Sunderland Tiki-Taka

[danej]

I try my first career update here. My most exciting save ever. I am almost done with season 3.

 

A brief background: I play with severe save restrictions. I won't elaborate on it for now, feel free to ask. Essentially, my save restrictions are similar to, but much tougher and more elaborate, than what lollujo uses in his non-league to legend series. I do my save restrictions in part for wanting realism, and mostly for not wanting easy, predictable success which gets boring.

 

Among other things my save restrictions include delegating most stuff to staff. Including scouting, I also can only sign players whom my DoF try to sign (I finalise signings myself, turn most of his crap signings down). I don't touch training. I never hire/fire staff myself. I never ask to upgrades to the infrastructure unless the board suggests it. I rarely interact with players, only when there is a button in the mails to do so (for instance praise the player who has trained the best during the week, praise someone who was man of the match in the last game).

 

I also only use templated tactics.

 

In spite of these severe restrictions, I have had easy, predictable succes in every single save. So I needed to take it up a notch.

 

I realised that me using the template Gegenpressing 4-3-3 DM wide was a big part of my boring success. That tactic still seems very OP as long as you rotate a lot.

 

So for this save I instead use the template Tiki-Taka 4-3-3 DM wide (not the vertical Tiki-Taka, the vanilla/extremw one). And boy this has been fun.

 

In part because it looks beautiful. At times (often sporadically) it looks like Barcelona 2010, It looks like the Spanish national side.

 

Also, results are quite realistic. There are few goals per game, a bit less than two. I don't score much and I don't concede much. The tactic is usually a bit toothless up front.

 

So, the story so far. The first season I almost got the sack (board expecting a mid table finish in the Championship). I was hovering around 18th-20th for a lot of the season. Eventually finished 15th which saved my job.

 

Second season was very similar, I finished 14th or 15th. But wasn't in danger of getting sacked, was never close to the relegation zone.

 

The current season three (24/25) has been a positive surprise. I was leading the table from gameweek 9-17. Was still 2nd as late as week 35. Eventually dropped off. Was 6th before the final match. Looked unlikely to make the playoffs. However, I won my last match luckily 1-0 vs. 2nd Hull who was lucky to get automatically promoted anyway. Everyone around me dropped points and I finished 4th.

 

Am now in the playoff semis vs. Southampton. Got an undeserved 0-0 at their place. Return leg now.

 

As implied above, I haven't bought many players. After typing this up, I will throw in some screenshots of the transfer history below. With Sunderland, as in real life, I am lucky to have a young, talented squad, an many of the original players have developed well and could do a job in the Premier League. Players like Abdoullah Ba, Dan Neil, Dennis Cirkin, Dan Ballard, Anthony Patterson and Aji Alese. Other original players like Trai Hume and Niall Huggins are also decent backups and would probably be so for me in the botton half of the Premier League as well. If I ever get promoted that is.

 

A great thing with this tactics + the mentioned restrictions is that it feels like the weels can fall off any time. Success never seems guaranteed. If I fail to win promotion, next season could be another mid table finish.

 

A special mention goes to original youngster Jewison Bennette. I sold him a some point, think it was January 2024, to Brentford for around £10m. He looks great on papier, has 5 star PA. But he didn't develop at all, so I though it was better to cash in on him and was lucky to have Brentford and Southampton enter a bidding war for the player. The price was way above his market value which stood at around £5-7m.

[danej]

[danej]

[danej]

[danej]

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[danej]

The squad this season sorted by appearances