Episode 95 of the Deep Lying Podcast has been and gone, and if you haven’t listened yet, what are you waiting for? It featured Greg Johnson from Squawka who was on hand to answer some of your and George’s questions, with Ed absent due to being in a minor traffic accident (#PrayforEd #he’sfine #youdon’tneedtopray).
The community section delivered some absolute treats for you to read and watch again, and if you want another reminder of those recommendations, you’ve come to the right place.
It’s me! I’m back with another community section round-up from episode 94 of the podcast. This week’s pod was a tactics special with FM Analysis and LPQR appearing as guests alongside George and Ed (making a return after a few weeks). They answered some of your questions you’d submitted and had a good old natter about narrow formations in particular. Always a hot topic. Once you’ve had a listen to that, and find yourself intrigued by the community content that George mentions, head on back here and easily click the links to go and read about them. We’ve got you covered.
Episode 93 was a bit of a corker in my opinion! Ali Maxwell of Not The Top 20 podcast was on, and the pod had a very EFL flavour, naturally. Alongside the usual save updates, George asked Ali to give his recommendations of players to look out for across the 3 divisions, and Ali also gave us some recommendations of interesting clubs we might fancy doing a save with across the EFL. If you haven’t listened yet, do click the link and check it out.
Down to business though and the community section!
The community section round-up is back! Last week’s edition went down well enough that George and Ed haven’t kicked me off the site. Hopefully well enough too that you all spent your boring Monday at work catching up on the latest content from around the FM community. Who needs to be actually working, eh?!
Episode 92 featured Danny Jamieson from FPL Daily, so if you haven’t given it a listen yet, do click the link and catch up.
And a reminder too that if you’re a Deep Lying Podcast fanboy like me, you can help the guys out to continue to provide the pod straight into your ears every week. Head over to their Patreon page, and if you’ve just found some spare change down the couch too, you could maybe chip in that little bit extra too and get a few benefits for yourself!
I’m delighted to be making my debut on the Deep Lying Podcast site and I’m bringing you something big: the first ever round up of the podcast’s community section to hit a website.
I’ve been compiling the community section for the podcast, which has been running in conjunction with #FMSlack since the middle of January, and there’s been some brilliant content produced in that time across the blogging and YouTubing spectrum.
Before now, I’ve just been posting the round-up on Twitter once the pod has been released. Now that George and Ed are Patreoning however, we’ll be giving you the all important links to what you should be catching up on and who you should be following across the community every Monday from now on.
Let’s get into it.
I’m heading into unprecedented ground here folks. I can’t remember ever churning out articles so regularly as this, it’s a good thing, a bloody good thing. I’m enjoying it and hopefully you are too – long may this continue.
As promised I wanted to provide a bit of in-match tactical analysis to back up my last article where I broke down my team, tactic and instructions. So prepare yourself for death by screenshot.
Here I’ve looked at 2 matches from the 2021/22 season, one of the seasons with a Premier League & Champions League victory. I wanted to analyse matches before this season – but only realised when writing this article that I couldn’t go back further than 4 seasons! Slightly gutting, but a lesson learned. You’ll go on to see that I’ve analysed goals from these 2 games – as this is the easiest thing to do. In future posts I will focus on defence and weaknesses to try and give a really rounded look on this Stoke team.
Champions League Final: Stoke 3-1 Chelsea
I’ve picked this game because it was lovely to revisit, always savor a win over Chelsea, especially with Mourinho still there. We won the game comfortably in the end, 2 goals from set pieces and the first goal I’ve analysed below.
I enjoy scoring this type of goal and it’s one that’s pretty commonly scored in this Stoke side. It’s fairly simple and direct and takes full advantage of the demonic pace in our wide players. Rene-Adelaide’s starting position between the lines is exactly what we want for him to either turn and run at the defence or to have time to pick a pass – which he does very well.
Champions League Semi-Final 2nd Leg – Stoke 4-0 Dortmund
Now for a lot more insight. Here I’m analysing all 4 goals and will hopefully give you a good idea of how my tactic and instructions contribute to the build-up and more importantly, the goals we score. Buckle up and get ready for a thrilling ride.
Stoke 1-0 Dortmund (Gabigol 4′)
Another deadly counter-attacking goal. Against a 4-3-3 we are lethal on the break as more often that not, the AMR/AML are caught high up the pitch and leave acres of space down the flanks as the DR/DL tuck inside. I particularly enjoy how Jevdjovic is within the penalty area when crossing and not nearer the corner flag, meaning we’ve a much higher % chance of finding the man in the middle and ultimately, scoring.
Stoke 2-0 Dortmund (Cresswell 29′)
This is a great example of how the instruction to ask my full backs to sit narrow can have a positive affect in attack. Notice how we have 5 players in their penalty box and a further 3 supporting. If an attack breaks down we may be a little exposed, so it’s a good job we have a good habit of scoring.
Stoke 3-0 Dortmund (Gabigol 51′)
A lovely goal and an example of how our players can find space both through the initial set up positionally and from their own ability. The triangle between Romero, Rene-Adelaide & Gabigol works very well again.
Stoke 4-0 Dortmund (Gabigol 79′ – hat-trick)
A fairly straight forward goal but one that comes about through a number of factors. Cresswell starting wide means Sane tucks in, allowing him to break into the box when he skins his man, making the ball to Gabigol a simple pass instead of a low % cross.
I hope this gives you all a bit of an insight into how the tactic works in practice. There’s a lot more to show – but only so much I can do in one post. All feedback appreciated as ever. My next blog will profile a few key players in our current squad, until then!
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.
Continue reading
So on Friday morning, we, along with FM Central, Guido Merry, Chris Darwin and more, launched the #WeAreTheCommunity to try and help FM content creators promote, discover and easily share each others work.
And we have had some really great responses to it. Already, we’ve been seeing lots of people using the tag and getting involved. But we’ve also had some questions, queries and quizzical tweets that have shown us that keeping the thrust of the launch to podcasts alone was pretty dumb of us.
So here’s a quick FAQ which explains what we’re doing with #WeAreTheCommunity a bit more and hopes to answer those questions a bit better.
