Dare to think outside the box

Terrier Spirit; Part Two – Ankle Biters!

So, the main thing I want to do for the squad involves giving them an identity and a way of playing for each other that will bring results that no one expected. I want the opposition to be constantly under pressure, for us to be solid and dogged in our approach to defending (ankle biters) and then quick to spring the leash once we’ve got the ball back. As our squad is one of the favourites for relegation this season due to our transfer and wage budget structure, then it’s important for us to be well organised rather than wasteful with the ball.

And so, I introduce my first-choice tactic that we will run with initially. The tactical style (our identity) will be known as #Terrier Tiki, and even if we tweak the roles throughout the season then I want this identity to be the core of the club. I have moved away from my original tactical plan due to the signings that Guido has made and they are detailed as below. There are two variants of the tactic based on if the opposition is stronger than us or if I want to sit a bit deeper and encourage the opposition to come out a bit if I’m struggling to break them down.

We will be structured in our play, with each player knowing their role and working as a team to control the space without the ball and exploit the opposition’s weaknesses with the ball. I’m pretty strong through the middle with good central defence, midfield and attacking midfield options so will look to push the play through them initially working the space until I can get the wing backs and wide attacking midfielders free. I’ll break down the individual roles and player instructions below and explain the reasons for them, as well as provide the 2 tactics download links below.

(more…)

By Guido, ago

Do You Even Delap?!

When we think about scoring goals, the first thought that comes to mind is hitting the ball top corner or maybe a simple tap-in from a cross, but we very rarely give thought to the throw-in. Unless you’re a Stoke fan, then you might have seen your fair share of goalscoring opportunities from the long throws over the years.

The throw-in has been part of the game since the nineteenth century when English public school boys would run amok with grassy knees. A wide variety of methods were tried and tested to return the ball to the playing field, including kick-ins and one-handed throws but eventually, the two-handed throw was accepted (having been stolen from rugby). All in all, the throw-in was not deemed to be that important or influential.

(more…)

By Guido, ago

Terrier Spirit; Part One – The Dog Fights On!

Founded in 1908 Huddersfield Town AFC locally known as ‘The Town’ or ‘The Terriers’ enjoyed their best spell of success during the 1920’s when they were the first team to win the English top flight 3 times in a row and won the FA cup in 1922.

In the late 1950s, the club was managed by Bill Shankly and featured Denis Law and Ray Wilson, before being relegated from the top division in 1972. The Terriers then spent 45 years in the next three tiers of the football league before against all the odds being promoted back to the English Premier League in 2017 under the management of David Wagner who instantly became a club legend with that achievement.

In their first season back in the Premier League they again surprised everyone with their #TerrierSpirit & managed to stave off relegation despite one of the lowest wage budgets in the division.

(more…)

By Mark Rennolds, ago

Corner-Kicks In FM19

One of the prevalent developments in football over the past few years is a growing emphasis on the importance of set pieces. When you cannot break down a defence during the phases of open play, a strong set-piece routine offers you the opportunity to score a goal. After all, the premeditated nature of set pieces offers managers a level of relative consistency in preparation and planning. You can work out multiple routines and prepare your players for these routines during training sessions. In this blog post, I want to focus on the process of setting up a good corner routine, the variables that determine whether or not a routine is successful and my own routine.

(more…)

By Guido, ago

Creating My Classic Strikerless In FM19

For a good four years now, I have been running the weblog Strikerless.com, which is based around the ideas of strikerless football. When I started writing about strikerless football, it was deemed somewhat of a novelty, an oddity that tricked the mechanics of the match engine but had no actual foundations in real life football, barring one AS Roma team and the odd effort born out of desperation when teams found all their forwards banned or injured.

Since I started preaching the strikerless gospel, real life caught up. Several European teams play without a traditional forward and with a certain degree of formlessness. They either have no obvious focal point of attack or they can attack from so many directions that anticipating how they will attack at any given time is nigh on impossible. This is the underlying concept of a strikerless formation in a nutshell.

Instead of a traditional forward, you play a trequartista or other sort of attacking midfielder as your most attacking man on the pitch, position-wise. These attacking midfielders, be it a trequartista, an enganche, shadow striker or an advanced playmaker, tend to move into the space between defence and midfield to receive the ball, thus overloading the central midfield, establishing domination in terms of possession and creating space for surging runs by wide players or other midfielders.

That brings us to a new version of the game; Football Manager 19 is on the verge of going live. FM Grasshopper and I attended a private event and were allowed to play the Alpha version of the new game. This event and my results in playing the Beta inspired me to write this article. Please note, and I want to be very clear about this in advance, this article DOES NOT and WILL NEVER contain a download link because it was created on an ALPHA version of the game, not the finished game. What worked well in Alpha, might not work at all during Beta or the full release.

Having said that, the underlying train of thought might prove useful and insightful, so there is an added value to this article. Plus, if you are so inclined, it is not like you cannot manually write down the player roles and instructions to try this bad boy for yourself. I just don’t want to assume any responsibility if your gambit backfires. There are no proper plug and play tactics after all.

