WSL - transfers + transfers

It has been a quite active couple of months for Tottenham. Turns out this database creates a huge amount of games, so my team is definitely in form. Since the last update we've been doing spectacularly well, and I feel that the squad is finally gelled the way I wanted. On that note I'm starting to find out where I need to tweak the squad to get ready for the tough games in a few months.

First of all, I have began to play a secondary formation/tactic with my team. After doing quite a bit of reading I decided to try something similar to what Vitaliy Mokosiy uses on his Boston United series, which can be found on his blog, True Football Manager. If I haven't mentioned this blog before, I recommend it, it's fun and very informative. The guy has been playing FM for a long time and I feel like he's one of the better players out there. He's at least very good at writing a fun FM blog.

So my team is now switching between my original 4-3-2-1 which has been fairly successful and my new 4-3-3 (although I am tempted to also call it 4-3-2-1). This new formation if quite different from my original one, where I now have 3 midfielders playing in the middle with no one on the ML and MR positions. Then I have an AML and a AMR playing as inside forwards, who are supporting a Poacher at the FC position. I actually had a lot of players to make this formation work with my current squad, and I'm starting to feel that this new formation might be a better choice in the long term. The 4-3-2-1 was a bit limiting as my 2 AMCs were often covering the same ground, and my two wingers would have to move much more than in my new strategy. I also feel that my 4-3-2-1 would work better if I had amazing wingers, which I didn't, I was using some relatively young players in that position.

Anyway, I will talk more about my new formation once I'm more comfortable with it. The bottom line is, I have been getting rid of a couple strikers, such as Milivoje Novakovic who was sold to AC Milan for 3M (not bad for a player that I barely got to play) and now I am discussing the sale of Mikael Forssell for 3.3M to A.C. Milan as well. I have had some trouble with Forssell in the past, as he was quite unhappy about playing so little first team football. With these two sales I intend to bring a new striker to the squad, and right now I'm seriously considering Lukas Podolski, who is currently a free agent (I couldn't believe that when his agent contacted me). Here is his profile right now:

 

The only downside to picking him up is his high salary, but 80+k is probably fair for a player of his caliber. It should really add some quality to our front, I'm just hoping Luis Garcia doesn't mind new competition.

Aside from that I have also received a substantial offer for Juan, our main DL who was valued 7.75M. Arsenal and Liverpool began a bidding war on him, even though I did not have Juan on transfer list, in the end I received a 14.25M offer, and despite not wanting to sell him originally, I can't see myself saying no to such a large sum of money. Anyway, I sold him, but I'll have Juan until the end of the season, with so many good young talents in the team, I don't think it should be hard to substitute him with someone a bit weaker and still survive for a while. I do wonder whether the next tier will be as easy as this one, something tells me it won't.

Finally, I have been considering a new central midfielder for our squad. Playing 3 MCs does make my selection look a bit small at the moment. I want to eventually build up a really solid midfield, and I'm going to start by picking a good defensive one for my MCc position (ball winning mid). Currently I have 2 free agents who I'm looking at, here they are:

They are similar players, and I wish I had some help deciding. Right now I'm kinda pending towards Ernst. I feel like his size advantage as well as slightly better speed would be more suitable for ball winning midfielder / anchorman.

WSL - huge transfer deal

One of my big priorities once this game started was to find a solid team of scouts and start a major search for young talent. I managed to grab quite a few gems, including the English striker Mike Walker (16). Well, turns out this kid was highly sought after by the big clubs and despite his estimated value of 1.6M I have received offers varying from 1.6 to over 4 million dollars. Well this week I finally gave Walker up to Real Madrid for a whooping 4.7M.

This certainly gives us a nice little boost to our financial situation which is actually quite good already. I've been trying to keep my budget way below what I'm allowed, here is a sample of how we're doing prior to this transfer.

Finally, here is a list of our fixtures since the beginning of the season. I'm very impressed with how we've been performing, and aside from a spell of ties in September, I think almost all results so far have been adequate to our level.

WSL - a few months in

So far the club has been performing well, I have filled out the squad a bit more and I added a particularly good striker, who I believe will be useful in the next few months. His name is Ricardo Fuller, who came in as a free transfer, and I believe he will be a nice addition to our 4-3-2-1 formation.

As I mentioned I'm currently playing a 4-3-2-1 formation (Christmas tree formation) which is a formation I use to very much enjoy in my FML days. After doing some research online about what other managers use, I have to say this isn't a particularly popular choice. I think I might stick with it for a while but slowly pick a secondary formation. My tactics right now look like this:

I'm playing with a balanced philosophy, standard strategy and pretty much all the default settings for the rest (if you use the tactic creator). I made a few tweeks to individual players, but in general that's how I'm playing a lot of my games. I do switch to a 4-1-2-2-1 with a counter strategy when I want to take a more defensive approach.

WSL - pre 10/11 season, not a bad start

We had quite a nice start with our pre-season, which is a good sign. The only problem is that this db does cause the 1st season to be a bit hit and miss, so a lot of the top squads are still looking to fill up their teams, meaning they are not as tough as they should be. Nonetheless I'm happy to see the team gelling and getting results right away.

