FM22 Analytics, tactics and soccernomics
We had a good season!! After finishing 9th and then 8th the last two seasons, we managed to make the leap up to a 6th placed finish and now have the rather daunting prospect of European football next season to look forward to.
How did we make the leap of 13 extra points whilst spending only £2.7m?
Continue reading “Girona FC – S4,4: Season Review & Planning for Europe”You might remember from the first post in this series that there’s no money tree in Girona, but in case you don’t, here’s the team’s transfer dealings since being relegated back to La Liga 2:
Continue reading “Girona FC -Part 4: Finances, wage structure and recruitment policy”So, it has come to this. Considering the timing, possibly my final long-term career in this year’s FM, after the Sparta & Artium saves have both reached a somewhat natural finish point. We managed to achieve complete domestic domination as well as reach the CL final with Sparta with a team full of academy products and we climbed our way out from the 6th tier of Italy all the way to a Europa League win with Artium, all done with Italian u21 signings only. Both incredibly enjoyable and challenging, both clubs created from scratch in their respected nations.
So, as a somewhat tangible pattern emerges, and as I quickly get bored with traditional FM saves, I’ve decided there’s only one thing I can do to motivate me enough to play FM17 anymore: a youth challenge in my home town – Chisinau, the capital city of Republic of Moldova. And yes, with a created club 🙂 Continue reading “Rapid Chisinau – Home is where the heart is”
Hi everyone, this is a piece I wrote detailing the squad&club achievements at the end of our 15th season with Sparta Bucharest. It’s a detailed tribute to a Football Manager youth challenge that turned out to be much more than a simple FM career….
Continue reading “Sparta: 15 Years of Youth, Athleticism and Discipline”
Back to back to back? Surely threesome sounds better…Not that I’d be very far from the more literal interpretations of that given my half-shaved beard and weird accent started attracting way more attention than I thought it would from the overwhelmed feminine set of supporters. And yet as inexperienced in those matters I believe myself to be, that’s hardly the most exciting thing that’s going on right now. We’ve done it! Continue reading “Part V: Promotion threesome in Florence”
Hello everyone and I hope you’re enjoying this series thus far. You might be wondering why I change my approaches so often, as until now we’ve had very good success with most of the systems employed. This probably originates in my utter disregard to concepts like ‘stick to what’s working’ and ‘if it’s going well, don’t change it’, when it comes to football management. The whole idea behind this series is to provide an illustration of the fact that being adaptable and flexible are some of the most important aspects of management. Given this is a youth-only save, the ‘logistic’ set-up provides the perfect scene for that, as we’re unable to buy players and have to constantly look to adapt our tactics to players that come through the team through youth recruitment. Then again, it’s an exercise in trying to prove that success can be achieved on a football pitch with different styles of football, and therefore a subtle dig to the moralists of these realms which advocate a ‘right way’ and ‘wrong way’ to play football. Before this starts looking like an ego-trip, I will conclude on this conceptual side of things and I’ll get on with the real deal: Continue reading “Sparta | A Tactical Identity Journey: Part IV – Simplicity brings Efficience”
Asymmetric 