Promoted Too Soon?

** WARNING ** 

This update is a bit ‘all over the place’ – as was my head for much of the period covered herein. I can only apologise.

Based on the table for the previous two Bundesliga seasons, I set myself a points target of 36 for survival, a tally that would’ve seen us stay up by a country mile last season, although would only have been enough for a relegation playoff spot in 2013/14. So, with a 34 game season, that’s a little over a point per game on average.

That was my only goal, and after three defeats in three games I wasn’t exactly full of confidence...

...particularly as we were to play host to the Hispter’s dream-team of Borussia Dortmund next.



What followed was pretty well documented on Twitter over the course of a few evenings, and whilst I could try and dig some detail out of the statistics the truth is that I wasn’t taking a whole lot of notice. I *can* tell you that in our next game, against Augsburg, a half-time change made a big difference.

Here’s the match stats at the break, with us having employed a 4-4-2 – to which our guests were apparently most vulnerable (yeah, thanks for that Herr Scout).

1-3 at the break. Our shot, and goal, were from a penalty. 

After the break I switched to our 4-3-2-1 thing, and clearly it made a significant difference. We scored the only goal of the second half, and got the closest we’d been to a point all season. Buoyed by that I stuck with the same shape, what I considered to be our most attacking, and notched our first point in a tight 1-1 at Eintracht Frankfurt.

Was this to be the beginning of something better then? Well a second-round exit from the Cup, thumped by Hertha BSC with hero-turned-villain Selçuk Alibaz drawing first blood, suggested not. At this stage, with FC Bayern due in town next, I was reaching a point where I didn’t even want to load the game up – let alone sit through ’90 minutes’ of my team running around looking like 11 men who’d never even seen a ball before.

MATCH ENGINE FRUSTRATIONS, AND HOW TO AVOID THEM.

I’m not kidding with that description, and I had a bit of a discussion with @Cleon81 about it. We initially disagreed over the likely cause, but whatever the reasons (Lack of squad cohesion? Poor morale?) I find the match engine was far from helpful in enabling me to understand the root cause of our ‘problems’.

I had a team that was largely the same as last year, bar some major strengthening in midfield, and a set of tactics that we knew well and that were very strong in the second tier. I wasn’t expecting to simply transplant them with no issues, but I also certainly wasn’t expecting:

• A completely unpressured defender watching a cross come toward him, then falling over his own feet – allowing the ball to reach their striker. 
• Midfield players running AWAY from the ball/ball carrier when set to close down more. 
• Strikers to hit shots from 30 yards out, that went out for throw ins 10 yards out. 

I’m not talking about isolated incidents either, all of those were inside 30 minutes of one match. Similar stuff seemed to be happening in every second or third highlight, and bear in mind that I play in Comprehensive mode - you can perhaps understand why my frustration was approaching the point of despair.

Anyway, all of the above is my way of ‘justifying’ my use of the Instant Result button (a handy element of the Graphics Skin that I use, is that this feature is carried over from FM Classic). You might say that I shouldn’t need to justify that, and indeed I’ve occasionally used it for minor friendlies or meaningless games in the past, but I still feel somewhat awkward about doing so.

I used it against Bayern though, and somehow my Assistant was able to guide us to a narrow 0-1 defeat. Now granted we didn’t create much, given that I’d set us up in our most attacking formation, but we also didn’t give up a lot of chances – just the two efforts on target, with Bayern spending close to 40% of the match passing the ball around midfield.

A week later, employing the same tactics and the Instant Result button, and we had our first win. Not just a win but a good one too, 3-1 away at a Werder Bremen side who we created more chances than.

Part of our success should perhaps also go down to our new acquisition, frustrated by results and casting around for ‘quick fixes’, I’d decided to upgrade in the Goalkeeper department and snapped up this chap on a free.

A significant upgrade on either of our current pair, with a long history of top-flight football with Ajax. As well as being an improvement in class, he also has a Resolute personality – handy for tutoring future generations.

Following the Werder Bremen win came another, 2-0 at home to Bochum in a game that I dared to take control of myself, and another game where we created plenty. Now it’s important to know that I didn’t really understand what had changed, I certainly hadn’t made any real tweaks although I was working on an idea for something with an even more solid base than the 4-1-4-1 that we’d actually barely employed so far. I’d just reached a point where I was picking the players for our 4-3-2-1 and hitting ‘Go’ with a vague sense of hope.

A 1-1 draw at Stuttgart (played in full) came next, but it was the new idea that had been brewing which delivered the most surprising result.

FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE

One of the trends which annoys me most in Germany is for formations with 2 defensive midfield players, the difficulty I have in breaking them down is a major source of frustration and because of that I’d begun toying with the idea of trying something similar myself. I’d started to scribble out some rough ideas on paper whilst we were going through our rough patch (understatement of the decade), but I couldn’t come up with anything I liked. Then, around the time of the Werder Bremen game, RTHerringbone Tweeted that he was thinking of working on something vaguely similar.

