Building for Consolidation

RECAP: WHAT HAVE I LEARNED

So far, probably not a lot when it comes to actual execution in the game. Many of the threads and articles that I’ve read have made a lot of sense to me, however it’s going to take more work before I can reliably watch the match engine and get a feel for what’s going right or wrong.

Furthermore I know that I’m not in a great position to be making major changes and seeing their impacts immediately. Our players are semi-professional, training on a part-time basis, and our coaching team is minimal. Promotion should see inroads made on both of those fronts though.

All that being said, there were definite forward steps made in my first season, especially around learning to think more about the players' roles and what I expect them to do as opposed to formations and leaving the game to it.

Key points have been:

• To spend more time looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the whole playing squad, and to consider how two players in the same slot might be better suited by playing very different roles.
• Don’t just work on the assumption that every player up front is a source of goals, or that players sitting deeper aren’t.
• At lower levels, a good Target Man is worth his place in the squad even at the expense of a ‘key’ player elsewhere.
• Tactics: Train them in pre-match prep, not general training. Doh!

In all honesty that’s not a lot of great insight, but these things will all start to add up over time; I’m hopeful that moving into the professional leagues will see a good step forward as we pick up some quality players, and that I’ll make progress too – particularly starting to look at a reactive approach, and better analysing the raft of data that FM offers. With that in mind, time to take a look at the closed season.

THE SQUAD and FORMATIONS.

With promotion secured, the priority now is an overhaul of the squad – particularly as there have been some tough negotiations on contracts.

Here’s the roster fairly early into the summer, I’ve sorted by Potential Ability to give some idea about the future development of the squads; I know that this makes it tough to immediately identify squad depth, normally I sort by Position when I’m playing, but this raises some interesting points. You’ll notice that Noro and Lienard are missing from the list – neither wanted to talk turkey, and in all honesty neither looked good enough to cut it in Ligue 2.

I expect others to follow. Genghini isn’t prepared to talk at the moment, despite the fact that I’d like to keep him, and the others who you can see with a 2014 expiry will all be released. On the plus side, given that we have ‘Great’ youth facilities, I’m hoping that this year’s influx will come through assuming I can add some much needed depth to the coaching staff. You can see that there are a handful of very promising youngsters at the club.

In an ideal world I’d like to lose anyone with less than 3* (yellow) potential, but I feel like I need to keep the four first team regulars at least; Gauclin, Golliard, Donzelot and Sichi. At ‘Fairly Professional’ Gauclin should be a good tutor for our crop of young keepers, one of whom is already attracting attention from the big boys.

I moved quickly to bring in Bira Dembele on a free, as he popped up as a Scout recommendation. He needs to develop his tackling, but otherwise he looks an excellent successor to (replacement for) Sikimic or Golliard in due course.

What I need to do now is look at the rest of the squad and start to think about next season’s tactical options. I’ve managed to sign Sabo up for another year, which means I can stick with the rampaging left wingback option – or use him as an out-and-out winger. Donzelot and Ndema look a little light on quality for the right side though, so first on my initial ‘long list’ is a right fullback, or perhaps a DR(C?) if I want to look at an offset back line. Ianis Schmidt will be a good option one day, but not just yet, at 15 years old.

We’re okay (although only ‘okay’) on central defenders, and have plenty of choice in the DM area. Our lack of depth and quality will mostly show in the wide midfield and AM areas, and significant injuries up front would also be a problem. I’ll keep plugging away at Genghini to sign up, and Sichi will continue to figure, but I would expect the most transfer activity to come in these areas.

Up front I need Ledy to come good, after he tailed off in the latter half of the season, and Perrin will need to work hard.

I’ve got my eye on this guy as a potential for the AMR slot, but playing more as a wide Advanced Playmaker. He’d either need to sit ahead of a central three, and/or have a right-sided answer to Sabo bombing past him.

What I should also do is take a look through the players who have been released by the top teams, once we hit June 30^th - I know that a lot of players advocate realism and sticking to Scout reports, and I do that for the most part, but I don’t think it unrealistic that a manager in France would know about higher profile players who’ve been released in the same domestic leagues.

