[FM18; long] Elusive first season title with FK Partizan Belgrade

[OWD]

Ok, so here is the deal. A couple of months ago, I've started a game as a manager of FK Partizan Belgrade, mostly looking to see how rich a club from Serbia can get. I haven't had the best of the starts, finishing only 2nd or 3rd in the first season, but the board decided to stick with me, which proved to be a good decision, because we've won the title in the next six seasons or so. To be honest, that save got boring quickly, because I felt like I was insta-resulting my way through the league. The tactic I used was copy-pasted from guidetofm.com, and the only thing I've done aside from scouting and transfers, was naming the team, and making the subs.

Now, I have never played football in real life, and I am not a knowledgeable football fan. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know much about tactics IRL, and what I do know is from the FM point of view. I got into FM mostly for man-management and the financial side of managing a club. I am good enough at this game that I can build a winning squad in a couple of seasons, and win using almost any tactic, just on the count of having the strongest team by far, but I feel that time has come for me to get to the point where I can take over a club and start winning immediately, without doing major squad overhauls.

With that in mind, I re-read most of the tactics stuff on this forum, understood as much as I could, and restarted the game with Partizan Belgrade, aiming to win the title in the first season. After 10-15 attempts, I am sad to announce that I still haven't been able to do so! (!!!) It is always the same story. We are tipped to win the league, we get off to a solid start, but after about 12-15 games, form starts to drop, and from there things only get worse. To make a long story short, if I played a patient game, we would struggle to score, and would concede mostly early, and mostly from the set-pieces. If I played a more aggressive, attacking game, we would miss chances, and get vulnerable to the famous "balls over the top" problem. 

Many times in the past few weeks I have felt hopeless, contemplated on the game itself... Maybe I got a little sceptical about being able to win regularly with a squad that is not OP. But then I take a break, log on to Twitch, and watch some of the guys play... If someone could argue that fantastic results posted on the forums were "save-scummed", there is no argument here. Some of the guys pretty casually hit a CL spot with West Ham or Newcastle in the first season, without "cheat" tacitcs, and in the time it takes me to get form June to August. So as much as I feel emotionally exhausted right now, my Determination is 20 to learn and overcome, rather than give up. 

So, let's get into the some of the specific problems I encounter:

1. Major fitness issues:

The first problem I've encountered with the Serbian league is match congestion, and I am pretty desperate to see how other people deal with this.

Serbian league has a winter break, which means that if you play in the Serbian Cup and in a continental competition, you pretty much play two games a week all the time. Long term, I would solve this problem by having a second 11 that is capable of winning the league on its own, and just play them every other game. However, that approach isn't valid for the first season, when our first 11 is only just capable of winning the league, and we lack depth in general. I assume that doing a whole team rotation every other game is a major reason why I drop so many points, but I haven't found any other way to play. This is a huge issue!

It is a little difficult to explain, but let me try. Let's assume that all players are completely fit. Usually we need to play seven or nine games in a row between the international breaks, and the schedule is, say, Sunday - Wednesday. So player X would start the first game with 100% condition, the second game with ~93%, the third game (best case) with ~90-93%, but by the fourth game his condition would be like 85%. There are two ways to deal with this: resting him from training or rotating him.

Resting actually seems to help a little with recovering condition %, or at least I got the feeling it does, but I have no idea what the lack of training does to player attributes and injury proneness in the long term. To be clear, I am resting each player for the day after a match by default, and here I am talking about giving a player two, or more probably, three days of rest after each game. Anyway, resting doesn't solve the issue of injuries, since low condition is not the only thing that factors into the injury susceptibility. The other thing that factors is the match load, and once a player has played 3 matches in 14 days, his match load becomes high, and he starts being very susceptible to injuries, despite his actual condition. So, unless I do a complete team rotation each game, players get injured all the time. And I mean ALL THE TIME. Multiple times I've had games where as many as four players had to come off, which cemented my tendency to just do a full rotation, and play every player at most once a week.

