FM15 Italian Hero – I went a bit mad…

So the summer transfer window has come and gone, and I’ll freely admit I went a bit bonkers, as you can see from the screenshot below. There is a reason for that though.

Towards the end of season 1, with Catanzaro looking unstoppable and the prospect of one play-off promotion spot among the twelve teams in the play-off spots across all three divisions of Serie C, I started preparing for the worst and signed a couple of midfielders who I hoped would give us a more solid foundation for controlling games. I was concerned that my loan players wouldn’t want another season of third tier football so moved early and this perhaps wasn’t the wisest course of action…

When we secured promotion, suddenly a lot more players were interested in joining Messina and with a generous wage budget available I had money to burn, and burn it I did. Amazingly, I still didn’t exceed my budget and went into the season with money still available.

However, the the greatest cost of all these signings wasn’t financial.Instead, it was in terms of tactical familiarity. As the season went on, it became clear that many of these signings weren’t really clicking and on several occasions I found that the team performed better if I picked players who had been at the club from day one even if they were inferior in terms of their attributes. As a result, many of these players (particularly those who were signed when I thought I might still be in Serie C this season) found that their spell at Messina would be short-lived.

As you can see from the fixtures, we had a decent season, with things going OK in the first few months. Then came the run of 5 defeats on the trot which forced me to abandon the 4-3-3 which had brought me so much success at Volendam and Forest.

To start with, I dropped the mentality to Defensive, simply because I was tired of my team conceding goals. This was slightly better, but it wasn’t until I turned it into a 4-1-4-1 that things really improved. I had also watched Rashidi’s Torino Diaries episode in which he talked about creating space for attackers. It was this that made me think of switching to a Complete/Advanced Forward as I felt I wasn’t getting enough goals from my strikers.

Then, with results and confidence improving, I made another bold step. Why wait to make the switch to a back three? As a result, with a little tweaking, I created this system:

Readers of the general FM blogosphere will note a strong resemblence to FM Analysis’s tactic from his Ajax save. I won’t deny that my system is heavily influenced by his shape. It was thanks to his article on defensive shape that I had the courage to play my wide players in the midfield strata rather than playing them as wing-backs.

I will go into the thinking behind the system in greater detail in another post, along with my intentions for how it should evolve in the near future.

In the end, the results improved to such an extent that we finished 7th and qualified for the end of season promotion play-offs. One of the things I’ve discovered (and like) about the Serie B play-off is that they are very flexible, and take into account the performances of the teams at the top of the table. For those of you who aren’t familiar, here’s the breakdown:

All very complicated, but that’s not all. In the play-offs themselves, they are skewed in favour of the teams who finish higher up the league. As a result, we had a one-off away match against Spezia which we needed to win. And I mean that literally – a draw wouldn’t take us to extra time and penalties, we would simply be knocked out and Spezia would progress by virtue of having been the higher-placed team. So it proved as I’m sure you’ve seen from the screenshot above.

Still, 7th place when predicted to finish 20th was very encouraging. I’m aiming for promotion next season using my fancy new 3-1-4-1-1 system, though I have doubts about certain aspects of it (but that’s for another post).

FC Volendam Season 2

With the first season ending in disappointment, I set about revamping the squad ready for the next assault on the Eerste Divisie. I had settled on the general 4-3-3/4-5-1 shape for the side, but was a little uncertain about where to take the team. On the one hand, I considered modifying the attacking approach I’d adopted so far, and turning the team into a high intensity pressing side aiming to pin opponents into their own defensive third. However, I was skeptical of my players’ physical capacity to sustain such an approach and also felt that the pace in my squad was at the wrong end of the pitch for this system. I’d be leaving acres of space behind slow centre-backs, while giving my pacy wingers nowhere to run into.

At the other extreme, I considered scrapping the attacking approach completely and going very defensive. This was inspired by Cleon’s posts on defensive football on his excellent website and by the demonstration in Chris Anderson and David Sally’s ‘The Numbers Game’ that a clean sheet is worth a lot more in terms of points than a goal. My problem with this idea though is that I’m not sure I can successfully implement a defensive approach because what I ask it to do and what I want to see on the pitch (viewing through a fan’s eyes) are not always the same thing.

In the end, I have leaned towards the defensive side of things. Part of the reasoning behind this is that I am intending to get Volendam promoted, and the gap between us and the Eredivisie sides is quite significant. Therefore, I can’t expect to be able to play a gung-ho attacking tactic and not be ruthlessly exposed at both ends of the pitch. (I doubt that Brandley Kuwas’s pace alone will be enough to ensure he prospers against more intelligent defences…) I need to set my team up to play a system that prioritises clean sheets and thus increases the value of each goal we score. I don’t want to embark on a season in the Eredivisie trying to adapt my squad and players to a new system.

