So here we were, embarking upon RC Strasbourg's first season in the top flight since the run of eleven successive defeats that saw them relegated at the end of the 2007/08 season - a record for post-war French football. Not only had the intervening time seen them drop further still, but liquidation of the club in July 2011 saw them removed from the league - later reinstated in the fifth tier.
This was our chance then, a chance to return the Alsatian side to the French elite and, hopefully, battle hard to stay there.
We played out a good set of friendly games, but before I
could make any further signings (I was still looking for another striker)
the opening day was upon us. The schedule was relatively kind to us in that we
started against fellow promoted side FC Metz, although a fierce local derby is
never an easy ride.
Sticking with our solid 4-1-4-1 formation, and a high-pace
aggressive approach, we battered them for much of the first half, grabbing a
goal around the 20 minute mark. We went on to hit the woodwork three times,
before our hosts grabbed a late goal from one of those freak incidents – a shot
from 35 yards parried by our keeper, but falling to their striker to toe-poke
home. It was difficult not to be disappointed, but a point away in
our first top-flight game wasn’t to be sniffed at.
One down, somewhere in the
38-41 range to go, and our first home game? Only Paris St-Germain and the likes
of Thiago Silva, Douglas Costa, Yohan Cabaye, and Edinson Cavani – players who,
by monetary values at least, were in an altogether different league.
PSG would go on to complete a season where they were
defeated only twice, exactly the sort of quality that I expected of them. We never
looked to be on top, unsurprisingly, and often looked like conceding, but a good display by
Saussez in goal (only one or two heart-in-mouth moments), and excellent work in
clearing our lines, saw a quick breakaway secure the points – and we came close
to a carbon-copy second late in the game.
Given that their captain, Cavani, earns almost as much as
our entire club roster, there’s no overstating how big a result that was. Two
defeats in the entire season, and one of them would be at our hands,
understandably the fans and Board were delighted. For my part I was, in equal
parts, proud but mindful that it was early in the season and we had rode our
luck somewhat.
Sure enough, following that landmark win, we hit a run of form more in keeping with what I'd expected. Two narrow defeats were followed by
five draws in which we scored a total of twice. Still, that meant that we’d
collected 9 points by the end of September, for the side predicted to
finish 20th that wasn’t a horrible haul. If we could maintain that
sort of average then 36 points would put us close to survival – and I was
confident that we would find more wins somewhere in the schedule.
During that tough period we also added to faces to the
squad. First on board, a free signing being touted around by his
agent, was Gael Givet. I have a soft spot for the Frenchman, both from his
performances for Rovers in real life, and for my Rovers save in FM2012 where he
was an immense presence.
Gael was brought in purely as a backup, and realistically only as a tutor. Low wages, plus a hefty appearance fee, for an experienced and versatile – and, more importantly, Resolute – defender. It was an easy decision at the time, but unfortunately it was ultimately a poor one with him being released in the winter after he made just one appearance. We did get one tutoring session out of him, but not enough to really justify his wages, and he was starting to make noises about a lack of first team action.
Ignore the club, this was taken after he left us.
On a brighter note, after several days of to-and-fro we managed
to secure a deal for Amido Balde from Celtic – completing our small Scottish-ish
contingent – OK, so only Scougall is an actual Scot, but like Balde we also got
Irvine from the Glasgow side.
Technically he didn’t look a lot different to our other
options, but his physical stats are the difference for me, certainly compared
to Mustafi. Feeling like progress was being made, despite being in the
middle of that run of five draws, any such optimism was soon knocked out of me.
Balde arrived just in time for Depoitre to crock himself for a month.
The ‘traditional’ injury crisis followed with five players
carried off in four matches. First was Scougall, and his injury absences would
become a running theme – that and a bout of homesickness that saw him given
leave of absence for a few weeks. Whilst the Givet deal was ultimately a waste
of cash, by late in the season I would actually find myself wishing that I
could go back and undo the Scougall move.
Next we lost Depoitre, and then both Ferri and Bauer in the
same match. The latter two were the real concern, as both were regular
starters, but remarkably – despite those absences – things started to turn a
corner.
I was getting an odd combination of news items during that
run of draws, a regular mix of ‘Strasbourg fail to win again’ and ‘Strasbourg
maintain their unbeaten run’. I took heart from the latter, and when the former
was halted we hit what would have to be considered as a massive vein of form
for a relegation fodder side. People often talk about morale, and how big an impact it has
in Footy Manager. Given the expectation for us to struggle, I suspect that the
rate of drop-off in the squad's mood was somewhat reduced - a team tipped to finish higher would doubtless have taken a mental beating from all those draws. Once we found a win though, it bounced
back pretty quickly.
Throughout the season so far we’d been regularly outplayed
in terms of possession (not a massive issue), and chances (a bigger concern). A
one-goal margin at home to Nice, Mata scoring both for us, Nilmar grabbing
their consolation late on, saw us match them on both fronts.
