Toulouse – Naldo goes mental

A very, very brief update tonight to confess that I have, in fact, descended into insanity.

Despite usually being an incredibly frugal manager who shies away from splashing the cash and prefers to develop a team from well planned cheap signings, hence being presumptuous enough to write an article on Financial Prudence in FM, I have quite clearly lost the plot.

Why? Well, here’s why:

 

That’s right. £42m. Forty-two million pounds sterling.

Once you see him, though, you might understand…

Toulouse – 14/15 Half Season Review

Winter break is upon is in the 2014 / 15 season and we’ve been going from strength to strength. So well, in fact, that we’ve only lost 1 game and that was the final Champions League group game against Man Utd when we’d already qualified.

That isn’t to say that we’ve had everything our own way or that things have been overly easy. As I expected and wrote about in my last post, second season syndrome has been a factor in breaking teams down and we’ve had spells where we’ve struggled to score when using the deep 4-3-3 that has been our hallmark in the last 3 seasons.

Defensively, though, we’ve been peerless and the 4-2-3-1 has been well used in reacting to the more conservative opposition that we now face. It too has evolved in since pre-season, though, as I look to make the most of the players at my disposal and, now that we’ve reached a new window, there’s been some interesting transfer activity at the club.

Just a short update today and we’ll start with the usual look at the basic results thus far…

Toulouse – 2014/15 Preview – Defending our titles

After last season’s domestic treble, I’m expecting major changes from the game this season. Although “second season syndrome” is more often associated with teams who have successfully survived their first season after promotion, for me it applies equally to teams defending their first major title. Certainly in FM, the resulting reputation boost sees the opposition treat you with more respect which can equate to deeper defences, more conservative opposition and fewer scoring opportunities.

This can lead to frustration for many FMers as they become bemused that previously successful tactics are suddenly ineffective. Contrary to popular, outraged opinion this is not because your tactic “has been cracked” or that the AI is tipping the scales in it’s own favour because you’ve become too successful. Ask Man City fans if their opposition play differently against them now than they did 5 years ago. This is FM’s version of the same effect and, to me, it’s simply a new challenge and one I expect to face this season.

So this post will include some of the amendments I think I’ll have to make to counter our opponents’ increased defensiveness; as well as the usual transfers, etc that have taken place over the summer.

Toulouse – 2013 / 14 Treble Success

It’s been an historic season in Toulouse with the club not only winning their first ever Ligue 1 title but doing so with a record high number of points and winning both domestic cups to complete an unprecedented trophy haul for Le Téfécé.

As I alluded to in the last update, however, I’m not feeling as satisfied as I perhaps should be as the league ended up being a formality with our main rivals, Olympic Marseille, hitting some catastrophic form in the second half of the season and not only failing to challenge us for the title but in fact being overtaken by Lyon and losing an automatic Champions League slot.

It’s always nice to win stuff though and I reckon we fully deserved our success. We’d probably have won the title anyway as we beat Lyon’s 2006 record of 84 points gained. This is how we did it…

Toulouse – 13/14 update – l’OM capitulate

So we’re in an incredibly strong position to secure that elusive title but, to be perfectly honest, it doesn’t feel particularly satisfying. If we do win, it’s going to be a case of doing it by default because Marseille have imploded horribly in the last few weeks.

We’ve got 8 league games left to play whilst there are still a number of cup matches left, including at least one final and we’ll have a busy run-in. The high number of games hasn’t been bothering us as much as last season though because of the depth that we now have in the squad and it’s nice to have at least two striking options that I have faith in; both Fletcher and Bezus have been scoring goals fairly regularly without reaching huge numbers.

In this update, I’ll quickly run through our current situation and also cover the reason why I’ve settled on the flat 3 DMC’s as my standard formation, deciding against moving the playmaker into the MC role.

Toulouse – 13/14 half season update

Those following me on Twitter may be expecting a tactical post just now but that is currently “under construction” and in the meantime we’ve reached the halfway point of our third season at Toulouse, hence it’s update time.

The news in brief is that we were utterly magnificent mid-November when we suffered a slight dip in form that’s seen us drop some unnecessary points. Nevertheless, in any normal season we would be comfortably top. Any normal season doesn’t contain Marseille doing a passable imitation of Brazil ’70 as they continued their near unbeatable form of last season.

Despite this, I’m absolutely delighted with the start of the campaign, mostly thanks to our form in the Champions League…

Toulouse – Summer 2013 Transfers

You will probably notice that these posts on Toulouse are getting shorter. This is because I now know the squad and the tactic pretty well which minimises the amount of time and effort I need to put into analysis of games and signings… the latter, of course, being a complete lie when it comes to the striker.

Decisions have been made, however, and the squad now looks to be settled.

For me, this summer was all about two things: strengthening and deepening. Strengthening the first team by improving the quality of players in certain positions; and deepening the squad by providing better quality back-ups and youth players, particularly important given the number of games we’ll be expected to play this season.

I’ve always said that, in FM, three seasons should be enough time to get any team to win any league and this is our 3rd season… so is this squad now good enough to win the title which we missed out on so cruelly last season…

Toulouse – 12/13 Season Review

And so we’ve reached the end of the second season so it’s time to reflect on how we’ve performed. It’s been a long old season as we’ve competed in five competitions and played some 57 games. There’s been plenty of ups and downs with some really promising performances and not a few rage-inducing moments.

So this post will be a simple one really and will detail how we’ve done over the season, what we’ve done well and should take forward into next year whilst also covering what we’ve not done well and should look to improve upon over the summer.

Whilst a lot of that may concern the striker position, I feel like I’ve talked that to death and you can find the details of that particular issue here. For everything else… read on.

Toulouse – finding a new striker

This post is partly going to be a selfish exercise on my part as I look to lay out a logical way of sourcing my next striker. My troubles with Stracqualursi are well known and although he may return after his loan spell a more settled player I’m still not convinced that he is the right sort of player to maximise the role that I wish to use up front.

Umut Bulut, in the Toulouse squad at the start of the game, has been something of a success with 17 goals in our first season and 14 so far this season but not only is he 29 and in need of replacing soon, I also get the feeling that an improved player here would really kick us on in terms of goal-scoring and attacking prowess. By trying to lay out what has made Bulut a success, not just in terms of the goals he’s scored but also overall team play, then I want to identify the attributes that I should be looking for in my new signing but also preferential PPM’s and things to avoid.

I hope that it will prove an interesting read as well as a means of ensuring that I don’t make the same mistake twice. Worst case scenario – you’re all bored to death and I waste another £5m… bugger.

Toulouse – 12/13 winter break

There have been improvements, there have been some positives… and there’s been Denis Stracqualursi… The big Argentine is looking more and more like a £4.6m error on my part. In case you haven’t seen it, my trials and tribulations with Stracq can be found here for your undoubted amusement.

There are a couple of things that the Stracq saga has brought to the fore, however: firstly, my players have no respect for me and apparently I still have a very low reputation in-game. This just makes our performances thus far all the more remarkable and makes me wonder what’s going to happen once my reputation increases. As such, the Coupe de la Ligue, a usually minor competition that I wouldn’t bother about, has suddenly become quite interesting. If I can get a win then my reputation should rocket and things might start clicking.

Secondly, I really do think that a strikerless formation might be the long term option. More on this later though…

For now, I’ll give a brief update on our results up to the winter break, some transfer activity that we’ve done in the meantime, look at what I need for the rest of the season and, as I’ve been promising for a while, look at the youth squad and its development.