Let That Be A Lesson To You. Autosave Is Your Friend.

So my PC just did one of it's occasional 'crash & reboot' routines, something I've been trying to get to the bottom of for a while, and when it came back my FM14 save-game is corrupted. The issue is that I've not been maintaining a rolling backup, and the last accessible save I have is three games into the 2017/18 season.

I'm feeling rather deflated, as you might imagine, but also somewhat torn about how to proceed. On the one hand I would love to turn this save into a success story for Strasbourg, on the other I'm not sure how I feel about replaying the season over.

It's not that I don't have the time or the inclination, but rather that there are decisions that I'd probably want to make differently. Signings I wouldn't make, etc.

So I'm going to sleep on it, but I'd also appreciate your input here guys. The way I see it there's three options, and I'd like to know what you think...

Should I replay the last season, or start a new save?
	Replay it, but try to make all the same decisions around signings etc.
	Replay it, and pretend the first play through never happened.
	Don't do it, a fresh start is the only way.
pollcode.com free polls

So Much For Taking It Slowly.

So much for taking it slowly. I’m sure you’ve all been there, assuming that you play Football Manager and don’t just read about it; you get on a roll and you don’t want to stop, or you hit a slump and you want to play through it – then, when you do, you get on a roll and... yada yada yada.

The next thing you know you’re feeling peckish, there’s nothing in the fridge, so you decide to pop out to the local corner shop…

People In, People Out, More Tinkering - Shooting for Survival.

THE BEST LAID PLANS...

So the 2017/18 season is looming, and our chance to prove that last season's 6th place wasn't a fluke... 

Was it?

As I started to prepare for the opening of the transfer window, I got a surprise bid from Heracles for Abdoul Karim Sylla – worth around £1.4m but over a 30 month period. I’ve already noted that he’s very similar to Balde, and therefore I didn’t immediately knock back the approach. I don’t think that losing Sylla would be a huge blow, as I’m confident that we could find a suitable replacement, possibly someone who would better complement Balde’s strengths and weaknesses; I’m pretty sure, in fact, that we could do that from within our own ranks.

That being said I put the ball back in their court, suggesting that they aim higher and with more of the outlay up front if they were serious. I’d prefer to hold onto Sylla for now, but if the Dutch club are keen enough to find a decent sum then I could be tempted. Heracles backed out at that point, but of course Sylla’s agent then started making noises about a new contract. Fortunately his agent isn’t a hard-ball type, and a mutually acceptable offer was arrived at.   

I hoped that would be the end of the transfer action, we’ve not really come under a great deal of pressure for our players so far, within a matter of days things took an unwelcome turn though; if I’d not considered it before, I was faced now with the realisation that we’re going to be seen very much as a selling club until such time as we can consolidate our position in the top flight (and, realistically, the top half of it).

How Did It All Go So Right?

First up, the headlines. Did we make it into European competition? No, we did not, thanks to SC Bastia’s inability to beat PSG in the French Cup final. Despite their 15^th place finish, the fact that they got to the final gives them the final qualifier spot for the Europa League. Had they somehow won, we would’ve been in, but I suspect that they never had any intention of actually trying, why bother? They'd already stolen our thunder. 

Selfish bunch of wasters.

How Far Can A +9 Goal Difference Take You?

So here we were, embarking upon RC Strasbourg's first season in the top flight since the run of eleven successive defeats that saw them relegated at the end of the 2007/08 season - a record for post-war French football. Not only had the intervening time seen them drop further still, but liquidation of the club in July 2011 saw them removed from the league - later reinstated in the fifth tier. 

This was our chance then, a chance to return the Alsatian side to the French elite and, hopefully, battle hard to stay there. 

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...

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...

Four-Four-One, Plus One : Settling on a Core Shape.

As well as the issues I was experiencing with width, the other factor in my decision to look at our tactics again was that we were getting a lot of possession with the 4-3-1-2 but not a lot of penetration. I actually got criticised by the fans for a negative approach, which seemed off given that it was our only 2-striker formation, it had an AMC in behind, and I was encouraging a number of players forward. It’s seemed likely that the issue was down to individual roles/instructions though.     

A brief conversation with @RTHerringbone ensued, and he explained how he’d been playing with 4-1-4-1 and 4-4-1-1 shapes, functioning with a lone striker. His outlook seemed to be a combination of ‘back to basics’ and giving players the licence to make their own decisions; it was very light on specialised roles and that appealed to me, although given the personnel at hand I could imagine mixing it up a bit.

  

Looking at the options I had in central midfield positions, I considered my approach to such a formation and arrived at the conclusion that I could look to build a fairly uniform 4-4-1, leaving me a ‘floating’ player to deploy as most appropriate. A DMC would help against shapes like the 4-2-3-1, whilst someone like Coco sitting in the hole behind the striker would add to our attack where viable. If it came to it I could always run with two strikers, although I still have a (completely unjustified) dislike for the bog-standard 4-4-2.

If my wide midfield men, who are mostly more suited to the AM strata, could supply from a deeper position then this could well be the shape for me – and as you can see from the Tweet exchange above, I'd started to see encouraging signs. 

New Faces. Tactics in Detail. Kicking Off 2015/16

Just before we move onto a look at the individual formations that we’ll be operating, exciting news on the transfer front as we moved for two central midfielders to potentially fulfil that role of ‘midfield general’ that I was concerned with. Two new names and, apart from Loyalty Bonusses and fees to agents, I’ve not had to pay a penny for either.

First up Jordan Ferri, a long time servant of Olympique Lyonnais – albeit that he only ever made seven appearances for them, along with another thirty or so for their Reserve side in the lower leagues of the French Game.