Partial rotation does not solve much, because it means that my strongest 11 rarely plays together. And, to be honest, because of the weak links, playing a semi-rotated squad seems like it is just slightly better than playing the second 11, but is significantly worse than playing the first 11.

So, I would like to ask you, how the hell do you deal with this??? Please, please, if anyone has experience with playing in Serbia, show me how to fix this.

 

2. Form after splitting points:

In the first season, and only in the first season, there is rule by which league points are split in half after 30 games, and top 7 teams play each other one more time to decide the title winner. That rule has been the death of me. Even if we do manage to finish the regular season first, our form just falls apart in those final 7 games. Part of that is tied to the fitness issue, i.e. playing two games a week. And I think a part of that is facing opponents that are in good form (top 7). Anyway, my team just crumbles under pressure, no matter what I do in team talks and press conferences. If I play it cool, players seem complacent, if I demand more, players seem pressurized. I even tried skipping press conferences and not giving team talks, but still lost the title to the likes of Mladi Radnik, or Spartak Subotica. You can imagine the frustration.

 

3. Unable to set up a good tactic or a system:

This is a key problem for me, and does translate into my other saves. It is tied to my apparent football illiteracy.

I have no clue how to build a system around Partizan players, let alone what to do about the second 11, having in mind the fitness issues posted above.

I can clearly identify top players in the team (Tosic, Soumah, Tawamba, goalkeeper Stojkovic; will post screenshots later), so I understand the idea would be to build around them. I understand that the team has quality wingers/IFs (Jankovic, Ivanovic), so wing play is an idea. Bringing it all together is an issue.

So far I have tried multiple systems in multiple saves, with various levels of success. I deleted the past attempts, so I can't write about what went wrong each time (even if I could determine it). But the key thing I've noticed across multiple saves, and I do think it is pretty important, is the fact that none of my key players were consistent. Striker never scored 30 goals, wingers never had 15 assists, etc. In times when things went pretty well, and when we were close to the elusive SL title, goals came from various situations, and were scored by a wide variety of players. In the past, when I played with downloaded (not necessarily "cheat") tactics, things were not as chaotic, and there certainly was some attacking method.

And what is equally, if not more important, is that player ratings were average to fairly good even during winning streaks. In other words, our victories usually were not dominant, but hardly fought, and the football was rather drab. I don't know in which way form is tied to player development in FM, but I assume poor form has something to do with the obvious player stagnation (and even regression!) which was apparent in those attempts. Most notably, I haven't been able to get anything out of Djordje Ivanovic (will post the screenshot), a player I believe could be a key player in a year or so, but has not improved a single CA point in each of the attempts (checked with an in-game editor)!

 

Okay, so that's it for now. Hope I didn't bore you all to death.   But please understand, I really want to become good at this game, and I am rather desperate at this moment.

[Experienced Defender]

Hey man, you are managing my favorite club 

11 hours ago, OWD said:

Unable to set up a good tactic or a system:

This is a key problem for me, and does translate into my other saves. It is tied to my apparent football illiteracy.

I have no clue how to build a system around Partizan players, let alone what to do about the second 11, having in mind the fitness issues posted above.

I can clearly identify top players in the team (Tosic, Soumah, Tawamba, goalkeeper Stojkovic; will post screenshots later), so I understand the idea would be to build around them. I understand that the team has quality wingers/IFs (Jankovic, Ivanovic), so wing play is an idea. Bringing it all together is an issue.

When you post respective screenshots of these 6 players, I guess I'll be better able to help. I know how each of them plays in real life, but here it's important to know how the FM game rates their attributes.

I'd also like you to tell me more about your defensive midfielders, fullbacks and attacking midfielders? How many players do you have in each of these positions, which ones are considered the best in their positions? If you can post their screenshots as well, the better 

[Robson 07]

17 hours ago, OWD said:

the team has quality wingers/IFs (Jankovic, Ivanovic), so wing play is an idea.

