Shrewnaldo

Goals galore! What do you think you'll gain by moving the double pivot from DM to CM? Intuitively, I would say that keeping it at DM is what you want in the 23 match engine. With the space in front of them, they should step out anyway but obviously I'm not watching the games like you are so curious to know what it is that you think is missing that shifting them forward would solve?

Thanks. We haven't really taken your advice about those draws... But you can see that you're right about van Hooijdonk, he's hit the ground running in spectacular style. Ledezma was an interesting one. He didn't really get started as an 8 in the 4-3-3. He didn't seem to get on the ball enough and his creative output was very poor. After the switch to 3-4-3, I was considering using him as one of the 6s, looking to play through the lines with his passing range. But instead I went with him as one of the 10s - the one who drops off and tries to get on the ball whilst the other 10 looks to break beyond and support the 9. This has suited him really well and he's had a number of assists pulling into that half-space in support of the wingback then picking a pass or in-swinging cross towards the back post. Plus his set pieces have been great - both scoring and delivering. Been really happy with him.

Major changes I'm actually quite far on from the last update. Having had a lot of fun just playing whilst recovering from COVID, I've completed our maiden season in the Eredivisie AND the summer of recruitment that followed. Per previous posts, the first season was pretty successful in terms of results. Considering we were a newly promoted side, predicted to finish dead last and with players that would struggle to get into most B teams, being the only promoted side to survive - and comfortably at that - can only be a good thing. Whilst Feyenoord broke Ajax's grip on the title, it was very much the usual suspects clear of the rest. Only Utrecht had a surprisingly poor campaign - indeed were lucky to escape the drop having been bottom after week 16 - and essentially swapped places with Emmen who were unlucky to miss out on Europe. We were also flirting with a Europa Conference spot for a while, before a poor run of form through March and April saw us slump back to a satisfyingly mundane mid-table slot. That poor run of form came as we stumbled in back-to-back games against Utrecht, off the back of their new manager bounce, followed by PSV, Heerenveen and Ajax. We never recovered from the collapse in morale but had put enough points on the board already that it ultimately didn't matter. Many of those points had come through January and February when, as alluded to above, we'd made a wholesale switch of tactic - ditching the oh-so-boring 4-3-3 and going with something much more interesting. The initial impetus for the switch was a continued concern over our defensive frailties. The 4-3-3 was failing at all the defensive tactics - it was no longer able to use possession as a defensive tactic, with teams pressing the life out of the regista and IWBs; it was no longer able to restrict the opposition to low quality chances with those high turnovers providing a free run at exposed centre backs; and we were conceding a whole bunch at set pieces with improved delivery from more esteemed opponents. And then starting regista Anwar Bensabouh, the absolute lynchpin of the team, tore his knee ligaments and would miss 2 months of the season. That presented an opportunity to rip it up and build a tactic from the back forwards. I decided to go with a low block, using 3 centre backs and a double DM screen then, hopefully, playing quickly through the lines to a pair of 10s that would play as close to our 9 as possible and create the chances. So rather than 4-1-4-1 out of possession and 2-3-5 in it, we were moving to 5-box-1 in defence, and 3-2-5 going forward. Against teams of our level, it worked a treat and only really fell apart once the morale fell off a cliff. But there was enough in games like this to convince me to keep with it going forward. Yes, we scored from a corner and a penalty, but in truth we dominated this game from start to finish and restricted Emmen to 6 shots with an average xG of under 0.05 each. But most pleasingly, we had also improved on our attacking output from the 4-3-3 - with 92 final third passes to our opponents 38, we were getting the ball into the right areas with our possession, something that we'd struggled to do even when winning the Eerste Divisie using the 4-3-3. Picking a random winning game from last season as a counter-example, in a 3-0 home win against De Graafschap when we'd had 58% possession and 52% ball share, we'd had only 33 final third passes compared to our opponents 45. Both can obviously be effective, but I'm really enjoying this shift of attacking emphasis. Looking forward, the move to the 3-4-3 (as I'll call it) left us short in certain areas. The obvious one was at wingback where we'd previously been using players suited to an inverted role, not marauding down the line as I now wanted them to do. We'd also need another centre back given the move