Leeds United - conquering Europe?

[brianboomstrong]

Alright, alright, alright.... My name is Brian, 36 years out of Denmark and a huge FM fan since the late 90's. The last couple of years i have found it a bit hard getting a game going, mostly due to marriage and kids. Never got past one season in my save games in the recent years, and therefore i didn't buy the new FM2020 until now. Now, before i even started a game (ok, i did start with man utd right away, even got to make a quick intro to that save game in here, but it quickly got boring) i decided i wanted to try something new. Im not the most patient guy, so i decided to take an approach that would give a long term challenge, but with a short term "quick fix". Not totally uncommon og unrealistic, the approach was to "buy" a upcoming club in the Championship - like we see a lot of now a days in real life. I had an amazing save with Leeds 4-5 years ago, and even tho im a Red Devil to the bone, i have always liked the idea of Leeds back in the Premier League. So, i have taken on the challenge of getting them back once again to previous glory!

This is my first manager story, so bare over with me or feel free to comment with what you think of it all .

 

[brianboomstrong]

 

[brianboomstrong]

The first update will be a brief review of the first 6 months. It was, to say the least, a start that has exceeded all expectations with some great results in the Carabao Cup in particular.

However, let's first take a look at the team and transfers.

Now, i wanted to go with a 4-2-4 formation - i've always been a fan of this one. I also tried briefly with a 4-3-2-1 tactic tiki-taka style, but quickly realized I didn't have the players for it . Then back to 4-2-4, with a positive approach and a targetman up front. However, I was missing a player here, looked at the transfer market and explored the possibilities.

The first summerwindow of transfers looked like this, most of the already done by gamestart:

I haven't sold any players, so no need to talk about this. However, I was surprised Pontus Jensson was not part of the team anymore, and with a loan player in Ben White from Brighton as the partner to Cooper, I also went looking for a starting central defender.

This guy was bought, and has been a massive force together with Liam Cooper in the central defense. More on that later.

Now up front, the choice was quite easy. I was offered Mitrovic for a fair sum, and the move came quite easy with mutual understandings in the contract negotiations. The transfer was made possible with the funds added in the takeover, which gave the club a transferbudget of 30mill pounds.

This concluded my starting 11, which looks as this:

 

[brianboomstrong]

Now, results wise it's been amazing. Almost too good to be true to be honest, with a brief break of a few days after about 18 games played. I simply got a bit ... how to say, "is this too easy?" but also concluded that Mitrovic did'nt have that big impact as expected, and Tonelli would have been a possible transfer even without the "quick fix" of having a financial takeover approach to the game. I concluded most of the positive results was due to an amazing tactic .

The score after 23 rounds in The Championship is as follows:

Player contributions:

Barry Douglas has been outstanding, almost never having a bad game. He started out with 5 assist in the first 5 games, but has continued to play on a very high level with the rest of the defense with only 15 goals conceeded in 23 games. Other notable players is ofcourse Bamford with 18 goals, Hernandez with a combined 21 goals and assist and young star Shacklton controlling the midfield with Kalvin Phillips.

Mitrovic is, I guess, a mood player. He only made 1 goal in his first 10 starts in the league, but then scored 8 goals the following 6 games... and then 1 goal in the last 7 games. He's been worth the money so far, but I fear for his consistancy if we - as it seems - win the promotion to the premiership.

 

[brianboomstrong]

Resultwise i wanna mention a few. We have dominated the league as seen above, but not just that - we have dominated our closest opponents.

This West Brom shout out was the first clue of something dominant was underway. A stellar performance from my attack, leaving West Brom in the grave.

This resultat was without a doubt both surprising and amazing! QPR was at the time the only follower in the league, having started out with no losses in the first 12 games i think. After this result, they have barely won one .

 

[Andyrob90]

As a leeds fan I'm keeping up with this story, keep up the good work, but Ben White is class and could be a future transfer would be worth giving him game time. guess the only other thing is when are you going to share this tactic?

 

[brianboomstrong]

The biggest results tho, have without a doubt been in the Cup games - beating both Leicester, Man Utd and Liverpool.

Lets start from the beginning, with the 2nd round leg against Leicester, beating Derby in the 1st round 1-0. I was actually about to sim the game, since i did not expect to stand a chance, and also spending my time contentrating on the Championship promotion. But fortunately, Leicester did not put in the strongest lineup, though, with players like Schmeichel, Chilwell, Ndidi and Maddison from the start.

