lied90

Live, love, and breathe hoofball - A club DNA project! A save in FM can be about whatever you want it to be. For most managers it's about taking your favorite IRL team to new heights, taking a team from the lower divisions to the Prem, win the champions league, discover wonderkids from the far corners of the world, creating masterful tactics, scoring loads of goals and getting yourself among top managers like Pep and Klopp. Personally I almost only play online saves for the competitiveness, but this save will be about building a club with a clear philosophy from top to bottom. I'll be using a custom database that let's me start in 20th march 2023 with updated fixtures and results. (Source) Sources on club DNA/club vision in FM: Passion4FM article ___________________________________________________________________________ Normally a clubs vision is already set in stone when you take charge of a club. Our goal will be to change that vision as we gain stature at the club and make the club adhere to our ethos. Ethos: "The distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution" To make the save more challenging, our slogan will be "Live, love, and breathe hoofball". Creating a vision based on gegenpressing and attacking football wouldn't be much different from a normal FM save, so I want to go for the opposite, which will also make it difficult to convince the board and fans to join our vision. I'll get into more detail on how to achieve that as the save gets going. Our plans and goals: Make the club known for playing hoofball Don't get fired Recruit players suitable for this playstyle at senior and youth level Recruit staff who prefers playing direct football Recruit staff with high discipline and determination Make the club change their vision to match ours - playing direct football, making the most of set pieces etc Enjoy moderate success along the way (?) Stay long enough to be recognized as a legend or icon at the club Leave the club when all this accomplished, and observe how long it takes for the identity to disappear Hoofball: Create a manager, find a club Tony Pulis is the epitome of hoofball and needs no introduction. In my FM saves he is always unemployed until he retires, so I've recreated him as best I can and will try to do him justice. To keep a bit of realism I wanted him to take charge of a club desperate enough to gamble on him. Cardiff seemed like a perfect fit, being a welsh club and struggling to stay in the championship. They've also had their fair share of problems in regards to club DNA, with their controversial owner who tried to make the bluebirds into red dragons. Board and fans expectations Can Cardiff play hoofball? The short answer is yes. We have two potential target forwards in Connor Wickham and Sory Keba who are both 191cm, combined with Callum Robinson who has the pace to compliment them up top. The squad has plenty of wide players capable of running down the wing and crossing, hardworking midfielders, tall CBs, and fullbacks capable of defending. We want the team to be more extreme of course, but it's a good start. For long throws we have Connor Wickham and Jamilu Collins with 15-16 long throw attribute, but we lack a set piece specialist from corners and free kicks. The team will be put trough a training schedule with a heavy focus on physicality, set pieces, direct attacking and defending. Not that this is optimal in terms of getting results, it just fits our all important ethos and slogan. Our first match is against local rival Swansea in just 12 days so we are thrown right into the deep end here. We'll have to get the boys used to the tactic as soon as possible in order to not fall deeper into the threat of relegation, which would mean a possible short end to this adventure. __________________________________________ Leave a like or comment if this save is of any interest to follow, makes it easier for me to keep the thread up to date instead of just playing solo.

CBs scoring 20+ goals from corners maybe. The insane amount of goals in general, how easy it is to abuse the ME,

Looking for a database or save file that is designed only for testing tactics.

Burnley under Dyche in comparison:

Passing into space works fine regardless of what pressing and defensive lines you have. It can also work even if your striker is slow and tall, I've had Weghorst score plenty by chasing passes that went into space.

Suggestion in title. Having specific positions trigger pressed and marked is a very important part of certain tactics, but won't work if you change to a different formation/tactic. Having to manually change this every time is a hassle and unnecessary. Opposition instructions by position should be saved with the tactic.

while they have troubles making the team gel in real life, some of the players brought in look very good on FM imo. Best of luck.

I'd imagine having 1xstrikers+2xAMCs would be more viable in defense than 2xstrikers+1xAMC? Experience from my current Burnley save is that the TF usually head backwards after the ball is cleared to him.

Looks promising, have you tested it in higher quality leagues?

I'll be following. I think Grazianno Pelle would also be available on free from the start, shame you didn't get him. Regardig your PF(D), I doubt he presses the opposition CBs much with such low LOE?

Don't think we have much scenery around any pitches here in Oslo. There are some great ones up north.

Didn't know Bjørndalen was that far down the leagues, I guess Holmlia and Nordstrand take all the good local players.

