I can't say that this will let up, but I will continue to write updates when I can, they'll just be longer in arriving. We'll see where things take us once FM15 is released too, although I'm thinking that I might arrive late to the party on that one.
Anyway, having made my excuses, let's dive in...
ONE PLUS TWO : THE NEW THREE
Before we pick up on the latest regarding tactics and our progress in the 2020/21 Bundesliga campaign, a work on the Three Amigos.
I was on the verge of dropping this feature, mainly discouraged by the lack of progress from one Jimmy Marton, but things have been ongoing behind the scenes. As we’ve not been spending big money on transfers* I’ve been reinvesting our not insignificant winnings into the infrastructure of the club – specifically the training and youth facilities.
*(Approx £40m in seven years, but over half of that has been on three players whose combined fee has been cleared by the sale of Rotariu. Our net spend in my tenure is just shy of £10.5m)
The improved areas now read as follows:
- Training Facilities : Great
- Youth Facilities : Superb
- Junior Coaching : Good
- Youth Recruitment : Established
The latter two have both recently been heavily invested in, and I’m expecting that they’ll step up a notch in due course.
I’m hopeful that these facilities, which I’ll continue to upgrade whenever possible, along with our now worldwide reputation, and a coaching staff of 4-Star+ ratings, will enable us to really start to attract and develop talent of a higher quality. I’ll also continue to bring in highly regarded youngsters to train from an early age (ideally 17-18 years old at most).
With that in mind I thought I’d give the Amigos a ‘refresh’ for the new season. Martin Hasek is now a firmly established part of our starting eleven and Jimmy Marton, well we all know about him but I continue to try and give him ‘just one more chance’. I think it’s down to that cheeky grin.
I introduced you to Rüdiger Braun at the start of the 2018/19 campaign.
Since then he’s played close to 30 games for us, and I've concentrated on starting him in specific games where I expect him to be less pressured at the back. The upshot was an average rating for last season weighing in at an impressive 7.62 across 16 appearances. Here he is now.
Progress has been good, although I’d never suggest stellar. He’s got plenty of scope to develop further though, and with a Resolute personality (Professionalism 15-20, Ambition 6-20) I’m hopeful that we’ll get plenty out of him.
He continues to train on a general Wing Back regime, and I’m happy enough that he’s looking good in all the right areas for me.
Having blown a healthy £9m fee on the 20-year-old Nillo, he’s going to be our second Amigo for the time being. You met him last time, here’s a reminder.
With a Model Professional personality, combined with his media handling (Level-Headed) and current attributes we calculate key development attributes of Professionalism (20) and Ambition (anywhere in the 1-20 range).
He’ll be an interesting one to track as I’m currently unsure of his best role. I see him as a challenger for Bednar’s slot in our formation – that being either the Box-to-Box man in our narrow defensive setup, or the Central Winger. He’s got a ton of versatility though, and I can equally see him deputising for (or displacing) Norwood when we play the more advanced DLP role in our more attacking formation(s).
Finally, based on his projected potential as a ‘leading Bundesliga defensive midfielder of the future’, there’s Baek Hanoh. Again you’ve seen him pretty recently, following his handful of appearances last season.
The Korean is currently training up to be Norwood’s successor in the Regista role, when we field the more defensive tactic. He’s also regularly deployed as the deep Ball Winning Midfielder when we play less defensively, to try and make sure he gets as much game time as possible – he’s more than capable of playing that role.
His traits and visible attributes suggest a Professionalism rating of 15-20 and Ambition in the 6-20 range. Another good candidate for solid development, it’ll be interesting to see how we can bring him on.
RECOMMENDED READING
@MerryGuido has produced a really interesting piece based on his latest ‘strikerless’ evolution – albeit that it now includes a False 9 up front. There are elements of it that tie in nicely with what I’ve been trying to do, and I’ll make some references to it during this update – I heartily recommend giving it a look.
It went online around that same time that I started to write this update, and it’s not at all dissimilar to what we’re achieving – be it through the tactic I’m covering here, or the previously covered more defensive one.
ANALYSING THE 4-1-2-2-1 CONTROL
Okay, with the ‘housekeeping’ out of the way, I want to take the time to look at how our baseline narrow tactics play out on the pitch. We covered the defensive tactic here but, as I alluded to last time, the more ‘aggressive’ tactics have been (and continues to be) in a state of development.
