Chelsea FM15 - very delayed update

Unfortunately I have pretty much stopped doing any kind of posting on all my blogs for a while. Me an my wife had a child a couple years ago and slowly I have stopped doing all kinds of things that I used to do. However, one of the things I have not stopped doing is playing video games including FM. I've played quite a bit of my Chelsea save even so I figured it would still be good to update the blog with where I am right now.

I'm currently on January 1st of 2018 and our Chelsea has been doing very well despite only having won the premier league one year in the 15/16 season. We got 2nd in the 16/17 season but I feel like we are on our way to winning this one as well. I've changed our tactics a little bit this season so I wanted to update you all on that as well. Inspired by Guido (https://strikerless.com/) I wanted to relive my FM live days of playing strikerless. I have not had success with a 4-6-0 since FML but with Chelseas budget and some inspiration/guidance from Guido I have managed to be doing quite well with this formation.

I'm using a 4-6-0 formation which is slightly different from my FML formation in that the deeper 3 midfielders are actually located more centrally while by attacking mids are playing a mode wide formation. I partly did it this way because of the players I already had in my squad using my previous 4-3-2-1 formation. This has been working well and it is a very aggressive formation although I have had some difficulties against some tough oppositions like Juventus and Manchester United. I think the key for this formation working so far was the addition of Pogba who really stepped up the quality of my midfield. Oscar playing as a Trequartista was originally something I considered a compromise but he has been amazing when playing with William to his right. As you can see I also bough Douglas Costa which has been just an outstanding player for my team, playing in any of my front 3 positions and doing great with set pieces. I also purchased the RWB Danilo from FCP for U$38M. In his first season his average rating was 7.21.

My other unusual formation is a 3-2-2-2-1 using 3 center backs while keeping one of them as a stopper. This tactic was something I wanted to try for a couple of reasons, I have a lot of high quality center backs, and Danilo has been amazing as a wing back when he plays that role. Additionally having Ramires, Pogba and Lucas Silva in the midfield means that I feel comfortable putting less players there and still not leaving the middle vulnerable. Lastly this formation has allowed me to continue playing a fairly wide style of football but with long passes. I haven't tried this formation against tough teams yet but once I finish tweaking it I will try it.

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.

UNL - Half empty rather than half full

And season 15/16 is concluded, at least for the League games. Here are some of the major stats including:

United Nations League Table

United Nations League 2

2015/2016 fuxtures

It was an OK season for us really. 10th place in the league is actually below my personal expectations of this season. I was hoping to maintain that 5-6th spot. Anyway, part of the poor performance I think is a combination of tactics and player management. Since I used 3 different formations during my season, I required a lot of players, which are not getting enough games and are starting to complain.


I need to pick out a formation/tactic and stick to it a bit more. My mainly played tactic is the 4-4-2, which I believe I posted before. It's quite a normal setup. As you can see in the figure, I achieved a goal scored : goal conceded ratio of 1.32 (from 49/37). My 4-1-3-2 formation (the CM convention tactic) was used about a third of the amount as the 442 getting a ratio of 1.36. Finally the V 4-1-2-2-1 formation, which is the offensive tactice produced 7 goals in 6 matches, with a ratio of 1.4.In terms of goals per match, the ratings are: 4-4-2 (1.48 goals per match), 4-1-3-2 (1.36 goals per match), 4-1-2-2-1 (1.16 goals per match).

  And these are the awards for this season:

MKD - 2012/2013 Player performances and MKD's tactics

Player stats for 2012/2013

So after this latest season, these are the numbers for our players.

Special note to some of our most important players, for instance in terms of goals Daniel Powell was once again our top scorer with 18 goals this season. Followed by Rafa Jorda (16), Daniel Larsson (9), Dean Bowditch (9), Gary MacKenzie (4).

Passing wise, Luke Chadwick had 84% pass completion, followed by Daniel Larsson (83%), Michael Woods (83%), Jay Spearing (82%)

Tactics

So I finally decided to post my current tactic as it seemed to have started to work. After having a fairly slow start in the fall 2012, I ended up tweaking my previous tactic quite a bit to achieve a more effective strategy... Not only that, but I also learned last season that you need at least a couple of tactics in order to succeed. Using the same one all the time seems to cause the opposition to learn how your team plays. So basically I have this tactic trained up as well as another similar one, which I tend to use during easier games, as I don't feel it is quite as polished as this one.

First, let's look at the team instructions

My 4123 "carbon" strategy involves a Balanced philosophy, with an attacking strategy. Passing is set to shorter and creative freedom set to More disciplined. At this point, I just don't feel my team is quite as talented as I would like, therefore giving them too much freedom would probably be a bad idea. I may change that once I aquire a stronger side.

