New Faces. Tactics in Detail. Kicking Off 2015/16

Just before we move onto a look at the individual formations that we’ll be operating, exciting news on the transfer front as we moved for two central midfielders to potentially fulfil that role of ‘midfield general’ that I was concerned with. Two new names and, apart from Loyalty Bonusses and fees to agents, I’ve not had to pay a penny for either.

First up Jordan Ferri, a long time servant of Olympique Lyonnais – albeit that he only ever made seven appearances for them, along with another thirty or so for their Reserve side in the lower leagues of the French Game.

The suggested roles that our coaches highlight are primarily in the DM strata, but whilst he may play there as a Deep(er) Lying Playmaker, I see him in the middle of the park. His work rate and physicals suggest that he’ll be a good option in the Box-to-Box slot, but his fellow new joiner is more likely to take that role on and I’m expecting to use him more as our central pivot.

Operating alongside Ferri will be our first ‘big’ name at the club during my tenure, someone with extensive experience of top-flight football, and a limited spell in the French game. Ladies and gentlemen I give you the understated, the reserved, and the never controversial Joseph A Barton.

Squad Building and Tactics: Into 2015/16

SQUAD BUILDING

So it’s time set about prepping for next season (2015/16). Given last season’s performance I’m shooting for a top half finish as far as the Board is concerned, but secretly I’m hoping to have a good push at a promotion spot if – and it’s a big ‘if’ – we can bring in a good four or five new players. We’re going to losing some over the summer, and in addition there are a couple of others who really aren’t keeping up with the standard that we’re going to need.

Having filtered things down my senior squad is set at 20 players, and of those three or four might reasonably find themselves on the fringes.

Onwards and... well, not upwards unfortunately.

Frustrations and Patience 

or ‘How not to give up and start a new save just because you’re not tearing up the leagues’.

First let me qualify that title by stating that I’ve never been one to crave success to the point where I just keep flitting between different top teams, but in the past I have had a history of starting various saves that only lasted for a season or two. That wasn’t due to performance, but was more down to my writing on the Stories Forum over at SI Games – and the fact that my imagination and ideas ran far faster than my ability to keep up with them. I used to have at least two saves running at all times, sometimes as many as four, and it wasn’t unusual for at least a couple of them to be very short-lived.

In terms of career games I actually prefer something of a slow-burn to start, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally suffer from itchy feet when things get into a rut. Towards the end of the 2014/15 season I found myself beginning to think that way at times, but more on that later.

WHEELING AND DEALING

Two factors dictated the deals made in December, firstly the concern that we were effectively operating with just two first-team strikers, and secondly the fact that one of them (David Ledy) refused my continued attempts to extend his contract and signed a deal for a summer move to Angers SCO. Even ignoring the potential for injuries, it made no sense to just keep plugging away with David and wait until summer to bring replacements in, so with that in mind I picked out the following players from my scouts’ reports.

Survival? Pfft! Piece of Cake...

PERFORMANCE

After an opening day draw, and the solid Cup win over La Berrichone, we went on something of a run. Nine games undefeated, eight of those in the league, and we were firmly in the top four slots. For the most part I was sticking with a lone striker formation away from home, mainly the 4-1-2-2-1 outlined in my pre-season update, but at home or against poor performing hosts I leaned towards a strike partnership.

Sometimes I would take the same ‘proactive’ approach as I did to the Berrichone game (see below), tweaking things ahead of kick-off, but not always as I wanted to get the squad familiar with my base formations and instructions.

We had a blip in October, taking just four points from six games, but then another unbeaten run took us into mid-December still sitting pretty. That run included four back-to-back away games (two league, two cup) which saw three wins and a draw.

Building for Consolidation

RECAP: WHAT HAVE I LEARNED

So far, probably not a lot when it comes to actual execution in the game. Many of the threads and articles that I’ve read have made a lot of sense to me, however it’s going to take more work before I can reliably watch the match engine and get a feel for what’s going right or wrong.

Furthermore I know that I’m not in a great position to be making major changes and seeing their impacts immediately. Our players are semi-professional, training on a part-time basis, and our coaching team is minimal. Promotion should see inroads made on both of those fronts though.

All that being said, there were definite forward steps made in my first season, especially around learning to think more about the players' roles and what I expect them to do as opposed to formations and leaving the game to it.

Key points have been:

• To spend more time looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the whole playing squad, and to consider how two players in the same slot might be better suited by playing very different roles.
• Don’t just work on the assumption that every player up front is a source of goals, or that players sitting deeper aren’t.
• At lower levels, a good Target Man is worth his place in the squad even at the expense of a ‘key’ player elsewhere.
• Tactics: Train them in pre-match prep, not general training. Doh!

In all honesty that’s not a lot of great insight, but these things will all start to add up over time; I’m hopeful that moving into the professional leagues will see a good step forward as we pick up some quality players, and that I’ll make progress too – particularly starting to look at a reactive approach, and better analysing the raft of data that FM offers. With that in mind, time to take a look at the closed season.

A Breakthrough (?). Season's End.

If they’ve done nothing else, the early stages of my blog will doubtless have evidenced just how one dimensional my thinking has been in trying to make early inroads at Strasbourg…

...Okay two dimensional, I’ll be generous to myself.

Whilst I’m fully aware that the days of plug-and-play tactics are long gone, and I have no expectations of a quick fix, I’ve still been somewhat guilty of just scratching the surface in terms of my initial approach. In my desire to iron out single issues (long shots) I’ve tended towards looking at sections of my formation in isolation, rather than considering the eleven men as a whole. To give myself some credit I did recognise from the off that it’s not a simple question of telling a player to shoot less, and that it’s about creating better chances and space; it’s doubtful whether the changes that I’ve tried to make actually address that though, even given that I’ve been looking at a very brief period of time for the team to adapt.  

Pressing On. Questions Questions.

SCHOOLBOY ERROR

Right, first up it's time for an admission. As a long-time player of the series, and not helped by the fact that the advent of digital delivery has removed the paper manual, I have a habit of assuming that I know roughly what I’m doing. It seems that’s not always the case.

Thanks go, as usual, to @Cleon81 for some useful information I discovered whilst reading his excellent piece on player development, as part of his Santos Project.

I’m halfway through my season in the French 3^rd tier, and my team aren’t ‘getting’ my tactical approach. Whilst most elements are nailed down, their level of familiarity with the Formation itself is still rated as awkward. Now I appreciate that it is a fairly non-conventional setup, and also that I have a grand total of two coaches – with Tactics rated at only 2 stars – but I would still expect things to have started bedding in by now.

It was only when reading Cleon’s piece that I realised my approach of setting General Training to ‘Tactics – High’ was not working, as it’s apparently Match Training that is used to increase the overall tactical familiarity. You live and learn. The upshot of this is that, for the remainder of this season at least, I’ve decided to go for a more familiar formation in the hope that it’ll give us some consistency.

It’ll still allow me to work on my understanding of tactics, but I do also need to make sure that we maintain our push for promotion. However, for much of the below, I was still experimenting a little.