Much ADO About Everything – Forwards and Backwards

In the first blog, I was very complimentary of our defensive solidity – praising a system that had conceded less than a goal a game on the way to a 6th placed finish. We needed only to improve the offence and we’d be well on our way to serious success…

The best way to predict the future is to create it

You’ll have to forgive the sanctimony of the quote, which I think is from Abraham Lincoln, but it fits well with the theme of this post – the future of the national team and the club’s role in making it as successful as possible.

As a brief reminder, I’m playing a “club and country” save with Rapid Wien and Austria.  The over-riding priority of the game is success with the national side and the club side exists almost solely to facilitate that.  But no-one plays to lose and we’ve managed to win the Bundesliga title in each of my three seasons plus the domestic cup in two – a 4-0 humiliation in a semi against Sturm Graz being the sole aberration.

Club Tactics – Forward Planning

Whilst early signs are that my fears of domestic dominance coming too easy look to be well-founded, I’ve still more or less enjoyed the initial months at Rapid.  The national side, though, is another matter completely as I’m already struggling to keep my job.

Having reached the winter break in the first season, it does seem an apt time to update on my tactics – or rather my tactical plans.  As always with a new save, I set up for the first half season to suit the existing personnel until I can get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of the squad.

Settled tactic, now what?

Anyone who has read my previous blog articles will know that I spend quite a bit of my time in FM trying to perfect the tactics. Tactics, the system, the philosophy, the approach… whatever you want to call it, it’s vital for success in Football Manager.

But tactics are only half the battle. At the end of the day, it’s the players that will dictate whether your tactics are successful. You can have the most revolutionary, awe-inspiring and unrivalled genius of a tactic but if you try to use Adel Taarabt as your midfield enforcer then you’re going to struggle.

So what I aim to do with this article is run through my approach to identifying the right player for the right role – which attributes are important, what PPM’s does a player need, would they benefit from any personal instructions?

And to do so, we’ll use the 4-1-4-1 I’ve been developing with Rapid Wien and Austria as a case study.

Austria & Rapid – Early days and FM12 striker flashbacks

After a series of posts dealing with the periphery of the game, graphics and mods for streamlining FM, I’ve finally played long enough to write a proper update on my actual save. In case you missed it, I’ve started a Club and Country save with Austria and Rapid Wien that I hope will last for some time and form the bulk of my blog articles for the foreseeable future.

I’ve played up to the winter break in my first season which includes 19 leagues games with Rapid and 4 Euro 2016 qualifying games with Austria.

My initial tactical plans have proven impossible to implement due to SI’s decision to introduce the inverted wingbacks as a new feature that doesn’t actually exist in the game. Therefore, I’ve had to tweak the 4-1-4-1 slightly. There are some parts that are working very well and others, like the striker, which aren’t

Apologies if this is something of a statistical overload but, as well as updating on the progress of both club and country, I hope to work through the issues I’ve been having tactically and hopefully come up with some sort of solution.

FM15 – time to revisit the tactical vision that failed?

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything for this blog so apologies to anyone who has been disappointed by the lack of activity. My absence was caused by a number of factors – a new arrival in the shape of our second child and the need to campaign for a No vote in the recent Scottish referendum on independence, but primarily because I really didn’t like FM14 at all. It was a bad game.

Towards the end of my attempts to make FM14 enjoyable, I tried to implement a truly pompous sounding “Tactical Vision” with my Alavés side. My attempts to do so failed spectacularly, hampered, I believe, by the restrictions inherent in the FM14 engine. However, shining through the usual detritus, filler and sales-pitch bullcrap of the FM15 “new feature” announcements was news of four new “roles” – one of which might actually make my vision workable.

So, ahead of FM15, and because I’m bored waiting to give the new child a late night feed, I thought I’d sketch out what exactly I hope to be able to do in the new match engine. This, for me, is likely to be the yardstick by which I gauge whether FM15 is an improvement on its scandalously poor predecessor. And by god I hope it is.

Overtaking Happel – Creating new roles

Second season done with Rapid and the first title in my ‘Overtaking Happel’ challenge is in the bag. At times the title looked unlikely, at others practically impossible but everything came together in the end and, aided by the required dose of good luck, we pipped Red Bull Salzburg at the post.

In keeping with the ‘theme’ of the Overtaking Happel posts, though, this won’t just be a diary of our results and the players that we signed. I’m trying to centre each article on a particular aspect of the game which has come to the fore during the season at hand. Hence why, during this article, I’ll try to cover what I have somewhat clumsily called “creating new roles”.

Essentially, what I’m trying to look at here are limited selections within the tactical interface that do not really cover what you require. How can you get around these limitations to produce the result on the pitch that you had in mind? Well all-too-often you just can’t as the interface is too restrictive but sometimes, just sometimes, you can come up with a working alternative. This season I’ve done just that and to great effect.

The Happel Challenge – Shopping by attributes rather than positions

I’m sure that many of you are sick and tired of hearing about my games with Rapid Wien but, sorry, I’m back with another one! My dissatisfaction with FM14 is hardly a secret and I’ve made my feelings clear on many occasions – about the tactical interface and match engine in particular. With those elements of the game, probably the two most important elements, so fundamentally ruined for me; I had to find enjoyment in some other aspect of FM.

Either that or stop playing altogether and, to be quite frank, FM has been my sole pastime for so long that I’ve forgotten what else I’m supposed to do with what little spare time I have.

So sadly my Alavés save is no more as I decided that the best way to regain some love of the game was to head back to Rapid – a club I always enjoy managing.

For a blog, though, this would probably be an interminably dull save to report on in the same manner I did with Feralpi or ADO. So instead, I’m going to try and focus each ‘Rapid’ report around one (hopefully) interesting aspect of FM that happens to have come about during the corresponding period of the save.

This article’s topic is, therefore, on “Shopping by attributes rather than positions”.

If You’re LAPpy and You Know It LAP Your Hands

First up I would like to apologise for the utterly heinous title to this piece.  It appears our editorial policy has veered into the wall of the pun and I’ve had to fall in line, which is why you’ve recently read titles such as “Basque to Basics” and “Basque to the Big Time”.  It’s been wall-ful.

What wasn’t so wall-ful, however, was our fourth season in National.  Long-suffering readers of this column will be fully aware of my ineptitude when it comes to Fooball Management and of our on-off love affair with relegation.

This season, however, we mainly stayed away from the league’s bottom and focussed our activities on its lovely mid-section.  How did we improve from the potentially catastrophic to the merely mediocre?

Read on to find out.

Alavés – Basque to the big time (and the latest of the 3-4-3 project)

My Alavés save has taken something of a backseat recently as I’ve been kept busy at work and the majority of my free FM time has been taken up by the network save with Petr Uchio. We have, however, completed a successful second season with Deportivo Alavés and continued the Cantera project in earnest.

Of course, if you read the last blog article on my 3-4-3-ish idea, you’ll be aware that the Cantera is not the only ‘project’ which I’m currently undertaking. Unfortunately, some events are transpiring within the save which look likely to prevent me fully experimenting with the 3-4-3 and so I can only give it a few cursory run-outs in friendlies.

Nevertheless, I should be able to highlight some significant findings on the proposed tactic and the necessary amendments that have been made to the starting shape… but only after a brief update on Alavés’ second season and our promotion back to the big time…