Onwards and... well, not upwards unfortunately.

Frustrations and Patience 

or ‘How not to give up and start a new save just because you’re not tearing up the leagues’.

First let me qualify that title by stating that I’ve never been one to crave success to the point where I just keep flitting between different top teams, but in the past I have had a history of starting various saves that only lasted for a season or two. That wasn’t due to performance, but was more down to my writing on the Stories Forum over at SI Games – and the fact that my imagination and ideas ran far faster than my ability to keep up with them. I used to have at least two saves running at all times, sometimes as many as four, and it wasn’t unusual for at least a couple of them to be very short-lived.

In terms of career games I actually prefer something of a slow-burn to start, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally suffer from itchy feet when things get into a rut. Towards the end of the 2014/15 season I found myself beginning to think that way at times, but more on that later.

WHEELING AND DEALING

Two factors dictated the deals made in December, firstly the concern that we were effectively operating with just two first-team strikers, and secondly the fact that one of them (David Ledy) refused my continued attempts to extend his contract and signed a deal for a summer move to Angers SCO. Even ignoring the potential for injuries, it made no sense to just keep plugging away with David and wait until summer to bring replacements in, so with that in mind I picked out the following players from my scouts’ reports.

Mustafi looked to be a huge (literally) presence in the area, and a great Target Man option, and Depoitre showed similar stature along with the PPM of ‘Plays with back to goal’ – something that ought to be great for bringing other players into the attack.

After the results I saw on bringing Perrin into the starting line-up, at the same point last season, I’m sold on the idea of at least one big striker. With this pair I get the option to play two, one alone, or play Ledy or Perrin off one of them.  Better still, both were without clubs and joined on free transfers.

The only departure was one of our strong academy prospects, who was lured away by AS Monaco. It brought us £575k in compensation though, and a further potential income as and when he starts to play first team games. The fact that the fans didn’t react badly, quite the opposite in fact, was a relief.

As far as I was concerned the two new signings would be all I needed to take us through to the end of the season, albeit that I would be scouting for particular players the whole time; come summer I expect to be letting go of four players whose contracts are up, three of whom have been first team regulars.

THE POST CHRISTMAS BLUES

We squeezed one friendly in to the winter break, giving some local nobodies a good pasting to boost our morale, and then we were back in action. Unfortunately things didn’t carry on where we’d left off – or rather they did, but only in terms of the last couple of games before the break.

It took us four games back to notch a win, getting knocked out of the French Cup in the meantime – although I was happy to ‘Concentrate on the League™’ by then. To be fair things weren’t horrible, we were generally taking points at home and losing away. 

For a team that was originally charged with avoiding relegation that’s not a bad place to be, but after the first half to the season it was frustrating. The main concern was the lack of consistency, and the fact that (in most cases) we were back to sneaking wins by the odd goal. It was around March that I started to get that ‘itchy feet’ syndrome, and the feeling that I just wanted the season to be over; I could’ve holidayed the rest of the season but I stuck it out.

As you’ll see we were all over the place in terms of results, but our league position was actually pretty stable. When I was finding things most disheartening I had to keep reminding myself of that, and that we were predicted as relegation fodder with little or no expectation for results as good as we got. 

It’s all well and good seeing the stream of #FM14 spam on Twitter proclaiming that ‘LeetJonny1998 has led his Liverpool team on an amazing 174,234 game unbeaten run’ but frankly I don’t buy it; in the 30's or 40's maybe, Arsenal did it after all, but I've seen some suggesting 3 or 4 calendar years of not losing a single match. 

There’s either frequent use of the reload feature going on there, some ridiculous exploitation of the match engine, or a massively edited save file. That or they’re playing FM Handheld, where it often seems nigh-on impossible to lose with a half-decent side. 

All sweeping generalisations, I know, and I have huge respect for those players who achieve something like that whilst displaying sound footballing knowledge, but I remain convinced that the majority are ‘cheating’ their way through. I’m a golfer and, like golf, cheating at Football Manager is only cheating yourself so why bother?

Anyway, I digress, what I was getting at is that we weren’t expected to do achieve anything like that sort of performance, and I would’ve got bored if we had at this early stage in my career. That didn’t mean that I wasn’t fist-pumping with the best of them when we did turn in a result, but frankly it didn’t happen that often.

When it did, the most important thing was to understand why. Again I’m looking at this in retrospect, as I was just trying to blast through the season, but I want to take a few minutes to run through one of the games from the second part of the season and see what I can pick up.