The tactics

Rather than switching the mentality straight from Attacking to Defensive, I thought I would try a Standard approach, with the idea being that the team would be more cautious than with the Attacking mentality, but hopfully would not lose too much going forward. It would also allow me to defend higher up the pitch than with the defensive mentality, while also keeping some space behind the opposition for my pacier players to run into. I’m aiming for a ‘medium block’ and an energetic but not exhausting pressing scheme. For the moment, I will be leaving the roles as they are, but I have considered switching my striker to a Defensive Forward to see how that affects things. The biggest changes will come with the team instructions. Gone will be the high tempo, direct passing game. In its place will come a lower-tempo, patient, possession based approach, heavily influenced by some of my summer recruits.

The summer transfers

Having lost out in the play-offs in season one due to losing my first-choice midfield as the season took its toll on the squad, I decided that this was the key area to strengthen.

First of all, I sold Kevin Wattamaleo for €600,000. He’d been injury prone and the money was too good to turn down. I’ve decided to aim for transfer profit every summer. For those incoming, I targetted free transfers and loans to keep the expenditure down. I’ve made a point of offering one-year contracts with clauses which allow me to extend the contract without negotiating, either at the click of a button or after a certain number of games. This allows me flexibility with the squad without the risk of losing key players on free transfers at the end of a good season.

(At this juncture, I should point out that these screenshots were taken at the end of the season, which will give away something of the way the season went…)

Incoming were:

Wim De Decker, to provide experience and quality at the base of my midfield. I particularly liked his Determination, Leadership and Vision.

Sean Klaiber, on loan from FC Utrect. His all-round mental and physical stats looked good and he could tackle and pass.

Henk Bos, a winger from Groningen, brought in to provide competition for Kuwas and Ludcinio Marengo

Dion Watson from Fortuna Sittard. After losing Henk Veerman mid-season I needed more cover up front, a fact that was made more pressing when Kevin Brands declined to renew his loan contract. Guyon Phillips did extend his, and I also signed Kevin van Kippersluis as backup (a decision I regretted in the long term).

I also brought in a striker, Johan Plat who quickly revealed himself to be surplus to my requirements, along with Pete Jungschlager as cover for the creative midfield role and Bas Kuipers on loan from Ajax as competition at centre-back.

The Results – first half of the season

The season started pretty well, and I was up near the top of the table throughout the season. Defensively, things were improving as five consecutive clean sheets at the start demonstrates. Points kept coming with decent unbeaten runs but I still felt the team was lacking something so dived back into the transfer market.

The mid-season transfers

At this point I made three transfers which I think will stand the club in good stead for the future. First, I brought in an ageing Leon Osman to provide real creative quality in midfield. At 34 he isn’t one for the future and his physical attributes are in decline, but his mental and technical attributes are excellent for our level.

Then, to cover the injured Guyon Phillips, I brought in Will Keane on a free:

Another excellent player for our level, and as you can see from the screenshot, he slotted in well.

Finally, I brought in Abdoul Karim Sylla, also a striker, but rapidly retrained him as cover for Marengo on the left. Marengo had been struggling with injuries much more this season and I wanted someone with pace and finishing skills to fill in.

The Results – second half of the season

The second ‘half’ of the season was even more successful, with only two defeats and three draws in sixteen games, which left me top of the table by a point heading in to the final match, and a nervy 1-0 win brought me the Eerste Divisie title and promotion to the Eredivisie.

Objective achieved! Now to retain my Eredivisie status and hopefully establish the club as a mid-table side whilst I upgrade the infrastructure. On that note, a planned expansion to the training facilities was cancelled after I signed Osman, Keane and Sylla as I invested a large amount on their wages. I’m hoping to get enough from promotion to restart that and develop the club off the field as much as on it.

Kuwas-watch!

An even better season for the so-bad-he’s-good winger, averaging 7.26 and contributing to a higher number of goals.

Season 2: Looking back

The last update I gave was afterthe second leg against Zenit, so the Sampdoria result is the first day of the rest of the season. This is using the tweaked tactics which seemed to have picked things up nicely. However, as you can see, the form wasn’t as good in this period as in the previous dozen or so games. Once again, there is a frustrating slump in the middle of this string of results and another mini-slump towards the end, as I managed to take 1 point from games against Chievo and Cesena. What makes it more frustrating is that sandwiched between the two were a fantastic win at home to Tottenham to make it to the Europa League final and an even more impressive 6-0 thrashing of Napoli in the Coppa Italia final.

