The story of FC Erzgebirge Aue in 3.Liga

[ChaosReiter]

At the beginning:

After hundreds of hours spent on FM24, something went wrong. Everything has been functioning well actually, a bit too well…… For tactics, I know exactly how to make a good one which helps me beat teams much stronger than mine; For each position, I know who's top 20 top 50 and who's the best wonderkid to buy; I hire the best and the same coaches and agents save after save. In the end, the only difference between the saves are the team names. Taken charge of a low-level club and bump all the way up to the top seems to be a thing that SHOULD happen, I can no longer feel the joy within the procedure. This is not real. So, I decided to make a change, setting up some rules to have a new experience, to be thrilled by any slight success and make the difficulty level closer to reality.

 

Rules:

1.No SL.

2.No in-game editor or any other tools to check any info.

3.Can only hire players through scouts, searching by name is not allowed.

4.No vacation, no skip games.

5.Let staff in charge of team training and player training, do not allow to change any of them in any case.

6.For tactics, high press, higher defend and tackle hard are all not allowed.

 

Hopefully the story can please whoever will witness this special football journey.

 

[ChaosReiter]

Aue-Bad Schlema is a small town in Saxony, Germany, near the border with Czechia. Its population is around 20k, really not a big town.

FC Erzgebirge Aue is in this small town, its beautiful stadium has 15.5k capacity which means it can hold 3/4 of the people in town. And people here do love football, that's a major part of their life. For most of the time of the past few decades, Aue plays in Bundesliga 2, at the end of 21/22 season, they dropped to 3. Liga till now and shows no sign of getting back. Some of the fans are hurt, stop watching games, the rest still support their team but losing them is a matter of time. The owner wants to make a change, and all of a sudden, the change comes.

[Carambau]

What is "SL"?

Good Luck with Aue 

[ChaosReiter]

12 分钟前, Carambau说:

What is "SL"?

Good Luck with Aue 

save & load . thx.

[ChaosReiter]

New season is about to start, the owner caught a bad cold and had to stay in hospital for a few days. He lay in bed, reading the resignation sent by the club manager, wondering where the fate of the club he loves would turn to. That's when he met the strange guy. This guy survived a car accident, and got a serious amnesia, he didn't remember anything with only one exception —— football. They talked about football day and night, from favor players to tactic strategy......

The next day, local sociel media's headline:

All the fans are asking the same question: Who the F is that?

That's me, the new manager.

[ChaosReiter]

Last season Aue ended as 14th in 3. Liga, with this new unknown manager, and the trans market closed already, all the media is regret about the prediction they made for Aue. But the owner trust me, his expectation is simple, get to the top-half of the 3. Liga in the first year and reach the playoffs the 2nd year. We both know these expectations are reasonable, yet we both expect the same thing too —— promotion. In July 2023, my career with Aue begins.

Finances & Facilities

We current rent Erzgebirgsstadion as our home field from the city council, it costs us 599k per year. Other facilities are basically all average level.

Players' current wage is 94.94k p/w, considering the number of fans and the income, we probably will have to face a loss. This is another reason we need to get promotion as soon as possible.

Staff

Building a decent staff group is very important, especially for longer term. This is always my first thing to do.

I requested for a set piece coach, and then planning fill all the blanks. Our head of youth development's personality is balanced, which is bad, but our reputation is not good enough for a decent one, so gratz, this guy can keep his job for 1 or 2 more years. Scout team is the most important now, we can use them in the winter trans, will try to cover more nation knowledge while choosing. Sent some offers, wait for them to take.

[ChaosReiter]

Squad

Squad is the 2nd thing we need to check. It determines what tactic we'll use. I'm using these 4 steps to get a quick squad check: Overall quality, Stars, High potentials, Players who can only play 1 position and too good to abandon.

1.Overall quality

Our Defs, midfielders and strikers are mostly the same level, that's great.

2.Stars

We don't have star player who's much better than others, which means we don't need to build a tactic base on particular player.

3.High potentials

Before listing high potential players, we need to know what's the section of CA of 3/3.5/4 stars. I found the highest and the lowest CA of 3/3.5/4 stars (including U19s even other clubs if you want it to be accurate but not necessary):

So we know what 3/3.5/4 stars means for now (it will change after squad change).It helps us to know players' PA section.

We have 7 lads who might hit 4 stars. They cover a lot of positions, great!

4. Players who can only play 1 position and too good to abandon

Mostly we focus on WB/ML/MR/AML/AMR, for example, if we have a star player who can only play AML, we won't be able to use 352 tactic.

Omar Sijarić is the only one in our squad, so we won't suffer much loss if we play a tactic without wingers.

[Deisler26]

Good luck. 3.Liga is hard to get out of!

[ChaosReiter]

Tactic

I always start building tactic from the number of strikers.

 

  

These are all strikers we have. OK, Lenny you can go back to U19 or rent out. We got 4 usable strikers and one of them can play as AMC or AMR. So the number of strikers in our tactic will be 1 or 2, and if we use 1 striker tactic, Marcel will play AM.

 

The situation of our midfielders are very interesting and troublesome. MR/ML are the most rare positions in the game, and we have plenty of them. We are able to play 4-4-2 without buying anyone. Problem is, we have zero DM.

The choices are clear:

1. 4-4-2 with 2 MC, defence will be poor.

2. 4-4-2 with 2 DM, DM players will maintain low positional ability since we banned player training of all kind, we can't count on staff to do that (sometimes they will and mostly they won't).

3. 4-4-2 with 1DM 1MC/AMC, balance choice.

4. 3-5-2 with 1DM 2MC, will waste our people resource because we have 9 players on WB/ML/MR/AML/AMR, this tactic will only use 2.

I decide to choose No.3.

[ChaosReiter]

This is going to be our tactic for now, will test and adjust it in pre-season matches. We in desperate need of a sub DM, that's our main goal in winter. Sub ML/MR are both inverted strong foot, need to personalize player instructions for them in sub squad, if they work well, keep them, if not, sell them and get new players.

[ChaosReiter]

I have to give up this thread because the posts restriction per day. It seems I can only post 8 or 9 times per day, that's far from enough to make a story  : (

[RogerC]

Why not make longer posts instead?

[ChaosReiter]

1 小时前, RogerC说:

Why not make longer posts instead?

Not a bad idea but still a bit uncomfortable, do you know when or how will this restriction goes away?