CASE IN POINT – WHAT WENT SO RIGHT (or WRONG)?

Well the most obvious anomaly in that little lot has to be the visit of GFC Ajaccio, where we ran out 5-1 winners. Despite an up-and-down run our league position hadn’t shifted by more than a couple of places in either direction, but even so this game came as something of a surprise.

I'd stated that I hadn't wanted to play ultra-defensively, but having stepped up a division I had frequently opted for the lone striker. Recent results had led me to rethink that, for home games against weaker opposition at least. A couple of games earlier, against Auxerre, I’d been frustrated by the lack of penetration and, once again, switched to two up front at the break. Whilst the record books show a goal in each half, we were much better in the second – it was an echo from the decision that I took last season after the winter break.

Here’s how the two sides lined up.

Facing Ajaccio’s 4-2-2-2 I was happy that our back line should cope with their attacking players, albeit that Sabo likes to get forward. With Laoudihi also acting as an attacking presence our central trio ought to still be able to match up to their pairing, and our strike partnership should be good for a chance or three. I instructed the guys to play wider, in an effort to stretch their central midfielders, but otherwise didn’t do a lot by way of tweaking.

From the kick-off Ajaccio pushed up, and we got an early indication of how things might take shape. I’m happy with the back line and whilst their wide-right guy is in behind, two of our midfield trio are in a position to intercept anything but a clinical pass. More importantly, if we do turn the ball over at this point I have Laoudihi (circled) in tons of space, and whilst one of their fullbacks has pushed up, the rest of their defence is sitting off my strikers. 

Under pressure from our midfield, Rousseau eventually plays a hospital ball of a back-pass to their DL, leaving Perrin with the easiest of interceptions.

From there it’s a quick ball to Mustafi, and a charge upfield by three blue shirts, but unfortunately the attempt to find Laoudihi - with a long ball out to the wing - just goes to touch. Reasonably positive stuff though, and quickly followed by our first goal – a penalty, but coming from a attacking good move.

1-0

I’m pleased with our shape here, and our stretching of play to the flanks – whilst not creating any overloads  – has put us in good position to capitalise on any well-delivered cross. They’re something of a rarity, but on this occasion Sabo has followed his instructions to favour crossing from deep. Perrin looked to get on the end of the ball, but a raised hand from their DC gifted us the spot-kick.

  

I would’ve preferred at least one of my midfield trio to be further forward at this point, so for the future I’ll need to think about switching up their roles. On this occasion they were; BWM-D (Oliveira), BBM-S (Coco) and AP-A (Sichi). Going forward, into the ‘15/’16 season, I’m finding myself more inclined to favour a CM-A role in there somewhere.

Five minutes later we’re two up. Again it starts on the left, but this time a quick switch of play stretches the visitors and Laoudihi is crossing in from our right. We get another bit of assistance from their defence (bad day for François!), not to mention the keeper, and in around 14 seconds we go from goal-kick to goal.

2-0

What I like here is the switch of play, with Sabo on the ball their entire team is focused on their right flank and Laoudihi is in a ton of space again. Three passes, not particularly rapid-fire but quick enough, and the winger is off and running whilst the defence tries to shift across. I’m aware of a trainable PPM to ‘switch ball to the opposite flank’ and it’s something I want to make use of, probably once I’m at a higher level with players capable of picking such balls out with a degree of accuracy.

Again I would’ve preferred Coco, or one of the other midfield men, to be running at the defence here but it’s just the strikers. Realistically we had no right to score, both men are double-marked, but hilarity ensues and we’re looking very good. At the end of the day you’ve got to force them to make errors like that, so I’ll take them when they do.

Three nil comes from a regulation cross and header, Perrin rising at the back post to put his name on the match ball, before we slip up and give them a glimmer of hope.

3-1

A throw-in deep in our territory sees everyone back, yet when the cross comes in – after an exchange of two or three short passes – not one of the THREE defensive players in the immediate vicinity puts in a challenge. They leave it to the Keeper to try and make a rushing block. I’m not sure what I could’ve done here, I really just put that down to poor decision making, but it does raise one interesting point that has been bugging me.

Question - Defensive Roles 101

The three players standing around are a DC-L, the DL and the BWM. Had our other DC-R been somewhere central then he might have got a head on the cross – instead he was elsewhere, having initially gone across to double up on one of their wide men. 

