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...

AROUND THE HALFWAY MARK

Following on from the Dijon game, covered in the last update, we went on a superb run that saw us lose only one more Ligue 1 tie before the winter break, we also went out of the Coupe de la Ligue but it took Olympic Lyonnais two extra-time goals to beat us on their home turf. That run left us in a very strong position in terms of the promotion chase, with the third tightest defence in the league helping to offset our fairly average scoring rate.

Both of our primary strikers were contributing, despite mostly being played in isolation, but the really pleasing thing for me was just how many we were scoring from the MR and ML spots – given that our players there (generally Chere wide left, and Laoudihi right) were lining up in what I would, once upon a time, have looked on as less attacking positions.

Probably the highlight of the first half was that run in late September/early October, culminating in the Dijon game, where we scored three goals in each of four successive matches, but I was more focused on the overall form than any one individual fixture.

I also had an eye on potential new signings too, and had a couple of names on the radar. First on my hit-list was a new keeper. Despite their potential ratings, regular first team football, and some seemingly decent personality types, my two young stoppers were showing no sign of improvement. 

I took to Twitter to try and gain some insight, and @Cleon81 suggested that a lack of ambition (a hidden stat) was likely to blame. The choices were simple, a ‘big’ signing or find a decent tutoring option. As we made the run into Christmas I found my man, a Keeper in his mid-20s with a Model Professional personality, and a decent potential rating to boot.

Adrian Saussez

All things considered he looked a decent option for new first choice (i.e. better attributes than our current pairing), as well as an ideal tutor to his understudies. Add in a fee of £20k and I considered him to be a steal, even if he never actually got to play.

The other player I’d been tracking had come up on a scout report back in September, and had been the subject of several more inspections by my staff. I was looking at a summer move, provided we won promotion, as the likelihood of a big-money fee was high. Hold that thought, though. 

We went through a short mid-season break, with a couple of friendly ties just to keep our confidence up, and kicked on into January with a run of five successive victories in league and French Cup competitions. When Sebastien Chere got injured in the fifth of those games, putting him out of action for 4 months, we had a little over a week to transfer deadline day and I decided that we needed to do something. I spent a while looking at possible loan deals, trying to bring in someone of a higher calibre who might be out of favour, but our reputation was clearly still an issue.

This was all going on around the time that the January 2014 window in the (real) Premier League was coming to a close, and I watched the Mata saga unfold with interest – United fans were frothing at the mouth, a good number of Chelsea fans were watching in apparent disbelief, and Arsene Wenger was muttering something about the morality of Chelsea being able to strengthen United to pressure Arsenal’s title bid(?)

I found it all very interesting, and very amusing, because no-one realised that Mata was actually on his way to join us...

Luis Mata

It was a big decision to bring Luis in now, instead of waiting until summer, primarily as the club-record £2.1m fee it took to secure his services wiped out pretty much everything we had to spare. We had our primary creative outlet, with Coco leading the league in Key Passes, and our defensive rock with Dembele putting in the most Key Tackles, but a lot of our results had been down to Chere and Laoudihi – so we really needed Mata to hit the ground running.

We’d extended our run of wins to six whilst waiting for the deal to go through, but Mata’s debut was something of a come-down. Nothing to do with our new starlet, who had a solid game, but because of the defeat coupled with injuries to Depoitre (3 months) and Coco (2-3 weeks). The window was closed by that point, so it was a case of ‘make do and mend’ until we got to the end of the campaign.

THE SECOND HALF

Tactically we were still adopting the 4-1-4-1 and 4-4-1-1 options, with our 4-1-2-2-1 almost redundant by then. I was increasing my Keegan-esque tendencies and frequently starting games with a Fluid/Attacking mentality, and quite often maintaining it for the full 90 where we had the opposition backed up against their own area.