Ultimately he didn’t, but the ideas he put up gave me the impetus to develop my thoughts further. What I came up with was this, based on the players I had available...

The idea of wingbacks as our only wide players was something I’d mentioned as far back as the start of my Karlsruhe save, but the presence of strong Wingers/Inside Forwards has always led me to mothball any plans before now. Most of my attacking players are reasonably suited to the central areas though, and with two ahead of the Central Winger it felt like we had the potential to put a lot of pressure on the oppositions central defenders and any DMs.

Employing it as shown, in a Fluid/Counter approach, I hit Instant Result to allow my Assistant the first run at it at home to Bayer Leverkusen...

@rtherringbone So about that 5-Diamond tactic, and your love of quality over quantity stats... Counter-Fluid pic.twitter.com/Fj5Duc78BE
— flipsix3 (@flipsix3_FM) April 17, 2014

A great result, and one that took us out of the automatic relegation slots for the first time. I was encouraged, and fielded the same formation away at Schalke, tweaking only slightly to replace the Trequartista with an AP-S to be a little less ‘gung-ho’ up front. That wasn’t quite so good, as I took control and watched little by way of attacking play – but at least we were beginning to look like we knew how to play the game again.

From that point on, mixing up this new Counter tactic with our 4-3-2-1, things have been generally positive. As we reach the halfway point of the season, and go into the winter break, here’s how things stand.

In September I was very close to packing the save in and starting over somewhere else, having experienced by far my worst sequence of results on any iteration of CM/FM ever. Now, with more than half of our targeted points secured, I’m getting dangerously close to enjoying things again.

So it’s with rediscovered optimism that I head into the winter break, with plans to try and shift a couple of higher earners who aren’t really featuring. Both ‘Conan’ and Valentini have shown a marked drop in perceived ability, with the former barely featuring and the latter struggling to find the form of last season.

I’m not expecting to get a great deal for them, if indeed I can shift them at all, but if I can cut their combined £20k from our wage bill – possibly along with a couple of others – then I can begin to look at offering decent contracts to some of the prospects on my shortlist.

Before I head into the break, here’s a quick update on our friends The Three Amigos with comparisons to their attributes as at the last review...

Jack is the only one to have seen a great deal of first team play for us, notching 9 starts and 4 sub appearances. There hasn’t been a lot of development, although things have ticked along a little on some nice defensive and physical attributes. I’m going to be making an effort to shift Daniel Gordon during the break, and if I do I’ll expect Bauer to feature even more. Add in the fact that I’ve recently upgraded my Defence coach (from 3 stars to 4) and I’m hopeful that things will move forward. For the time being I’m going to focus training on Marking and Tackling, because those two are the ones I see as lagging furthest behind the grade at this level.

Despite the fact that he’s playing down in the third tier, there’s been some decent movement from Sven on a few points. Worringly there’s been some minor deterioration too, but I’m not sure that I can justify recalling him when he’s not going to see any play. It might be worth my while trying to find a better club for him, at a higher level, but I’m loathe to risk that and then not be able to. I’ll see how things go during the break; if we shed any players, meaning that he might get a bench slot occasionally, then maybe I’ll take the chance.

Poor old Jimmy has barely had a look in, at least until recently – in the new formation that I’ve been trialing he and Micanski have been sharing the False 9 and Shadow Striker spots. There’s been some minor movement, but again he needs regular game-time and I struggled to find a loan deal for him. Things here will be dependant on what happens in the window, if I can shift Conan then Marton is always going to be the go-to second choice, and even Kevin Basala may start to see some bench time.

Not a great deal of progress on any of the guys really, but then I’ve not been in a position to adjust my plans to cater for them so much. For now I’m aiming to keep them ticking over whilst we consolidate our position, hopefully in that time they won’t stagnate significantly but it’s a risk I’ll have to take.

WINTER WORK

So that brings us to ‘now’, for the first time since I started this blog it’s caught up to where my save is (thanks, in part, to a fun couple of weeks’ diversion offered by Battlefield 4). I’m working through the winter break, somewhat encouraged by the progress made when I was approaching wits end, the fact that my assistant could get results with my tactics led me to accept that the tactics themselves are reasonably sound, and that it’s probably my analysis of the match engine – and reacting to it – that needs the work. That should come as no surprise to me, it’s something I recognised from the get-go, but it was a lot easier to overlook it when we were doing fairly well.

I’m two friendly games in on the break, playing largely with the 4-3-2-1, with two good wins. 3-1 over a Bayern B-team that included the likes of Robben and Ribery, and a 4-0 demolition of US Sarre-Union. With four games left before hostilities resume, and with the transfer window about to open, I’m hopeful that we’ll retain momentum and I’ll reach a point where I’m confident enough to start properly analysing our tactic against top-flight teams.


For now I'll sign of there, with the usual open invitation for comments either on the blog, or via Twitter where you'll find me at @flipsix3_FM

Cheers, and happy gaming!