So Much For Taking It Slowly.

So much for taking it slowly. I’m sure you’ve all been there, assuming that you play Football Manager and don’t just read about it; you get on a roll and you don’t want to stop, or you hit a slump and you want to play through it – then, when you do, you get on a roll and... yada yada yada.

The next thing you know you’re feeling peckish, there’s nothing in the fridge, so you decide to pop out to the local corner shop…

People In, People Out, More Tinkering - Shooting for Survival.

THE BEST LAID PLANS...

So the 2017/18 season is looming, and our chance to prove that last season's 6th place wasn't a fluke... 

Was it?

As I started to prepare for the opening of the transfer window, I got a surprise bid from Heracles for Abdoul Karim Sylla – worth around £1.4m but over a 30 month period. I’ve already noted that he’s very similar to Balde, and therefore I didn’t immediately knock back the approach. I don’t think that losing Sylla would be a huge blow, as I’m confident that we could find a suitable replacement, possibly someone who would better complement Balde’s strengths and weaknesses; I’m pretty sure, in fact, that we could do that from within our own ranks.

That being said I put the ball back in their court, suggesting that they aim higher and with more of the outlay up front if they were serious. I’d prefer to hold onto Sylla for now, but if the Dutch club are keen enough to find a decent sum then I could be tempted. Heracles backed out at that point, but of course Sylla’s agent then started making noises about a new contract. Fortunately his agent isn’t a hard-ball type, and a mutually acceptable offer was arrived at.   

I hoped that would be the end of the transfer action, we’ve not really come under a great deal of pressure for our players so far, within a matter of days things took an unwelcome turn though; if I’d not considered it before, I was faced now with the realisation that we’re going to be seen very much as a selling club until such time as we can consolidate our position in the top flight (and, realistically, the top half of it).

How Did It All Go So Right?

First up, the headlines. Did we make it into European competition? No, we did not, thanks to SC Bastia’s inability to beat PSG in the French Cup final. Despite their 15^th place finish, the fact that they got to the final gives them the final qualifier spot for the Europa League. Had they somehow won, we would’ve been in, but I suspect that they never had any intention of actually trying, why bother? They'd already stolen our thunder. 

Selfish bunch of wasters.

How Far Can A +9 Goal Difference Take You?

So here we were, embarking upon RC Strasbourg's first season in the top flight since the run of eleven successive defeats that saw them relegated at the end of the 2007/08 season - a record for post-war French football. Not only had the intervening time seen them drop further still, but liquidation of the club in July 2011 saw them removed from the league - later reinstated in the fifth tier. 

This was our chance then, a chance to return the Alsatian side to the French elite and, hopefully, battle hard to stay there. 

Are You Ready For The Big Time?

Warning: Minimal tactics. Or detail, for that matter.

Per my previous update, I'm trying to give a reasonable overview of the time elapsed in game, whilst bringing the blog up to date to match my current game state.

So, after achieving promotion via the Ligue 2 title, it was time to think about...

Playing Catch-Up : The (Brief) Story of 2015/16

I’m already in danger of falling into old (bad) habits from my FM Stories days. Back when I used to write on there, I would get to a point where I was writing and stockpiling updates whilst forging ahead with my game(s); on one occasion it ended up with a situation where people were commenting on what I was posting, whilst I was playing the game four seasons down the line.

That’s all well and good in a pure fiction environment, but given that my intention here is to try and learn ‘on the go’ I want to try and get to a point where what I’m playing is no more than a month or so removed (in-game) from what I’m posting. With that in mind I’ve set up a couple of FMC saves* that I can use to scratch the gaming itch now and then, and I’m also going to do some fairly large scale updates to try and get us back close to ‘real time’.

*(One of these might well be producing a one-off update sometime soon)

Without further ado, here’s how the 2015/16 season played out...

Four-Four-One, Plus One : Settling on a Core Shape.

As well as the issues I was experiencing with width, the other factor in my decision to look at our tactics again was that we were getting a lot of possession with the 4-3-1-2 but not a lot of penetration. I actually got criticised by the fans for a negative approach, which seemed off given that it was our only 2-striker formation, it had an AMC in behind, and I was encouraging a number of players forward. It’s seemed likely that the issue was down to individual roles/instructions though.     

A brief conversation with @RTHerringbone ensued, and he explained how he’d been playing with 4-1-4-1 and 4-4-1-1 shapes, functioning with a lone striker. His outlook seemed to be a combination of ‘back to basics’ and giving players the licence to make their own decisions; it was very light on specialised roles and that appealed to me, although given the personnel at hand I could imagine mixing it up a bit.

  

Looking at the options I had in central midfield positions, I considered my approach to such a formation and arrived at the conclusion that I could look to build a fairly uniform 4-4-1, leaving me a ‘floating’ player to deploy as most appropriate. A DMC would help against shapes like the 4-2-3-1, whilst someone like Coco sitting in the hole behind the striker would add to our attack where viable. If it came to it I could always run with two strikers, although I still have a (completely unjustified) dislike for the bog-standard 4-4-2.

If my wide midfield men, who are mostly more suited to the AM strata, could supply from a deeper position then this could well be the shape for me – and as you can see from the Tweet exchange above, I'd started to see encouraging signs.