Your post is quite long and that may have held off replies.  A lot going on, so fix or build things one at a time for now.  Putting congestion and tiredness aside for a moment decide your plan.  I've highlighted where you reckon your wide players are great so maybe start there?  Are they really wingers or inside forwards?  That perhaps decides the next part as to whether you'll play direct down the flanks or a more complex central based strategy.  If that's the way your comfortable approaching this, then confirm that plan to the forum, and I'm sure you will get lots of help.

[OWD]

Thank you both for the replies. Some real life stuff is happening right now, so I will reply properly tomorrow, and post the screenshots I promised.

[OWD]

Here are the screenshots I promised.

 

Squad Overview and Dynamics:

Spoiler

 

Key players (IMO):

Spoiler

 

Important Players (IMO):

Spoiler

 

Other Players:

Spoiler

 

[Experienced Defender]

First, thank you for the comprehensive information you provided, it really helps a lot. 

15 hours ago, OWD said:

 

The first thing I noticed is that the team lacks cohesion. Advice is simple - set Training Focus on Team Cohesion till the beginning of the season/end of pre-season. 

As for players' individual training, here is what I would do (not necessarily what you should do):

Danilo Pantić  (positional training - MC - advanced PM; focus - Off The Ball)

Nemanja Antonov (positional training - ML - defensive winger; focus - positioning)

Marko Jevtović (positional training - DM - half back; focus - positioning)

Nebojša Kosović (positional training - MC - Mezzala; focus - technique)

Saša Zdjelar (positional training - MC - deep-lying PM; focus - off the ball)

26. Nemanja Miletić (positional training - DL - Wing back; focus - technique)

73. Nemanja Miletić (positional training - DC - Central defender; focus - positioning)

Slobodan Urošević (positional training - DL - fullback; focus - positioning)

Marko Janković (positional training - MC - Mezzala; focus - balance)

Djordje Ivanović (positional training - MR - Winger; focus - crossing)

Ognjen Ožegović (positional training - AML - inside forward; focus - first touch)

Vladimir Stojković (positional training - Sweeper-keeper; focus - first touch)

Seydouba Soumah (positional training - AML - Inside forward; focus - balance)

Zoran Tošić (positional training - AML - winger; focus - crossing)

Leandre Tawamba (positional training - ST - defensive forward; focus - heading)

Tactic-wise, I'll go more into detail tomorrow, but there are basically 5 formations that would best suit your team IMO: 4-1-2-3Wide, 4-4-2 Diamond Wide, 4-1-3-1-1Wide, 4-1-3-2Wide and 4-2-1-3Wide. 

So for now just think about these suggestions, and tomorrow we'll talk about tactics in particular.

[Svenc]

On 05/10/2018 at 03:13, OWD said:

Some of the guys pretty casually hit a CL spot with West Ham or Newcastle in the first season, without "cheat" tacitcs,

 

A "cheat" may lie in the eye of the beholder. If it's repetable, they still may do something which is wonkily defended by the game and AI . Unless they turn the squad upside down, it pretty much draws player quality not all that relevant. Does the AI manaing West Ham or Newcastle do this? No it blatantly doesn't. Does the AI manage to have consistently great results all throughout the season? No it doesn't. It doesn't even overachieve a bit, usually. Quite ofently, it even sees the sack. Therefore, I'd take such with a huge grain of salt, in particular if it's repeatable rather than being  a "Leicester thing" -- a season which also took several top sides to underperform all around -- and Arsenal not being able to hit a cows arse for weeks , which unlike in the game, in real football is a semi-regular occurance right at the top of the game. Remember that from SI's end, this is meant to be a football sim game. The main coder is pretty much on record as eyeing particularly suspicious levels of overachievement, no less as he knows his code has faults. If you are able to overachieve in general, you may be doing pretty damn great from SI'S point of view, in particular as AI management has also seen a few upgrades throughout the releases (still won't make them regularly getting Newcastle into the CL first season). The in-game media will spot and react to your good performance likewise.

