Hi folks, it’s been a while since there was a Karlsruhe update, in fact it was back before the World Cup (remember then?).
In that post I talked then about the possibility of farming out Jimmy Marton on loan, to try and make a dent in his much-needed development. The thing is that Champions League Qualification gives me a bit of a headache with the loan plan, as I need to include a number of home-grown players including four who’ve trained at Karlsruhe.
Marton is an obvious choice, but that still doesn’t solve the issue of getting him regular first team action. The alternative would be to continue to seek a loan for him, and include players in the CL squad who will realistically never play but are just there to make up the numbers.
If you’ve been following the blog you’ll be aware that I took a recent diversion to the World Cup, where I intended to just see how an experimental tactic would work out, but ended up as the toast of Mexico when Carlos Fierro inspired us on a run through the knockout phases and to the top of the tree.
I promptly loaded my Karlsruhe save back up and proceeded to check in on Fierro.
“Just forget about him son, it’s better that you just forget”
TAKING IT TO KARLSRUHE
Anyway, part of the reasoning behind that experiment was to find a way of playing with two up front, whilst not reverting to the predictability of a 4-4-2. Clearly it’s workable and it does play with a nice compact defence, which works with our strength as a counter-attacking side.
Here’s my first run at it for Karlsruhe, alongside a more adventurous alternative that resembles the one I employed late in the World Cup final.
It needs some tweaking based on the available players, and the balance of the two ‘sides’, but it gives you an idea. Along with our familiar 4-3-2-1 this is what I’ll be looking to employ in the coming season; it worked for Mexico and, with a Champions League campaign ahead, I’m hoping that it’ll work for us in helping to overcome similar odds and at least allow us a respectable showing.
Of course we’ve been focused quite heavily on Inside Forwards over the last couple of seasons, a role that is conspicuously underrepresented in the above formations. The good news is that we don’t have a single player on our books, in terms of those who’ve played out wide, who can’t play in at least one of the positions featured in these new formations. Obviously we won’t be able to accommodate them all at once, but if (and it is a big ‘if’) we can get some traction in the Champions League and the German Cup, then we’ll be glad of the squad depth.
In the league I fully expect to mix things up too, so the 4-3-2-1 will definitely continue to feature.
NEW FACES
On the subject of squad depth, at the end of the last Karlsruhe update [link] I talked about areas where we might look to strengthen. Say hello to Matthias Zimmerman, Mateusz Wieteska, and Daniel Bednar.
Zimmerman is actually a returning Karlsruhe youth prospect, not that I realised it until after he arrived at the club; he was contracted to Karlsruhe for five years and I may have pulled a fast one as a result, as he qualifies as one of our 4 ‘Trained at Club’ players for Europe (alongside Jimmy Marton, Dennis Mast, and whoever I decide to include from the youth ranks).
I was particularly keen on his Resolute personality, for tutoring purposes, and on his versatility. He should have no problems slotting into any of our tactics as an option on either side of the defence.
As a free transfer I think we’ve done a great bit of business here.
Much needed cover in the centre of defence, with the bonus that he can take up the Anchor Man role in our new tactic as well. He’s young, with room to develop, and has the look of a solid all-round defender.
At £1.5m I’m optimistic about the lad.
Bednar is one of those occasional punts you take, when you spot someone with tons of potential and decide to throw a bit of cash at him (£450k in this case). I pointed him out last time as a potential wildcard deal.
He already looks to be a heck of a player, and bearing in mind that his reports suggest masses of scope for development I’ll be looking to get him as much action as possible.
The other items on the shopping list were a striker and possibly an attacking midfielder. Given our likely tactical direction I’m happy to shelve the latter as we have adequate numbers. As for the striker, that could well prove vital if we do start playing two up front.
My offer was accepted for Slimani, who I later saw doing some fairly good stuff for Algeria in Brazil, however talks broke down over potential wages and length of contract. I could’ve continued to pursue that angle, but I had another iron in the fire and at the point that I re-joined the save he accepted our proposal and signed on.
He’s been in and out of the first team at Dortmund for years, and has never cemented a spot, but he’s done some decent work for their second string. I was particularly drawn to his Pace and Finishing, of course, but I think he has the looks of a solid Bundesliga striker with room to develop a little further.
At some point I obviously want to be in a position to compete for the big names, whether or not I actually pursue them, but for now we’ll continue to shop for less high-profile names and hope to get the best out them. It’s worked for us so far.
PRE-SEASON
We started out in Scotland, with a run of games that I played before the whole World Cup experiment. Jimmy Marton was given his chance to shine as the lone striker; A goal against Aberdeen (2-1 win), two against Hearts (6-1 win) and another brace against Rangers (2-2) made for great viewing and I was already leaning toward the idea of playing two up front whenever possible – this really is going to be the make or break season for Jimmy.
Having had a bit of a break for the World Cups (real, and FM style) I came back with the new ideas in mind, and headed off to England for a four-game tour, with my mind set on giving the new dual-striker tactic a run out.
First up was Everton, with a decent looking side featuring names like Seamus Coleman, David Ospina, Leighton Baines and James McCarthy. We played the first half with the back three, and the second with the back two. Everton didn’t get a shot on goal, whilst we drew a couple of decent saves from Ospina. For a team that will be settling in together, featuring three of the new faces, it was a strong showing.
