2700 words and I couldn’t think of a sodding title

When I updated last, I was having some tactical trouble and bored you all to death with some statistics in an effort to found out where the problems were and how I could go about fixing them.

The good news, then, is that now I’ve settled on the tactic, I’m going to bore you all to death with some statistics in an effort to go about improving the players I use within that system. That though, will come in the next update as here I’ll update on how we finished the first season with Rapid, our first signings and, more importantly, how our qualifying campaign for Euro 2016 is going.

Den Haag – Patience is a virtue…

… but dropping a 4000lb cluster bomb on the Amsterdam ArenA might be more efficient.

That mob from the capital are swiftly becoming the bane of my (FM) life. Not only have they won the title for the fifth year running, i.e. every season I’ve been playing this save, they also beat me in both domestic cup competitions this season.

I’m not sure that I can blame them for Arsenal knocking me out of the Europa League but, other than that, they are single handedly responsible for ADO Den Haag winning diddly squat instead of a lovely shiny treble.

Anyway, the squad continues to strengthen but much of this update will be spent looking at the new tactic and, specifically, how it has provided us with more defensive stability this season – this at the request of @fm_samo and @fmanalysis

Feralpi Salò – If at first you don’t succeed…

… try just one more time then give up. Well, at least that’s my plan.

I was tempted to call it a day at the end of this season but we got so close this year that one more effort is called for in our attempts to complete that final challenge – winning the Champions League.

It’s clear that we’re now the best team in Italy, comfortably so I would say but there is still a small group of European elite sides that are just that little bit better than us. It’s no longer the class above that it has been as evidenced by our fantastic performances in Europe this season but neither would I class Feralpi as equals to PSG, Real Madrid and Man City – the real powerhouses of Europe at the moment, although I’ve got a wary eye on Man Utd after appointing Montella and Bayern who are managed by my old protegé Christian Chivu.

So a fairly simple update this one – how we did, who was good, who wasn’t that good and a few transfers to make us better. And we’ll check in on the progress of young Eric Little – the development case study… he’s getting good.

Feralpi Salò – we’re not done yet…

In the last update, I asked you all to vote on whether I should stay with Feralpi Salò or move on to another club and another league. At the time of writing, the votes were too close to call – with 53% (40 votes) in favour of moving on and 47% (35 votes) wanting me to stay.

Perhaps I should have gone with the small majority but the minority who wanted me to stay were also good enough to provide reasons within the comments section and managed to persuade me that my time in Salò is not yet finished. So lesson learned – if you really want me to leave, tell me why next time!

This will be a relatively small update then: detailing why I’ve decided to stay, what I’ll do to try and keep it interesting and the transfers that we’ve completed over the summer.

Feralpi Salò – A fairytale ending, a rage quit and backtracking – the story of 2023/24

An interesting end to the season, that’s for sure.

When I updated last, we were embroiled in a 4-way title challenge going into the winter break and the team was performing very well – giving me great hope that we’d be able to sustain our form this season and give ourselves a real chance of a first Serie A trophy.

Going into the last day, we’d done just that and faced a bona fide “helicopter Sunday” as any one of ourselves, Napoli or Inter could claim glory in a final day showdown.

Could we do it? Could we simply nudge ourselves over the line and claim glory? Read on to find out….

(NB – this update will purely look at our results and the players that I’ve brought in)

Feralpi Salò – In the hunt…

I’m feeling good about this season. We’ve reached the winter break, just a little before the halfway point in the league, and things are going pretty well. We’re embroiled in a very interesting title challenge and surpassed all my expectations in the Champions League despite a sticky start.

More importantly than that, though, is that the team feels like it’s performing really well. I feel like I have options all over the park and there aren’t many players who I feel have let me down on a regular basis, indeed I’ve been pleasantly surprised by some.

Normally I would wait until the end of the season and do a big update then but Thomas Levin (worth a follow on twitter by the way) suggested that I provide a little bit of information on my scouting techniques. I guess that I am more thorough than a lot of FM-ers… well “thorough” is the polite way of putting it. Others might describe it as indecisive, un-necessarily picky and borderline anal.

This was the case but the scouting section has become so big (waffle) that I’ve decided to issue it as a standalone article. Therefore this update will simply be that – an update on the fortunes of Feralpi Salò. I hope you still find it interesting.

Feralpi Salò – I shouldn’t really be disappointed should I…

… and yet I am. Disappointed that is. Which would seem odd when you consider the ludicrous ease with which we achieved my primary target – surviving our first season in Serie A.

It’s what happened after we survived that ended up leaving me so deflated.

Nevertheless you’d have to consider this a successful season for our small club and it puts us in a great position to strengthen for next year, something we’re already embarking on with some early Bosman transfers and re-structuring off the pitch. In fact, I’d say we’ve had such a successful first season in Serie A that I can’t see us ever being relegated – certainly not with me in charge as I’d expect to be sacked if we under-achieved that drastically.

For now, it’s over-achieving that takes centre stage though with a quick update on season 2020/21 – when Feralpi Salò introduced themselves to the top tier of Italian football.

After that, I’ll look at the strengthening that’s taken place at the club, both on and off the pitch, as we push for an even more successful campaign – my 6th in Salò.

Protecting “the pocket” – Part 1 – Using a DMC

I made a post a short time ago advocating the use of “the pocket” in FM, exploiting the space between defence and midfield to bring you scoring chances and causing the opposition defence as much problem as possible. In these articles (there will be several parts), I’ll look at the exact opposite – how to defend this zone and prevent the opposition from doing the same to you.

In an effort to do so, I’ll look at a few different ideas that you can employ within your own tactics. Rather than do this in the course of my own game and potentially cause myself some problems, I’ve started a new game and taken over both Lazio and Udinese – two Italian sides of similar ability. I’ll be replaying a friendly between the two on several occasions and employing various formations in an effort to illustrate my recommendations. I’ll be using, where possible, default formations within the game and asking my assistant to pick the team, take teamtalks, etc so that I am only showing the changes that particular recommended tweaks can make.

Typical example of a player “in the pocket”

In direct contrast to the first post, the situation above is exactly what we’ll be trying to avoid and I hope the following will help you to decide which method of doing so will be most profitable for your own team.

Toulouse – The 4-3-3 in detail

I was going to do a piece on Rapid Wien’s real-life tactics today but after they put in a quite depressing performance against Admira Wacker I’m no longer in the mood. Instead, I’ve had a few questions over Twitter on the tactic that I’ve been using with Toulouse so I’ve decided to make a detailed post on how it works, why I’ve set the various instructions within the tactics and the type of players that are required. I’ll also attach the tactic to the end of the post for anyone who wishes to try it out for themselves.

The tactic, as can be seen to the right, is a 4-3-3 of sorts although we utilise a deep midfield of 3 DMC’s and the front 3 is split into a targetman striker and inside forwards out wide in the winger positions. If you want to read through the development of the tactic then you can read through the game updates by clicking on this link and starting from the bottom up. If you’re just interested in knowing about the tactic, then read on.