In either case, what you are doing is spotting that amongst the hundreds of thousands of players, some guys are doing better than you. Basic rule of the thumb: There is always going to be somebody who's better than you at any activity, no matter how hard you try. If you don't treat this like the game it's supposed to be, don't expect it to be one (various games do have a pro gaming scene of players getting paid for turning games into second jobs). Rule two: Most may do worse than you, but you won't hear as much 'bout them. That your experience with "cheat tactics" was so different is no coincidence. They always make players pop up in space no matter what (due to defensive/AI issues) As a benchmark: In football, the best forwards on average turn about a shot in four to six into goals. Most centralish forwards, unlike Messi/Kane at 5, Ronaldo at 7, however, average but two attempts per game. They can't be  "consistent", or they'd be aliens. Without "exploiting" something not all that well defended by the game, don't expect a forward to be consistent unless he averages such numbers (as to be displayed in his profile or by entering columns manually, in the squad screen -- screenshot below). Any forward will miss more than score, as that's football DNA, as even the bigger chances mostly see the keeper in the advantage -- somewhat, from my experience, tried to be replicated in-game.

 

 

[blackdevil]

I was looking for a save to do and having seen this have started a Partizan save.  Tactics wise I think the squad is suited to a 4-2-3-1 wide system and doesn't need anything fancy, particularly in the league where we're one of the better sides.  So far we've played 25 games in all competitions with 21 wins and 4 losses.  All 4 defeats have been in the Champions League with 4 away defeats and 1 home defeat to Man City.  As you can see in the screenshots below I'm not using anything fancy although the 2nd one just moves everything a little deeper for those tough CL away trips...If I remember to select it  although it did get us a win against DVB.

Tactics used so far: (no player instructions used)

Spoiler

I think the biggest issue you're experiencing is likely due to the physical and mental wellness of the players.  Regular rotation of the players (not necessarily the whole team at once) including who gets substituted taking care of the physical side of things (don't forget you can use youngsters from reserves/U19 squads as well).  For the mental side I rely on the pre/post-match press conferences to be confident in my teams ability (Training has gone well and confident of getting a result) but at the same time say the "opposition have a chance and it's not going to be easy".   Keeping morale high and the players focused to avoid complacency is the key to getting consistency over the course of the season.  For team talks I sometimes let my assistant do them but when I do them it's always done in calm tone.  Unless they've been poor in the first half (or after the game) be aggressive and it usually gets them back on track.

Looking at my squad as we approach November you can see most of them have good morale and match sharpness.  The only ones not match sharp or in good morale are the injured players or the couple that haven't played much:  (only signing done by DoF is Djordje Kamber)

Spoiler

Results to show consistency:

Spoiler

 

[OWD]

I would like to thank all three of you for your replies. Again, some work related stuff is going on, so I will reply properly tomorrow.

[blackdevil]

Just as an update - I finished the season in Serbia and it's not that bad at all compared to some other leagues.  There was only one week where I had four games in a week (Wed > Sat > Mon > Wed) and that culminated with the Serbian Cup semi-final 2nd leg.  I had thankfully won the league with first Wednesday game of that spell (3 league games remaining) so it could have been a nuisance if the title was still up in the air but I was able to win those as well anyway.  

The biggest help with fixtures was probably getting eliminated from the Europa League in the 2nd Knockout round as I'd imagine it'd be a lot tougher if I'd stayed in the competition.  If you're doing better than I did in the CL/EL then I expect it'd a very tough final league phase.

As I was mostly focused on morale and fitness as they appeared from my perspective to be your biggest issue in maintaining form through to the end of the season it's worked out quite well.  I left the training to the assistant (probably not the best idea in this case) and DoF to most of the other DoF type tasks, only left myself with the veto power over player sales.  Taking over these aspect could allow you to do better.