(more…)

By Guido, ago

Creating a new hybrid style with FM19’s new interface

As you may or may not have heard, the weekend of October 13th and 14th was the weekend Sports Interactive released an Alpha version to a select few creators from within the community. Lord knows quality control is not a thing because somehow I managed to get invited. It was a grand weekend, where I got to spend time with some of the finest creators our community has to offer, drink copious amounts of booze, marvel at all the stuff on display over at SI HQ, talk to Miles and some of the developers and naturally get a feel of the new game.

Together with my compatriot blogger FM Grasshopper, whose blog you should be reading if you have never done and should continue to read if you are already reading it, I decided to focus my attention on one of the most influential and game-changing new features Football Manager 19 has to offer.

As you know, the new Football Manager offers a host of innovative new features. One of the options FM Grasshopper and Guido want to examine and explore is the overhauled tactical interface. As you may have gathered from the videos and play-throughs, the tactical user interface has undergone some massive changes. The most obvious difference is in the interface layout, which coincides with a new and more intuitive template-approach to creating tactics. Let’s look at the various new features and how to use them.

(more…)

By Guido, ago

La Magica; The Monchi Files — 08. The Art Of Negotiating A Good Deal (Buying)

In the transfer market, wheeling and dealing is an art. When engaging within transfer negotiations, clearly, the buying club aims to bargain for the lowest price possible, while the selling club naturally tries to market the player for a much higher amount. The final transfer sum will be somewhere between these two, depending on the two teams’ ability to negotiate a good deal. Clearly, a manager worth his salt can earn his club millions by negotiating the right conditions for a transfer.

As we have seen in the previous instalment of this series, a transfer deal can be influenced by a number of factors. I am not going to delve into all of these again, as it would mean copy-pasting half the previous article. What I am interested in is the art of negotiation. What are the interesting tips and tricks you can use to secure yourself a good deal on the transfer market?

(more…)

By Guido, ago

La Magica; The Monchi Files — 07. The Art Of Negotiating A Good Deal (Selling)

Being able to maximise your recruitment process – your conveyor belt of talent from either your academy or other clubs – is just one part of what makes or breaks a club in the transfer market. When engaging within transfer negotiations, clearly, the buying club aims to bargain for the lowest price possible, while the selling club naturally tries to market the player for a much higher amount. The final transfer sum will be somewhere between these two, depending on the two teams bargaining power.

It can be influenced by the possible available substitutes (i.e. other players), the talent and skills of the player(s) in question, and the estimates that the respective clubs assign regarding the marginal utility of the player’s talent. Considering that it is a team sport, the value of individual talent and skills greatly depends on the team the player is contracted to. The extent of how much the buying and selling clubs’ bargaining power influences the signing price is still debated and vary according to a number of factors that may even come from the player himself.

The start of the negotiation process, from the selling point of view, is the part where a good manager (or Director of Football) is also able to negotiate a reasonable price, as this can earn his club many millions extra. Negotiating a good deal is a complicated game between guestimating the value of a player, assessing what the buying club is willing to pay for him and being able to extract as much money as you can out of the deal.

(more…)

By Guido, ago

La Magica; The Monchi Files — 06. Shadow Lists

Looking at modern football – how is it possible that the richest clubs own more wealth than the rest of the clubs combined? The circumstances are often in their favour, whether that be in terms of the country they are from, potential markets they can access and financial windfalls that can be generated as a result. Yet, at times, they still lose out to smaller, financially less powerful clubs, be it in individual matches or even over the course of a season. Is this a fluke, some random event where the underdogs were favoured by Lady Luck? Or do some clubs continue to defy the odds and is there a lesson to be learned here?

Clubs, such as Basel, Sevilla, Porto, Ajax, are entrepreneurial – they attempt through the lens of time, the need, and aspiration of the market. Their achievements over the past decade or so, both domestically and internationally, did not happen by chance. They all laboured strenuously to get to and stay in the position they are in this world and remain there. Opportunity is created daily and it’s all around us. Yet, only a few are able to seize it and turn it into a blessing. Football management is nothing different.

(more…)

By Guido, ago

Are Traditional Strikers Dying Out?

There was once a time not too long ago that having a dynamic, lumbering striker was almost necessary for success. The likes of Fernando Torres, Carlos Tevez and Robin Van Persie were some of the most prolific goal scorers on the planet in most of the decade spanning from 2000 until 2010.

Since then, however, things have changed. While many of the world’s best clubs still deploy traditional strikers, others have opted for a strikerless attack. In the 2018 FA Cup Final between Chelsea and Manchester United, Blues boss Antonio Conte opted to deploy a starting XI sans a traditional striker. With Alvaro Morata on the bench, Conte chose to play winger Eden Hazard as a de-facto “striker” instead. The Belgian would go on to score the game’s lone goal in the 1-0 victory.

(more…)

By Scout Master, ago