QUESTION TIME: HAVE YOUR SAY

Hi folks, when I left you last time we were just coming out of the winter break on a run of draws, edging our way closer to my survival target of 36 points from 34 matches.

Two defensive mistakes at the left fullback position saw that run end in a 1-2 defeat at home to Hoffenheim, and resulted in me tightening things up by switching that position to a FB-D Role and Duty combination. It could have just been a case of a player (Bijker, on this occasion) having a bad day, but as my plan was already to try and develop a more solid defence it seemed the way to go.

At Augsburg we went in at half-time with a 2-0 lead, which I thought we were going to throw away when they scored early in the second half, but Jimmy Marton’s first goal of the season – combined with some good defensive play – saw us finish with the two-goal cushion restored.

A narrow win at home to Frankfurt buoyed our spirits for the trip to Munich, where a brave showing saw us concede only twice in a fairly one-sided affair. With ten to play, and 30 points on the board, I revised our target to 40 – more than enough to survive in either of the previous two Bundesliga seasons during the save.

Thanks to some patient play, and more good defending, we notched three wins and three clean sheets to take us to 39 points – adding the 40th with an excellent 1-1 draw at Leverkusen. With six to play we were as good as safe...

...and when Stuttgart lost on the Saturday, the day before we played host to Schalke, survival was guaranteed. We took the shine off it a little, slipping to our first defeat in five games, but the job was done and my mind was already turning to the squad.

For all of the tactical tweaking that I’ve been trying to apply, the simple fact of the matter is that we’re thin on the ground in terms of Bundesliga quality. Much of our season has been reliant on a core of around 13 regular players, plus a couple of others who are almost guaranteed an appearance from the bench each week.

Ignoring those out on loan our Senior roster comprises 20 names, and as I look at it now seven of those have made less than 10 starts – and six of those have appeared less than 15 times in total, including substitutions. We’re severely short of depth, and with the expectation that five or six players will depart in summer that’s only going to get worse. An added problem is that we only currently have two functional wide players to adopt the Inside Forward positions, both of whom have contracts that expire this year, and neither of whom have (so far) been willing to sign up to reasonable deals; I can’t justify giving either Torres or Mast a three or four year deal on (relatively) big money, but that’s just what both of them keep holding out for .

With all of that in mind, despite the fact that we’ve still got five to play, my focus is now entirely on squad strengthening. The issue is going to be finances because, whilst I expect the purse strings to get loosened somewhat, we’re still very small fish in a big pond. It's just a shame that agents and players don’t take much notice of that fact.

As things stand right now I’ve tweaked budgets three times this season, dropping the transfer pot to prop up salary allowances, and still I’ve only got £12,000/week to play with – that’s already more than accounted for by the one deal I’ve hopefully got in place, with an offer on the table for Henry Lansbury.

Whilst he’s not the sort of stellar player that a typical FM manager would be hunting for a top flight side, he’s solid and versatile; I can see him slotting in on either flank or in the central winger position that we’ve been operating. If there was a transfer fee involved I wouldn’t be pursuing him, but on a Bosman – when we’re going to need to do some serious work on tight budgets – he looks a decent prospect to me.

The main challenge I’m going to face will be clearing out the dead wood. I’ve got at least four players who I’d like to see gone before next season kicks in, but only one of them – Park Jung-Bin – has a deal that’s in its final year. I’m going to try and give the others some game time over the remaining weeks of the campaign, in the hope that I can get some half-decent performances out of them to increase their saleability. It could be a big gamble, and cost us some points, but without knowing what our budgets for next season will look like it feels like I might be gearing up for a very rough ride on the financial front.

TARGETING NEW FACES

Before I go any further though, I need to put some contingency plans in place rather than waiting for June or July to come around and then getting stuck looking for players. Looking at the current roster...

...and identifying those players who’ll be eligible to play in the Bundesliga at the start of next season (i.e. will be 17-years-old)...

