The Russian Youth Club

[Danny]

Football Manager 2021 is here, and asides from messing around during the BETA with Strikerless tactics, I didn't really know who I would be starting with once the full release came out. That was until I was browsing YouTube one night and found myself watching a video from Jack (@WorkTheSpace on Twitter) regarding the hardest teams to manage on Football Manager 2021..

That is when I came across Chertanovo Moscow, a team in the second tier of Russian football, but what makes them so special? What makes them one of the hardest teams to manage on Football Manager 2021?

Well, they can't sign players.. Yes, that is correct, Chertanovo Moscow can't sign anyone. They have to rely on their Youth setup 100%. I can already tell this save is going to be one **** of a ride, but I'm seated, I'm ready, so lets do it!

The Russian Youth Club - Chertanovo Moscow

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After loading up FM21, starting the save and having a look around the club, it was clear this would be like nothing I've ever done on Football Manager in the past, I've always enjoyed buying/selling players for a profit, making the club I'm managing stable in the finances department and focusing my attention on youth, and yeah, I'll have to focus on youth this save, but it's completely different, I'll can't go scouting around different teams/leagues in hope to find myself the next Russian superstar, I have to generate as much money as I can and push it all into the facilities at Chertanovo, in hope that one year, I get the dreamed about 'Golden Generation' youth intake.

But enough of that, let's take our first look at the squad!

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That is pretty much the entire squad list of the club, not just the first-team, there is maybe 3/4 other players that are just way below the level needed to even avoid being relegated this season, and these players aren't even players to rave about, there is a couple of players that I've had a look at and they do possess some talent for this level, my only hope is a fair few of them are still teenagers and might improve.

Let's take a look at the few players I think stand out from the rest of the squad..

I'd consider Abaev & Zavezen to be our two key players, attribute wise Abaev is just miles ahead of the rest of the squad and with Zavezen he provides the team with a little bit of everything, he is fairly creative for somebody in this league, his mental attributes in areas are solid and has a little bit of pace behind him, he's also able to cover 9 positions, which will no doubt come in fairly handy in the long-run.

Thankfully, Zavezen is only 24, so he'll be around for a while, Abaev on the other hand is 39! I'll be lucky if he doesn't decide to retire this year, which would cause a problem.

Tactic(s)?

I'm normally the sort of person that likes to have 3 variations of 1 tactic, for different situations, but I'm not 100% convinced which 'base' I will go with yet, this so far has looked the best during pre-season, but I want to give it some extra time to fully decide if this is the way I will play going forward.

It fits the squad fairly well, too, it's only really lacking some width, which in terms of talented wide players, the squad isn't filled with them - But once I've fully decided on an end product and I've created the defensive and attacking variation of the tactic, I will do a dedicated post to the tactic and go into more depth, because I know you all love the tactical posts.



So, we have a brief first post, we know who I'm managing, we know why I'm managing them, we've briefly looked at the squad and the key players and taken a look at the tactic I will hopefully be using going forward. I will look to do dedicated posts for certain areas of the save, as we move further into it, the lack of signing/selling players means I'm currently just trying to find the right tactic to use.

Update wise, I can't put a confirmed timeframe on how often I'll post updates, but it will be as and when I can, my plan is to post 'Monthly' updates (monthly in the save, not IRL)

But yeah, let's see if we can eventually catch up to the Russian powerhouses of Zenit, Lokamotiv, Krasnodar and the bigger Moscow clubs!​

 

[Danny]

As I was writing this up yesterday, I was actually already a decent way through the first season - So, what I think would be best is to give you an entire update on Season 1 as a whole, then from then you'll see smaller, monthly updates.

What I'd be interested to know is, when writing the monthly updates, what information would you like to see in them? I want to get a brief idea of how I'm going to layout the updates and what sort of content will be in them, I have a few ideas, but I want to make sure you're all enjoying what I put out.

 

[Danny]

The Russian Youth Club - Season 1 Update

After I arrived in Moscow to take charger at Chertanovo, the media predicted we would be facing a relegation scrap throughout the season and that we should hopefully avoid the drop.. Just.