Tactically I did change from an attacking mentality to standard when I was leading in the 2nd half of games in the final phase of the league to reduce the intensity of our game to help reduce condition loss although I'm not sure how much that helped.

And on squad rotation - I did swap nearly the whole team (including keeper) in rotation where possible which we could do as they're supposed to be one of the top two teams in the league.  Obviously due to injuries & suspension that couldn't be done every time.   I kept an eye on the fixture list to ensure that my first choice line up would be available for the big games where possible.  I forgot to use youngsters from the reserves/U19's aside from one occasion when I played a winger from the U19's.  I should have used them when I had that 4 games in one week spell, alas my concentration attribute seems to be on the decline.

[sporadicsmiles]

The key to squad rotation is to trust your backups, pick your matches and avoid the urge to change all 11 players. Your backup players should be at your club because you know they can play well enough to get a result. Maybe not as good as your first team player, but well enough that they are not a liability. Get rid of any backup player you do not want to play, there is zero point having a player like that. Your senior squad should all be able to play for you. Complement this with youth (Partizan have a good youth setup, right?), especially as emergency cover in an injury crisis. I like to have at least one (preferably more) young players who are able to start 5+ games for me in a season. The very best youth prospects, so I can them experience and improve them. My squad will usually be; 11 first choice players + 1 backup keeper + 2 backup fullbacks + 2 backup CBs (preferably with one youth, I do not rotate CBs all that much) + 2-3 backup CMs (depends on formation, one youth player here) + 2 backup wide players (+a youth player if I have it) + 1-2 backup strikers (depends on formation, I usually play with one striker so I have one backup). That is 23 or 24 players in my first team, including 2-3 young players. Every player I have is able to play for me, or they are sold and replaced. You can adjust this to your own tactic.

The next step is to pick your matches. You are stronger than most teams in your league. So pick the games carefully. Got a game against a relegation contender at home? Perfect chance to rest some players. Midtable team but followed a few days later but a vital game against a rival? Rest players. When you are strong, there are a lot more chances to rest players than when you are weak.

Finally, you do not have to rotate your entire squad. I would suggest not to do that (I only do it if I am playing a low league side in a cup, or I am qualified from my UCL group and absolutely need to rest my team). You can rotate 2-3 players at a time. Decide by who has the worst condition or who is at most risk of an injury. Over time (and it takes longer than for your first team) your backups will also develop partnerships with other players, which lessens the impact. Also remember if you are 2-0 up and cruising at half time, you can take off a key player to rest them too. That is almost as good as resting them. You just have to remember that the goal is to win matches. It does not matter if you win 1-0 with a backup striker who cannot lead the line as effectively as your main guy. This may be preferable to winning 5-0 but losing a player to injury because he played too much.

Hope that helps a bit. I love good squad management.

[OWD]

On 07/10/2018 at 02:14, Experienced Defender said:

The first thing I noticed is that the team lacks cohesion. Advice is simple - set Training Focus on Team Cohesion till the beginning of the season/end of pre-season. 

As for players' individual training, here is what I would do (not necessarily what you should do):

(...)

Yes, I did set the training focus to Team Cohesion, although it didn't seem to help much. Our form was at its best in the start of the season, and this holds true for almost every attempt I made.

Your individual training suggestions are way different than anything I did. In fact, it makes me realize I didn't really think out of the box at all. I am quite surprised by some of your suggestions, but I feel that further talk about the subject would bring possibly unnecessary depth to a topic that is already too broad.

 

On 07/10/2018 at 11:59, Svenc said:

A "cheat" may lie in the eye of the beholder. (...)
 

I get where you are coming from. Just to make myself clear, my goal is not to win EPL with Newcastle in the first season, or anything similar. My argument is that I firmly believe my more modest goals are achievable given the fact that some streamers (who are not really tactical masters like for example Rashidi) overachieve so easily.

