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.

UNL 22/23: player profiles

After posting only the major results I figured it would be good to showcase some of my main players on the blog. Maybe post some of their numbers and write a bit about some of my most important players this season. After spending so many seasons putting a solid squad together, I'm now finding we've been shuffling the team around a lot less often. Here are some of my players:

Tihomir Maric (11)

Maric is our vice captain and he's been with Heidelberg for 6 yeas and he joined us quite young at the age of 20. He was originally more of a winger for the team as he can play the left wing fairly well but once we started using our newer and more fluid tactic I found he was very effective as an advanced forward. He has scored 11 goals in 10 games this season and he's slowly taken Orsi's place at the front. Orsi has been one of our best scorers historically, but this season he's been a bit disappointing for some reason. Fortunately Maric has picked up the slack and has been scoring a lot of goals with Robertinho to feed him the ball.

Robertinho (8)

Robertinho is also 26 and he signed up with Heidelberg back in 2019 as a free agent from Santos. I'm not sure how this happened at this point since he's an amazing winger and getting him for free is bordering criminal. Robertinho has been a great power in the left wing. He is fast, he is agile, he is an amazing crosser and is also great at set pieces. He can basically do everything a manager would want from a winger. He has been probably the best overall player for the past year, not only contributing to Heidelberg but also for the Brazillian national team (which I also manage now).

Antonio Jose (2)

Antonio Jose is Heidelberg's captain and has been for a few years despite his early age. He's been a stable force at the back alongside Kelisson Roberto, his Brazilian partner at the back. AJ is a strong CB with great aerial capabilities as well as a strong leader within the squad. He joined the team back in 2017 for 1 Million from Fluminense. Beyond that, he is a consistent player and is part of the reason we have had such a great season so far. 

United Nations League - Season 22/23

This season was another great success. We've managed to once again take the UNL title. This is the third year in a row, and despite our great point count, we still had to wait for the very last game to be able to claim the title. In the last day of the season Heidelberg was only a single point ahead of Minato and we needed to at least do as well as them in order to lift the trophy. Well we did it after beating the Russian side, Kremlin by 1x0. The game wasn't necessarily a close one, but still very exciting. Check out the goal at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx8XaCLhLvQ

 We also managed to win the UN Cup as well which was a great achievement for us, to win both of these on the same season. (check the final @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoDMCKqCPeQ&feature=youtu.be ). It would have been even greater if we had won the Champions League, however, that wasn't in the card. We made it all the way to the semi-final, only to lose by 5x0 on aggregated to Machester City. We did qualify past the group stage despite having Real Madrid, Spartak Moscow and Sparta Prague in our group. We then beat Olympique Lyonnais (3x2), Inter (3x1). Even though our Heidelberg squad is strong enough to do well internationally, we still don't have a team quite at the caliber of some of the richest clubs of the world.

In terms of players, my top picks are our steady captain Antonio Jose. This 23 year old Brazillian centre back played 54 games this season, which is insane and managed an average of 7.60... He's certainly part of the reason we did so well. While Gustavo Orsi had a terrible last few months, he still managed to score 19 goals in 38 games and had an average of 7.44. Tihomir Maric, our vice-captain also did very well, scoring 21 goals in 39 games and had an average of 7.35 overall. A few other favorites of mine were the right winger Kitazawa, who had a wonderful early season which was halted by an injury in which he never really recovered completely. He still had 9 goals and 7.27 average after 30 games. The DM Robson Geraldo was another great player this season, this 20 year old Brazillian had an average of 7.27. Robertinho, our AML also had a great early season but an injury later on did slow him down unfortunately.

Below are some more stats for this season.