to starting with 3 but most desperately we needed a 9. I'd wanted to give the likes of Smit a chance in the big league but they just aren't good enough to score regular goals at this level. Smit scored at 0.34 goals per 90 - maybe good enough for back-up, but not a starter. Per my previous post, I really want my 9 to be a proper battering ram of a striker - sheer physicality and work rate getting him in the face of defenders, pulling them out of position, bodying them, using pace to get away from them and, ultimately, finishing. For a team of our level, that's a big ask to find and I made it the number 1 priority of our summer recruitment - eventually smashing the club transfer record to bring in Sydney van Hooijdonk from Nimes. Mostly as understudy to Moussa Koné in a mid-table Ligue 2 side, van Hooijdonk had scored at 0.8 goals per 90, taking over 5 shots per game and hitting the target 57% of the time. Those are some mightily impressive numbers. He'd also had a loan spell at Heerenveen in 2022/23 where, for a side that narrowly avoided relegation, he'd taken over 3 shots per game, hit the target 48% of the time and scored at 0.47 goals per 90. Plus he'd won 60% of his aerial challenges which, for a striker, is genuinely impressive. At £6kpw and a £600k fee, he's a big financial gamble for us but that 9 role is so important that I felt it worth the risk. It also continues a theme for us which has been sheer size. I've really looked to prioritise height and physicality with our signing. Jesús Castillo 6'1" signed in January to replace the injured Bensabouh and play as one of the 6s; Luka Dajcer 6'1" was signed from relegated Cibalia in Croatia and able to cover centre back or 6 with a combination of phenomenal defensive statistics and passing ability; Momo 6'4" from Burgos as a back-up centre-back having won 90% of his aerial challenges and having a similar passing range to the Croatian. Meanwhile Enzo Barrenchea 6'1" can play with 6 or 10, having been on loan at Den Bosch last season from Juventus. That loan season means he's already adept at Dutch and gave him 2894 minutes of game time to convince me that the Juve youngster had what it takes to step up - combining chance creation from his deep role (0.31 chances created per 90 having not taken set pieces), with impressive defensive statistics. (let's not talk about panic loan van de Pavert) My biggest concerns are at wingback. I just haven't been able to source the statistical output I wanted to fit our budget. I was pretty pleased to sign Petar Cirkovic from IMT Novi Beograd, relegated from the Serbian top tier. An 81% tackle success ratio whilst making 2.36 tackles per game put him in the top 5 of the longlist I'd created, whilst he was putting in a ridiculous amount of crosses (8.9 per 90) and hitting the target with 18% of them; creating a chance at a rate of 0.22 per 90. Combined with his player trait, he was a clear standout. The only problem is that the game thinks he's good enough for only Eerste Divisie level. And whilst I've decided to ignore that in favour of the stats, I'm concerned that this is a gamble that will backfire. But at least we had a gamble to take. On the other flank, we have nothing. I was left testing the free transfer market and judging players based on their performances in our pre-season friendlies. Off the back of that, I was really very keen on Tomás Wiesner, once of Sparta Prague then Cosenza. Sadly, he decided to move to Norway and join Brann instead. The other option I really liked was Kyle Duncan, once of NY Red Bulls and Oostende, but he just won't lower his wage demands and remains without a club. As an emergency measure, I'm using Jizz Hornkamp at right wingback and I'm thinking I'll just go with him on the right and Cirkovic on the left for this season. We should be aiming for the European playoffs but so long as we stay up again, I should get enough cash next summer to invest in a couple of proper quality wingbacks. For me, that should round off the team nicely as I feel we have decent quality elsewhere. The likes of van Hooijdonk and Castillo have added to the really successful transfers of last year. Chindris, Meisl and Ledezma in particular were great. and really justifying the stats-led approach. The last relevant news is that the board is improving both the training facilities (currently below average) and expanding the stadium. The latter will take us from 3300 seats to 6125. Until February we'll play at de Vlotter, the ground of amateur side ADO '20 who, rather embarrassingly, have a bigger stadium than us. Which I guess underlines just how small this club is and how much of a challenge the recruitment is. We were given £890k transfer budget and our annual salary, at £2.67m, is still just 66% of the next lowest team (Go Ahead Eagles) and 3.8% of Ajax's. Indeed, despite what I think is some pretty handy summer recruitment, we're still predicted to finish dead last and, at 1000/1, have double the odds of Go Ahead, predicted to finish 17th. But I'm going to ignore all that because I genuinely think this squad has a very decent shout at a top-half finish.

