UNL: Conclusion of the 23/24 season

Once again we have finished the year victorious. I feel that the game is starting to get too easy, but really unless we are winning the Champion's league on a regular basis there is still room for improvement. Come to think of it, one issue with this extremely fun database I made is that at this point I wish the teams in the league had more money. Really only us and Minato have really been accumulating any money and that's because we are the only two teams winning.

I digress. Once again we won the League... here are the standings.

As the fixtures show, we ran a very tight campaign this season, losing only 3 games the whole season in the UNL. We have created a new record point count for the league with 95 points.

Chelsea FM15 - fruitful October

The month of October was another good one for my Chelsea team. We beat Southampton 2x1, followed by an exciting game against Leicester City. This game happened at King Power Stadium and they were actually the stronger team for the most part. They had more possession and twice as many shots. Fortunately for us we played the right cards and converted 5 shots on goal into 3 goals, winning us the game by 3x2.

We also played Swansea and Crystal Palace, both games we easily managed to win. This leaves us in 3rd place tied with Man United in points. Man City is first by only 3 points so things are still shaping up.

Lastly, we had another Champions League game. This time it was against Ajax and the game was in Holland. After a very good performance by our squad, we unfortunately came out of it with a 0x0 draw. This leaves us currently in 3rd place in group G, behind Juventus and Celtic. However, I do not feel very worried since we still have a lost of home games ahead and I am confident we will make it through this round.

October has been rough for injuries. Besides a 5 month injury to Strootman, we also have Ramire, John Terry, Matic, Felipe Luis, Willian and Gimber all injured this month. So I'm happy we're still getting results, I'm just starting to worry that our team is struggling with players getting tired right before we have some difficult games coming up against Man United, Juventus and Liverpool.

Cities: Skyline

As anyone that reads my blog or has known my gaming preferences would know, one of my favorite game genres is city builders/simulators. However, for the last 13 years, myself and any other city sim fan knows, we have been having to play the same game. Sim City 4 was the last good sim made for folks like me, and all the other garbage release since has been nothing but huge disappointments. I never understood why, I mean the formula for SC4 was already good, all it would take is a bit of a graphical overhaul and a few new tweaks and you could have another great title out. Somehow every developer has been focusing on the wrong things, not what players wanted. Until now...

Paradox is one of my most respected companies in the gaming industry, and in combination with a finish developer (Colossal Order) they produced the long awaited title for us city sim fans, Cities: Skylines. This is a modern take on what SC4 last did with a huge number of improvements. In particular, this title added a crazy amount of attention to traffic, to the point that I can't even imagine how it keeps track of so much data for each vehicle and their routes. The road system and traffic are some of the best improvements in this game.

Another great addition to this genre was the physics. This game has great water physics that makes it so much fun and so easy to cause irreparable problems to your city. Just to give you a sense, in one of my first cities I decided to put my waste water into this convenient pond located on top of a hill, that way the drinking water wouldn't come from the same source. Great idea no? Well turns out the game kept track of my waste water, which had no escape and as the city grew the pond started to fill up. Until the day I got a lot of chirps about flooding in my industrial zone. I took a look and the streets of my industrial area was covered in shitty water and the stuff was starting to rush all through my city. I lost about 6-7 hours of gametime building a city that was almost irreparable at that point... best gaming day I've had in a really long time. I was so happy to see that kind of attention to detail in a game like this.

This isn't really a review of this game, it's mostly just me saying what I like about it, from the perspective of a huge fan of the genre. So the last thing I wanted to bring up is the map maker and the asset editor which come with the game for free. Basically you can make awesome maps and make awesome buildings for your city with the tools that already come with the game. Below is my attempt at a map I've been working on. It's incredible, and what's more amazing is that because they are so integrated with steam, all this stuff can be shared with other players and downloaded seamlessly right inside the game.

So if you are a big fan of city sims, you must purchase this game. It is even available for Linux, so if you are a linux user, make sure to buy it from your linux client so it counts as coming from linux (which is good to indicate to developpers that linux people are buying games)

Chelsea FM15 - cruising in the EPL

 After some more games, my Chelsea is doing fairly well. We've been cruising in the premier league, although we have not met the hardest opposition so far. We faced Aston Villa, Hull , Everton and the newly promoted Bournemouth... here are some of the match summaries.

Beyond that, in the European stage things have not been as simple. We faced Juventus on our first match in the Champions league and had a very difficult first half. I think we were actually playing too defensively. We started the second period behind by two goals which really pushed us forward, we almost managed to tie the game with quite a few good chances, in the end Hazard's goal wasn't enough. We also played Celtic, which we easily managed to beat.

Chelsea save - start of season 2

Another season started and I'm setting our goals pretty high this time around. I convinced the board we are going to win the title this time around. With that they opened the wallets for me and I've spent a lot of money in the transfer window... maybe a bit too much even. I'll probably go into my transfers on a later data however.