After the surprisingly win, i was pleased to see Man Utd was drawn in the next round. I knew I HAD to put in good effort, and play the game - but the outcome was still a big surprise for me, especially how we went on with the game. I did not dominate the game, but has you can see below, it was a game with chances in both ends but thanks to an amazing job in the goal by Casilla - who really hit the day! - we managed to pull home a 2-0 away win over our big brother rivals from Manchester. A win for the fans, no doubt, having not tried this in many years! Casilla was not MOM, only due to Mitrovic making two goals on clinical finishing! (It was almost the only two times he showed himself in the game, and if i remember correctly, he had not scored the previous 4-5 games lol).

Now, just when you think the Manchester result would be the game of the year, this happened:

This shouldn't really be possible lol, but it happened. A huge humiliation of Klopp's crew, and probably a result that will not be surpassed in the next several years - unless I go on and win a title. Everything was successful in the match, with clinical finishing - and at the score 7-0 the feelings ran away with Liverpool when they were given a red card. To be fair, Liverpool did not rank in the strongest position, by far - but a win is a win and in 50 years no one will remember the starting lineup but just the result!

 

[brianboomstrong]

January 2020 is in the books, and here's how the first month of the new decade went by.

- January 1: 4-0 over West Brom, Lewis Coyle back in style, marking himself with an 8.6 match score only surpassed by Bamford with 2 goals and 9.30.
Another good performance by Bamford, attracts further interest from the Premier League. He is now "wanted" by 6 different clubs and I hope a bid will come - but they will have to get off about 20 mill before I sell. Tyler Roberts will take his place and I believe he will be good enough to make sure we still move up the PL.

The position in the Premier League is extra interesting this season. Liverpool are down 10th after 20 rounds, Chelsea 11th and United 7th - while Wolves, Bournemouth and Leicester are in the top 6. At the bottom I am already watching the relegation candidates - there will definitely be a few good transfers to pick up, including Zaha in the Palace if they continue the bad form.

- January 4: 3-0 over Crewe in the FA Cup 3rd round. A few of the reserves got the opportunity from the start and it was great to see Alioski grab the chance with a MOM award after goal and assist. He was actually intended for a starting role as a left wing at the start of the season, but a controversy surrounding a new contract gave Helder Costa the opportunity instead while Alioski was allowed to be unhappy on the bench. Costa seized the opportunity, and has kept Alioski out ever since.

- January 8: So! The Carabao Cup ... our biggest opportunity to win a trophy this year, besides the league of course. We are the semi-final, the opponent is Newcastle. We start at home with a fantastic 4-0 win, not least thanks to Jonjo Shelvey. You can always count on him. Red card after 8 minutes, and a penalty for us - which Mitrovic misses though! "Oh no, one of those days" I thought .... but he took revenge 15 min later and by the break it was 3-0. Pablo Hernandez became MOM with two goals.

- January 11: Biggest news of January. Tottenham have bought promising striker and current Championship top scorer, Patrick Bamford in a record deal worth 32.5 mill sterling pounds! On a personal note, this was too good an offer to turn down. Their original bid was about 22 million pounds, and I thought I would try and push the limit so I raised the bid by 10 million pounds. To my surprise they accepted right away. Im not planning on buying a new player, and will have Tyler Roberts getting the chance to start the rest of the season. I also have Nketiah on loan from Arsenal, and he should probably start in front of Roberts - but I prefer to give my own player the minutes. Let's see how it works out in the coming weeks!

As I hoped earlier, Tyler Roberts made an instant impact... lets hope it continues. First game after the sale of Bamford:

Other noteable results in january, was the "slapping" of Aston Villa in the FA Cup 4th Round. There must be some premier league sides fearing me aldready, cause yet another away win over a club from the topshelf in England.
6-0 away, and I believe they had their strongest 11 on the pitch.

The 2nd Leg of the Carabao Cup semi final against Newcastle, setting us up against rivals Chelsea in the Final:

January also marked the beginning (and end) of the winter transferwindow. As i wrote earlier, Bamford was sold for a record deal 32,5 mill sterling pound.

I used some of the money on Mendy from Leicester, wanting to have a substitute for Kalvin Phillips who has more than once been recommended giving a break. Mendys contract would expire summer 2020, so I got im really cheap for 1.4 mill SP.

Lewis Coyle returned from loan, and HE IS A BEAST! Taking over right away as right back, for also well playing Ayling - but wow... why in gods name was this guy on loan? He has also been my best player in january, with 5 games from start (cant play in Cups) and a 8.36 rating. Wow! Newcastle already interested, but his stats shows Premier League level and ill try and keep him for the future no doubt!

Last but not least, I did a bigger review of the new youth system and found this message in my development center. It sounds promising, but im yet to learn the fully impact of the new system of regens... but this is getting exciting!