Thanks for all the suggestions, @SixPointer @_Ben_ @MattyLewis11 @phnompenhandy @Lestri @danielgear @uroszila Much appreciated and I don't disagree with anything proposed. I think my own thoughts are probably closest to Dan and uroszila. Ordinarily, I'd probably go with the AF for basically the reasons that Ben has articulated, but I want to push myself away from my usual style of play a little and try those "somethings different" that I moaned about earlier. So instead I want to go with a proper battering ram of a striker, someone who just uses sheer physicality to disrupt the defence, hold up the play, bring others into the game and get on the end of crosses. Whilst I could still do this by using a big unit at AF, I'm going to pair it with a suitable role - I hadn't thought about Complete Forward but will certainly consider it alongside the Pressing Forward and Target Forward, all on Attack Duty. We have a lot of technically adept players, but have increasingly become a taller side with recent acquisitions and the desire to maximise set pieces, so this fits into that idea too. As well as sheer size, I'll be looking for Aggression and Work Rate, plus Stamina to wear down defenders. I've been trying it with the strikers currently available, and had some success with Jizz Hornkamp (no, really) but it might well be an area for investment in the summer. I'll also be looking for a pair of wingbacls (my previous options having been more suited to the inverted role) and at least one more centre back, given the move to a system that uses 3. I think we're pretty well covered elsewhere, but more on that later.

I should probably have done a half-season update by now but I'm having too much fun playing so just cracking on. However, prompted by some thoughts about whether I was changing enough tactically to improve my defence (I wasn't) and then by a long-term injury to the vital Bensabouh, who had previously been first-choice regista, I've switched it up tactically. It's drastically improved the defence and we're starting to get some really pleasing offensive results out of it, in ways that are even more pleasing that the 4-3-3. Fans of Shrew, all none of you, will not be surprised to learn that one area of indecision remains and that the indecision is centred on the role of the striker. I say indecision but I basically know what I want to do - so perhaps uncertainty is a better word for it. Long story short, I thought I'd test my assumptions by opening it to the floor. So, good people of the SI forums' Game Updates sub-forum, tell me what sort of 9 you'd use to complement this:

Interesting stuff. I'm just leaving the three specific parts that really chimed with me in the above - completely empathise with this desire to balance out the intent to move quickly through the lines, but only to do so at the right times and with targetted to feet passes rather than lofted, direct balls into space or in behind. I have been going with the same thought process as you - lowering tempo but increasing the mentality. However, reading through your post I do wonder if what we're looking for is actually the polar opposite - it's about reducing the risk factor in the passes but playing at higher tempo when they are available? So move to Cautious with higher tempo? I might post later about a similar thing - I'm going to move away from the 4-3-3 and push more towards a 3-2-5 with the ball but playing more on the counter for now (we're having defensive issues). But your post has triggered that thought in my head that maybe I've been looking at the issue back-to-front. (and I know your move to Positive has worked for you, I'm just thinking "out loud" / with my fingers here)

I mean she's only 8, so I'm hoping she's not doing much chain-smoking...

Yeah, the plan was to get some smarter threads as we moved up in the world so she was happy to pick the outfit and then spent about 40 minutes picking the colours. Funny you should mention that as I'd usually play the mezzala, his chosen role, on the left to interface with Giousis on the left, who prefers his right foot. But with Ledezma being right-footed, I find that he is a bit limited in going outside and slows the play down as he turns inside onto his stronger foot. So I'm both thinking of swapping his side - but then losing the benefit of overlapping Giousis with the mezzala - and training his weaker foot. Struggling a little bit, to be honest. We've had some great results - both beating some of the weaker sides and a smash-and-grab against Ajax. I've been switching between my standard 4-3-3 that we used last year and switching to a 4-4-1-1 against the big boys. The latter is quite a different approach - keeping two midfielders quite deep and looking to play on the break to a 10, who then plays in the 9. But it's very, very conservative and is only really intended as damage control against the big 3. I'm more concerned about my difficulty in switching up the 4-3-3. In some games, we've just been hopeless - not even at the races. Probably to be expected given our lack of quality, to be fair. Yeah I checked that this year because I was disappointed that our scouting budget hadn't been increased as much as I'd hoped. But I just ended up doing the same again and sticking ~£200k from the transfer budget into scouting again.

