I'm Still Alive : The Future

Those of you who've follow me on Twitter, or indeed on the blog, may be wondering what's been going on of late.

If you've followed the blog for a while will be aware of personal circumstances that came to light early in December 2014. I've not really expanded much on that, as this really isn't the forum, but just to assure everyone that things are fine; treatment is ongoing and the early stages have been effective, although surgery remains the only solution.

In the meantime I've not been playing a lot of Footy Manager, not really because of health (I really am fine), but because of work pressures, because of just wanting a bit of a break, and because I bought myself a PS4 and GTAV - the latter fact almost coinciding with my last blog updates.

I had, following a 'vote' on Twitter, set up an FM Classic save with a whole bunch of random leagues, and picked a Chilean team to manage - the plan being for a quicker paced 'journeyman save', regular updates - possibly a little more 'story' based, but still with occasional tactical pieces. That's still something I'd like to do, but not something I'll be diving into any time in the immediate future.

I've finally sorted out dates for surgery, and plans for work and holidays in the run up to it. I'll be going under the knife early in June, so before then I'm cramming the next 4 or 5 weeks with a holiday, some gigs, a bit of work, and whatever else I can squeeze in.

Surgery is likely to see me in hospital for a fortnight or so, so an excellent opportunity to catch up on the dozens of books I have waiting to be read, then it'll be home for convalescence. That's where FM could well come to my rescue, as I'm likely to be largely housebound for a good few weeks. Obviously we'll see how I feel at that time, but having a dip into the FMC save is high on my list of ways to pass that time.

Until then I do keep dipping into the output of the rest of the community, and I'll make brief forays onto Twitter - I may not be as visible as before, but rest assured that I am alive!

flipsix3
(Dave Solomon)

A Brief History Of Time (In The Superliga)

INTO THE TOP FLIGHT

So far I’ve really not looked too hard at the Kolding Squad, partly because our amateur/semi-pro status meant that tweaking it has been a relatively easy job and partly because I harboured ideas of moving on quickly; Kolding IF just being a first rung on the ladder.

Eight weeks isn’t a lot of time to sort ourselves out for the top flight, and with no guarantee that my interest in jobs elsewhere will come to anything it would be seriously daft to not make plans.

The Best Laid Plans

“I’d prefer not to bring in a whole raft of new players, especially as our base group of 15 or so seem to have gelled so well...”

- Me, last time. 

Putting It All Into Practice

After two rather lengthy posts about how I spent the extended winter break, did it all do any good at all?

Let's find out....

The Long Cold Winter - Part II

Okay, so last time out I took a lot of time to consider our defensive game and arrived at the decision that I’m generally satisfied with the way we’re playing at the back – although I do have a minor tweak to consider in the first instance.

I also picked out some interesting stats about our attacking game, and the ‘economy’ of our shooting and goal-scoring. Whilst I was writing that up, however, it struck me that I’m not entirely sure about the best way to deploy my strike partnership. Furthermore, as I started to dig deeper, I realised just how much info there is in Football Manager that I (and, I suspect, others) pay very little attention to.

Actually that’s not entirely fair, I always knew that it was there, I just never really looked at it. What I’m looking to do this time out is to start to scratch the surface of some of that info, but first I’ll get back to the question of the strike partnership.

I’ll apologise in advance, some or all of this may seem quite disjointed. You may feel like I’m stating the bloody obvious or that I’m just not making sense. This update is going to be something akin to me thinking out loud, and when I think too hard it’s not unusual for me to go in circles!
Anyway, on with the update...

The Long Cold Winter – Part I

WHO KNEW?

So I was merrily playing along when I got the usual request to assign first team players for potential slots in the Reserve side for their imminent match. The first thing I did, of course, was check the ‘Next first team match’ info...

...then I checked it again. And again. Then I went to the schedule page.

So it seems that the Danish game takes a winter break, and not just your two or three week break like the Germans or French. Who knew?

Kolding Part 2 – Evolutions

RECOMMENDED READING

Welcome to 2015!

Before I get started with an update on all (well, some at least) things Kolding, a quick link list for some of the excellent stuff I’ve been reading through lately – some or all of which may have had an influence over our early progress...

The return of the Central Winger from @JLAspey / Cheekydeeky . A role that I used a lot in FM14, and will continue to do so in the new incarnation.