Anyway, my goal is to get to a level where I can overachieve slightly on a consistent basis. For example, win the EPL with Chelsea, or Serie A with Napoli in the first season. Or do a solid top half finish with a team that was projected to finish in the mid table. I believe that I would be pretty much there if I "just" knew how to implement a coherent tactical system, and maybe learn to counter some of opposition's advantages on top of that.

As for player ratings, I haven't done any sort of proper analysis on what to expect. But considering my player Tosic is the best in the team, and amongst the best in the league (both in terms of CA and my own evaluation), I am far from happy with his 6.6 - 6.7 rating that he averaged over the course of the season in most of my attempts. I would expect my top players to at least be in the region of 7.0 - 7.2. Also, I am aware that Tawamba is not the type of a player who would bang in 30 goals a season. But having 10 game goal droughts every other save is not acceptable.

I believe that not getting enough from my top players is a sign that my tactics are not very well suited to my team. And that brings me back to the topic of setting up a coherent tactical system; learning what looks right on it's own is not enough, but I have to learn what is logical AND can be implemented with players that are at my disposal.

 

On 07/10/2018 at 17:00, blackdevil said:

I was looking for a save to do and having seen this have started a Partizan save.  (...)
I think the biggest issue you're experiencing is likely due to the physical and mental wellness of the players.  (...)

Oh man. Those are the results I am looking for, nothing more, nothing less.

Yes, fitness and morale management is a major issue for me. I really wonder how you did it. Do you remember media talks, journalists mentioning how many players you used over the course of the season? I always believed 25 is more than enough. If the AI does it, I simply cannot comprehend why I can't get by without using 30+ players. Aside from that, I may have to rethink my media talks.

Another problem for me, which I forgot to mention in the opening post is how to not get destroyed in Europe. Looking at your results, obviously Dortmund result stands out, but relevant to my very last game is how you did vs. Celtic. You got through on away goals, while we got destroyed two times, 5-0 and 3-1. It is not just the result, but also the manner in which we lost...

Looking at real life (PSG vs Red Star comes to mind), I understand that CL or LE blowouts is something I might have to accept in the first few seasons, but loosing heavily to the likes of Celtic or Galatasaray just destroys locker room morale, and I definitely noticed that in most of, if not all of my attempts. The problem is general match strategy. Simple. If I go out attacking, our defense will be leaky, and we will concede. If I play defensively, we will still concede by making silly mistakes. So that is one of my top priorities, to sort out the tactics that can defend properly and have a viable counterattacking outlet (primarily to alleviate the pressure).

 

15 hours ago, sporadicsmiles said:

The key to squad rotation is to trust your backups, pick your matches and avoid the urge to change all 11 players.  (...)

Thank you for your input. You gave some very good and complete advice on squad management. I do not wish to sound disrespectful, but I am familiar with all of that. It's just that Serbian league has a more congested schedule than other, more familiar leagues. Playing there showed me I was not as good at squad management as I thought...  

As I explained in my initial post, rotating 2-3 players every game doesn't seem to be plausible, because playing 3 or more matches in 14 days would make most of the team very injury prone. In his second post, Blackdevil pretty much confirmed that you need to use full team rotation in Serbia. However, I would still appreciate additional input from people that had managed in Serbian Superleague.

[Experienced Defender]

When it comes to Tawamba's individual training, maybe training him as a Complete Forward would make more sense than DF when I think twice. CF training would improve more of his attributes than DF, and he can still be used as a DF when needed (e.g. in tough European games).

Btw. I noticed that you had not posted the screenshots of Milan Radin and Aleksandar Subić. I am wondering why?

[OWD]

Subic is on loan for the first season. Not sure why I forgot Radin. I use him as a second choice DR.

[blackdevil]

49 minutes ago, OWD said:

how many players you used over the course of the season?

I never had any media questions about it, But I used the 25 first team squad + Sasa Ilic (10 games) who left during the winter break and one U19 player for one game (Nikola Lakcevic).