I'm 100% not saying that I know exactly what to do here but I had a bit of this problem last year, I think it was. I'd been looking to avoid over-working the players during pre-season and subbing them off whenever they were getting tired. Then suddenly it occurred to me that tiring them out was sort of the point - building up their fitness requiring pushing them beyond their existing comfort zone. So now I play at least three pre-season games with what I expect to be my first team, and make as few subs as possible. Partly to try and produce some team cohesion, partly to build up fitness. I also arrange no friendlies in the first week of pre-season, instead choosing the boot camp option in the training modules to 'beast them' a bit. This means I can cut down on the training later in pre-season and just play games. If I really think that I need training and matches for the first team, then I'll just stick the trialists and back-ups into a reserve team and arrange a bunch of friendlies for them. This latter part is where I usually get it wrong though - I tend to have a match sharp and fresh first XI, but my subs and back-ups tend to be way off it, and struggle to make an impact early season. Indeed, I've been getting a lot of feedback in 23 that the player is "struggling to pick up the speed of the game" off the bench, which I assume is down to me not preparing them enough in pre-season.

Thanks all, appreciated. Forgot to post the new touchline threads, upgraded for our promotion to the Eredivise and chosen by my daughter - Shrewnaldinha.

God it's annoying that the game won't enable us to save these statistical outputs from season-to-season. I've done that thing where I keep a save file before the leagues reset so I can go back and check previous season's performances. Frustrating. I also *really* like the idea of customisable Data Hub reports - both in terms of limiting positions and the statistics available. It would make Recruitment Analysts so much more useful if you could task them with doing that for other leagues. Makes total sense to tell one to go and "plot me a chart showing all the Danish wingbacks with >1000 minutes for distance covered by 90 and xA per 90" or a selection of stats. We really need that Data Hub interface to be available for other leagues