The performance against Everton only made the virtual no-show at Fulham all the more annoying, but that’s why we go through pre-season. We made up for it though, with some confidence boosting action at Halifax (6-0).
Buoyed by (most of) the performances so far I we set up with the newer shape, once again, at Norwich. The first half wasn’t great, as we failed to make any real impression in the final third. After the break, playing in our more familiar shape, we looked more dangerous but couldn’t overturn the one goal deficit.
By now I was having some early doubts the new approach, although I’m more than aware that it will need time for the players to ‘get’ it and we do have new faces settling in as well. For the trip to Bucharest I reverted fully to the 4-3-2-1 and delivered a 5-1 drubbing to Rapid.
Another possibility occurred at this point, with the idea of simply adjusting one of our Inside Fowards in the 4-3-2-1 shape to play as a second striker, which is just what I did for the final pre-season game at Gaggenau ...
...delivering a dominant performance and a 4-0 win, although the quality of the opposition has to be factored in.
YOUTH DEVELOPMENT
Before progressing with the real action, a quick word on the youngsters. We have a big pool of youth players, not least due to the fact that we can’t field anyone younger than 17 in the league. Even after some serious pruning during the summer, getting rid of most players assessed as having less than a 3 star potential, we’re looking at 38 players and the lack of regular competitive football is an issue.
I started this save before realising that, by installing an extended leagues pack, I could’ve had our second team playing in league action. Had I been managing a bigger Bundesliga side, our seconds would’ve been in the third tier and I could’ve started to bring more of these youngsters through sooner.
The good news is that our profile is increasing now, with our strong performance in the top flight, and we’ve started to receive a lot of loan offers for our young prospects. By the time the season kicks off we’ve already loaned out 9 players, all as regular starters for their temporary clubs, and there’s interest in more. With any luck we should start to see some of them really kick on.
GAME ON
After a decent win at Sandhausen, in the Cup, it’s soon time for Bundesliga action and I decided to hedge my bets somewhat. We started the first game, away at Mainz, in our familiar 4-3-2-1 with a view to switching things up in the second half. It’s a ‘risk and reward’ call as our starting shape potentially leaves us more vulnerable to their attacking midfield line (they start in a narrow 4-2-3-1), but it also gives our Inside Forwards room to operate in their empty DM area.
We’re two up by the quarter hour mark, and we add a third on 33 minutes. It’s all going well, and I’m happy enough to switch things around at the break – a more compact defence should largely nullify their packed AMC areas. A mad ten minutes sees them score twice, with our fourth sandwiched in the middle, before things settle and we see out a frankly impressive result. On the down side we looked far too conservative for my liking, although maybe that could be put down in part to complacency caused by our first half domination.
For the visit of Nurnberg we take a similar approach, setting up in our 4-3-2-1, and despite going behind we quickly draw level. The second half, and a change to the two striker model, sees Marton grab the winner – but, once again, we’re noticeably less dangerous overall.
Next up comes the big test, as the fixture computer sends us to Munich to face FC Bayern for our third league match of the campaign. Given our hosts’ strength it seems a natural match for the more defensive shape that I’ve brought through from the Mexico save, although it does feel a little OTT given Lewandoski’s isolated lone-striker role for Bayern.
That being said, the Pole proceeds to run rings around us and score twice in the first half – two headers, both when he was the only Bayern player in our box, and both times when he had 4 or 5 defenders in attendance. Real class, it seems, really does stand out.
Sticking to the plan, but setting Wieteska up to mark Lewandoski as tightly as possible, we sneak a goal back early in the second half. It’s still almost one-way traffic though, and I’m expecting more goals for the home side when the game crashes to desktop at the 64 minute mark. Not something that happens often, thankfully.
On the restart I set up Wieteska to keep closer to Lewandoski from the get go and somehow, despite Bayern carving out 26 shots to our 1, all but four inside the box, we hang on to a goalless draw. I took to Twitter at this point, to see if people thought I should replay the game at least until Bayern got a goal, but in the absence of any negative feedback I allowed the 0-0 to stand.
That’s where we are now then, three league games into the campaign and in 4th spot with 7 points – all of the top four have the same points total so far, but obviously it’s very early days.
The Bayern game(s) was/were a decent learning exercise, and if anything I think that we’re probably playing the new shape far too defensively; six players in the D/DM strata, even with the wingbacks given freedom to get forward, just feels like we’re inviting pressure. Add in that our own strikers were largely isolated, due to Javi Martinez prowling the lines, and our lack of incision is probably understandable.
Over the next few ties, which include Champions League group games (groups yet to be announced), I’m looking to play a combination of our 4-3-2-1 ,along with the Gaggenau variation on it shown above, and to tweak one of the formations from the World Cup save to try and get it to show some more teeth. Whilst it may have worked wonders for Mexico, I suspect that the sheer class of someone like Fierro had a lot to do with that.
I’ll leave it there for now then, and give you an update around the halfway point of the season – unless anything earth-shattering happens in the meantime that warrants a specific post. (Like, maybe, me actually getting back to the original plan and analysing my tactics a bit more).
Meanwhile I’ll always drop the odd comment in on Twitter (@flipsix3_FM), particularly when the Champions League groups are announced, so follow me on there to keep up to speed.
Cheers!
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