And to be brutally honest with you, after my evaluation of the squad, I wasn't too far off agreeing with what they were saying, but I figured I'd attempt to do what I can and make the media look a bit of a fool. But did that happen?

Let's start of with talking about the tactic that I used throughout the majority of the season, because it's a little different to what I was initally going to use, not that the 4-1-2-1-2 wasn't working, it just wasn't working how I'd imagined and went from inconsistent to just doing nothing, keeping hold of a lead was proving to be a major issue and a tactical change was needed if I was to stop our slump in it's tracks..

Introducing: The Strikerless Russian

Now, if you follow me on Twitter @FormidableFM you'll notice this looks familier? Well, it's very similar to the system I used during the BETA with Real Sociedad and it proved to have some very good success. Plus, who even likes strikers roles anyway?

Now, I wouldn't say it works as well in Russia as it did in Spain, but as you can imagine, the quality of the players we have currently is a little off the level of the likes of: Oyarzabal, Isak, Silva, Merino and so on, but after a while I started to noticed many of the clubs in this league don't play with a defensive midfielder, so there was often a lot of space between the midfield and defense, space which my advanced playmaker and shadow strikers could do some damage in, so I gave it a shot.

Results using the 4-1-2-1-2.

As you can see, we started the season off extremely well for a team that should be dragged into a relegation battle, 12 points in August, we even started off September in a positive way, but then it all started to go a little downhill and we started leaking goals all over the place and struggling to even take a point from some games, we had the form of a team that should be at the bottom, change was needed.

Results after changing to TSR

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The first game after the change was the 6-4 victory over Akron, which when I look back at it I think was the main reason we ended the season where we did, that game pretty much gave the squad a lift, they wouldn't give up, they scored 4 goals and we still won the game, we easily scored 6 goals and in all honesty, we could have had 8/9, I was seeing some solid football being played and that win lead us onto take 18 points from a possible 27 before the winter break, 1 loss from 9 isn't the form of a relegation candidate, and despite our poor month after the winter break, we'd gained enough points for it to not really effect us, we then managed to end the season with 5 wins from our last 8 games, which saw us finish in a respectable 7th place. 23 points away from any sniff of a relegation battle. Impressive?

Final League Standings

Krylja & Orenburg were obviously the big boys in this league, both had just come down from the top tier in Russian and possessed squads that are on another level compared to the rest of us, they both made it look easy.

Moments To Remember

Wait, how have I got this far into the post and not mentioned the Youth Intake? How could I forget? Silly me.
Yeah, during the winter break we had our Youth Intake, the most highly anticipated part of the year for any Football Manager, manager?

Was I expecting anything special? Well, I wasn't.. Not until this showed up!

Was I starting to act like a kid at Christmas? Was I getting excited? Did I actually think I was about to produce the greatest Russian player since.. Valentin Ivanov? Or the next Andrey Arshavin?

ABSOLUTELY!

Along came February, the month where I would find out just how good or poor this 'Golden Generation' would be, and this is the report I got, my eyes have never been so attatched to a single screen in my many years of FM.

But are any of them actually any good? Well, yes and no..

Will they turn out to be a talented Russian international players? I very much doubt it, but are they some of the best talents Chertanovo have seen in decades? I'd probably say so.. Let's take a look at some of the best ones.

Ivan Kambolov

I'm probably going to train Ivan as a CB, his tackling, heading, work rate, teamwork, determination all looks extremely good for a CB of this level, not to mention he is either footed too, he also would have the ability to cover as a DM/defensive CM if I needed in the future too. But being 2* CA with 5*(?) PA, he should improve fairly well that he could end up being a starting CB for the rest of his career with us.


Alexandr Danilov

Now Danilov is the reason I'll be training Ivan as a CB, as I think I've found my long-term DM option, some of his attributes aren't what I'd want for a DM, but many of them are look like they are good enough or at least will be after some match experience/training - Plus a 5'7" CB with 6 heading and 5 jumping reach just wouldn't end well, would it?