Are we ready? Depends. Ready for what? Getting our backsides handed to us every week? Probably. Last season was a phenomenal success. We started as the best team in the league and, ignoring the ability of Jong Ajax to pull in ringers like Francisco Conceição, ended as the best team. At no point across the entire campaign were we lower than third. In truth, it would have been an absolute travesty had we not gone up. The success was largely founded on our attacking ability - top scorers in the league and drawing a blank in only 6 matches. Much of that success relied on the goals of Christos Giousis, swiftly becoming a favourite from the left, and advanced forward Rein Smit. The latter has eventually settled the question on the striker role for me - intuitively I would prefer a creative player, dropping off the line and creating space for others then using their passing ability to find the runners. But Smit has shown that using a player on the shoulder, and instead looking to the midfield for those through balls, is the way forward. Not only is he personally the top (non-penalty) scorer in the team but the team as a whole scores more (1.78 per 90) when he's in the team than any other regular starter. I'm using Houweling, as the 'keeper in all but 2 matches, as the overall team average goals per 90 at 1.57 - so Smit's impact in increasing that to 1.78 is impressive. Defensively, we weren't quite so impressive - hence the earlier post on working out some of our issues. My tactical changes mid-match certainly helped as we went through January and February conceding only a single goal per month, before the usual March slump and then end of season scramble. Regardless, I feel like our defensive personnel were barely Eerste Divisie quality, and certainly were going to struggle in the Eredivisie and so it was here that I focused most of our recruitment. I've spent the best part of two evenings going through the statistics of the leagues available to me through our scouting package, getting scout reports, watching AI matches where available and generally having a great time. Through all that, we've ended up with 7 key first-team signings. I moved early to secure de Waal, who was on loan at AFO in our league and smashing it - scoring at over 1 in 2, with reasonable creativity stats and, most crucially, the ability to play a number of positions across the front 5 AND be good enough for a squad role in the Eredivisie if, as was eventually confirmed, we were to go up. I had to wait until the end of the season to arrange the rest. The expanded scouting range, thanks to re-directing the season's transfer budget, was great and had provided me with all sorts of tasty options but hardly any of them fancied a move to a team predicted to be at the bottom end of the Dutch second tier. But a team getting battered off Ajax and PSV every other week? Why not. At this stage, I should mention that I cancelled our affiliate link with Feyenoord. Whilst the three loans had helped in the promotion season, I just don't like the idea of doing that when we're in the same league. Promotion had also loosened the purse strings somewhat - with our wage budget effectively doubling from ~£25k a week to £52k a week. And of course this also increased the maximum amount we could pay an individual - certainly more than the £1100 a week top-earners Bensabouh and Oude Kotte received last term. Aiming for a squad of 25, I figured that I could get 12-15 back-ups of sufficient quality for around £1000 a week average. This would leave me with a good £35k a week for the first 11 and hence I could afford an average of around £3k per player. Given the above, I started from the back and prioritised centre backs first and foremost. Searching for players from the scouted leagues with >900 minutes and a combination of tackle and header success ratio >85% turned out this beauty. Granted he was only playing in the Romanian second tier, so some "quality adjustment" had to be accounted for, but my scouts also loved him - advising that he was consistent and lacked only technique. I'd also kept a save from the end of season 1, when Chindris' club UTA Arad had been in the Romanian top tier, and his statistical output, even in a relegated club, was still excellent. Alongside him I went with Luca Meisl, signed from the Belgian second tier, where I was convinced by an attempt to look at something akin to the Smit impact above - the Austrian's presence on the pitch had reduced his team's goals conceded by 90 by 25%. Using the goalkeeper's performance as the baseline, Beerschot conceded 0.62 goals per 90, when Meisl played his 1200 minutes, they'd conceded at a rate of just 0.46. It's a bit of an experimental one but, knowing that Meisl ticked my other statistical thresholds AND knowing him a little because he's Austrian, I thought it a punt worth taking. Sadly, it meant compromising on my previous aim for more aggressive players but you can't have everything. Into midfield, I took less of a punt. Knowing that loanee Chabrol-Touré was returning to Feyenoord, we needed at least one addition in the middle. Further, having been convinced that our 9 would play on the shoulder and the two MCs need to be proper ball-players, I wanted an improvement on Philippe van Arnhem too. The mezzala had signed from amateur football last summer and, for a free transfer, had performed admirably but was some way off the creativity of his midfield partners. Ordering by chances created per 90, you can see the issue: So I went looking for creative midfielders, but not just open-play creativity. Contrary to board and fan expectations, we'd been promoted as top scorers whilst completely failing to exploit set pieces. Like, at all. We'd scored from a single corner and two indirect free-kicks across 38 league games. Suspecting that we'll find it more difficult to create from open play in the Eredivisie, I was keen to improve our set-piece ability and figured new CMs could do the job. Which is why I was really pleased to convince Richard Ledezma to join. He'd started 35 games for Jong PSV in the second tier, assisting 9 times and with an xA/90 of 0.2. He'd played really well against us and I'd asked the scouts to take a look. They liked what they saw and highlighted that his contract was expiring at the end of the season - indeed that he intended to seek options elsewhere in search of first-team football. His stats stood up really well, with 3.61 progressive passes per 90, and ~1.8 set piece key passes per 90 which isn't the highest in the league but was the best of those players who also ticked my other requirements. Lastly, the addition of a trait to 'tries killer balls often' sold me. I like to build from the back and play through the lines. The ability to have that link player pick an unlocking pass for the 9 or a midfield runner... invaluable. And speaking of traits, it's what finally convinced me on Adamczyk. Playing at Polish Ekstraklasa side Chrobry, I'd initially gone to see a couple of their matches to watch centre back Dawid Szymonowicz. But Adamczyk shone as a number 10, completely dominating their relegation clash against fellow strugglers Cracovia. He'd played as a 10 but very much in the sort of positions I'd expect our CM(A) to exploit and from which I'd expect him to make these sorts of "key passes" for the 9. More than 1.2 dribbles per 90 from a central position, 0.36 chances created per 90 for a relegation threatened club and revealed by scouting to consistent and love big matches... why yes, yes please. Those were the four positions that I was really keen to secure, providing the central quality that we were lacking. The other key priority was in goal where Houweling was ok, but just left a lot to be desired. According to the statistics, he was maybe the 6 or 7th best goalkeeper in the Eerste Divisie but I still don't know how much to trust goalkeeping statistics. In a number of games, I felt like he'd cost us with some weak attempts at save and I never like 'keepers who don't have good positioning. Sadly, none of the options I'd identified through scouting were keen - we got closest with Sibenik goalie Lovre Rogic who looks fantastic, but sadly he chose to join Cremonese instead. So I was left trying to pick up trialists and relying on a combination of coach reports and friendlies judge them by. This makes the threshold quite high, so after failed trials for a host of goalies including Bailey Peacock-Farrel and Neil Etheridge, former Wycombe goalkeeper Maksymilian Stryjek got the nod. Which leaves us with the following squad depth: Obviously this is utilising the same 4-3-3 system and I plan to stick to that as the base case. It'll definitely get amended in the tougher games, perhaps even shifting to a 4-4-1-1 so we can keep two deeper midfielders along with the IWBs, but that's for another time. I'm painfully aware that we're still short of quality in some key areas but I didn't want to make wholesale changes and lose all our squad cohesion. So I prioritised the weakest areas through the spine and know that I'll need some time to find options for the more specialist roles - IWB and particularly the regista. I am, however, really pleased with our recruitment and feeling quite optimistic for the new campaign. At least I was until I checked the comparison graphs... Across the 36 attributes in the Physical, Mental and Technical tabs, we are rock bottom in 28 of them. Only in Jumping, Fitness, Aggression, Bravery, Determination, Corners, Throw-ins (yay) and Tackling are we not bottom - and even for those 8 we are below average. This. Is. Going. To. Be. Tough.