Closing down and Tackling are set to Default, but Marking is set to Zonal for the team. Despite that, I actually have individual instructions for a lot of my defensive players to Man Mark, and that's useful since my defense is not top tier, and they are also a bit on the slow side.

Crossing and Roaming are also set to default here. Aside from all that, you can see I have a few manual changes as well (by a few I mean a lot).  My defensive line is set quite low, despite showing as normal. I do think this strategy works best using a deep defensive line. Width in this strategy is also important, and it needs to be set wide. If you observed the formation I use, I have quite a narrow midfield and setting them to wide, allows some more space for our midfielders to create with our full backs. We have our tempo set to slow, which has worked so far, however this may also be something I change over time. I often debate on increasing this setting because our team does seem a little too relaxed more of the time, but having players that don't have high score %passes does make me want to keep this setting for another season. Time wasting is set to the default low value, but as I mentioned, the team does seem to play a slow moving game, and often I feel that they waste a lot more time than they should.

The Focus of our passing is down both flanks, again this is so that midfielders and full backs are using the outter open areas to create chances, while leaving the middle relatively covered during counter attacks. This idea came from reading about other people's strategies, in this case especifically the grid system, where the OP did a similar thing with the midfield.

Finally, Counter attack is set to yes and Offside to No. Much like some of the stuff above, I may change offside to yes in time, once I feel my team can handle strategies like that.

Below are my individual settings for goalies and my defence. The goalie is pretty much set on defend with the only change being Closing down. Full backs are set on a more defensive stance, which may not seem intuitive since I have so few wide players, but it seems to be working so far, and this is obviously affected by my "attacking" mentality applied to the team.

My central defenders are slightly different from each other. Having the DCL play a Cover duty while the DCR plays a defensive duty. I tend to keep a strong CB on the left position just to make sure our defense stays strong throughout the game, including counter attacks.

 

 My midfield is layed out below. Having my Defensive Midfielder on "defend" duty, man marking his area. Central midfielders have essentially the same assignment, but I just try to balance things by having always a more defensive player paired with at least one attack minded midfielder like de Falco or Mutzel.

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The Carbon tactice relies on having 3 strikers with slightly different instructions. Most teams play with 2 CBs and having the extra striker really helps put pressure on the opposition and tends to create more space for goals. Looking at the three, you see I have the poacher in the center, who will end up being the one with the most chances to score, paired with a Complete Forward (attack) which tends to be set for a good overall striker like Powell or MacDonald. This player is set to have a lot of creative freedom and will be almost playing a bit like a playmaker at the front. On the other side I have a Deep Lying forward set to attack as well, however this player will be set a bit more negatively and the main idea here is to have a far player on this side, such as Daniel Larsson who has 17 pace and was a great addition to the team this season. I may even change this position later, having a better and faster striker and setting up the Run From Deep setting to high so that this player acts a bit like a winger at the front, helping bring the ball up from midfield, and using speed to create crosses and other opportunities.

FM12: Half a season with the Quackers

I've played a good half a season with this new game and I'm enjoying it despite the transition period. Darlington is a lower league team (BSP) which I picked because I figured it would be a nice challenging game. Because of their large stadium I thought the room for growth was already there, making this a good candidate for me. On the negative side, this team is pretty lacking on funds, and our facilities are nothing to brag about.

We started off the season with no debt, which at this level I think is actually quite nice. I wasn't given much for buying players, but I don't think this would have been different anywhere else in BSP. Salary wise, I am allowed £14821 but my team was almost maxed out when I got it. I didn't really play smart and ended up keeping the majority of my players (by that I mean everyone), which isn't great for my financial situation. I guess season 1 I'm hoping to just make it to the playoff, and get better for season 2, when I should be able to have more money and ideally better players to get ready for a promotion.

Darlington Arena, as I mentioned is quite big, seating 25k people. The corporate facilities are "good", training facilities are "fairly basic" and I have a "basic youth facility". To compliment that, I have "adequate junior coaching" and "fairly basic youth recruitment". As I said, not great, but I'm hoping this will get better with time.

Tactics wise, I had to play around a bit initially to get a good thing going. I'm embarrassed to say, this too much longer than I'd like but now my formation is the one from the top picture. A simple 4-4-2 with "rigid" philosophy and "attacking" strategy. A few modifications I made to the default 4-4-2 is the Limited Defender I employ at the back, and the use of "defensive" full backs a lot of the time. I'm wondering if this is a wise idea though. In the center nothing unusual, just your average wide midfielders and central mids (one on D and one on Auto). Up front I have a Target man set for support, where usually I keep my favorite striker, Liam Hatch. The other forward is usually a poacher set to attack, in general I try to put less versatile strikers here. I haven't been scoring as much as I would like, so I am still tweaking my attack. My biggest strategic issue for the first few months is the fact I had my team passing more on the short side, and turns out poor sides do better with longer passing options.

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 - 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.