Occasionally I had been throwing on a second striker late in the day, simply pushing the AMC into a flat 4-4-2, but on those occasions no great tweaking of instructions was made – it was just a question of getting another body nearer to the box; generally partnering a Target Man (Support) with an Advanced Forward. With Depoitre out that was less of an option, so we would see out the season with our tried and tested shapes.

Following on from the AJ Auxerre game, and the loss of our first-choice striker, we promptly went to extra time and a penalties defeat in the French Cup. That one cost us Jordan Ferri for a week, and then Saussez did himself a mischief lifting weights just after our next league game; 4-5 weeks sidelined.

That was a run of three defeats, as well as our injury list extending to now include our two top scorers, second top assist provider, and first choice Keeper, all when we really need to maintain morale (which seems to be a huge factor as ever)

Orlan Mustafi came good for us, a brace at USBCO giving us a much needed win, and a goal in the Angers SCO game that also saw Mata get his first for the club, but then the Macedonian striker got crocked on international duty leaving us with Perrin as the only fit striker in the first team. I briefly considered going strikerless, but with a couple of months to go it felt like a big risk to try and adopt a radically new tactic – instead we plugged on with Perrin, the hero of my first two seasons, and Nacer Nadji promoted from the Under 19s as backup.

When Jeremy Grimm was ruled out for the rest of the season I began to feel like the world was against me, even though the defensive midfielder wasn’t actually seeing heaps of game time as we leaned more towards the 4-4-1-1 aggressive approach to games.

Meanwhile back-office tasks centred around contract discussions with players whose deals were up in the summer, mostly I was happy to let them go but Chere was the one that was troubling me. Despite mediocre coaching reports he’d clearly been doing the business for us, prior to his enforced absence, although there was little indication that he could step up in the event that we did win promotion. Mata was already looking the better option, and ultimately Chere’s wages would probably be better reinvested elsewhere.

Following the blip of three defeats, and despite Perrin being unable to contribute more than a single goal to take his season’s tally to a magnificent two(!), with five games to play we found ourselves top of the table with a single point required to guarantee top flight football. 

In our previous two campaigns our final four games had netted just two points on each occasion, and our last five this time around featured three top seven clubs. I was confident that we would get the point we needed, but by now I was gunning for the title; a goalless draw at home to AS Nancy Lorraine was hardly an inspiring way to secure promotion.

Two nervy games followed, and the fact that all of our goals in them came from defensive players was telling, but clean sheets in both – and in our penultimate match where Coco and Mata delivered – meant that we were guaranteed to receive the Ligue 2 trophy at our final game of the season, at home.

Reverting to the story-teller in me, I gave the departing Sikimic and Perrin starts by way of a farewell, and I was only disappointed that we received the trophy after a narrow defeat, but by then I was already looking to next season and the strengthening that will undoubtedly be required.

So we’re heading for the big time, and frankly it’s a slightly worrying thought. Around the same time that I knew we were going up, I read this update from @Shrew Naldo regarding his network game. We both share the opinion that we’re probably in for a shock when we start facing off against the likes of Paris Saint Germain. Certainly there's a lot of rebuilding and strengthening to do at Strasbourg. 

I’m not sure exactly why I’ve not been able to offer long term contracts to senior players (i.e. more than a couple of years), probably a Board thing, but so far it’s actually worked in my favour as I can sign the likes of Barton, who will probably be a help next season – but who I wouldn’t want to be saddled with in the longer term. In the unlikely event that we survive next year though, I’d hope that I can look to tie the likes of Mata in to longer term deals – either to keep them with us, or to begin to generate some meaningful transfer income.

So that’s the story of 2015/16, sorry it’s a bit light on detail but (so far) I’ve been resisting the temptation to get back into narrative mode. It may be that I find things move into that direction, at least for next season (as I’m a good way through it already), but I really want to get to a point where I have the players and the time to start getting right under the skin of my tactics on a more granular level.

For now, as usual, feel free to feed back in any way that suits you.