Enlightening Craven

C

Craven

The trequartista
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Enlightening Craven

Introduction

Each year sees a new Football Manager and each year there is tactical improvements to the match engine that go way over my head. Since CM 03/04 I’ve never had any great success using my own tactics and always relied on community made world beaters to reach champions league glory with my favourite local team, Derby County. Let’s face it, since the 70’s we’ve never even came close to looking like a team capable of this feat so I live the dream in a management simulation.

After trying several times over the years of Football Manager to create a solid tactic, I find myself giving up and downloading the next big thing. Today at college during my dinner break I sat down with a coffee and thought about why I tend to give up so easily when giving up is just not something I do. I came to the conclusion that if I was to write about my learning experience and share it with a community, it would drive me on to succeed. If there is one thing worse than failing, it’s having people watch while you do it.

So with a copy of FM-Britain’s Tactical Theorems ‘10 and hopefully, input from the lovely FM-Base regulars, I hope to reach a target I’ve set myself of winning one trophy in three of the five countries loaded over a span of 5-10 years.

The Leagues loaded are:

England – Premiership, Championship
Italy – Serie A, Serie B
Netherlands – Eredivise ,Jupiler League
Spain – Liga BBVA, Liga Adelante,
Sweden – Allsvenskan, Superetten

I created my manager with past experience on automatic and set myself as unemployed and started the game.

I applied for the vacant jobs at Qviding (Sweden), Djurgardens IF (Sweden) and Valladolid. After a few days I got my replies back and Djurgardens and Valladolid offered me the job. The season is already half way through in Sweden and Djurgardens are sitting in 14th spot above the relegation zone, but in the relegation playout.

Valladolid haven’t even kicked a ball yet, have a better standard of players and a much better wage and transfer budget. I’ve played the La Liga many times and only the Allsvensken once so I’ve gone with Djurgardens and will look to avoid relegation and bring in a few free agents if possible to strengthen things up.

Meet the team



According to my assistant Carlos Banda, my team are more suited to a 4-5-1 or 4-4-2 formation and after looking at the squad I’d have to agree with him, with morale so low winning is going to be difficult for me. I’m quite happy with the defensive midfielders attributes and both my first choice wingers AND both back up wingers have good pace and acceleration so there is at least something to play with but the strikers aren’t that great. A look in the transfer/loan market might be in order here and having only £300k to spend and £2k under the wage budget won’t make it easy.

The key member of my squad is Daniel Sjolund



I’ll probably try to have him pull the strings in the centre of the park. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to set up yet but having pacey wingers might be ideal for counter attacking football? I’m going to have read through the TT’10 pdf and make a decision when I get back home from football tonight.
 
Nice to have you back with us Wesley.Great concept for an Fm Story. It's different from the usual Kak.

Nice and varied selection of league's too I might add.
 
Thought this was going to be some cack Fulham story from the title, good thing I checked it out, sounds interesting.
 
A winning start

I had a quick read through the TT ’10 pdf and started out with the 4-5-1 formation in the previous post and left it pretty much default, I figured I would play the first match and see where the problems are before I go messing with sliders.



In the first match against Orgryte we were on the back foot for most of the game, only creating a few half chances, we were pretty much looking like losing heavily in the first half but Orgryte were wasting their chances. The one thing I noticed is that their midfield were finding way to much space and having too much time on the ball. OI’s and changing the closing down sliders didn’t have much effect. I changed the match strategy to standard at half time and we made the breakthrough with a controversial offside goal soon after the restart, we held on to the lead and picked up the 3 points but I can’t say I’ve learned anything from the game.

One positive note of the week was I managed to pick up Tobias Linderoth on a free transfer which pleased the fans and will hopefully help me sort out the midfield problem.

Next up was AIK, currently 1st in Allsvenskan.



I changed the formation to a flat 4-5-1 and got taken apart in the first half. Their first goal was a long range effort and nothing I could do about but the next two were from badly defended corners, Linderoth must be wondering why he signed on to the Djurgardens cause. I’ll see about setting up better on set pieces, if anyone has any thing to add for defending/attacking corners please do so, but no glitches please. In the second half I pushed the wingers up to AML/R positions and went attacking. We played a bit better but couldn’t fashion a chance at all and the game finished 3-0.

After AIK I was hoping for an easier fixture but after checking the fixture list, we were next up against Kalmar FF placed 6th in Allsvenskan.



I started with the 4-5-1 I used in the second half of the AIK game. My assistants advice was Kalmar struggle against quick tempo and 4-5-1 so I used a few touchline shouts to speed the game up. We were attacking well enough but needed a penalty in the 25th minute to get ahead, new signing Sergio put it straight down the middle and we looked comfortable going into half time. In the second half Kalmar kept the ball well and I soon found our possession of the ball was dropping, with that being said Kalmar rarely threatened and we enhanced the lead in the 60th minute with a goal from my Croation winger Milic. Kalmar had only one notable chance in the game but failed to convert and we saw out the rest of the game.

Sergio was another free agent I picked up in time for the Kalmar game, I needed another MC because my star player Sjolund is banned and injured, lovely.



Malmo FF were next, another tough game against 5th place.



I kept the same tactics from the last game and it went horribly wrong, we couldn’t get any of the ball and were dominated from start to finish possession wise, after the four games played it’s clear we have a real problem keeping the ball. We did managed to create 3 CCC’s but only converted one late on and the game finished 2-1 to Malmo.

Djurgardens are currently sitting in 4th spot in Allsvenskan.



I’m going to read the TT’10 more thoroughly today and try to solve my possession problem but feel free to leave any advice. I've just noticed that Drananov has also managed to find his way onto most of the screenshots, he's my third signing but he's not shown anything worth mentioning yet.
 
Cheers Kris, the team talk guide is exactly what I need because morale is a problem for my team, before I took over Djurgardens hadn't won a game in 7 so they were all at a low. I'm currently reading articles before I play any more games because things I'm trying aren't working.

I have used in game shouts and I only noticed it having a positive effect once in a 4-0 victory, since then I've lost two games and decided to do a bit of article reading before I carry on. The only thing I know for sure about my team is that 4-5-1 is the best way to set up, the rest I need to figure out. :S
 
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