Let's find out....
NEW FACES
Bar a couple of underwhelming trials, no new players materialised as we ran through our mid-season friendly schedule – however there was a brief flurry of optimism as the Danish youth intake date hit. Our strongest looking candidate was a wide midfield player, which isn’t ideal, but a couple of nice prospects arrived in the shape of Lasse Jakobsen and the central midfield pairing of Mads Frederiksen and Lars Serritslev.
Not a natural wingback, but at 15 there’s plenty of time to rectify that and his versatility gives him the chance to offer us an option on either flank.
It’s always difficult to project forward when you see so many very low attributes, but that Pace and Acceleration combo has me thinking that I’d love to see him rampaging through the middle of the pitch. Central Winger, anybody? (Serritslev is fairly similar to Frederiksen, but without that early showing of speed.)
As an amateur club, with no impact on wages, I took the whole bunch in to form our U18 side; one or two may even be able to push for bench slots early on. The lack of financial pressure is great, but of course it also means that we’re unlikely to hold onto any of these guys who really do develop into potential star players.
One further new recruit arrived but not until we were into the final third of the season.
Having come back from the extended winter break the players were somewhat low on match fitness, even after a good run of six friendly games in the space of a month. Again it’s worth reinforcing that we’re a part time club, with limited coaching resources, and with limited control over our training regimes. In the circumstances injuries were not really surprising, especially combining those low fitness levels with the tail-end of a Scandinavian winter. Not surprising, but certainly slightly worrying when we lost a key defender for 5-8 weeks (Andersen), and then Rune Nautrup for a similar period.
In the case of the former we were reasonably equipped to cover, but not so much with Nautrup. After a couple of games where we muddled through, young defenders trying to adapt the wingback role (their positional retraining having not yet kicked in at all), I took advantage of the amateur game to try and poach options from our competitors.
A couple of very good looking* young prospects decided to recommit to their current clubs, but the lure of joining a side that had just battered Jammerburgt FC by seven goals to one (four in the opening 12 minutes) was too much for Jens Mårtensen to refuse.
*(as far as I could tell with little to nothing revealed by our sole scout)
First impressions may be underwhelming, but when you compare him to Nautrup – particularly in key areas for the wingback role – things look a lot better.
HOLD YOUR NERVE...
Low fitness levels were impacting our performance. An injury or two, especially after we’d released some of our poorer backups, made life tough. When that happens, and things go against you, it can be easy to lose faith and think that action is required.
The Thisted result was a real blow, we barely registered a meaningful attack throughout the 90 minutes. Ringkøbing looks better but we were down to 10 men after 36 minutes, and it was only after parity was restored - them losing their man late - that we grabbed two late goals in the last 8 minutes.
As for Marienlyst, we had to come back from 3-0 down just to keep it respectable. It was humiliating watching until our late surge, and when I say humiliating I mean this...
You can’t imagine how close I was to the ‘Ragequit’ button. Actually, if you’ve played FM yourself, you probably can.
At that point it would’ve been easy to panic and start making drastic changes. It would be overreacting to call it a slump, but things were clearly starting to unravel. Or were they? Our tactic was producing the goods before the winter lay-off, and the goals we were conceding now were generally freaks (see above).
I was confident that, with some words of encouragement (and the occasional arse-kicking), we could pull out of it. I left things entirely alone and carried on into the Jammerburgt game. A goalkeeping howler let us in for a first goal on two minutes, proving that it does happen to other teams too, and that opened the floodgates. Three more goals inside 12 minutes, and another three after the break; spirits were soaring. The scoreline at Odder belies our performance in a game that we could easily have scored another 3 or 4 in.
Morale is a huge factor in FM2015, one of the biggest in my opinion. Fortunately, despite our ‘up and down’ spell, the excellent spirits that we took into the winter break hadn’t been broken and back-to-back wins had them all back in the ‘Superb’ to ‘Good’ range – especially for our first XI.
Sometimes you just need to roll with the punches, stick to your gut instincts, and ride out the storm. When you look back that storm is often more like a brief squall.