I see this happen a lot on FM14, especially when opposition wingers make runs down the flank. It’s less of a concern when a midfielder drops back, but it does have the tendency to leave a striker/attacking player in an element of space. My gut reaction is that my DCs ought to be holding their position in the middle, particularly when facing two strikers, and they should leave the Fullback to cover the wide man where possible. Is this doubling-up expected behaviour? If not, what can I do about it in the FM tactics creator?

Our fourth and fifth don’t need a lot of analysis. Sichi is lurking on the edge of the area when they ‘clear’ our corner, and a precise driven shot finds the bottom corner; minutes later he smashes home a direct free-kick to finish the job. Voila, three points and the biggest league win we’ve had since promotion.

There’s something else to be aware of, in terms of tweaks that I made. Here’s the heat map, you’ll notice that Stanislas Oliveira (#9) spent a lot of time deep, I actually shifted him into the DM strata after we went 2-0 up very early on, placing him at DM-LC to provide cover for Sabo (#3) with defensive duties – whilst Sabo tracks back well it’s becoming increasingly evident to me that he doesn’t always put a lot of tackles in.

I guess that the logical thing to do here might be to employ a more defensively-minded DL, and push Sabo onto the left of the midfield line, effectively giving me a 4-4-2. I do like the BWM-D in that deep area though, particularly for tougher games, as it's not just the left that he normally covers. One to ponder for next season.  

Now, here’s a ‘Tackle Map’ for the game.

It’s fairly self evident here that Ajaccio sent pretty much everything down our left flank – perhaps not surprising as our formation leaves that more open than our right. Add in Sabo’s habitual rampages and we’re inviting them in, but that's something that is factored into my approach. In fact it's something that I feel like we can leverage; Oliveira dropped into the DM-C slot, as an aggressively closing BWM-D, obviously does the job defensively.

Conversely I’m not seeing us fight for the ball in enemy territory much. The obvious options are defensive wingers (Sabo can do that on the left, and one of our right fullbacks could do the same on the other side). That does impact on our creative outlets though, I don’t feel that Laoudihi is suited to a more combative role but it might be worth a try. I could also look at making my strike partnership a combination of Target Man and Defensive forward.

Any other suggestions here? Ramp up tackling/closing down on my BBM-S maybe? In the past I would maybe resort to a combination of shouts, Hassle Opponents and Get Stuck In, but I understand that the former actually (now) switches to Man Marking? If that’s the case then I’m not keen to do it unless our shape matches up to theirs pretty well. In situations like this, where I’ve got some asymmetric elements, I’m keen to try and keep our shape in tact.

As with pretty much everything else that I’m discussing, I’m also aware that the quality of our players isn’t the highest. Maybe, once we pick up better levels of Determination, Work Rate, and Stamina, I’ll start to see more of a ‘combative’ front line and adopt the much lauded 'High Pressing Game'.

Shots remain a mixture of long and short-range, although overall I feel like 6 on target from 13 isn’t horrible given our quality.

Here’s where I would welcome any input though, does anything jump out at you from these stats?

This is where I tend to go a bit snowblind, and I really struggle to get a great deal out of these. Any input anyone has would be greatly appreciated. I’m happy to provide any more data or images that might assist here.

There is one thing I immediately see, of course, and that’s Crossing. Despite decent aerial ability in the box, my Target Man may as well be 5'2" tall as far as I can see. This is leading me to believe that I should dispense with wide threats and try more to get everything played through the middle.

I know that the conversion rate in real life isn’t huge, but it still feels like we’re wasting time here. The other thing that I wonder is whether the lack of a winger cutting in from the opposite flank (when crossing from the right) isn’t helping? 

It seems strange to be picking up on crossing after this game, where we scored from one and won a penalty from another, but it’s becoming something of a pattern in the games I’m seeing.

Anyway, with the season played out I’m trying to get to a point where I’m playing a bit more slowly so I can do some deeper analysis of games in time to discuss them, learn from that discussion, and implement changes (fairly) quickly. I'm comfortable with my ability to look at a single move and take something away from them, at least where we're on the ball, but I now need to start looking more towards: 

• The longer build-up to attacking moves (not just to goals we did score).
• Better analysis of defensive issues. 
• General play, and particularly transitions. 

With that in mind I’m planning to update on the closed season in my next post (or two) and then progress to more detailed looks at games/developments as they happen. 

As ever you can catch up with me on Twitter at @flipsix3_FM or drop me something in the Comments box (I believe that I've fixed the issues I was having there, albeit that it'll now open a separate screen - not ideal)