The suggested roles that our coaches highlight are primarily in the DM strata, but whilst he may play there as a Deep(er) Lying Playmaker, I see him in the middle of the park. His work rate and physicals suggest that he’ll be a good option in the Box-to-Box slot, but his fellow new joiner is more likely to take that role on and I’m expecting to use him more as our central pivot.

Operating alongside Ferri will be our first ‘big’ name at the club during my tenure, someone with extensive experience of top-flight football, and a limited spell in the French game. Ladies and gentlemen I give you the understated, the reserved, and the never controversial Joseph A Barton.

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.

Onwards and... well, not upwards unfortunately.

Frustrations and Patience 

or ‘How not to give up and start a new save just because you’re not tearing up the leagues’.

First let me qualify that title by stating that I’ve never been one to crave success to the point where I just keep flitting between different top teams, but in the past I have had a history of starting various saves that only lasted for a season or two. That wasn’t due to performance, but was more down to my writing on the Stories Forum over at SI Games – and the fact that my imagination and ideas ran far faster than my ability to keep up with them. I used to have at least two saves running at all times, sometimes as many as four, and it wasn’t unusual for at least a couple of them to be very short-lived.

In terms of career games I actually prefer something of a slow-burn to start, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally suffer from itchy feet when things get into a rut. Towards the end of the 2014/15 season I found myself beginning to think that way at times, but more on that later.

WHEELING AND DEALING

Two factors dictated the deals made in December, firstly the concern that we were effectively operating with just two first-team strikers, and secondly the fact that one of them (David Ledy) refused my continued attempts to extend his contract and signed a deal for a summer move to Angers SCO. Even ignoring the potential for injuries, it made no sense to just keep plugging away with David and wait until summer to bring replacements in, so with that in mind I picked out the following players from my scouts’ reports.

Survival? Pfft! Piece of Cake...

PERFORMANCE

After an opening day draw, and the solid Cup win over La Berrichone, we went on something of a run. Nine games undefeated, eight of those in the league, and we were firmly in the top four slots. For the most part I was sticking with a lone striker formation away from home, mainly the 4-1-2-2-1 outlined in my pre-season update, but at home or against poor performing hosts I leaned towards a strike partnership.

Sometimes I would take the same ‘proactive’ approach as I did to the Berrichone game (see below), tweaking things ahead of kick-off, but not always as I wanted to get the squad familiar with my base formations and instructions.

We had a blip in October, taking just four points from six games, but then another unbeaten run took us into mid-December still sitting pretty. That run included four back-to-back away games (two league, two cup) which saw three wins and a draw.

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.

A Breakthrough (?). Season's End.

If they’ve done nothing else, the early stages of my blog will doubtless have evidenced just how one dimensional my thinking has been in trying to make early inroads at Strasbourg…

...Okay two dimensional, I’ll be generous to myself.

Whilst I’m fully aware that the days of plug-and-play tactics are long gone, and I have no expectations of a quick fix, I’ve still been somewhat guilty of just scratching the surface in terms of my initial approach. In my desire to iron out single issues (long shots) I’ve tended towards looking at sections of my formation in isolation, rather than considering the eleven men as a whole. To give myself some credit I did recognise from the off that it’s not a simple question of telling a player to shoot less, and that it’s about creating better chances and space; it’s doubtful whether the changes that I’ve tried to make actually address that though, even given that I’ve been looking at a very brief period of time for the team to adapt.  

Pressing On. Questions Questions.

SCHOOLBOY ERROR

Right, first up it's time for an admission. As a long-time player of the series, and not helped by the fact that the advent of digital delivery has removed the paper manual, I have a habit of assuming that I know roughly what I’m doing. It seems that’s not always the case.

Thanks go, as usual, to @Cleon81 for some useful information I discovered whilst reading his excellent piece on player development, as part of his Santos Project.

I’m halfway through my season in the French 3^rd tier, and my team aren’t ‘getting’ my tactical approach. Whilst most elements are nailed down, their level of familiarity with the Formation itself is still rated as awkward. Now I appreciate that it is a fairly non-conventional setup, and also that I have a grand total of two coaches – with Tactics rated at only 2 stars – but I would still expect things to have started bedding in by now.

It was only when reading Cleon’s piece that I realised my approach of setting General Training to ‘Tactics – High’ was not working, as it’s apparently Match Training that is used to increase the overall tactical familiarity. You live and learn. The upshot of this is that, for the remainder of this season at least, I’ve decided to go for a more familiar formation in the hope that it’ll give us some consistency.

It’ll still allow me to work on my understanding of tactics, but I do also need to make sure that we maintain our push for promotion. However, for much of the below, I was still experimenting a little.

Meet the Team. The First Challenge.

First things first, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have a little background on my RC Strasbourg Alsace playing squad. I’m not going to get into all sorts of narrative detail, as I might have back in my FM Stories days, but I’ll give it a quick once over.

As I mentioned in my opening post, I’m midway through the first season – just entering the winter break, in fact. As things stand my entire playing roster looks like this.

It’s not massively different to the ‘Out of the Box’ squad, should anyone decide to load them up. My budgets were fairly tight, non-existent until I sold in fact, so my early business was limited. I let Gauthier Pinaud go to CA Bastia, a bit of a gamble as he looks a decent player but he was one of a number clearly unsettled by my arrival; their offer would at least give me some cash to play with. My only other exit didn’t come until the winter window, with a teenage goalkeeper (Dylan Ruer) heading off to FC Metz.