With press conferences and team talks I keep an eye out to see if the players are showing complacency and try to cut that out with the responses.  And also stress to take one game at a time & can't go into it thinking it's already won...but at the same time "we've trained well and confident of securing a result" if it's for a league game.

First Team Squad:

Spoiler

Was fortunate that only Marko Jevtovic complained about lack of first team football.

 

57 minutes ago, OWD said:

how to not get destroyed in Europe

Honestly it's luck with this save, I nearly didn't make it to the CL group stage at all.  Against Honved it required an 88th min goal to secure the away goals win.  Was 3-1 down vs Celtic in the first leg away and got an 86th min goal and then held on in the 2nd leg as I went 2-0 up and then made it interesting with an own goal on the 66th.   In the EL first knockout round in needed an 90+5th min winner in the 2nd leg to go through as we'd have been out on away goals.

The group stage annoyed me somewhat as we saw the other side of late goals, we lost to Ajax in the 90th min of the first meeting with them and City needed an 86th min winner the 3-2 defeat.  The Dortmund games were strange as they just didn't seem to turn up, at that stage I thought I could have made it out of the group but alas a step too far.

European results if interested:

Spoiler

 

[blackdevil]

7 hours ago, OWD said:

Subic is on loan for the first season. Not sure why I forgot Radin. I use him as a second choice DR.

Same here until the DoF signed Nikola Pejovic on loan in Jan transfer window.

Just a thought, what are you setting your manager's reputation to?  It might be worth setting it as "Former International" so the players take more notice of you from the beginning with regard to press conferences and team talks.

[GreenTriangle]

7 hours ago, OWD said:

As I explained in my initial post, rotating 2-3 players every game doesn't seem to be plausible, because playing 3 or more matches in 14 days would make most of the team very injury prone. In his second post, Blackdevil pretty much confirmed that you need to use full team rotation in Serbia. However, I would still appreciate additional input from people that had managed in Serbian Superleague.

It is plausible. Some players can play a lot of matches without a high risk to be injured. But here are two problems. Natural fitness and stamina are in serbian league lower than in english or german or italian first leagues. This means is not recommended to use high training intensity for a long time or play high intensity tactical configurations for a long time.  Can be used, but they increase the risk of injuries. 

On the other hand, your best players are playing in AMR - AMC - AML positions. So, 4-2-3-1 is a natural configuration for them.

 

[sporadicsmiles]

On 11/10/2018 at 00:33, OWD said:

Thank you for your input. You gave some very good and complete advice on squad management. I do not wish to sound disrespectful, but I am familiar with all of that. It's just that Serbian league has a more congested schedule than other, more familiar leagues. Playing there showed me I was not as good at squad management as I thought...  

As I explained in my initial post, rotating 2-3 players every game doesn't seem to be plausible, because playing 3 or more matches in 14 days would make most of the team very injury prone. In his second post, Blackdevil pretty much confirmed that you need to use full team rotation in Serbia. However, I would still appreciate additional input from people that had managed in Serbian Superleague.

No disrespect received, we are each allowed our own opinions on the game. I do not claim to be right, just to share what I myself do. 

37 games is not so excessively different to other leagues around the world, to be fair. In my last season (I am playing in Germany) I played 51 competitive matches. Red Star (who won the Serbian league) played 45. Hence I am fairly certain advice on squad rotation is pretty standard for the game. This included playing 2 matches a week for a good half of the season (the Europa league is a nightmare for rotation).

Even with 51 games, the only time I used full squad rotation was when I played weaker teams in the cup. I never had any injury crises during this time. We fell apart at the end of the season, but I have a young squad and we were unexpectedly challenging for the title. 

The other way to keep players more fit is to reduce the training intensity when you are in a period with multiple matches per week. 

[OWD]

In case anyone is interested, I am putting this on hold because of major tactical and training changes in FM 19. As soon as I purchase the new game, I will open an updated topic, and hopefully we will continue where we left off.