...I ran up a very rough and ready depth-chart based on our preferred tactic, and on the assumption that I can shift the players that I want to. Black represents a 'key' first team player (in cuirrent terms, at least), blue is a decent option either as backup or someone who I’d prefer to replace; Mast and Torres are in blue due to the issues I’m having with contracts, but ultimately those are slots I’d like to upgrade in anyway. I’ve shown Lansbury on the left on the assumption that he’ll hopefully come on board .

Those names in brackets can be considered last resorts based either on age or quality.

THE SHORTLIST

As you can see it’s not the strongest looking squad in the world, in fact far from it, even some of the ‘key players’ are ones that I’d ideally replace given the freedom to do so. With that in mind I’ve been trawling my shortlist for players who might be available on the cheap – either due to contract status or just general lack of impact at their own clubs.

Davy Klaassen is transfer listen by Ajax, and his contract is up in June anyway. He looks like he’d be a good alternative to Buchel in the middle of the pitch – a similar player but more attack minded. The central midfield area is probably where we have the least issues, but having that option against a less threatening opponent might be worthwhile; Klaassen would also fit in to our narrower Counter tactic, which sacrifices wide midfielders for more bodies in the middle, although I've been playing that less and less as the season goes on.

Ultimately we need sufficient bodies to allow us to cover for injuries as well, we’ve been quite fortunate this season but losing Buchel or Norwood for a number of weeks could have crippled our survival bid. Unfortunately Klaassen is the only one on my shortlist with the combination of an expiring contract and a player who would fit into the ‘gaps’ that we have easily. He also has an agent who wants to treble his current wage and make him the highest paid player at our club. As things stand it looks like a long shot.

The next step is to look at players with sufficiently low values compared to perceived ability and/or potential. I’ll comment on them here, but for profile details you’ll need to scroll down – all will become clear.

The first name that leaps out at me there is Martin Hasek, given that the left side of our defence could use strengthening he looks like a great prospect – with the ability to fill in for Bijker, and easily outplay Kante who is our best in-house option as a backup.

The biggest challenge at the moment is probably the Inside Forward position though, especially with the contract issues hanging over Torres and Mast. Whilst I have established names like Florian Trinks on my shortlist, they’re players who would cost us a good chunk of money to even get to around the table with – never mind wage demands that would push us beyond our means. Instead I’m strongly considering taking a punt on Milan Mares, from Sparta Prague.

In terms of overall attributes he’s on a par with Torres already, apart from being a little slower and he outscores Mast in most areas – again with the exception of pace. My only concern here would be throwing a 18-year-old (as he would be by next season) in at the deep end, but should he swim rather than sink he could prove to be a fantastic acquisition.

CASTING THE NET FURTHER AFIELD - THE SCOUTING REPORTS

Realising the frustrations of trying to build a squad from my Shortlist (I have a habit of only shortlisting the top-end prospects) I then decided on another approach. Initially I began filtering the wider scouting reports based on a few key criteria. It was better, but still not a great pool to choose from.

I started in defence, filtering players based on the key attributes for a good centre-half and immediately discounting veterans like Ricardo Carvalho (37). Clearly it was going to take some widening of the net, as finding anyone who hit 14 or 15 points in all of the (9) key attributes that I’d applied was a fool’s errand, but as I gave leeway for the filter to pick out players hitting 6 or 7 good ratings I started to see some possibilities.

Unfortunately no one really stuck out as a significant upgrade over the current roster, with the possible exception of Vadim Demidov. He scores well in many of the key attributes, but his PPM of “Dives into Tackles” isn’t a favourite of mine. He’s a half-decent option, and his Resolute personality won’t hurt on the tutoring front, but he’s only really as a fallback if I find nobody else – particularly as the projected wage demands of £18k+ are on the high side for us (at least based on this season’s budgets)

Next I took a similar approach with the Inside Forward position, ignoring a player’s perceived position and instead searching all scout reports based on key attributes. Setting 13 as my benchmark (14 was producing far too few options – even when looking for just 4 or 5 of the 11 key attributes), I hit some interesting options.