WSL - Trying a new db on fm11

After losing my save for the Zoah FM11 series which I started earlier this year, I decided to try something different. I went ahead and downloaded an interesting custom database made by Kgok at "The Dugout", and it is the World Super League database (with free transfers), based on the original World Super League by Nick. The general idea of this db is to have a very large selection of teams into 6 tiers, with all the best clubs in the world. Kgok's version however, goes a step further and releases everyone from their teams, leaving you and other managers to build up a squad from scratch. This just sounded like a ton of fun, so I went for it.

For my team I decided to join Tottenham Hotspurs, the reason for that being that I like the club, they were placed on the 3rd tier of the tree (World League 1) and they have a decent sized stadium and funds. I figured this would allow me to at least have a chance of getting to the top, despite my still amateurish skills on FM.

So let me introduce my first cohort of players

 

A few of these I hope to keep for a while in my squad and to start I really have high hopes for the following players: Luis Garcia (ST), Sergey Ryzhikov (GK), Drago Gabric (MR) and Kyle Naughton (DR, use to be a Spurs in RL)

AC Zoah 1x1 Barrow

The game started with an early injury of Dennis Young, making our job a little bit more difficult. I was forced to play Creeper Johnson on an odd position. At 30 minutes Barrow scored a goal with Josh Langley. I tried to play our team more defensively after the goal, but the team really wasn't able to create much during this game. At 90 minutes we were still losing by a goal which produced an overtime situation. I subbed out Billy McKay and Levi Reid due to they condition at that stage and brough in Bowerman at the front and Adam Wright to take over the right midfield.

At 119 Bowerman was able to create an opportunity that started with Patrick Ada Stealing the ball from Jarvis, The passing the ball to Robinson and Slokhon, who sent a through ball aimed towards Bowerman. A trully great opportunity for AC Zoah to take the lead and try to hold it.

at 120 the whistle was blown and we had moved into the final. Great result for our side.

And all this was from Barrow's lack of trying, we just managed to play well under their pressure.

Well executed plan.

This game went fairly well for us. Seem like our tactics were right for the job. The team didn't play good looking football, but we were very effective at making them take poor chances and capitalizing from the few shots we actually managed to get. This is how it all went down ->

Just as things were looking good

Just as things were looking good this season I had a few bad games. As you can see from the graph below I was keeping AC Zoah up in the top 7 of the league, and for a while I was in the top 5. Well just as the year was ending I lost two games in a row, one against Eastwood and one against Corby. Overall the season has been very good so far, and aside from this final stretch, I have to say we look like promotion contenders. I'm a bit scared about how I would do in the next tier but, I probably just need to get some new players if that actually happens.

Part of the reason for this good run so far are a few players including our new Billy McKay who has been great, scoring 14 goals so far and making 4 assists in total, as well as a lot of great collaborations to other goals. We also have a new goalie who has been incredible too, his name is Callum Barratt, and after 21 appearances his average rating is 6.78.

let's see what I have to work with...

GK	Quality (0-100%)	Age	Aq. Fee (K)	Season Wage (K)
Danny Simon	44.6	19	0	4.5
Tom Harrison	40.8	21	0	8.1
J Wood	40.6	17	4	2.16
DC	Fast DC (0-100%)	Tall DC (0-100%)	Age	Aq. Fee (K)
Patrick Ada	49.2	49.6	19.0	6
Creeper J	46.9	45.2	18.0	8
C McAughtrie	48.2	47.7	31.0	6
Sam Griffiths	50.4	46.3	19.0	40
Rob Pyle	49.5	45.3	18.0	28
Rob Terrace	41.2	38.4	17.0	8
FB	FB-d (0-100%)	FB-a (0-100%)	Age	Aq. Fee (K)
Alex Forde	38.5	35.4	21.0	0
J Lomax	47.8	43.4	18.0	70
Jon Patrick	45.8	40.4	21.0	8
D Young	43.7	36.8	18.0	12
A Francis	35.7	36.3	27.0	0
A Bentley	41.2	34.7	16.0	4.5
MC	MC-d (0-100%)	MC-a (0-100%)	Age	Aq. Fee (K)
Adam Johnson	42.4	42.0	19.0	22
D Wrack	46.8	47.3	36.0	1
R Davidson	43.4	42.8	22.0	8
P Bolland	53.6	45.9	32.0	3.5
Brett Solkhon	52.1	44.0	29.0	3.5
J Robinson	47.1	43.8	20.0	75
Simon Lewis	31.9	29.6	17.0	4.5
MR/ML	Winger (0-100%)	MC-a (0-100%)	Age	Aq. Fee (K)
Matthew Hull	37.9	36.7	18.0	0
F Kasiama	40.8	40.7	21.0	9
Levi Reid	40.3	39.7	28.0	10
Markus Person	43.3	35.6	19.0	9
Simon Colbeck	41.4	36.2	16.0	7
AMC	AMCC (0-100%)	R & L (0-100%)	Age	Aq. Fee (K)
A Wright	40.3	40.3	18.0	14
T Clarke	37.6	36.8	20.0	1.5
FC	FC fast (0-100%)	Target Man	Age	Aq. Fee (K)
Ben Mills	37.9	40.5	23.0	9
R Heywood	36.9	37.7	19.0	4
N Wellecomme	40.2	44.8	28.0	14
G Bowerman	44.8	43.6	20.0	60
H Curr	36.9	33.6	18.0	24
B Pollock	32.9	30.8	15.0	6
Danny Green	37.3	41.3	18.0	0

