[FM 16] Struggling to Find a Club Identity - Venezia F.C.

[Urbiscuit18]

Hey guys.

I’m new to this forum and I came here looking for advice about club philosophy or my lack of it. (tl;dr at bottom)

BACKSTORY

Anyways it all started in Serie D, with Venezia F.C. A wonderful city without top flight football for the better part of 14 years. In my first season we walked the league using a tactic loosely based on Napoli’s form this season. It was a potent possession based tactic.

So as you can see, it was nothing crazy and it did a fine job. We averaged 57% possession and 2-3 CCC's per game. It's hard to tell if this was because of the gap in quality of the opposition or the quality of the tactic.

In our second season we were a predicted mid table side in Lega Pro Girone A so I opted for this.

To my surprise we walked the league again! As you can see it clashes with the previous season's philosophy, as this was a counter tactic and the other was a possession tactic. We averaged under 50% possession and 3-4 CCC's per game.

So after back to back promotions to Serie B, It was clear that we need every ounce of blood, sweat and tears to stay up, but me being a littletoo confident for my own good, decided to build yet another potent possession tactic. (Seeing a trend yet? )

And it worked an absolute treat! The results were similar to the first time in that we averaged 54% possession and 1-2 CCC's per game. I couldn't believe we had just gone back up to the top flight in back to back to back promotions! I was in dream land! Then reality set in ... we were not, I repeat not ready for Serie A. With only 10 permanent players and a minuscule budget of only 9 mil to refresh the squad, the odds of beating the drop were not in our favor. In fact we were predicted to finish 17th, just outside the drop zone.

TL;DR: After reaching the top flight I'm in tactic limbo. With no real club identity I struggle to build a team for years to come.

So where does that leave us? Well, after a good off-season in terms of friendly and transfer performance we're left with a cookie cutter counter tactic with little guidance or clear direction for the future of the tactic.

Here's the tactic:

And here's the usual first teamers:

GK

RB

CB

LB

RM

CM

LM

AM

CF

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Urbiscuit18]

Alrighty then, since no one has replied I guess I'll give an update on our situation.

So we've played 7 games, won 3, drew 2 and lost 2.

This included 2 massive away wins at Inter and Fiorentina.

We find ourselves in 7th, just outside of Europe.

Now for the tactics part, I have a home and away tactic and both can not be more different!

Home:

So I based this one on the fact that we had a lot of quality in the middle and I tried to exploit that. Now I think it still has some tweaking to do as both games we played it we lost. However, all of the oppositions goals were either free kicks or corners. I need some advice on this one.

Away:

This one is a simple 4-4-2 counter tactic. It's done a job although at the end of games if we're up by a single goal, things can get stressful. Advice on tweaks for this one would be great.

Also, since I'm playing as such a small club do you think it's good that I'm radically switching tactics depending on the venue, or should I stick to one base and tweak it depending on the opposition?

[Jean0987654321]

Am I missing something here?? You post a successful system with positive results and you are hunting down an identity?? For what? You already have that identity. You are a possession team. Stick with that

[Urbiscuit18]

Am I missing something here?? You post a successful system with positive results and you are hunting down an identity?? For what? You already have that identity. You are a possession team. Stick with that

See like I said in the post, I'm having difficulty sticking to one style because of my mixed results. I don't think we're suited to being a possession team. Plus I have some quality wide players (Verlinden and El Ouariachi) and an absolute top striker (Falanga). I'd like to exploit that but I don't know how. That's why I'm here.