Vitória SC - An Example of Poor Management

[misterioBean]

Hello everyone!
It has been a while since I last played and shared an FM save here. Ever since the game came out I was struggling to get the urge to even open it, everytime I tried to start a new save I would just give up before the reaching mid season.

However, now I am really looking forward to actually give this a go. I'll explain shortly.

If you followed my saves in the last two editions of FM you probably know I love playing as Vitória SC. It's the club I support since I was born, is the city I grew up in and still live to this day and is, in my opinion, one of the few examples of how a club is more than the trophies they won.

In fact, Vitória SC has only 3 trophies to their name: a Portuguese Supercup won in 1989, a Taça de Portugal lifted in 2013 and, the most recent adition, a Taça da Liga which we were able to lift this season.
This must mean this season was a tremendous success... right?

Well not really.
Even though we lifted the Taça da Liga, the Portuguese equivalent to the Carabao Cup (even though it doesn't grant an European spot for the winner), this was a very bad season when it came to the league.

I mean, when you see we conceded 51 goals and only scored 39 it basically speaks for itself. Also, keep in mind this is a team that just last season made an historic run on the UEFA Conference League, reaching the end of the league phase with only zero defeats before ultimately falling to Real Betis on the Round of 16.

So it leaves the question, what happened? Well, the answer is very simple: Vitória SC lost 12 first team players during the summer, 6 of which were the backbone of last season's success. All of this while only profiting around 10m from their sales as most left on a free even if their contracts were not expiring.

According to the club President, the club had to let go of this players due to their high salaries otherwise the club wouldn't survive financially. This was said by a President that recorded a whopping 75m in player sales since he took over the club's management 5 years ago, way more than the club has made in his history.

However, when you dig into some of the things that happened, you start seeing why the club is where it is now.

This is the list of managers the club had since he took over.
12 managers in 5 years, even if there are some intern managers like Moreno's first spell and Rui Cunha.
From all of this managers, only Rui Borges was snatched by another club, everyone else was fired from their duties as managers.
Even Luís Pinto, who started this season and won the club's first Taça da Liga was fired just a couple of months after lifting the trophy and being called "The Manager for the Project" by the president... the same president that announce his resignation before just one month after...before the season even got to an end.

So now, the club will be have elections and there are 4 candidates, which were able to see the club's financial status.

This is a recreation of how things are at the moment.
According to the candidates, the club has a total debt of 80m, with 20m having to be paid until the end of June (I couldn't get this set properly because for some reason every time I tried to get it to 20m the due date would jump to 2051...)

I'm sure for any club in England or Spain this is not much, but in Portuguese football this is catastrophic, specially if you are not getting European football.

So, after all of this extensive banter, what's the actual plan?

Well, after hearing all the possible candidates, I think that out of the 4 only two actually stand a chance of competing to win, so I picked the one who has, in my opinion, the best and more reasonable project.

Club Vision

The club's in-game vision and expectations are very standard, so I'll have to implement the actual objectives myself:
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1. Take care of the club's finances as the main priority. This means salary cap for every player and staff member.

2. Focus on developing players from our academy, regarded as one of the best in the country and one of the main sources of sale profits.

3. Maximizing the scouting department and it's expenses.

4. Creat a tactical identity that mirrors the supporter profile - passionate and intense.

I'll dive into more detail in the next update.
We'll be looking into the current squad, budgets, staff and other stuff.

If you got to the end, thanks for reading and sorry for the banter, but I think you can see how close to my heart this really is ​

 

[misterioBean]

First Steps
Meeting the Staff

Currently, the club has 24 staff members, some blank spots are yet to be filled.
The first step is to evaluate every member and if they justify the money they are getting.

After everyone was evaluated, only 16 made the cut, which means we now need to hire replacements for everyone and new personnel to supress our needs.

Club Budgets

For obvious reasons, the club doesn't give us much money to play around with. We are spending close to our wage limit already so we need to bring this values down.

Meeting the Squad
Goalkeepers

The club currently has 2 goalkeepers in the first team.
The 32 year old Charles is an experienced player in the Portuguese league. He's agile, has good reflexes and has been overall a very safe and reliable keeper for us.

Castillo signed for the club last season and had some decent performances throughout the season, but still shows signs of inexperience. His first impact into European football was not what he was hoping for, but he still has potential and hopefully he can bounce back from a not so good debut season.

Defenders

One of the reasons this season didn't go as well as the last few ones was our defense.
We were too shaky when it mattered the most and conceded way too many goals.
Even though we have some good wing backs overall, our central defenders wre simply not ready for the job.

Just to give you a comparison, Óscar Rivas is our best central defender and last season he was our 4th choice.

Midfielders

Our midfield is not too bad. When compared to last season's it's noticeably worst but we have a decent mix of experience and future prospects in our squad.

However, our brightest prospect (Diogo Sousa) is scheduled to leave the clun in July to join Strasbourg for around 10m, so we will need some reinforcements here.

Wingers

Probably the best composed section of our squad is in our wingers.
We have a lot of speed and technical speed, mixing more experienced players with youth.

However, here lies the second and last confirmed deal out of the club.
Noah Saviolo, this season's surprise breakthrough, is leaving the club to join the Turkish side Trabzonspor for 11.5m.

Strikers

The main reason for our lack of goals in the last few years has always been our strikers.
For some reason, even players that score 10+ goals in their previous team struggles to score goals at Guimarães.

This season was a bit different because Nélson Oliveira, our main striker, was never known for his proficiency ahead of goal and Alioune Ndoye was not a proven goalscorer in Europe's bigger leagues. However, he was aa pleasant surprise and provided us with something we haven't had since Óscar Estupinan, an aerial threat.

Nélson is leaving in the end of the season due to some behavioural incidents at the end of this season so we won't be renewing his contract.

He's also one of the club's top earners so it does make sense to let him go on a financial point of view.

The Tactic

I decided to adopt a very basic and simple 4-3-3 as our main tactic. This is mainly how Vitória plays in real life so we'll try to fit it into our playstyle.

When we lose possession, the team behaves a bit different, with one of our midfielders going a bit deeper closer to our defense line and the other pressing a bit further ahead for counter attacks.

I'm still debating on the striker role here but I'll test it this way before making any changes.

Future Plans
Our next priority is to fill our staff with capable members that don't break the bank.
I'm setting a staff salary cap at around 10k/m unless their quality justifies going a bit above this value.

For our first team, I'm considering a salary cap of 20-25k/m for crucial first team players, 15-20k for first team starters and 10-15k for our backups, preferably at the low end of this spectre. We'll try not to surpass the 10k for our younger players.

Unfortunately, we don't have many players in our B team that are worth promoting for now. Maybe one or two, but we'll see how well we can prepare during this first few weeks.​