...BUT DON’T STOP WATCHING
Whilst I didn’t overreact to events, and was rewarded when the 7-1 victory kick-started a four game unbeaten run, it’s important to always keep watching for issues.
We’d reorganised our back three a little, with Letort sitting on the right hand side, but I noticed a few goals/chances arising where our wider DCs stepped up a little too far and let men in behind. I’m sure that a good portion of that can be put down to mental attributes – we’re playing with guys in single figures here – but there may be a tactical element too.
We play a high defensive line, and our outside DCs are Limited Defenders with a Defend duty. I didn’t want to reduce that duty down to Cover, but I applied the ‘Close Down Less’ player instruction. Given our lack on general mental attributes, and the high defensive line we adopt, it feels like that makes some sense.
Having done that, it was a case of watching for that particular issue over the next few matches. The previous tweak that we'd applied, of getting the wingbacks to ‘Close Down More’, seemed to have had some impact in reducing the number of times opposition wing players had too much time to compose themselves and pick out a cross.
The next four games saw us take 12 points, and concede only twice (both away from home). Further evidence of the power of morale, and of showing a bit of faith when you know that your tactic is good.
It’s Næsby next, and a huge game. They’ve lost one and drawn on of their last three games, allowing us to open up a significant lead. A draw would be satisfactory, a win would surely put us out of reach of both them and Thisted – and secure the title before they play each other on the last day.
Sticking to our game plan we boss the first half, and go in with a well-deserved lead, before they turn the tables after the break to pull it back to level. Cue a 90th minute goal for Steffen Algreen, his first for the club, rising highest to head home a flicked-on corner.
With the title secured we gave a couple of youngsters a run out, including a first start for 15-year-old Lars Serritsev in a 2-1 home win over Næstved, on our way to an eight-game winning streak to wrap up the season.
Now time to settle down and start to think about how we strengthen for our NordicBet Ligaen campaign. The rules are the same; a limited number of overseas players, and a requirement that the bench holds at least one goalkeeper and a minimum of three Under 21s.
The latter gave me some issues this time around, as it meant holding back certain players to always come on as a sub, rather than being able to rotate them into the starting XI. The trick is probably to focus more on youth development, ensuring that we can start our stronger youngsters whilst still having sufficient others on the bench.
That approach might also make new signings easier, as none of the more experienced players who have just been cast off by bigger clubs have any interest in joining us, it would seem.
Given the extensive ‘fog of war’ on players that require scouts to clarify, the state of our scouting pool (one man, with judging stats of 5 and 6), and our club stature, I suspect I’m going to have to take some fairly huge leaps of faith. Still, at least I’ve got all summer to...
WAIT, WHAT?
So the 4.5 month winter break caught me out, and I wasn’t about to get caught out like that again...
...except I have. It makes sense, of course. Such a long break over the winter means a late finish to the season, which in turn means that things kick off again in... 4 weeks!?
There’s barely time for us to wash the kit from the last game of the season, and already we’re arranging pre-season friendlies and offering trials left right and centre. Time to assess those trialists (those who will come to us, that is), and start trawling the youth ranks at Brøndby, our senior affiliate, once again.
I’m clearly not going to get too much of a clue about detailed profiles, so the plan will be to pick out three or four key attributes for any given position, and to look for those along with decent Work Rate and Determination traits. It feels like those two could be a significant factor next season.
I’d prefer not to bring in a whole raft of new players, especially as our base group of 15 or so seem to have gelled so well, but there’s little doubt that a couple of key players in the spine of the formation could make a world of difference, especially with Steffen Algreen having announced his retirement.
Just as a reminder, the intention is for this to be a 'journeyman' save, and to move around once I start to establish an in-game reputation. With that in mind I'll aim to keep a record of my career achievements as we go.
CAREER HISTORY
2014/15 : Winner Danish 2.Divison Vest (Kolding IF)
That'll do for now folks, a fairly brief overview, and I'll aim to get the subsequent season's update online soon as the save is starting to run away with me; as I upload this I'm already a third of the way through 'the season after next'.
Thanks for reading and, as ever, feel free to drop a comment below on anything connected to the save and/or blog, or to hit me up on Twitter : @flipsix3_FM
No comments:
Post a Comment