Some nice thinking around set pieces (specifically corners) in FM15, from @MerryGuido. I noticed, early on, an issue with defending corners when the ball came out to an opponent somewhere in the 12-18 yard range. I’m hoping that this might help.

A really great piece by @RTHerringbone on the thinking behind his 5-3-2 (or 3-5-2, or 3-3-2-2 – who knows?)

Finally, from the SI forums, a nice ongoing thread from Jambo98 on his gradual tweaking of a 4-5-1 formation. I’ve not had the chance to read all of it yet, but what I have makes it look like a very good template for those wanting to spend time in a process of continual tactical improvement.


Now, without further ado, on to my own stuff...

A New Beginning : FM2015

ON A PERSONAL NOTE

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may have seen a reference to personal health a week or two back. You guys don’t need all of the gory details, but given the likely impact on my FM time and blogging I’ll give you the potted version.

About a month ago I received a diagnosis of bowel cancer, to say it was ‘out of the blue’ would be an understatement. A bit of a shock, as you might imagine, but once we got passed those initial words the prognosis is all very positive. I’m completely fine now, and will be again in a few months. In between I’m looking at a few weeks of simultaneous chemo and radiotherapy, a bit of a break for that to take effect, and then surgery and some follow up treatment.

You can imagine that the news, and finding the best way to tell family and close friends, has been taking up some of my spare time but that’s all sorted now – rest assured that I have a great network of family and friends who will help me through what’s on the horizon. I’m putting the info out there just so folks know, I’m happy talking about it but I don’t feel a driving need to in an environment, and circle of Twitter comrades, that is focussed on football and Football Manager.

Auf Wiedersehen Karlsruhe (Hello FM15?)

Things have, fairly obviously, been coming together pretty well over the last few seasons at Karlsruher SC and I was looking to get at least one more season in before deciding whether or not to make the jump to FM2015. Would it be another good season though?

The answer is yes, but just how good?

In Search Of Control

Time for another update, but also a quick apology for those who were enjoying my weekly updates. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you look at it) my recent promotion and new job role have eaten massively into my free time. I continue to play Football Manager, albeit on a much reduced level - I've maybe played four or five matches in the last calendar week - something I would often achieve in a single session previously, and I'd have three or four sessions in even a busy week.

I can't say that this will let up, but I will continue to write updates when I can, they'll just be longer in arriving. We'll see where things take us once FM15 is released too, although I'm thinking that I might arrive late to the party on that one.

Anyway, having made my excuses, let's dive in...

Success Stories

For the first away tie of our 2020/21 league campaign we travelled to Stuttgart, for the Baden-Württemberg derby.  Early exchanges weren’t great, and we went behind in the 6th minute before somehow equalising (through Christopher Avevor’s own goal) despite not having a shot of our own on target.

A tweak was made at half time, as well as the players being told how poorly they were performing, and 45 minutes later we left the pitch on the back of a 3-1 win.

Despite all of our success, I think it’s only now that I’m finally feeling like we’ve genuinely ‘arrived’ and deserve our berth among the top sides in the nation.

‘But wait a minute,’ I hear you cry, ‘what about last season? All what success? You’ve won one title.’

This is true, as at the last blog update we had just won the Bundesliga in a nail-biter finish, let me ‘quickly’ fill you in on what happened next – then we’ll be up to speed again, and I can hopefully try to get back to a more analytical approach.

The Payoff

Break? What Break?

The mid-season break was spent mostly wrapping up contract renewals, where I wanted to keep someone on, and trying to arrange a couple of Bosman deals. The challenge that’s starting to emerge is keeping things on a tight budget. We currently have only two players earning more than £29k per week, as a baseline salary, but with every sign that we’re set to establish ourselves at the top end of the Bundesliga in the long term players and agents are starting to push the boundaries.

The Less Defensive Arts

Whilst most of my recent detail has been around the performance of the so-called-defensive 4-1-2-2-1 formation, as I’ve alluded to previously I have been operating with a mixture of tactics – depending on the opposition, home or away venue, etc etc.

For the home tie with Hertha Berlin I decided to go with the 4-2-3-1 that I’ve been tweaking, which I’ve go to the point of operating with a narrow attacking line and (vertically) offset midfielders.  It’s still a work in progress, and I’m looking to use some of the principals of the more defensive formation – i.e. dominating the central third of the pitch (vertically) and encouraging the opposition onto the flanks.

