Early Progress With Karlsruher SC

Hi folks, after a week of sunshine, and destroying my ‘better living’ regime thanks to all-inclusive hotel tariffs, I’m back in the FM saddle. Purely fortuitously the holiday came at a good time, giving me an opportunity to reflect on my first half-season with Karlsruher SC – a run of 18 league games (plus an early German Cup exit) which has seen us win 10 matches and lost the rest; still no draws for us.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO ‘WIN UGLY’

You’ll recall that, after a failed attempt to force my new squad into the tactics I brought over from the RC Strasbourg save, I’d decidedto adopt a direct 4-4-2 to suit our playing roster. The direct game is one that I’ve nearly always steered clear of, with images in my mind of an Allardyce era Bolton lumping the ball forward at every opportunity; I’ve always tried to impose something more akin to a Guardiola Barca possession game.

On reflection I’ve clearly been limiting my options in the past, and there’s a fair amount of grey between the black and white options of tiki-taka and the long ball game. Sure, eventually I’ve always put together squads that can play the high quality football that the likes of Wenger crave, but sometimes it’s taken a long while and I obviously could’ve been making better use of the players that I had.

TWEAKS

In the interest of full disclosure it should be noted that I have made some changes to the initial setup that I detailed last time out, either on a permanent basis or for specific situations.

First up, reflecting advice from a couple of people on Twitter, I removed the ‘Play Out of Defence’ team shout, and the ‘Distribute to Defenders’ player instruction on my Keeper. In addition to a great Target Man up front, I also have other tall and strong players able to do battle in midfield – getting the ball forward quickly doesn’t (always) feel like a lottery that’s going to see it immediately returned to our third of the pitch.

Frequently I’ve also been withdrawing my ‘wingers’ to the ML/MR slots, as opposed to the more attack-minded AML/AMR slots.

Where an opposition features defensive midfielders I’ll occasionally adopt a deeper defensive line, the theory being that sitting deeper will encourage the opposition forward and open up more opportunities for a killer direct ball.

Finally I’ve been quite fluid with my central midfield pairing. I tend to always retain a ‘playmaker’ role in the mix, but depending on the opposition my initial idea of a MC-D gets varied quite significantly. Against weaker opposition (not that there seems to be much) I’ll occasionally employ a Box-to-Box midfielder to try and add an overload in their third of the pitch - thanks to March Gisby (@gisby_marc) for his thoughts there. Conversely where we’re up against a man in the hole (I face a fair amount of 4-2-3-1) I’ll sometimes go as far as to drop drop him deeper into a DM-D/S role.

PERFORMANCE

Looking back at my Strasbourg save, with the obvious exception of the ‘lost season’, the highest scoring players in each campaign netted goals as follows: 10, 17, 14, and 9. The way things are shaping up at Karlsruher would suggest that I have every chance of matching or bettering those hauls with two or three different players. Sometimes throwing the ball ‘into the mixer’ is not a bad thing, especially when you’ve got big guys there to capitalise.

The really pleasing thing has been the quality of a lot of those goals; the idea that we would be all goal-mouth tussles and Kevin Nolan headers has been binned out quickly. We do have goals like that, of course, but I’m also seeing a lot of balls into feet and ‘turned around the corner’ by our target man to release his partner.

In short, whilst it may not always be incredibly beautiful football, it is certainly effective going forward, and quite varied in approach; far from the route-one fodder that I’d feared. Possession stats are rarely in our favour, which frankly doesn’t bother me, and for the most part we’ll create enough chances to give us the likelihood of a goal or two – although we can see our opponents generate twice as many.

SQUAD BUILDING and DEFENSIVE CONCERNS 

With the winter break, and transfer window, approaching the question then is around where I focus my efforts. I’ve got a good amount of money to play with in terms of wage budgets, albeit that all potential targets are likely to need me to push the upper end of our current wage structure, but don’t have huge amounts to work with in terms of any transfer fees.

I subscribe to the point of view that suggests you strengthen the weakest points of your squad rather than improving the strongest, and to be fair our attacking options are plenty good enough for the time being.

There are a couple of areas that I want to focus on, one is obvious and the other less so. The obvious one is at left-back, given that Michael Vitzthum is a loanee. The Stuttgart youngster has decent potential, and is showing significant improvements, but even so his average rating for 15 league appearance (6.75) isn’t great. With Dennis Kempe and Kai Schwerfeger as options, both rated as unlikely to improve, this is an area that needs attention.

My other concern, despite being less obvious from the squad depth chart, is our central defensive pairing.

Both have been decent if unspectacular; 6.91 from 18 games for Gordon, 6.87 for Mauersberger for the same matches. 

The issue is the goals that we’re conceding. Aside from the usual frustration from corners (I’ve accepted them as a ‘given’ by now, although I still believe that the changes I made here  under 'Check Your Corners' are helping to reduce the numbers), through-balls chipped through the middle are often resulting in opposition strikers getting a clear run at goal. Since the 14.3 patch those 1-on-1s are getting converted more often than they used to – great when it’s you scoring them, less so when it’s not.

I can’t help feeling that Pace is an element of the problem, and neither or my pairing could be described as quick, but the other factor is that my guys often seem to allow their men to sit off their shoulders – if the two of them don’t hold a good line, therefore, it’s easy for strikers to break the offside and make their run.

This is the sort of situation I’m talking about, albeit that the circled striker isn’t going to score on this occasion, instead it will be the indicated runner getting inside our right fullback. I know that the striker here is in an offside position (just) but it is a slightly exaggerated example of something I see all too often for my liking.

I do occasionally play with a DC-X and DC-D combination, although often not. In this case I did, but it’s the DC who is tight on Mahir Saglik who is our Stopper. Mauersberger is the one who has lost his man, and I can see no reason why. He has no PPMs that would suggest his movement towards the ball carrier, indeed he has ‘Marks Opponent Tightly’ which – in my mind at least – should see him stick closer to the striker?

I’m not entirely sure what to do here, in terms of other attributes my guys don’t look terrible (Concentration, maybe?) so I’m not about to run out and try to sign replacements, but it feels like there must be some way of getting them to pay more attention to what the striker(s) in their zones are doing. If anyone has any input here, I’d be keen to hear it.

So that’s my ‘mini’ update. I’ll be spending some time looking through scout reports for potential left-backs, or possibly making efforts to sign Vitzthum on a permanent basis (unlikley given that a cash fee would be required). In the meantime I’ll have one further league game before the winter break, and a few friendly games lined up to try and boost the coffers whilst maintaining fitness and morale.