The rest are actually pretty solid, they'll all no doubt we first team players in the next 2/4 years, but I imagine these 2 will be in the starting XI much sooner than they'd expect.

Now, lastly, I just need to take a moment to mention Maxim Saveljev, aka the hero of the season!! The young 19 year old bagged 29 goals in the league, nobody in the Russian Premier League or Russian First Division score more domestically. And the best part? My scouts and coaches don't even think he's good enough for the First Division, ha! What do they know!?

It's been an exciting season, one that hopefully I can build upon over the next 2/3 years as I look to build a team that can not only get promoted, but maintain their place in the Premier League of Russia.. But as first seasons go, I can't complain, I'm happy, onto the next one!​

 

[Danny]

Due to us not being able to sign or sell players, the off-season isn't very entertaining! There is no scouting, no attempting to sign players, and with the end of the last season ending on a positive note, I didn't want to change much on the tactical side of things and give it a month or so to judge what I want to do this season, if I change at all.

The Russian Youth Club - Season 2: July/August Update

Our prediction for this season isn't too far away from what it was last season, the media expect us to be involved in a relegation battle, which I don't mind too much, as we know after last season, we're better than that and at least we don't have a massive expectation on our shoulders! They think we will finish 15th.. I'd personally be happy with matching/beating last seasons 7th place finish.

In order to do so, we need to turn some of the silly defeats into wins or at least draws - When you consider both teams that got promoted last season only lost 4 games, we'll need to aim for that figure when we eventually do push for that promotion place.

July's Results

When I first saw the fixtures for the new season, I didn't like how it was starting.. Apart from Tom, the other 4 teams are probably 4 of the best 7/8 teams in the league, Torpedo & Fakel will likely be pushing hard for a promotion spot, while Yenisey are a very solid side with some great players - Not to mention Krasnodar-2, they are the spin-off team of one of the best Russian Premier League clubs, they have got some fantastic players for this level of football.

So taking 7 points from the 5 games might seem a little lackluster, I'm fairly pleased with it overall. The fact that we dominated Fakel too, just shows what we a capable of doing

August's Results

In terms of who we were playing, August was looking better than July before we even kicked-off against Chaika. The only real worry this month was facing Baltika, who probably should have been promoted last year but didn't quite turn up in the playoffs.

But overall, I feel like last season some of these draws would have been defeats and some of these wins would have been stealmates, so baring in mind what I said before about turning the defeats into wins or at least draws, I'm pretty happy with how August went, it was an unbeaten month, draws against Baltika & Zenit-2 are actually positive results, the only negative I have about August is the Sakhalin result, they were promoted from the 3rd tier of Russian football and are massive outsiders, having odds of 600-1 (next worst is 33-1) I feel like that is a game we should be winning with ease.

Let's take an overall look at how these results effect the standings and what other clubs have been getting up to..

So, after 10 games we find ourself sitting in 8th place, only 6 points away from Rotor in 1st place & 9 points clear of any sniff of a relegation spot - So it's been a successful start to the season in my eyes, something which we can take positives from a build on. We have also played 4 of the teams that are above us, along with a few other 'strong' teams, so in theory, we should start seeing some more positive results, but I don't wanna say to much and jinx it, ha!

This is the part of the post where I spend a few minutes dedicated to Maxim Saveljev, who is currently the league joint top goalscorer with 8 goals, he's also bagged 3 assists so far - He won the team so many points last season and is doing exactly the same so far this year. I know a goal drought is coming, it's Football Manager afterall, but I really don't want it to happen - He has 38 goals in 51 games during his Chertanovo career, at the age if 19, I wonder how high I can get that?

In the next update, I'd hope to be around the same position we are now, maybe even leaping up into those playoff spots? We do have a few tough opponents to face in the next month or two, if we can maintain the form we're currently in, I feel like some of the teams around up might slip up leading us into pushing for those top 4 places.

Now yes, we are predicted to be involved in a relegation battle, why am I talking about pushing for a promotion place? Well, why not? There is no expectation on our shoulders, lets attempt to shake things up a little.. ​