They came up with me, finishing third but avoiding the playoffs thanks to the enormous cheats that are Jong Ajax taking the title. They were actually well clear at the top but bottled it massively, taking only 9 points from the last 33 available. They've made a couple of decent signings including former Chelsea midfielder Danilo Pantic, but I'd fear for them this season. I'll certainly be targetting them as one of the few opportunities for points

Ah yeah, I did the same to get just the league stats view. Should have thought of that. Nice one.

Are your squad views showing the output / stats from the friendlies? Is that something that's part of your skin or is it an option you've activated?

May 2024 - World News As part of my effort to immerse myself in the unique gameworld a little more, I'm trying to use these posts to familiarise myself with events in the wide world of football... Little surprise in the domestic leagues across Europe as Man City, Real Madrid, PSG, Bayern, Ajax, Celtic and Red Bull Salzburg all win their respective leagues at a canter. Real and PSG both won their titles by 18 points... Manchester United, now managed by Diego Simeone, continue to struggle - finishing 7th in the Premier League; although Newcastle have still failed to break into the top four despite making some very smart signings including a midfield three of Koopmeiners, de Roon and Laimer (and Scott McTominay on the bench) Serie A continues to be the most competitive league in Europe with Juve winning last year, and Vincenzo Montella's Roma this. Meanwhile Bayern won another Champions League, Man City the defeated finalists and still unable to take that ultimate prize. West Ham won the Europa League, defeating Sporting Club de Portugal on penalties; and Spurs won the Europa Conference where København were the surprise package but falling at the final hurdle Closer to home, as I said Ajax won the Eredivisie rather easily, with a 6-point gap to PSV, then a further 3 points to Feyenoord and Utrecht taking the final Champions League spot a massive 17 points behind our parent club. AZ and Heerenveen took the Europa League spots whilst Nijmegen surprisingly won the Europa Conf playoff. Passing us on their way down will be VVV Venlo and Willem II, who went up last season, and Sparta Rotterdam - their squads will be perused for thieving opportunities The gap to the top sides is massive - Ajax spent £58m last year on wages, £28m more than PSV and then falling off to 7th-highest spenders Heerenveen with a measly £5.8m. Incidentally, our £52k per week wage budget for next year will be less than Venlo's relegation-achieving spend and nearly half Willem II's... There haven't been any really interesting managerial moves in the Netherlands, at least not as interesting as Jurgen Klinsmann taking over at Aberdeen...