The difference? Up to then we’d mostly been playing with our
4-1-4-1, that saw us sitting that little bit deeper and, against opposition of
Ligue 1 quality, it was hard to engineer hitting them on the break (I
steadfastly refuse to play route one stuff, and ‘more direct passes’ is only
employed occasionally). Against Nice I restored Coco to the hole behind our
striker, in the 4-4-1-1. A seemingly minor change, but it made a lot of
difference.
Whilst I did revert back to the more ‘defensive’ shape, I was encouraged
by the Nice game and started to adopt a more attacking combination of Roles and Duties in the MC area. I was encouraged by the fact that we weren’t being battered from pillar to post, and started to
take a more adventurous approach through shouts and mentalities. Like last
season, we adopted the ‘aggressive containment’ method; a high line (narrow
where I wanted a tighter shape at the back), high tempo, and encouragement for
Laoudihi and the rapidly developing Mata to run at their men.
Some great results followed, including three away wins as we
went into the winter break on an impressive 27 point haul. The highlight, after
the PSG win, was undoubtedly the back-to-back wins over St Etienne in league
and league cup matches. Even the final pre-break clash, the return tie against
PSG, was pleasing in its own way – we lost, but scored twice on their ground in
the process, a sign of our growing confidence going forward.
It should be noted, mind you, that in that entire half
season we never won by more than a single goal. It was often nervous watching
as the clock ticked down, and we were no strangers to late equalisers. That
said, we never lost by more than two either, a real testament to our defensive
pairing (mainly Bauer and Amofa by then, although Dembele was still figuring)
and to Kehi who was quickly emerging as our best option between the sticks once
again.
THE WINTER BREAK
Based on the predictions that I’d made to Shrew Naldo, we
were already 85% of the way to the sort of points tally I’d expected for the
entire campaign. That made the break somewhat more comfortable than I’d been
preparing for, and I didn’t feel any desire to rush off to the market for
further strengthening.
I was carefully tracking our use of Joey Barton whose
performances had significantly tailed off, and who Irvine was proving to be a
more than adequate replacement for when not away on World Cup Qualifier
duties with Australia - which seemed like a monthly event. With only a handful
more games before Barton's contract extension would trigger, I was expecting to have
to have some tough conversations with him given how much time he was spending
out of the match-day squad. (Ultimately a protracted injury, towards the end of the season, would save me the pain of that particular conversation).
Financially things were looking great.
Although we kept pushing toward the upper end of the wage budget, it was still
very conservative. At the start of the season our entire salary budget for the
club was £159,000 per week. With the break from action I reviewed those players
whose contracts would end in the summer, and offered a few extensions, even
then we were still only running at £165,322 per week. Our total monthly wage
and bonus costs are around £975k, with monthly gate receipts at £466,500 and TV
revenue over £1m.
Caution was still required, but by then I’d earmarked around
£30k/wk to drop out of the base wage figure at the end of the season, and
assuming survival I would be expecting the budget to be better next season; we
were running at a monthly profit of just shy of £450k, and the Financial Fair
Play summary was projecting an overall £11.5m profit for the period.
One very pleasant factor on the balance sheet remained the
complete absence of any form of debt, on the other hand I could foresee
investment required if we want to aim to establish ourselves as a top flight
force; Undersoil Heating (none), pitch condition (OK), Corporate Facilities
(adequate), Junior Coaching (adequate), and Youth Recruitment (average) could
all benefit from investment.
Playing that game of checks and balances could all prove
crucial, I suspect that we’ve been somewhat fortunate (to say the least!) in
achieving what we have this campaign and, again, we’re going to need to look
for a step up in quality if we want to stabilise in the top flight.
I was looking to the future already, in terms of potential
summer signings, but nothing would be done at this point. Instead I was
starting the exercise of splitting my shortlist in two; players to try and help
engineer a return from Ligue 2, and players to strengthen a top flight side. I was increasingly confident that I'd be turning to the latter, but I still wasn't counting our chickens.
PART TWO, HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS...
The return to competitive action saw us play three cup games
at the start of January, and a 3-1 win against lower-league opponents saw Balde
open his account with a brace. Any thoughts that we would pick up where we left of were
quickly crushed though. First PSG knocked us out of the Coupe de la Ligue at
the quarter final stage, a 0-1 scoreline on our own ground, and then Girondins
Bordeaux – relegated to Ligue 2 last season – beating us in a penalty shoot-out
after a massively entertaining 1-1 draw in the French Cup.
We bounced back somewhat in the league, but things were
still very tight in terms of scorelines, a 1-0 win here, a 2-3 defeat there,
and a another run of draws. It was frustrating that we never dominated a
scoreline, and whilst I tried to maintain a realist’s view of our overall
performance, I was fighting the urge to tinker.
I started to play around with a 4-4-2 about two thirds of
the way through the season. 4-1-4-1 was still my default for tough/away games,
but as has been the case the past three seasons I got the feeling that I wanted
to have a more threatening strikeforce when the odds were kinder to us. Also, given our frankly incredible points haul, I felt that
we were in a good place to experiment a little. We’d hit 35 points at the 24 match
stage, and I was confident that just one or two more wins would guarantee
survival.