Right now, we've played 3 matches. Our season opener was against Man City, a game we played well in my opinion, but still failed to get any points. This was also the first game I attempted a new tactic using a 4-6-0 formation with Oscar as a Trequartista playing in the AMC position. It's something new I am trying this season, but I think I pulled the trigger too early and probably should have tested the waters against an easier team first.

Anyway, second game we had the newly promoted Huddersfield, which we managed to beat very comfortably despite playing away. Costa was incredible and I hope this is his new norm, last season he had a few dry spells that really worried me about how much I can rely on him to win games.

My most recent game was against Tottenham at White Hart Lane. This was another tough match for us since last season they beat us when we played away and we fought fiercely for the 3rd position. Fortunately we managed to come out on top of a game where Spurs was certainly controlling. We played again with our 4-3-2-1 formation with the flat narrow midfield, Hazard on the left as an inside forward and Willian on the right as a winger.

FM15 Chelsea save - end of season 1

It was a fairly exciting end of a season for us. After that great knockout round with Dortmund we faced another German side. Bayern Munich was probably one of the toughest draws for us and we had to face them. At our visit to Germany we got beat 3x1 which was a good result based on how much they dominated that game. On the game back in London we managed a 1x1 draw in a game we probably played better than them, but never looked like we were going to beat them by much. While disappointing, I can't say we really had a chance to win that round. This left us with a few games left in the premier league. Our last game was against Spurs where we were in 4th place and they were in 3rd. We were 2 points behind them and a victory would secure us 3 place. If however, Liverpool lost to Hull we had a chance of moving to 2nd place with a greater goal difference assuming we scored a lot of goals against Spurs.

That match was very good for us. We had our full squad and beat them 4x0 with a hat-trick by Diego Costa. Unfortunately Hull tied with Liverpool, leaving us to end the season in 3rd place. This was enough to please the board and to satisfy our goal of qualifying to the Champion's League. Below are some more stats from this season.

An interesting bit from this season was the fact that Mourinho took over Manchester City. City was doing very poorly under Pellegrini and while Mourinho's arrival did improve their standing, they still only managed to get 7th in the end, just missing the Europa Cup position which went to West Brom. Mourinho did get a few awards for his work in the last few months. The FA Cup title this season went to Tottenham with a 2-1 victory over Norwich after their defeat to us.

Now, how about some stats about my players:

Defence

Looking at our center backs, Cahill and Terry dominated in appearances, but were they our best players? Well, when we look at the numbers, in terms of interceptions, Dante, our mid season purchase, did the best, with 10.6 interceptions p/ game. Gary Cahill comes second with 10. These two also lead in tackle rate, with Zouma as the top 3 players in this category. Zouma is definitely a player I intend to develop and use heavily in my squad. Once again, when we look at tackles per game, Dante is on  top with 7.45. So I really hope that despite the money spent on an older player, the board sees how valuable this player was for us.

Midfield

In the midfield we have strong passing performance by the Nigerial Mikel and the Croatian Nemanja Matic. with 88% and 87% respectively. Despite that, their average rate was fairly low. In terms of producing assistances, Fabregas produced 0.39 assists p/ game, followed by Willian and Hazard with 0.33 and 0.32. Here this trend actually equates to high average ratings for these players.

Hazard has the highest rating (7.41) followed by Willian (7.21) and then Oscar (7.07). Oscar's stats would probably be even better had he played most of his games in the wing. He was not an effective CM or ACM this season and this did hurt his stats.

Attack

At the front, we actually see some rather disappointing revelations. While Diego Costa was a fairly strong player for us with 0.75 goals p/ game, added to Remy's 0.7, this is pretty much the best numbers we have. All our other offensive players find themselves under 0.4 goals p/ game. The best average ratings went to Hazard (7.41), Costa (7.22) and Willian (7.21). I must admit, Willian was a much bigger asset this season than I expected. He was a source of consistency in the team, ensuring that he scored whenever the team seemed to need the most. He scored 13 goals.

Diego Costa finished with 28 goals in total, while our second best scorer was Hazard with 17.

Football Manager 2015 - Late season one (Chelsea)

We are not late in the season (end of April), and there are only a few games to go. Our Chelsea side is doing well in the premier league. Unfortunately the race has been extremely tight. The top 3 positions are separated by 3 points only. Tottenham has been doing very well and ManU dominated the league for most of the season. Unlike real life, Mata and Falcao have been unstoppable. Chelsea has had some good stretches, particularly around mid season but once the fixtures got congested for us we ended up losing a few games that we shouldn't have. We managed to win the Capital One cup against Everton which was a nice win for us, even if the board isn't as impressed. On the other hand we were knocked out by Wigan in the FA Cup after a pretty embarrassing two games.

In the Champion's League Chelsea had an extremely exciting first KO round. We faced Borussia Dortmund and lost our away game by 2x0. We came back to London to put up a great show. After a 2x0 lead, Oscar faulted inside the area giving the German side a penalty. They scored making the match 2x1. At that point I thought we weren't going to manage. I was very wrong, the team played like champs and we managed to end up the game with a 6x1 win. It was a wonderful game for our team.

