Last time out I was talking about our pseudo-4231 formation, using a tweak on the Central Winger concept developed by JLAspey, and I left you with some detail around the superb performance against Aalen.
After the Aalen game we continued our fine post-break form
with three more wins (conceding just twice in the process), before a 1-1 draw
at home to Sandhausen reined us in slightly.
It was one of those frustrating games where Micanski and
Alibaz both had excellent chances to win it for us, but the finish just
wouldn’t come. A late switch to our Direct 4-4-2, just for the last 10 minutes,
did nothing to change things and annoyingly we lost Valentini to an injury that
would keep him out for 3 weeks.
Whilst our new fullbacks have been great so far,
particularly Kopplin, it’s Valentini who has shone out as our best signing with 9 goals and 11
assists in 25 appearances. Losing him was a blow as we came into the business
end of the season.
We dragged out another draw at Kaiserslautern, 1-1 against
the 4-2DM-2-1-1 formation that frustrates me greatly, before Heidenheim brought
the same shape to our place. Scout reports suggested a vulnerability to a 4-4-2
so I reverted to type, and we ran out 4-0 winners.
At this point I’ll take a quick aside to catch up with the
‘Three Amigos’ though, here they are as we saw them last time and how they look
now. I’ve highlighted attributes that have jumped by at least one point.
‘Jack’ Bauer got a brief run of starts when Daniel Gordon
was out injured, although he’s been competing with our other young DC (Manuel
Gulde) on that front. Whilst mostly training on a general role-based schedule,
he’s had a bit of a push on Composure recently, and in general it’s his Mental
Attributes that have seen the best progress – although there are upward arrows
across the board, indicating increases in the hidden decimal place element of
his ratings (attributes effectively being rated out of 200, as they are).
Interest in Gordon has been high in the past two windows,
and whilst I don’t intend to let him go it may be that I have to consider it; should it come to that then Gulde and Bauer should be able to stake a joint claim for the
spot.
In terms of next steps, for Bauer it’s back on the general
Central Defender schedule and probably some individual focus on Marking and
Tackling.
@MrEds dropped me a note on Twitter to suggest that in the
short term he’d probably employ Sven Mende as a DM-S based on his Work Rate,
Positioning, and Strength plus on-the-ball ability. I get that, and were we
using a DM I would certainly consider Sven a decent option.
As it is, with the experiments I’ve been carrying out around
the ‘Central Winger’ idea, he’s actually played handful of games in that slot
with a degree of success. Clearly he’s very much a work in progress, but those
same qualities of Work Rate and Strength mean that I like him in that hustle
and bustle role – harassing the oppositions defensive line. Sure he lacks the
technical incision of the player I’d ultimately like to have up in the AMC/CM-A
role, but to coin a cliché he “put’s himself about” very nicely.
Five starts and eight sub appearances since last time, a
goal and two assists, and an average rating of 7.00 – I’d say things have gone
well for him. Passing and Technique have climbed on the Technical front, whilst
Mental traits have taken a bump in both the attacking and defensive game. Add
in speed-related Physicals, and it’s a good looking set of increases for me.
Next steps are to get
his Dribbling up into double figures at least, and then probably a spell on a
general Midfield regime.
The switch to 4-2-3-1 (and variants) has been predictably
tough on little Jimmy Marton, as he’s not (yet) suited to leading our line
alone. That being said he’s had one start, and seven sub appearances, during
which he’s notched his second club goal along with three more assists.
Development has been slow, and I’m mindful that I really need
to keep him playing. It might be that a loan spell is required, at 19 I’d
ideally like him playing regularl competitive football. If we go up then it’s possible that I’ll
slow down development of the 4-2-3-1 project – although not drop it entirely –
and there’s also the question of whether we can hold onto both ‘Conan’, and
Micanski (19 goals so far this season), in the Summer window.
For now I’ll keep looking for opportunities to bring him
into the match-day squad, whilst looking to develop the Mental side of his
game.
BACK TO IT
So that’s where our key youngsters are, and behind the
scenes I’m also making progress in thrashing out new deals for some of the guys
who’d been trying to play hardball on the contract front. There are still a
couple up in the air, namely Varnhagen and Peitz, but frankly I wouldn’t be too
bothered at losing the latter. In the case of Varnhagen I see him as the ideal
successor to the departing Yabo, but if the likely promotion comes of then
maybe a midfield playmaker can be my main focus on the transfer front – or
maybe Varnhagen will drop his sights a little, and accept a slightly lesser
role in our top-flight squad. That still relies on us going up though, and that
still needs a little work to secure...