Genuinely think this might be harder than staying up with Bristol City that first season. And that was a close-run thing Thanks. Budget for next season is £500k transfer and £52,500 a week for wages... so not exactly generous. But we had the third lowest wage budget this year (751k for the year) and went up so you never know.

Thank you all @keeper#1 @_Ben_ @MattyLewis11 @SixPointer @_Ben_ - at least one season ahead of target. The plan was to be in the Eredivisie for 2026, for the 63+63 link with the club's founding. This will put us there in 2024/25, so we either need to stay up for the first half of 2026 - or get relegated and bounce straight back for the second half @MattyLewis11 - I'm really not sure what the priorities are. Intuitively, I'm leaning towards defensive strengthening - in goal and across the back four. We seem to be ok for scoring, but our defence hasn't exactly been impenetrable even in the second tier so that would tend to be the obvious place to go. I'll have a deeper look later though I am glad that I took the gamble on the wider scouting range for this season. It *should* let me find some players in the weaker leagues that can do a job in the relegation battle. Players from the likes of Poland or Romania, who would not necessarily move to us in the Eerste Divisie but will fancy a shot at the top tier. Should work out ok.

And we're up

Brief update as we come to the closing stages of the 2023-24 season. We're currently in second and set to take an automatic promotion spot behind leaders Waalwijk. The final 5 games, though, are tough. In one way, it's good because it means that promotion is entirely in our own hands, but on the other hand we're left with some of the toughest games of the season: PEC Zwolle (H) - 4th; lost 3-1 in the first fixture Jong PSV (H) - 7th; 2-2 NAC Breda (A) - 5th; 1-0 win Waalwijk (H) - 1st; 1-1 Dordrecht (A) - 9th; 1-1 That's quite the run-in and we're not in sparkling form. We had our usual March slump, winning just one of the five games in the month - but have hopefully recovered to win two of the last three with a hugely dominant 3-1 win over Almere. The other sides also have mixed run-ins. Waalwijk need to visit Jong AJax and play us, but have three soft games outside that and I expect to cruise to the title. PEC Zwolle have a trip to Volendam and host Roda, plus our game and will be our biggest impediment to second. Jong Ajax, of course, can't be promoted so are immaterial to this discussion, whilst 7 points just feels like too big a gap back to Breda et al. So squeaky bum time basically.

These graphics really interest me. I wonder how the game calculates "danger of possession" for the top graph. Clearly it's not based on xG so perhaps something like final third passes? It'd be useful to know, will have a dig about later Enjoying the thread btw 👍

I tend to find that we stand off a lot in wide areas. Through the middle, I tend to find it's more about the centre backs being pulled out of position and a complete failure from the players either side of them to narrow the gap - I don't know if that's down to the ME or the sub-standard quality of my defenders, to be fair. @SixPointer has an interesting suggestion though... ... I am not but that does sound like a good shout. It is specifically in wide areas where I'm finding that we stand off the crosser far too much. Will definitely give that a shot. As I tweeted you, you need to hit that second dropdown next to "all competitions" and re-select the maximum number of matches. The pitch graphic will then reset. Just another idiosyncrasy in the bug-riddled fun-fest that FM is these days. I tend to use OIs to target the wide players and hadn't really considered "tackle harder" as an option until I saw our lack of fouls... double-edged sword though because there's an obvious advantage to not giving up free-kicks in dangerous areas.

Exactly how bad is the financial situation? Is it hampering wage budgets too, so you can't bring in frees or loans?