Lukas Van Eenoo’s biggest ‘miss’ on the key attributes is his Crossing, and really that’s the one that I’m least concerned with. If I could get him running the right flank, and cutting inside onto his left foot, then he looks like he could do a job for us. He needs to work on his fitness levels, but in my experience that’s at the easier end of the scale to make an impact on.

Yassine El Ghanassy looks like another half-decent option out wide, although the combination of poor Long Shots and low Teamwork suggest that he might be prone to occasional wastefulness – he’s not done much at any club that he’s been at so far. Probably one to avoid, but there are an awful lot of good looking numbers in there (at least for us).

It’s another exercise in frustration, as there really aren’t a lot of players jumping out from the list, but for now I’ve created a 2016 ‘targets’ shortlist of: Lansbury  and Van Eenoo, with Klaassen and Demidov as outside possibilities too.

...AND STILL FURTHER - PLAYER SEARCH

I was all set to carry on with the season at this point, and revert to my usual Summer scrabbling to fill the gaps, but then Paul Cook (@cook1e_Mr on Twitter) happened to comment on my previous update – and the failings of my defence. The conversation went from the players in question, to the wider issue of replacing them, and Paul hit on a point that some may consider a ‘blockage’ in my play style; others, however, may consider it to be the right way to play.

Since I started writing based on my saves, back in my FM Stories days, I’ve always relied on scouts and news stories to uncover transfer targets – considering this the more realistic approach. What Paul advocated is filtering the Player Search function, on the entire database, to search based on attributes and contractual status. It goes against the way that I’ve played in the past, but I guess that these days real life managers are gaining access to more and more sources of information every year – so why not use the Search function, and then send scouts out to look more closely at targets identified that way?

Again I started at the back and, taking guidance from Paul, set filters of Contract Expiry (3 months) along with key mental attributes (Composure, Decisions, Anticipation, and Positioning) at 14. Filtering out unrealistic targets gave me 18 possibilities with all four attributes at 14 or more. Ignoring anyone over 33 took this number down to 8, and only 3 if I wanted nobody older than 30. My scouts were sent out to take a look at those three, although only one is actually listed as being able to play as a DC.

Finally I reduced the attribute match to 2 out of 4, and added another handful of players to the scouting list – all the while ignoring players like Stephane Mbia, who currently earns three times more than our highest earner.

Having done that I repeated the exercise for Inside Forwards. Once the Scout reports came back I whittled the list down by excluding any obviously poor choices and ended up with the following sets of players.

Firstly, in the attacking midfield areas, I’ve shortlisted these guys – along with Lansbury and Klaassen, as mentioned above. I have offers on the table to Lansbury and Van Eenoo at this stage; I did try to get something in place for Mares too, however his agent’s demands were simply too high and inflexible.

HAVE YOUR SAY...

At the back my shortlist is somewhat longer, and can be seen below, and I’m going to ask for some input from you guys now.

My primary requirement for narrowing down to these names was their mental attributes, with the exception of Hasek who just looks to have great potential that I can hopefully nurture. So my questions to you are, all other things being equal:

• Who would be your first choice as the ‘experienced’ defensive rock to anchor next year’s Bundesliga squad, and why?
• If you were able to sign two, who would be the next on your list? 

Note: Personality and Media Handling types have been manually added for information.

RETRAINING REQUIRED (missed that when compiling the screen shot)

RETRAINING REQUIRED

My thinking is Donk as first choice, because he seems to be pretty much the full package at the level that I’m operating in – however I have to accept that it would need to be a bank-breaking deal (on the salary front) to get him.

Cahais is probably the next best option for me, having a couple more years in him, but I’m mindful of the potential issues with him settling in. Because of that perceived gamble, the more cautious side of me is still leaning towards Vadim Demidov.

Rather than opening a poll, which would require far too many options to cover both first and second choices, I'll ask you to drop something in the comments box or, alternatively, ping me on Twitter at @flipsix3_FM