First things first though, I need to decide whether I’m working with the same sort of formation or not.

It feels like a good start point to me, without too much shuffling I can bring the middle line across to give 3 MCs, or a widely spread 3 with wingers (defensive?). I can push the fullbacks up to give me a 2-3-x-x to combat the 4-2-3-1, or the Anchor Man into the middle strata and push the AMR forwards.

Finally, depending on the players I can find, it can also shift relatively easily to the 4-1-2-2-1 that I’ve been using when defending a lead late on -  where Ledy is replaced by an inside forward on the left flank. That does mean finding supply lines for a lone striker again though, so the wide players in the AM roles are going to have to spend less time out on the touchlines.

It’s what’s served me reasonably well this season, and whilst next time around is all about consolidation I don’t intend to be going ultra-defensive. With that in mind then, I’m off to look at targets.

(Note: A couple of days after I started writing the summer update, and playing through some friendly games, I came across this blog post by FM Ramblings (catch him on Twitter: @FMramblings). Interesting that he was having similar thoughts on formation, and similar concerns around supply lines).

TALENT SPOTTING

Despite the fact that we’re moving up into the professional leagues, and getting a healthy dose of TV money – at least relative to our previous finances – the transfer budget I was given is not great. Given that I’m having to sign up those current players who I want to keep onto full-time contracts, I adjusted to give me more in wages and less in transfer fees. With around £325k to spend I went shopping, whilst running through the pre-season Friendlies and training.

Genghini had insisted that he wasn’t signing a new deal, and wanted to move to a bigger club*. Reluctantly I let him go, along with Steven Keller and a bunch of poorly rated backup players. At the same time I dropped Brahmia from my shortlist, instead offering trials to Sofian Hama and Bilal Laoudihi to see which would best fill Genghini’s slot.

Offensively both look like similar players, but whilst Hama has more to the defensive side of his game Laoudihi got my vote. He outstripped Hama on all physicals, and a Determination of 14 (compared to 4) was a big factor given that I expect us to be up against it for most of the season.

Laoudihi was quickly joined by Sebastien Chere,  my first club-to-club purchase. What immediately struck me here was his versatility, he’s able to slot into midfield or the AMC spots although my gut feeling is to play him as an Inside Forward at AML. 

(Ignore the injury info, I’ve taken the screen-shot  a couple of months into the season as I forgot to do it at the time).

Ultimately I added a third new option in the M/AM strata, another free transfer and another massively versatile option, in the shape of Coco – albeit that he was identified later in the summer, and wouldn’t arrive until a couple of games into the season.

Those moves left me with one fairly one-dimensional attacking midfield player (Sichi), and three more versatile options. For the most part I envisage playing a couple of those four when utilising two strikers (Wing and AM), or three with a lone striker (Wings/IFs and AM). Those three players will allow me to fill those slots in the formation, with a variety of different roles.

Donzelot continued to make noises about moving to a bigger club, despite our promotion, and my last move of the summer was a £50k deal for this man – giving me the option I’d wanted in terms of a player who could take the right of a back four, or a more central role.

His lack of aerial ability means he’s more likely to be used on the flank, but against a one-up-front formation he could do a job as the covering half of a DC pairing; a useful option as an emergency centre-back, given that we’re still having to make do with 5 subs.

*Three months into the season, I can exclusively reveal that Benjamin Genghini’s ambition to move to a bigger club has seen him join...... nobody at all. Should’ve stayed Benji, should’ve stayed.

PRE-SEASON

There’s not a lot to be said, truth be told. I adopted Cleon's approach of a bunch of games against weaker opposition, just to get morale and match fitness high as possible. At first I thought it was going to backfire, when we went 2-1 0-1 3-1 and 1-1 for the first four, but then a run of six wins that gave an aggregate scoreline of 36-1 did the trick.

They were played with an assortment of 1-striker formations, for the most part, but whilst we got great results it’s hard to know how well our tactics were contributing when the opposition were so poor. I’m tempted to look at slotting in a couple of similarly rated teams to next year’s schedule, but making sure that we finish with at least three easy games just to pick up any morale drop that we might suffer if we don’t play well.

So, without further ado, we head into a season of consolidation.