Category: Journeys & Stories

Tactic Creation Guide: Part 3 – Offensive Trio – Press Forward!

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I planned this as a three part series. I intend to go step-by-step through the process of creating a 3-5-2 tactic, from examining the formation’s strengths in the context of its three units: defensive, transition and offensive to showing you what kind of players you need. The first part dealt with the 3 Men Defence Unit. The 2nd focused on the Transition Unit of midfielders and wingbacks. This third and final part will examine the Offensive Trio and how their roles and instructions contribute to the success of the tactic as a whole. Finally I will analyze how the three units fit together to make up the strengths and weaknesses of the 3-5-2 system. So thank you for following so far. Read on!

Step 1: Defensive Unit

Step 2: Transition Unit – Wingbacks and Midfield

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Serie A saga: A busy summer at Lazio

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In my last post I gave an overview of the Lazio squad and which players I would like to retain, dispose of and keep for the medium term. Rebuilding this great club would take time, patience and no small amount of financing. Their last Serie A win was in the 1999-2000 season under Sven-Goran Eriksson, although they won the Coppa Italia in 2012-13 under the guidance of Vladimir Petkovic, beating fierce city rivals Roma 1-0 in the final.

In this post I will:

  • Provide an overview of our summer transfer activity
  • Review the tactical systems for the new season
  • Discuss season objectives

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FM19 | The Box To Box Midfielder | União | Part 3

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União are back in the top flight for my third season in charge. Today we’re going to have an analytical look at my Box To Box Midfielder, Rúben Oliveira. We’ll see how the Match Engine emulates the role of a BBM, and how effective they can be in the right situations. If you haven’t read the previous editions you can check them out here.

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Inverted Wing-Backs in FM19: How to Utilise Your Silent Assassins.

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Inverted wing-backs: what’s the point?

Inverted wing-backs are often just seen as full-backs standing in central midfield. An excuse to pass sideways. An excuse to bring natural full-backs out of position. An excuse to play 20,000 bleeding passes for the sake of it!

However, believe it or not, using inverted wing-backs correctly can give your side an unrivalled attacking threat. If you’re still with me, I’ll try to explain how! Continue reading →

Saving English Football! – Part 1

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So last year I created a series in which I tried to Ruin English Football. I basically created an alternate world in which top teams lost their ability to sign players meaning they relied heavily on their youth in turn creating a quality generation of English talent. However what ended up happening was League One and Two teams became huge and took over and Wigan and Blackburn won everything. If you want to read about that you can check out parts here:

England managed to win another 4 world cups, a European Championship and 4 Nations League Titles in around 50 seasons.

So this save has some similarities but I decided that instead of ruining another country or another simulation, I’d try and make up for what I’d done previously. This time round I’m going to save English football. I know the current national team is doing fantastically, its kind of sad that around this time last year I wrote an article on Why England won’t win a major competition in our lifetimes. That makes me look really pessimistic in retrospect. However despite how much I applaud Gareth Southgate; I’m stealing his job.

I have a few things on my ‘checklist’ that I’d like to achieve in this save: 

  • Climb the Leagues with the Unicorn, relying on young English talent either from my academy or an extensive scouting network provided by the national team. 
  • Keep the average age of the national team 24 or lower, without losing quality of players. Keep older players for key roles and rotate teams during friendlies/easy qualifiers. 
  • Improve the facilities as early as possible, as that is paramount to early climbing. 
  • DO NOT GET ATTACHED TO PLAYERS! Players will stay for a maximum of two years. 

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Dynamo Project Tactic Creation – Step 2: Transition Unit

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I planned this article as a three part series. In this extensive guide I intend to go step-by-step through the process of creating my 3-5-2 tactic, from examining the formations strengths in the context of the primary three units: defensive, transition and offensive to showing you what kind of players you would need for this tactic. The first part dealt with the 3 Men Defensive Unit. This following one will be looking at the Transition Unit of the two midfielders and two wingbacks, and how their roles fit in my tactical system. So read on!

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Rebuilding with Lazio

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I took over at Lazio with the club in a perilous position of 16th in the standings. The club was in an average shape off the field, with a balance of £10m in the red, and the squad required extensive rebuilding.

In this post I will look at:

  • How I evaluate a club after taking over
  • An overhaul of  the backroom staff
  • Full evaluation of the playing squad
  • Results through to the end of the season
  • Planning for next season

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Dynamo Project Step-by-Step Tactic Creation – Step 1: The Defensive Unit

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I love summer break. No, I’m not being nostalgic for those halcyon days in elementary school when we would have three months free from all worries of studying, exams or work, and simply enjoy life. No, unfortunately as much as I would love to, this is not an article about that. Rather, I love the summer preseason break in Football Manager 2019. A great time to take a look at what worked or not in the previous season and start planning for the challenges of the next. For me all tactic building happens in preseason with ideally only a few tweaks needed once Fall rolls around and we get well into the new season.

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Season update: A sad farewell to Trieste, and a hello to…

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In my previous post, I outlined how we achieved a very respectable 12th place in our second season in Serie A. The consequence is that we have another season to accumulate finance to develop all aspects of the club.

The Board agreed to improve both the training and youth facilities, which underpins my strategy of developing youth players and improving senior players to sell for large profits. This had already borne fruit last season when we sold Cedric Teuchert for £7.5m and Max Christiansen for £2.7m.

Until the club is established in European competitions, selling to buy for a profit would have to remain a core strategy.

In this post I will look at:

  • Youth development progress to date
  • Summer transfer activity
  • Performance in my third season
  • A change of club

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