article by @JLAspey a.k.a Jonathon Aspey.

Head on over there for a read, it's a really good piece and I'd rather the author get the 'hits' for it than me regurgitating the detail. It seems that it’s always possible to learn new concepts around the FM match engine and, much like the revelations about defending corners that I picked up last time out, this one was a real eye opener.

By default, like most I imagine, I’ve come to think about the formation in the Tactics Creator as being the defensive shape of a team; the combination of Roles, Duties, and Instructions creating the attacking movement. What's outlined in the above article is a way to do exactly the opposite, and I was intrigued as our left flank is one that very much reflects what he was trying to achieve. With Munch marauding from the back, Coco is more suited to sitting a little narrower and playing a creative role. The difficulty is that Munch can’t cover both a winger and an opposing fullback – Coco’s in-field position means that his pretty impressive defensive traits (Mark: 13, Tackle: 13, Pos: 12) can be somewhat wasted. 

He’s constantly been our best provider of key passes, albeit that his Assist count is low. To reference Mr Aspey again, I believe that he’s often being the “player who assists the assister”, so I figured that I should look to focus more around that, making him more inclined towards the playmaker role whilst also utilising his combative side. I made the tweak to the AMCL slot as we played into January, I also figured that in the longer term we could potentially look to form a double-pivot, with Ferri sitting deeper in the MC slot once he becomes comfortable there.

A four game unbeaten league run took us up to the PSG Cup tie, and a hard fought defeat. We bounced back against Evian and then hit a woeful run of form, losing three on the bounce but somehow still holding on to 4^th place. A roller-coaster couple of weeks (three wins, scoring 4 in two of them, and two defeats) took us into the stretch, and my final change of approach.

More will be said about the new AP role for Coco in the new season, and I'll likely post some stuff into that thread at The Dugout, suffice to say that for now Coco was doing a decent job whilst adapting to his new instructions. 

Part 3: The (Inevitable?) Move Towards Two Strikers

As has so often been the case, even when the odd result suggests otherwise, I found that our lack of threat up front could be frustrating and even game changing. Against evenly matched opponents we rarely had real problems, but strong defences found it easy to cope with our limited attacking options, and realistically most of the teams in the division (on paper, at least) had strong defences compared to us. In the comparative view, on the pre-match scout reports, it was not unusual to see almost every opposing position rated as four or five stars compared to our players.

With the exception of our first top-flight season, Spring has seen me adopting a two-striker formation of some sort and this was time out was no exception. The DM role was dropped in favour of a second man up front, usually comprising an AF-A and False 9 combo; both Nadji and Windekilde seeming quite suited to the latter role, dropping deep and wide to pull their markers out of position.  

Essentially we were playing as a 4-4-2 then, albeit with Coco in that more central position on the tactical whiteboard. I tightened things up a bit by effectively making two very definite ‘blocks’, one focused on defensive duties (DC x2, DR, and a central midfielder), the other on attack (WBL, AMCL, AMR and two strikers). The last man, a Box-to-Box midfielder, was the main link-up between the two groups.

With that shape in place for the final five games of the season we went unbeaten, three home wins and two away draws and what looked like a nailed on 5^th place. I say ‘looked like’ as I was entirely focused on the last match, at home to Bastia who were within touching distance (goal difference excepted); so focused, in fact, that I wasn’t looking upwards in the table. While we were securing the points to keep us clear of our visitors, AS Monaco were taking a beating at Metz – in the process of securing 10^th place for themselves, our local rivals had gifted us 4^th spot and a place in the group stages of the Europe League!

(Monaco’s poor form would ultimately see Benrd Schuster sacked in the summer)

Well that will have to do for now, I need to go away and start looking at how our squad will shape up for Europe. I’d love to go out and buy, but there are requirements around Home Grown players that take precedence – not to mention finances still being on the tight side.

I’ll be back soon with the latest closed-season shenanigans, and a *cough* promise *cough* that I will take next season slower with a more detailed look at the evolution of our tactical approach – which I expect to be a two-striker affair from the get-go.

As usual please feel free to offer any feedback, or ask any questions, via the Comments box or on Twitter @flipsix3_FM. I'm always happy to discuss anything, and offer any further information that folks might find interesting and/or useful.