I wanted to have a save that revolves around importing african talent to a club in the EU. Kinda like what Beveren did in 2003, I think they started several matches with up to 11 players from the Ivory Coast. This obviously narrows it down to leagues with less strict registrations rules. I tried starting in Finland since they count african players as EU players, but they requite a bunch of HG players in the match squad. Any advice appreciated.

I've tried various hoofball tactics that have been shared here and on other forums, and while they seemingly get results in lesser leagues, they don't perform very well when I test them in the PL. Have you tried yourself?

Will be 2 weeks before I update on the last season, I prob won't continue the save after that. The reason is that I'm not capable of getting better results with pulisball than I already have, and I've had to play more and more "proper" football in order to win, which is the opposite of what I want.

For myself, the biggest switch in creating tactics that workes was when I started thinking of FM tactics as something separate from real life football. FM has a meta, especially when it comes to mentality and pressing. As a result, certain settings will work better than others almost regardless of what formation you use and player materiale. Downloading tactics can actually help in this regard, as you will quckly see common denominators in the tactical settings in tactics that consistently bring good results.

sure is:

I asked Tony Pulis for a defensive fullback, and he recommended this young unit of a mexican. Pulis usually stick to buying senior players, but I made an exception for this guy.

Any manager who brings tiki taka to Stoke is a rival of mine

The Potters are going to Europe! Despite not being in our best form it was enough to get into Europe in the end. The season was, in terms of points, a disappointment. We ended the season with 1 point less than last, so the league was a lot more even this season than the last. On the bright side, we conceded only 32 goals, giving us a solid foundation. Liam Delap was brought in on loan during the January transfer window, hoping that he could score some crucial goals. He spent more time in the stands because of a few horrific tackles from behind. I was very impressed. While we did lose more matches than I wanted, it was mostly against better teams. Josh Tymon proved to be our most important player in the run up. With Tsygankov out with injury for large parts, Tymon stepped up and scored several important goals, mostly by making runs towards the back post during counters. Where are they now? Since the save is now going into season 5, I'll take a quick look at how i went with some of the players that helped us up from the championship. Yaya Sanogo: The former Arsenal striker was brought on a free as a first choice TF. He only had a one year contract and was forced to find a new club at the end of the season. After a mixed spell with AFC Wimbledon, he has decided to retire at the age of 32y and is now an unemployed coach. Tyrese Campbell: Our young star was sold for a record fee to Crystal Palace after being promoted from the Championship. He didn't take his chances in his first season and has failed to become a regular since. He was part of an exchange deal with Everton and plays for team now. He didn't impres for Everton either and is not transfer listed for £8.5mill. Jordan Shipley: Shipley wrote himself into the hearts of all Stoke fans when he scored the deciding goal in the play off final. He struggled for playing time in the first PL season and left in the January transfer window. He has since been a solid player for San Jose in the MLS. Summer Transfers After reading that our rivaling save signed Lorenzo Lucca, we had to get the second best option, Benjamin Sesko. With him and Sasa in the box, our wingers should have enough to aim for. Robert Skov was brought in to have a wide midfielder option on the flanks, he is also very good at taking set pieces. Lewis Cook is a very capable in terms of defending and stabilizing the midfield. He will compete with Grimes for minutes. Our young talented GK, Tomlin, has gone out on loan. Nick Pope has joined us from Man City and has agreed to be a backup option behind Joe Bursik. Transfers out Not much to mention, Lewis Ferguson has been on loan to Bologna and make the move permanent. Joe Hughil and Jebbison are out on loan in the championship. Jed Wallace is loaned out to Sunderland after being a very important player for us in several seasons. Joe Tomlinson will be between the sticks for Luton on loan. Diangana is once again out on loan, this time to Swansea In other news, we have had to fend off several clubs that wanted Kalulu, Real Madrid made an offer just short of his release clause at £44mill. Fulham offered £46mill for Dovbyk, but he refused their contract offer.