Micanski’s 20th goal of the season came at home
against Greuther Furth, but was only enough to earn us a point after the
visitors struck early on. I was annoyed, to say the least, at the outcome of
the match. Late in the first half the Bulgarian was through on goal and was seemingly hacked down in the area. The Ref blew up to bring the Physio on, a clear
indication of how ‘strong’ the tackle on Micanski was, yet after treatment had
been administered he then booked our striker – I can only imagine for diving?
The Furth game was also our third straight match against the
4-2DM-blah-blah-blah defense, which is starting to become a personal bugbear.
Playing two physical strikers definitely helps, and I understand how a lone man
up front really wouldn’t work, but I definitely need to do some more work to
understand the best way to break down that approach.
On the bright side, Heidenheim took the points over
second-placed Bochum – our next opponents – leaving us with a ten point cushion
with six to play (13 points, and a game in hand, over St Pauli who occupy the third-place
Playoff spot).
Perhaps predictably the Bochum game then saw the end of our
unbeaten run in the league. A 2-1 defeat – with Mauerseberger being sent off,
and Varnhagen being injured and ruled out for three weeks – and what had looked
like it might be a close to an insurmountable lead was suddenly down to 7
points with 5 to play – especially with us facing the third placed side next.
St Pauli were our next hosts, and were yet another side to
line up with two defensive midfielders. Looking back through the post-match
analysis tools I make that 7 of 11 sides in our post-break games who have
fielded that back line, with another two starting with a single DM. It
definitely feels like that match-up would be a good one to analyse, but at this
stage of the season my concentration for doing an in-depth piece is somewhat
lacking, I’m looking at our position at the top of the table and finding it
hard not to just keep ploughing on without capturing any notes at all.
We had to come from behind twice against St Pauli, once relying on them to score for us (under heavy pressure at a corner) to secure the point which guaranteed us a minimum of third place, and saw our hosts drop from that third spot to 5th. It is, as they say, tight at the top...
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| Four to Play |
...just for a change though, our last four games feature
only one of the top ten sides with 1860 München, the only team who could
potentially overhaul us for an automatic promotion, visiting the Wildparkstadion in our
next fixture. They had to face Paderborn first though, and anything less than a
win meant that we were up.
Unsurprisingly they got the three points, jumping four
places in the process. Still, all we needed was a draw and a draw is exactly
what we delivered as we bored the fans stupid with a 0-0 ‘thriller’. Both sides
had chances, neither converted, and with something of a damp squib we booked
our place in the Bunesliga at the expense of just one more lengthy injury (4
weeks for Mauersberger, rendering our successful appeal of his suspension, from the Bochum game, somewhat
pointless).
Clearly ‘The Streak’ was a big factor here, and looking at
the results for the teams immediately below us we couldn’t have afforded to do
much less and still stand a chance. With that weight off my mind though, I
could go into the last three games giving the younger players their match time,
and easing Alibaz and Yabo out of the match-day lineup in preparation for their
departures – if the title came then so be it, but it wasn’t a priority.
Playing 4-4-2, to accommodate Jimmy Marton, we twice took the lead at Bielefeld only to trail 2-4 by the 66th minute. When we levelled the match I thought we had it, but an 86th minute corner did for us (did I mention recently how much I hate corners again?). Bochum promptly missed their chance to close the gap though, and we went into the penultimate game with a six point margin and a goal difference that was some 17 better than theirs.
Realising that the defeat at Bielefeld meant no win in five, and facing up against a side battling relegation, I decided to push for the win. Reverting to the pseudo 4-2-3-1, and adopting a Fluid approach, we thumped Ingolstadt 3-0 to secure the 2.Bundesliga title in front of our home crowd – Dennis Mast grabbing his first two goals for the season in the process.
All that remained was to ride into the summer break on a high then...
...arse!
2014/15 OVERVIEW
So here’s a quick visual review of how our 2014/15 season
finished up. I think you’ll agree that we were pretty dominant in the
2.Bundesliga, at least in terms of cementing one of the two automatic promotion
slots.
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| POST-WINTER BREAK FIXTURES |
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| HIGHLIGHTED PLAYERS KNOWN TO BE LEAVING THIS SUMMER |
In addition to the above details, there were a few more
statistics that caught the eye:
- Most team goals in the division.
- Micanski the top individual scorer.
- Alibaz, Klingmann and Micanski all in Top 5 average rating (2, 3, and 5).
I'll leave things there for now, and next time out I'll cover the plans for squad development as we head into the big league. In the meantime thanks for reading and, as usual, please feel free to drop any observations/suggestions (about anything from players and tactics, to blog layout and presentation) into the Comments section - or catch me on Twitter at @flipsix3_FM.
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