Taking Stock We've reached the short winter break and I thought it was an apt time to take stock - primarily aimed at understanding our short-comings and informing the summer's recruitment. Things have been going well and we remain very much in the promotion race. Having won the first period, we're guaranteed a playoff place but sneaking into top two would make that immaterial and get us into the top tier automatically. Despite our lofty position, I feel like we're not quite performing at our max and I'm keen to see where the issues are - tactically or in terms of personnel. My immediate focus is defensive. We're the joint-top scorers in the league and have failed to score in only 3 of the first 22 matches. Conversely, we have "only" the 5th best defence and have kept only 7 clean sheets, just under 1 in 3. That's really not good enough for me. We're not losing many games but we've drawn 9, with only 2 of those being goalless. So my logic is that a better defence in just 3 of those draws would give me an extra 6 points and comfortably top. So clearly defence is the focus. So I went looking through all the available statistics to understand where we were falling short at the back - both using the Data Hub and the Team Detailed statistics for the league. The Data Hub suggests that our defence is rather passive. We make fewer blocks, fewer clearances and fewer tackles than our peers. And this is absolutely supported by the overall "defensive actions" chart which has us making 11.6% fewer defensive actions than the league average. But you have to consider that we keep the ball most than almost every other side in the league - second in the average possession table with 57%, so 14% more than the average. If we allow the opposition to have 14% less of the ball then it's only logical that we would be required to have fewer defensive actions. But clearly that doesn't tell the full story, as the OPpDA shows that we are no better than mid-table in terms of defensive proactivity. And when we combine that with the number of tackles that we're making, it's clear that there's scope for us to in the opposition's faces a little more. We've also made the 4th fewest fouls, have the 3rd fewest bookings and no reds in the league - obviously there are advantages to this but it's indicative of us being a soft-touch. All of which points me at two considerations: tactically instructing the players to get stuck in more, and considering aggression and strength for future defensive signings. Yet considering those signings, I'm really not sure which positions we should be looking to improve. Usually when you're a season or so into a save you have a clear idea of the players you really don't fancy. But I'm relatively happy with almost all of my first-choice players and it's not immediately obvious how to select those three weakest positions to strengthen. Statistically, there are no obvious weaknesses in the Data Hub. Only loanee Guus Baars is sub-average for headers won (and having watched back a few games that's mostly because of headers lost at attacking corners), only Cain Seedorf is sub-average in tackle success and I can't really figure out whether fewer blocks and clearances is a bad thing or indicative of our tactical set-up. And the defensive statistics view on the squad screen isn't a great deal of help either. Ignoring Bensabouh, Liesdek and Mulder as they don't typically play in defensive roles, the only standout statistics there are Aktas' disproportionate tendency to lose possession and Candelaria's impressive record of just 0.77 team goals conceded per 90 minutes when he's on the pitch. At this point, I was getting a little stumped so I stopped by the Analyst Report within the Data Hub to see if there were particular areas from where we are conceding regularly. So the flanks would appear to be a weak spot and this certainly chimes with my IJ test from watching back a handful of our high-conceding matches. But the numbers aren't so disproportionate as to indicate an Alexander-Arnold-style liability at the back. However, whilst I was there, I happened to notice this: And I confess that I hadn't really picked up on this during the matches but we've conceded 12 goals in the final third of the first half, and 9 in the final third of the second half. That's 48% of our total goals conceded coming in the closing stages of each half. And that to be screams that we have a problem with Determination and / or Concentration. A quick check through the players who have played most minutes at the back would tend to support this - with at least three players having average at best attributes in this area (noting the imprecision of the restricted attributes view). It could also indicate that I have not been smart enough at switching tactically in the closing stages of each half and there is something for me to look at. Typically I would only look at restricting the play towards the back end of the second half, but those 12 goals conceded between the 30th and 45th minutes... that's not a time I'll ordinarily make changes and perhaps I really should. So after all of that, a couple of actions to take forward: Future defensive signings should prioritise Aggression, Strength, Concentration and Determination (as well as my usual blind spot of Leadership) Look to shut halves out from 30 minutes forwards If anyone has spotted anything I've missed in all that, then I'm all ears / eyes

I don't think it would take much to make it more useful. Being able to designate certain players as blockers and to pair them with the player you wish them to block for would be helpful. Also stuff like designating the starting position and then run direction of a player - so you could have a player start at the back post but drop off towards the penalty spot whilst everyone runs in towards the goal, hoping to create space the one who has moved for the square ball. That sort of stuff that happens day-in, day-out in real football. Oh I agree that it will happen, but it's not really because the human manager has done much. We've just put them into a fairly restrictive tactics engine and then left them there for long enough that the game interprets this as tactical familiarity and sufficient coaching time to get the sorts of rotations that is programmed into the game. It's more automated than player-driven. Interesting switch. I did not see Kishna as a DLP at all but looks like you're getting a tune out of him. 20 goals in season 1 is phenomenal.