No idea how you pulled Lucca, he still has no interest in joining me

2024/25 DoF Tony Pulis and manager Tony Pulis have been given a huge budget to bring in new players to the club. So when we have the money to buy good players, and still have to stay true to the Pulis way, how do we do it? We buy players who can play football, who also happens to be tall, strong, hardworking and aggressive. Sangare was suggested by DoF Pulis With really high work rate, strength, and height it's hard to argue he doesn't fit the plan. He can also be retrained into a very good CB for us. Being Norwegian myself, I remember this guy dominating in the norwegian league as a DM, CM, AM and even ST. He was retrained as a CB after going to Celtic. As a former midfielder, he has good passing and technical attributes, combined with being 196cm. Our most expensive signing by some margin. The Ukrainian can play on both wings, but will primarily play for us on the left as he is left footed. He's an overall solid player, and can be used as a set piece taker. We needed someone to be a backup TF after Benteke left to Russia, and in comes experienced TF Chris Wood. Having experience from Burnley under Dyche he will have no issue adapting to our system. Wood came for free from Sassuolo After this we still have some money left in the bank and a very healthy wage budget. Not much have changed in terms of tactics, we more or less always start with a low block and adjust from there depending on how it goes. We started the season in good fashion, conceding few goals despite playing top teams several times. A lot of narrow results in October and November. this is as expected, since teams tend to play more cautious after you have proven yourself in the PL, we are no longer the underdogs they want to attack. This leads to a lot of games vs similar or weaker teams with very few highlights, making us even more dependent on set piece goals. The results indicate that we are capable of playing in Europe, time will show if we manage to carve us a top 7 finish come the end of the season. What happened to the goals? By the end of january our top goalscorer is Tsygankov with only 6 goals in 19 matches, followed by Sasa and Dovbyk who have only scored 5 and 4 goals each. While this may not be a problem given that our league position has improved, it indicates that we can strengthen or changes things up for the better up top. Man City has agreed to loan us Liam Delap for the rest of the season, with a laughably high optional future transfer fee. He will be reunited with his father on the training ground this season, and maybe in the future, we will see. Conceding only 0.88 goals per game is very uplifting, we just have to increase our goalscoring. (easier said than done with our play style)

One of his first suggestions was a cheap wonderkid from Uruguay who looked like a young Baggio. Would have been an incredible signing for any normal team, just not us.

This clip shows part of how we play around the target forward. Diallo plays as a box2box CM behind Sasa (TF) who Bursik aims for from goal kicks. Grimes will mostly stick further behind since he is told to stay in position by default as a DLP(S). The point of kicking it long to a TF is to start the play high up the pitch, so the TF needs passing (heading?) options from the first touch. Usually I'm happy if we just win the second ball, but sometimes it ends up as a goal.

The Austrian Peter Crouch 23/24 - Half way Sasa Kalajdzic Having looked how to spend our increased transfer budget, I've decided to spend parts of it on Sasa Kalajdzic. The towering striker is 200cm tall combined with 14-15 in several creative and technical attributes, making him the closest we can get to a Peter Crouch. Benteke has served us well but will leave on free to CSKA Moscow at the end of the season. Pierre Kalulu joined us for as little as £3.7mill. He is perfect for Pulis football, being very athletic, a smart defender and has some technical ability. Jordan Thompson has been an important player for us when promoting from the championship and securing a safe mid table position in the first PL season. He has now been let go to Rapid Wien to get more playing time. We continue to gather a good amount of points, picking up several wins. We collapsed against Leeds and got unlucky against Burnley, before getting 4 out of 6 wins after that. The trashing of Crystal Palace was a highlight, especially because of the type of goals we scored: We have improved massively from last season and it shows on the table. We consistently lose against Arsenal and Liverpool, apart from that we seem to be able to fight against any team in the league on our day. Our Austrian Crouch end up getting an average rating of 7.44, scoring 10 goals and getting 5 assists in 18 matches. Our left back Friedl got a 5 month injury in march, hopefully it's not a sign of things to come. Kalulu has, as expected, improved us by a lot. No wingers or inside forwards seem to get the better of him. Artem Dovbyk improved from last season, he averaged one goal every two games. Josh Tymon has adapted very well to playing as a winger. He also contributes a lot more in defense than the average winger. Ibrahima Diallo has not set the world on fire according to the ratings. The eye test says that he is creating chances by winning the ball in midfield We are so close to getting European football. Note how we have improved in defense, conceding 17 fewer goals this season than last. I think with the type of football we play, we can't hope for much more than 6-7th place in a good year. The reason for this is that the lower table teams will probably start to be more cautious against us, which should make it hard to get "easy points". The players are all behind Pulisball it seems. No moaning about hoofing the ball atm, as long as the results go our way. The real Tony Pulis is now our new DoF. I'll be sure to ask him to recommend some signing. I'm impressed by our defensive statistics. Playing a low block on the regular inherently means that we will give away a lot of shots, so having an average of 1.39 xga per game sounds good to me. I'm somewhat surprised by how low our fouls have gotten after starting to defend lower, considering we always get stuck in and play with several very aggressive players. The club has started to change with Tony Pulis. Before the club expected us to play modern football. Now we are expected to play on the counter and MAKE THE MOST OF SET PIECES! Just need to get rid of that youth focus now and we are all good. Goal of the season from Gordon