Let’s take a brief look at our 4-1-2-2-1 ‘Control’ formation, featuring the Central Winger. We’ll use the third game of our Bundesliga campaign, the visit of relegation-tipped Augsburg, as our main reference point.
Here’s our starting line-up for the game, with Augsburg fielding a flat 4-4-2.
I like @JLAspey’s defensive version of the narrow formation against their shape, as the 4-4-2 seems predisposed to exploiting the flanks even without our encouragement, and as we’ve covered before my Control tactic is an evolution on that. I just need to keep an eye on my wingbacks and make sure they’re not getting too exposed against a wide midfielder and (potentially) attacking fullback too.
An early foray from Augsburg highlights our defensive approach. They work their way down our right flank and are twice repelled – recycling the ball back along the touchline. Their third attempt fares no better – their ball carrier finds some freedom, but would have to bypass six Karlsruhe defenders in order to find a ball. Even with their MR unmarked on the far side the odds aren’t in their favour, and I’m not massively concerned by the free man, we have the cover for someone to drop onto him – we might not succeed in that idea against the biggest and best teams, but I’d back us more than 50% of the time.
Furthermore you can see men on hand to intercept any attempts to pass back to the central midfield players.
In the end they’ll recycle back along the flank for a third time, eventually playing the ball all the way back to their defence at which point we push out to again close down the central options.
Again the ball goes out to our right flank. We can do this all day, and when we do regain possession the supposedly narrow formation quickly disperses. The ‘Central Winger’ is quick to take up an advanced position to bolster the front line, pulling wide into the right channel, whilst the Enganche and Shadow Striker assume deeper spots.
As they push forward Bednar drops deeper, looking to pick up the ball and make a run. It’s a pattern I see a lot as our play ebbs and flows, Bednar pushes up level with Mitrovic whilst the two ‘AMC’ players come deeper, then he retreats as they advance – the constant adjustments meaning that the defence have to keep reassessing, go with their man or hold the line?
Our first goal comes from a corner, but it’s the build-up play that’s interesting. Having broken down an Augsburg attack we build a fairly steady response, it’s by no means a quick counter but there comes a moment where everybody explodes into action – shortly after this pass from Norwood (DLP-S) to our Shadow Striker...
Note the width that the wingbacks are providing, on this occasion the opposition defence is fairly widely spread to try and cover it - if our central attacking players make a move there's plenty of room to run into gaps in the line. Although our left wingback cuts inside (causing their DR to hold is wider position), our man on the right is occupying acres of space as the Augsburg defence tightens up to try and cover the runs that everyone is suddenly making.
Having released the pass to Mitrovic who, even playing as a Target Man, has a tendency to drop off the defensive line, Ducksch (SS-A) will continue his run and Augsburg are left defending against five men. The Central Winger (Bednar) makes a lightning run to beat the offside trap and draw a fine save from the Keeper – tipping the ball around the post for the corner.
Augsburg grab an equaliser through a very quick long-ball counter, Leonard Roberts hanging in an almost offside position as half of my defence is too keen to get forward a little too quickly. It’s frustrating, but ultimately we’re still a side that is largely punching above the quality levels of our individual players and it doesn’t feel like a schoolboy error.
We continue to press, and ultimately grab the winner from another set piece. It’s not been a textbook win by any stretch, but early in the season I’ll take the points over the performance every time.
One of the keys of our narrow defensive system was the way in which it kept the opposition away from the central areas in the final third. Whilst I don’t expect our more expressive version to produce exactly the same results, we should still see less attacking play through those areas. Here’s Augsburg’s Passing charts (all passes on the left, and just those successfully completed on the right) from this match.
Obviously it’s a one-off match, against poorly rated opposition, but you can see the sort of impact that our compact defense – protected by the more defensive midfielders – is having. Even with a more attacking style of play we're still enjoying a fairly comfortable time through the central areas; even at the back Augsburg are either switching the ball out wide quickly (good) or seeing more central passes picked off (even better).
ANOTHER TAKE
Whilst I like the steady build-up through the middle, typified by the way this tactic usually plays out, it’s worth noting that it also works nicely on the break. Here’s a couple of examples from our Champions League fixture against FC Vaslui – a game in which we somehow trailed at half-time, having hit the woodwork three times, before turning the scoreline around in style.