WAIT, WHAT?
Sometimes there comes a point in a save where I experience the conflicting emotions of “holy shit, I’m really pretty good at this, check me out”, and “holy shit, if we pull this off then I’m in for a world of pain”.
Promotion last season felt a bit like that, but when the
press started talking about our potential involvement in the race for European
qualification – about 12 games out from the end of the season – it went to a
whole new level. I can honestly say that, whilst I was following every match
keenly, once we’d hit my target points-haul for survival I really hadn’t taken
a lot of notice of league position. Of course I was still expecting a massive
slump at some point, but as I realised that we were closing in on the end of the
season, and we kept grinding out results, it dawned on me that I might
genuinely be looking at taking this squad to Europe.
At this point, with a minimal knowledge of the French game,
I found myself wondering if I’d over-estimated the strength of their top
flight. Is it more Scottish Premier League (2 or 3 top teams, the rest frankly
poor) than English Premier League?
Trying to block out the Press speculation we pressed on,
sometimes with two up front – a 4-2 win over visiting Montpellier HSC,
sometimes with the deeper midfield man – a good away win at Troyes.
With eight to play the papers were at it again, we were
looking like genuine contenders for a shot at 6th place, and the
possibility of a final Euro Cup qualifying round slot (depending on the league
standings of the top two sides in the two cup competitions). It was an unthinkable
target at the start of the campaign, I’d genuinely expected to be fighting
relegation throughout, and even if survival was no longer an issue the idea of holding on to 6th spot still felt like it was a big ask now. What our
points haul did mean, though, was absolute security. Absolute security meant nothing to
lose. Nothing to lose meant that that I could go ‘the full Keegan’ for the
remainder of the season if I wanted.
46 points in each the previous three seasons would have put
us 15th, 14th, and 15th respectively. I didn’t
think it unreasonable to aim for another 8 points, a couple of wins and a
couple of draws would see us there, and that tally has been good enough for a
top half finish in every season that I've been playing.
Admittedly that points target didn’t exactly sound like a Keegan-esque ambition, but you have to factor in that my starting XI included four African internationals – three, plus Brian Amofa who qualifies as French but plays for Ghana – and World Cup qualifiers meant that we were about to lose all of them for a week or so, and possibly Jackson Irvine too as he was called up for the Socceroos once again. That was going to make at least the next couple of games tight.
At LOSC (4th) they played the 4-1-2-2-1 that caused me trouble against attacking fullbacks last season. We adopted the ‘Exploit both Flanks’ shout, and switched our Fullbacks to Complete Wingback mode (though they remained in a flat back four in terms of defensive shape). Two goals for us, then a straight red for them, meant a comfortable position and the hosts reduced to a back three. The response was simple, aim to make hay while the sun shone. We could only add one more, but it was our first three goal margin of the season. We followed that up with a good win over FC Lorient, before Monaco brought us back to the ground with a bump as they battered us at the Stade Louis II. 70% possession, and a seemingly ceaseless assault on our goal.
With three to play we found ourselves in sixth spot still,
but only by a point from St Etienne – our next opponents. Buoyed by our double win over them in December, we set our stall out to attack
and despite going behind early on we dominated. The ball just wouldn’t go in
the net though, not until we went 4-4-2 and Depoitre turned up for what could
well be his curtain call. The point kept us above them with two to play (against the 9th
and 13th placed sides)
There was absolutely nothing to be gained by cautious play
now, so we came out swinging in game 37. Nantes did the same, trying to bully
us out of the game, but that wasn’t going to happen. They were down to 10 men
before the break, with the score at 1-1, leaving a narrow back 3 the same as
we’d faced at LOSC. We took the same approach, widening play and hitting the flanks.
Just after the break Laoudihi put us ahead for the second time, before one of
those annoying-as-hell own-goal corner routines gave the home side parity. We refused
to let up, seeing the ball cleared off the line in the 84th minute,
but we could only take a point.
St Etienne’s win dropped us to 7th place, and I was
annoyed. It was ridiculous, we were tipped for 20th and certain
relegation, and here I was annoyed that we’d given up sixth with a game to
play. Sixth!
Just to add some extra spice, game 38 was the return tie of
our local rivalry with Metz – against whom we’d started the season. There could
only be one approach to the game, and after being held to a draw at their
place, we played full-on attacking football for 90 minutes to grab a 2-0 win.
38 games, just 48 goals (only one team in the top half
scored less), but those goals were paired with the third best defence in the
league.
Read that again, the third best defence in the league! That from a team who
added no-one to their back line following promotion.
That defence meant that
our goals tally was good for fourteen wins and sixteen draws. Only the top two
sides suffered less defeats than us, and whilst they pretty much ran away with
those spots, we finished only four points off third place.
Incredible scenes, as they say.
I’ll be back soon with the end of season review, and to try and make sense of just exactly how we pulled that off. I'll also cover my plans
for next time around, from when I’ll be aiming to keep things more ‘live and up
to date’. For now, I'm off for a lie down!
No comments:
Post a Comment