However, I finished the season off in style with a 5-2 away win at Perugia and then made up for the frustration of only finishing 3rd by beating Manchester United in the Europa League final. All in all, a pretty successful season. Of course, I’m delighted to have won two trophies, but I would be much happier if it we could have avoided a few things. Firstly, losing ground in the league. Juventus won it (again!), and I can’t bloody wait for Carlos Tevez to retire – 33 goals and 22 assists in 38 games this year. That aside, I’m not happy that we were overtaken by Inter, who finished significantly ahead of us in 2nd. Then it’s the two bad runs in the league. I know all teams have dips, but I need to be quicker to address them. Three or four games is far too slow. What makes it worse is that in both runs there were defeats to teams we should be beating easily. If I’d lost to Juve, Inter, Napoli, Lazio etc. I would be frustrated, but I could deal with it. Losing to Chievo just makes me angry.

Tactics

One of my concerns about my team was that while the wide players were scoring freely, they weren’t getting much help. For the Coppa Italia final, I made a couple of small tactical tweaks to try to address this and it seemed to work. I had noticed that despite my Counter mentality, I was often camped on the edge of the opposition area and my playmaker was getting crowded out, so I swapped Miralem Pjanic from an Advanced Playmaker (attack) to a Roaming Playmaker in the hope that this would give him more freedom to find pockets of space. I then changed Kevin Strootman’s role from a Box-to-Box midfielder to a Central Midfielder (attack), having read a lot about the Central Winger idea. This worked well with his PPMs of Gets Into Opposition Area and Gets Forward Whenever Possible.

Transfers

At the end of the season I decided to freshen up the squad a little. I’d arranged a few transfers during the season – Bryan Oviedo and Gaston Gil Romero as mentioned before – and so there were a handful I was willing to offload. I’d also arranged the signing of Andrea Belotti (and completely forgotten about it!) which was useful as Totti announced he would be retiring at the end of the coming season.

To start with, I cleared out both my ageing full-backs, despite them doing well this season. Holebas was now my third choice left-back and Torosidis was making noises about wanting to play more, so off they both went. Dodo also finaly completed his move to Inter. Then, I decided that I had too many strikers in Totti, Destro, Paloschi, Zaza and Belotti. Bear in mind that Iturbe, Ljajic, Klaassen and Depay can also play up front and it becomes immediately clear that some of these guys won’t be seeing any first-team action.

I sold Paloschi and Destro pretty quickly, and Ljajic wasn’t far behind after I noticed some interest in him. This would have left me a bit light in the wide areas had I not decided to bring in James Milner from Man City when Kevin Strootman picked up an injury on the eve of the new season. I still had cash to burn (mostly from Florenzi’s sale the previous summer, but also due to a sudden influx of prize money), so started investing in the future. Lorenzo Crisetig was signed from Inter for 10m Euros (I’m already thinking this is a bit overpriced, but he’s a good back-up for De Rossi, Romero and Nainggolan) and Bilal Ould-Chikh was bought from Twente and immediately loaned back for the season. He’s my long-term replacement for Gervinho, who Real Madrid sniff around every summer. I’d happily sell him, but they never make a bid! Finally, I loaned Marco van Ginkel from Chelsea as cover for Pjanic. I wasn’t convinced Klaassen had the creativity, and Leandro Paredes was not developing as I hoped. Finally, Tin Jedvaj returned from his loan at Leverkeusen and will be my back-up for Kostas Manolas and Matteo Darmian on the right-hand side of my back four. Centre-back is the only position that still concerns me slightly. Manolas is a good defender, but a little lacking in his mental attributes. Astori is generally pretty solid, but has had some shockers at key moments. My back-ups are Romagnoli and Jedvaj, both of whom are very good for their age, but I’m a little reluctant to make them first choice yet. I think this could be Astori’s last season and this is the one remaining area where I am willing to spend big on a first-choice player.

Going Dutch

Throughout this save I have found the Dutch league to be a good source of cheap(er) talented players. As you may have noticed, my squad now contains Strootman, Depay, Klaassen, and van Ginkel and will soon contain Ould-Chikh. I don’t know if this affinity with Dutch players had any influence, but I was offered the job as national coach, which I readily accepted. I’ve never really managed at international level before, except for a couple of brief flirtations in FMC14 which lasted no more than a couple of games before I gave up. This time, as I’m putting the news out into the public domain, I will be giving it a serious go. First off, I have to qualify for the 2018 World Cup!

The future

With the Roma squad progressing nicely – only De Rossi left to replace but Romero and Crisetig already waiting in the wings – all that is standing between me and the Roman empire I’m aiming to build are my own tactical limitations (and Carlos Tevez). So I’m starting to feel as though my work at Stadio Olimpico is close to done. Not only that, but my appointment as Netherlands manager has given me an itch for the Eredivisie. If I’m not successful this season, I may park this save and start a new, Holland-based save. If I am successful, I might stay for a couple more seasons and then quit, and go looking for a job in Holland. Either way, I think that is my next destination.