2012/2013 LLM - Perhaps this will be our year

A new season begins and I have spoken to the board regarding our expectations, I really would like to aim for a top 5 finish and maybe even a promotion this season. So the board has agreed to increase the salary cap to 31,581 and 1,300 for youth players which should allow us some new players in our squad. I really would like to revamp our squad this year and get them ready for a possible promotion. The team is still struggling financially but I really think increasing our performance as well as the reputation of players coming in will help us in that front as well.

-> apparently according to Sky Bet our odds this season are 40-1, and they say we are contenders for relegation (we'll show them), and Southport and Gainsborough are the favorites for promotion this season.

I was also made aware that our team is now one of the older teams in the league, as well as slowest, however we have an edge when it comes to strength as well as passing ability. In terms of our new youth players, ones to keep an eye on are Terry Naismith (CM), left midfielder Simon Colbeck and Striker Ben Pollock.

Best of season 2

Here are the best players of season two, my personal favorites were Kasiama (ML), Wellecomme (ST), Lomax (DR) and Patrick (DL). Dennis Young and Bowerman also had important roles, but just were not as consistent over the course of the year.

Season 2 concluded - 10th Place

So I'm done season 2 and unfortunately I don't feel that Zoah FC actually made enough progress this season. Somehow the board is happy with the outcome but I definitely had higher hopes. Finishing in 10th place is worst than last season and as the figure below indicates we were actually performing well in the first half of the season. For a while there it looked like we could have been in the top 5.

I wish I could explain why there was such a drop in performance but I'm determined to do better next season. But as an effort to improve the team I have signed three new players for next season, I do believe I need to have better quality players in order to jump up in quality. I figured my main areas where improvement is necessary are the center midfield and my center back. I would appreciate on people's opinions on these signings.







Just for kicks, here are the season summaries from Blue Square as well as higher tiers.

New signing, Griffiths

Griffiths is our new addition to the team, I decided to play him on his very first opportunity and he did not disappoint. He not only kept the opposition out of our side but also scored a goal and had another great chance from a set piece. What a great free signing, apparently he was let go from the Wolves, lucky for us.

I've also been looking at 2 other players Patrick Ada from Cameroon and Shane Huke from Australia, they seem like solid signings but I'm thinking I may not be able to get them, we'll see.

Beginning of 2012 = slump

Things have started to go a bit downhill in 2012, I'm not exactly sure why, We're playing a bit less games and I haven't really changed anything major in the team. I supposed we've had a few big injuries but I really don't understand how a few players being injured for a while could all of a sudden make the rest of the team drop in performance. So I've started to look at the game analysis and noticed that my CDs and my goalie have horrendous passing percentages, I'm now wondering if that's just part of the life of a lower league defender or if I should be changing my tactics a bit to make it so they don't try direct passes every time. I'm starting to tinker with that.

New hot prospect from Sveeeden

So I just bought myself a new hot prospect, Markus Person who's a score 44.6 winger using my formula. Not too bad for an 18 year old.

A great run so far in season 2

Things are definitely going well this season for AC Zoah, we're currently 8th in our league but our performance is good enough to get us in the top 4 I believe. Here are our games so far.



Our last game was particularly excited as we made it into the 2nd round of the FA Cup.



Finances are still a bit of an issue but this win got us around 30k and we also had an infusion of cash last month as well.

Pre-season 2 - updates

We just had a fairly successful pre-season. I tried to get as many home games as I could to try to generate some cash as well as give everyone a chance to prove their worth in the team. Perhaps the highlight of our preseason was the victory of our home cup over Nairn County and Bromley.



We also made a few changes to the team, by adding some new coaches. I've been doing some reading on LLM and I believe this is something that was severely lacking in season one, so I hired whatever I could afford just to keep the team better trained.





In terms of players, I only had one new player comming in. I believe he was a real find. He was a Walsall youth dropout that came in for free and I firmly believe will be a significant addition to our squad. In terms of players leaving the team, I felt that we needed to eliminate our extra weight we didn't need so after their end of contract, I let go of Mark Dudley, Jermaine Johnson, Naill Maguire, Ollie Parker and Joe Rogers. I was also able to sell Tom Moss for free to Northwich. Our budget now looks actually quite good, as our salaries are totaling 24,689 p/ month and we're allowed 27,499. Not too bad, I'm hoping to bring that down even more if possible.

Pre-season meeting

So these are the advices I've been given for the upcoming season.
In terms of season expectations, we've told the board that we believed we can achiever a top half finish this season, and they decided to give us 24k p/ month in wages.

Renew?

I've been renewing contracts and all that, but I'm wondering whether or not renew my coach/assistant manager. He's not really that great but last season it worked quite well for us.

My favorite players this season

Here is a list of my favorite players of this last season.