The 'Defensive' Arts

Last time out I talked a lot about my intention to incorporate @JLAspey's Defensive 4-1-2-2-1 formation into our tactical roster. Having strengthened the squad, and played through pre-season, I set out to get an early impression of how it would perform in a competitive environment; the fixtuire list gave me an ideal opportunity to do just that against two very different levels of opposition.

Here's the notes I made as I went along. I'll refer to Jonathon throughout - as in Jonathon Aspey...

A Quick Recap. Focus Regained.

So I’ve started and scrapped this update about hUa dozen times, trying to retrospectively analyse the back end of the 2017/18 season; the simple fact of the matter is that I played through it, not taking too many notes and just enjoying the ride, so with that in mind what I’ll aim to do here is:

1. A quick recap what happened during the second part of the season.*
2. Have a brief look at the squad and plans for next season.*
3. Look at tactical plans for the coming campaign.
4. Look in a bit of detail at my transfer strategy for the coming season.

Once that’s all done, and we get off and running, I’ll be making an effort to have a closer look at our tactics in action again. So, without further ado...

*(If anyone feels that they’d like more detail on anything then just let me know, and I’ll see what I can dig up for you).

Regaining Focus

Last time out I covered the beginning of the 2017/18 season at the Wildparkstadion, and the thinking I was doing around the question of a one or two striker system.

So  where did we go from there?

Two Strikers, Or Not Two Strikers, That Is The Question

Hi folks, it’s been a while since there was a Karlsruhe update, in fact it was back before the World Cup (remember then?).

In that post I talked then about the possibility of farming out Jimmy Marton on loan, to try and make a dent in his much-needed development. The thing is that Champions League Qualification gives me a bit of a headache with the loan plan, as I need to include a number of home-grown players including four who’ve trained at Karlsruhe.

Marton is an obvious choice, but that still doesn’t solve the issue of getting him regular first team action. The alternative would be to continue to seek a loan for him, and include players in the CL squad who will realistically never play but are just there to make up the numbers.

If you’ve been following the blog you’ll be aware that I took a recent diversion to the World Cup, where I intended to just see how an experimental tactic would work out, but ended up as the toast of Mexico when Carlos Fierro inspired us on a run through the knockout phases and to the top of the tree.

I promptly loaded my Karlsruhe save back up and proceeded to check in on Fierro.

“Just forget about him son, it’s better that you just forget”  

World Cup Dreams Part 2

So here we are then folks, the end of our short Mexican adventure in Brazil, but just where does it end? Read on...

The World Cup May Be Over, But Mine Isn't.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Before we get into this update, I wanted to just drop a few links on you for great articles and threads that I’ve read over the last week or so. It’s something I want to try and remember to do more often.

This excellent piece by FMAnalysis on the Brazil vs Germany World Cup semi-final. Whilst not overly complicated in its language, it offers some decent insight into Brazil's main mistakes on the night. I have the game recorded, and will be re-watching it at some point with this article to hand. 

Next up is this very interesting post at SI Games from jpcote09. I'm going to need to read it more than once, and even then it feels like the sort of thing that I'd need to make some little summary notes from to take away just a few of the core ideas. If you want to get a real understanding of how individual Team/Player Instructions impact your tactics in FM14 then look no further. 

Finally take a look at this little beauty from @Cleon81 on the SI Games forums. Along with its connected 'Discussion' thread it promises to be really interesting. I've already spent a good period of time on the first match, and feel like I'm taking something away from it. 

Okay, enough with the homework already, what about the World Cup?

A Temporary Diversion (World Cup Fever)

I hadn’t originally planned to join the ranks of FM players running short term World Cup saves, but I got swept along in the real life event and it coincided with my preparations for the next season of my Karlsrühe save. Also, because of spending time watching events ion Brazil, and a bunch of social commitments, I've not progressed the Karlsrühe save any further than last reported.

Given that I’m looking to make some tactical tweaks I wanted a chance to have a play with some of the concepts without having to ‘live-prove’ them in that save and risk our season; ‘what the hell’ I thought, ‘why not have a play around with one of the teams that everyone’s getting excited about’.