Although often overlooked by many, getting together a functioning backroom staff that match your overall plan can be very rewarding. We may only be talking a 5-10% increases in coaching efficiency, tactical familiarity, team blend and squad personality (to use some examples) but in terms of player development, that could be the difference between having a good player and a world-class player. As discussed in the previous article, player development will be an important part of my philosophy at Bochum so when I start-up my search, I’m looking for excellent coaching ability first and foremost. I also look at their personality, history and age as well as key attributes for each role to make sure I secure staff that will be around long enough to improve themselves and rub off on the lads coming through.
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Author: RIchard Roughley
Auf gehts VfL Bochum – Part 1: The groundwork
After a protracted reorganising of my life forced me into a several month article hiatus, I felt it was time to jump back on the wagon, dust off my virtual boots and start asking my scouts to find me the next Jamie Vardy. So far FM16 has mostly been about tactics, tweaking and a new level of deeper learning for me, though like many of us I’m still prone to the occasional freak out of frustration when something just isn’t going as planned. To be honest, my most recent Altrincham save was binned when I took a few weeks off, came back and had no desire left to raise the sleeping Chesire giants to the pinnacle of English football, especially as it was something I’d done before. I needed a spark of inspiration… Continue reading
Analysing Altrincham: The Wing Backs
Ahhh, much better to jump in with a post after a few days rather than weeks! You join me on my quest to turn an old tactical idea into a functional tactical reality – the catch being I’m managing Altrincham who are relegation fodder in the Vanarama Conference. After putting the finishing touches to the basic 4-1DM-3-2 outline, my initial idea was to provide a broad analysis of the tactic in action with pointers as to what is working and what isn’t. However after reading several articles recently that champion the merits of breaking down the tactic into its constituent parts, I felt it would be a nice idea to write a series of posts about each position and the issues I found. First up: The Wing Backs.
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And Now For Something Completely Different
It happens to all of us at some point. You have a phase where you don’t play the game and it just doesn’t grab you; the thought of starting a new save seems desperately long-winded and your current saves don’t quite have the “X” factor. After the Wolfsburg experiment hit a brick wall, I drifted away from FM, had the obligatory crazy back half of December (flights, booze, flights+booze) and came back to it in January with minimal desire to perfect the disciplined 4-2-3-1. I’d been away too long and couldn’t get back into the rhythm of testing – the lack of Bundesliga at the moment certainly doesn’t help either!
But never fear, I’m going to continue my tactical blogging with something that I just have to do every year – take the helm at my beloved Altrincham FC and (attempt to) mastermind success with their astonishingly limited resources. I usually go for a classic 4-4-2 as their squad is geared towards it, but after tidying my desk I found some scrawly notes from a few years ago (that’s how often I clean up) and decided to resurrect a tactic I used in FM14 in the Belgian lower leagues (hipster alert).
Now as the game changes slightly with every edition/update, it’s important to use my notes as a starting point and not simply copy the tactic over from a previous version and expect it to function well. Also, it’s much more exciting to go on a tactical journey rather than plug-in and let the points rain down (or more likely, slip away). So, what was contained within these scrawly notes?
VfL Wolfsburg and their balanced, disciplined 4-2-3-1 – Part 2
In the last article, I discussed the basic style and approach of VfL Wolfsburg, generating a base tactic for FM16 in the process. After having blitzed through pre-season and moved a few games into the season proper, it feels a good time to start analysing whether or not the tactic is both stable and a faithful representation of the real life Wolfsburg. We start however with an aside with a relevance that will be established later…
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VfL Wolfsburg and their balanced, disciplined 4-2-3-1
First of all, I reckon there’s a small apology in order as it’s been an awful long time since the last post about Mönchengladbach, but with FM15 giving way abruptly to FM16, there was always going to be a crossover point in this Bundesliga tactics series… So we soldier on anyway beyond Gladbach and their “deep-lying gegenpress” and onto something that will seem much more familiar (and with less hipster sparkle) to fans of the English Premier League in particular – VfL Wolfsburg’s 4-2-3-1.
For a bit of background, Wolfsburg are one of those teams that German’s have reservations about because they’re not very German in their foundation and finances. Like Bayer Leverkusen, they are one of two top flight teams that are entirely owned by a company – in Wolfsburg’s case, Volkswagen. Though simplistic to say their recent success has been bankrolled by a multinational automobile conglomerate, it certainly hasn’t done them any harm having plenty of money behind the scenes. The peak of their success was a Bundesliga championship in 2009, but both Dortmund and the now virtually unstoppable Bayern have kept them at arm’s length in recent seasons.
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Recreating the Deep Lying Gegenpressing of Borussia Mönchengladbach – Part 2
In the first part of this series, I used the FM tactics creator to cobble together the shape and the settings that would hopefully mimic Lucien Favre’s Mönchengladbach side of recent years. Various articles and diagrams informed my decisions beforehand, but the important part is the subsequent analysis where I get to see if it actually plays out how I envisaged. Football Manager is as funny an old game as the game of football itself, replete with unforeseen consequences that would make Gordon Freeman’s eyes water (yes, that’s a Half-Life reference). You can choose the settings with the best intentions, but end up with problems that you did not expect.
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Recreating The Deep Lying Gegenpressing of Borussia Mönchengladbach
First of all, hello and Guten Tag. I’m Felley and I think I have just written the most hipster-titled article of all time.
As for the actual content, I have been entrusted – if that’s the right word – by Ed and George to recreate some real life tactics in the marvellous game that is Football Manager. Based in Germany, I’ve been slowly absorbing the football culture like a sort of travelling nerdy sponge. Spending afternoons soaking in both the kitschy, wheat beer fuelled discussion on Sport1 and training with a local non-league side on a sodden, sandy Aschenplatz, one quickly learns the value the Germans place on football intelligence – both on and off the pitch. It is against this backdrop that I am writing my first batch of articles for The Deep Lying Podcast as I look to recreate the tactics of the Bundesliga. In the first of what will hopefully be a long and fulfilling series, I’ll be taking a look at Borussia Mönchengladbach, recreating their playing style and looking at their recent tactical exploits…