2-1
Here Vaslui have won a throw on our left, but Henri Lansbury (DLP) is keen to close down the recipient.
Winning the ball, Lansbury releases Ducksch (SS-A) through the left channel, and our entire central midfield contingent looks to provide support.
By the time Ducksch takes the ball to the byline he’ll have four men in the box, and Mitrovic will be on hand to head into the far corner. A textbook quick counter.
3-1
As the play has shifted backwards quickly (the throw was actually inside Vaslui’s half) our back four are far from disciplined – but notice that Junio Malanda (BWM-D) has dropped back to assist. Meanwhile our narrow midfield and attack can be seen shifting across towards the central area of the pitch.
By the time Donk turns and picks out a pass, the more advanced players are in motion and the visitors are clearly in trouble already. From there it’s a simple short pass from the Central Winger to the Enganche, and a quickly released through ball for Mitrovic to chase for his second goal of the game.
In both of these examples the play has all come through that central ‘spine’ of our midfield and attack, but like @MerryGuido’s tactic these two games have shown that we do marry that central overload with wide support from our wingbacks – often giving the opposition defence that tough choice to make.
THE ADVANCED PLAYMAKER, COMPARE AND CONTRAST
One more thing, while we’re looking at my Control formation. I mentioned, last time out, the discussion that I’d had with Paul Cook – leading to me employing the Enganche in this tactic, rather than the Advanced Playmaker that I’d originally looked to carry over from our defensive setup.
It’s difficult to give a direct comparison as, when I do employ and Advanced Playmaker, it’s in a different tactic surrounded by different roles. For the purposes of comparison, however, I switched the Enganche for an AP-A for a single match – with the same player occupying the slot. .
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| Enganche (left) vs Advanced Playmaker (right) |
I’d need to run several examples to get a real feel for the differences, as the opposition will also be a factor. In this case we’re looking at the Augsburg game, once more, on the left and the Champions League tie in Moscow (CSKA) on the right. The difference in quality of opposition may go some way to accounting for the relative lack of defensive contribution on the left – it certainly felt like he spent less time dropping deep though, which meant that he was available more often as an outlet in transition.
I can’t say that I’m clued in enough about the fine detail of individual roles, but it feels like something that I could continue to tweak for individual games – perhaps reverting to the Advanced Playmaker (possibly even in Support duty) where we need that little extra in the way of defensive support; that being said though, in those cases I’d probably just revert to the Defensive tactic.
ADOPT AND ADAPT
Returning to the subject of @MerryGuido’s piece, it feels like this has the makings of an interesting companion tactic to my own pairing. At times he’s seeing attacks that match what I’m trying to achieve, with build-up play through a central column that dominates midfield. By encouraging his side to Play Wider, through the appropriate Team Instruction, he’s probably seeing more input from his wingbacks than me though – whilst mine provide width, they are by no means intended as a primary route.
I’m intrigued and I’ve added his tactic as the third in our tactical set so that I can take a look at it, and potentially carry out some minor tweaks - as I did with @JLAspey's base for my Defensive tactic. Although there’s a whole lot more Team Instructions than I’m accustomed to playing with. It’ll be interesting to see it in action first hand.
My one temptation is to look at the Enganche as opposed to the AP-S, with plenty of support for the defence I like the more ‘rooted’ outlet that the Enganche seems to supply.
That’s my update for now then, here’s an indication of where it leaves us early in the 2020/21 campaign. FC Bayern and Dortmund both seem to be having some difficulties in getting a head of steam up, whilst Schalke – partly thanks to their £27.5m purchase of Rotariu from us – continue to lead the way.
There’s a long way to go yet, but it;s shaping up to be an interesting season.
As ever please feel free to drop in any comments you may have, or you can catch up with me on Twitter : @flipsix3_FM
Until next time I'll just leave you with one last image. Back when I started my Karlsruhe save I mentioned that I'd chosen them based on a combination of their stature, facilities, and the fact that a friend of mine is living in the city.
A couple of months back I got the opportunity to visit him, and took a walk up to the stadium - unfortunately not on a match day. It's a long way from what you might think of when you watch the likes of Bayern and Dortmund - and I'm not sure it'll see Champions League football anytime soon. Not in the real world, at least.
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