We have also made a few tactical changes since my last post. For one we made a few purchases. Most of them are a reflection of the fact that I'm trying to plan for a team that will be unbeatable in a few seasons. For that I purchased Gimber, Coric and Taufer. I had mentioned before that I was eyeing the CB Gimber and the Winger Ante Coric. They are both fairly good prospects that may become first team players in a few years. For now they are mostly just playing in the under 21 squad. These players are also young enough that they will become homegrown if I keep them for the long term, something I desperately need with my current Chelsea squad. Aside from that I brought in the Brazillian center back Dante. He came in for 7.25 Million, which in hindsigh might be a tad much for a 31 year old. I just felt that Chelsea was a bit too thin at the back and to be quite honest he has been very useful so far. I played him as CB quite a few games but I also ended up using him as a defensive midfielder during an injury spell. I basically had all my defensive midfielders injured for a long time. That fact combined with our clogged calendar made it so I had to bring him in. I can't complain about his performance despite his lack of natural skill in that position.

Lastly, I brought in the Italian DM/MC Melkamu Taufer. This 17 year old is already a fairly decent player and he is supposed to be developing into a superstar if things go well. I would very much like to develop him into becoming a strong deep playmaker, but we'll see. Right now he is looking very good in terms of teamwork, work rate as well as good passing skills. I may need to increase his off the ball skills and wouldn't mind better vision as well. He came in for 2.3M pounds, which isn't cheap, but I know I can at least make my money back in a few seasons. I believe I will also manage to bring in Odegaard at the end of the season. This player will likely cost me a good chunk of money but will certainly be worth it in the long run.

FM15 - Chelsea save

Just recently I've added football manager 2015 to my steam library. I was debating on whether to purchase it since I'm still playing FM13 so much and I'm still enjoying my Heidelberg save quite a bit. Since SI decided to make new FM games for Linux I sort of feel obligated to support them so I actually bought the new game.

For this game I'm probably not going to do a terribly detailed AAR but I thought maybe I'd post a few of my tactical choices and interesting things I do with my team. I basically started with the Chelsea squad that started the season and set my save to start with no transfer money, so basically all EPL squads look like what they did back in September. After playing a few friendlies and a few league games I realized that playing Mourinho's 4-2-3-1 wasn't working very well for me I decided to switch it up. Even though we were winning games the team was just not looking as menacing as Chelsea does in real life. I suffered a terrible defeat from Man United, 7x0, which was definitely a wake up call that I couldn't just rely on that tactic when I wasn't playing very well in general. Below are my fixtures up to this point. Since the ManU game, I had to change things up a bit and since then we've only lost to Newcastle, which was a game I was still using that same formation and to Swansea. The Swansea defeat was a bit of a fluke, we really were the better team, but just couldn't put it in.

So the current tactic we're using is a 4-1-2-2-1 where I dropped Matic to the DM position, even though he is still part of the creative team, and Mikel has been playing some games as a ball winning midfielder. I do rotate Ramires in that position as well, and sometimes even change it to a box to box midfielder role. Fabregas is still playing in the midfield as an advanced playmaker (A), although he just picked up an injury. As you can see I also dropped Oscar's position from my tactic which is a bummer since he's one of my favorite Chelsea players in real life. He was just unable to create much the way the team was playing. Instead I have been using him on occasion in the middle as the other AP(A). He isn't best suited for that position but until I figure out an alternative, he may have to play there. I have also tried playing without a formal striker some games and putting Oscar as a shadow striker and that has worked fairly well against weaker sides. I haven't been brave enough to try it in a big game though. Hazard is playing as an inside forward on the left, and as expected he's my top player so far. Very dangerous carrying the ball up front. On the right side I've been rotating Willian and Schurrle as Wingers, and that has been working well. Willian is probably my favorite one in that position at this point but I'm trying to make Schurrle happy, so I play him pretty often. Up front I have Diego Costa, who was really struggling to score initially with my first formation. Since the switch he's been finding a lot more scoring chances and doing much better, even if he is inconsistent. Remy comes in on occasion as well, and he's had some very strong performances as well. I may even have to rotate the two throughout the season if the performances continue this way.

In terms of trades, I've just loaned out a few players but haven't really done much else. I'm thinking about purchasing some young players and maybe unloading some less promising younglings from our current team. I currently have my eyes on the popular wonderkid Martin Odegaard (15 year old MC), Youri Tielemans (17 yo MC), Bilal Ould-Chikh (17 yo DMC), Ante Coric (17 yo AMC), Benedikt Gimber (17 yo DC) and Niklas Sule (19 yo DC).

Beyond that I may wait for the January window to perhaps unload Cahill for a better DC and perhaps look for another WB as well. I'm finding Ivanovic in FM15 is not nearly as good as the real player.