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.

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”  

Preparing for the Bundesliga

Last time out I covered the back end of our promotion winning season, and closed out with some nice stats around how we’d topped the league in terms of team goals, and individual goals (Micanski). Those, along with our huge unbeaten run during the season, were causes for optimism.

It’s not all rosy though, in fact it’s quite the opposite. With Alibaz and Yabo having agreed moves to new clubs before I had the budget to tie them down, and Pietz’s contract running out, things look a little thin in midfield to say the least – particularly if I continue with the 4-2-3-1 project, dropping one of the strikers.

Here’s what I’m expecting in terms of squad depth, although that’s assuming that no-one starts to poach our other prize assets.

So So Close.

I’d already mentioned on Twitter that I was in two minds about promotion, on the one hand we have a handful of quality players, and a number of decent prospects, but on the other I just don’t think that we have the strength in depth to even battle for survival in the top flight. Of course I said that at Strasbourg too, where we promptly had a good run at European qualification two seasons running, but that was after I’d spent two or three years moulding my squad. 

Realistically I was looking at this season at Kalrsruhe being one of finding my feet, and preparing to build a squad for a promotion push next time around.

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...

Squad Building and Tactics: Into 2015/16

SQUAD BUILDING

So it’s time set about prepping for next season (2015/16). Given last season’s performance I’m shooting for a top half finish as far as the Board is concerned, but secretly I’m hoping to have a good push at a promotion spot if – and it’s a big ‘if’ – we can bring in a good four or five new players. We’re going to losing some over the summer, and in addition there are a couple of others who really aren’t keeping up with the standard that we’re going to need.

Having filtered things down my senior squad is set at 20 players, and of those three or four might reasonably find themselves on the fringes.

Building for Consolidation

RECAP: WHAT HAVE I LEARNED

So far, probably not a lot when it comes to actual execution in the game. Many of the threads and articles that I’ve read have made a lot of sense to me, however it’s going to take more work before I can reliably watch the match engine and get a feel for what’s going right or wrong.

Furthermore I know that I’m not in a great position to be making major changes and seeing their impacts immediately. Our players are semi-professional, training on a part-time basis, and our coaching team is minimal. Promotion should see inroads made on both of those fronts though.

All that being said, there were definite forward steps made in my first season, especially around learning to think more about the players' roles and what I expect them to do as opposed to formations and leaving the game to it.

Key points have been:

• To spend more time looking at the strengths and weaknesses of the whole playing squad, and to consider how two players in the same slot might be better suited by playing very different roles.
• Don’t just work on the assumption that every player up front is a source of goals, or that players sitting deeper aren’t.
• At lower levels, a good Target Man is worth his place in the squad even at the expense of a ‘key’ player elsewhere.
• Tactics: Train them in pre-match prep, not general training. Doh!

In all honesty that’s not a lot of great insight, but these things will all start to add up over time; I’m hopeful that moving into the professional leagues will see a good step forward as we pick up some quality players, and that I’ll make progress too – particularly starting to look at a reactive approach, and better analysing the raft of data that FM offers. With that in mind, time to take a look at the closed season.