Football Manager is a one of a kind game isn’t it? Bloody fuck we all moan about it, endlessly at times, and yet we do this while sinking 100s if not 1000s of hours of our time into this game. I think I moan less than others - I know the game isn’t perfect and yet I’m not looking for perfection, just a means to enjoy the 2-3 hours of ‘me’ time I get most evenings when my 3 kids are in bed.
In my opening season I was able to split my blogs into two but I have blitzed season two so this may well be a #longread - I was just enjoying the journey too much. It’s been a hell of a season back in the top flight for IACC. Let’s get stuck in.
Pre-Season - Recruitment Drive
It was always going to be a tricky period to navigate after sensationally gaining promotion. 2 players retired, including our club captain and first-choice keeper, and 7 other players left the first team squad due to expiring contracts. A few I was recommended to keep but decided not to either down to age, wage or the fact that I thought they just weren’t keeping. We then sold our backup right back, Cerato, for £700k and reserve defensive midfielder Nicholas Watson (brother to Franco) for £850k. Pleasing fees for players not first choice nor cut out for the Liga Profesional de Fútbol.
I’ve spoken previously about wanting to utilise statistics when recruiting players. FM Stag has yet again done some fantastic work in this area by producing ‘what good looks like’ when looking at numbers on a screen. Tony, aka FM Grasshopper also used his burgeoning skills as a graphic artist producing key statistics per position in his latest blog.
Unfortunately I haven’t really been able to utilise this much again. Our finances are grim so I’m still relying mostly on free agents / cheap players - most of whom haven’t played enough football to gather statistics on. But there was one…
I’ve used Stag’s thresholds but just tweaked the ratings for my own benefit to ‘Very Good’, ‘Good’ and ‘Poor’. As we can see from the image above Salomón floats around the very good in two metrics, good in two and poor in one. This was whilst playing for Tigre on loan from Boca across 14 games. Not a huge data set to use but better than most of what I was dealing with when recruiting. He passed the eye test attribute-wise and as a free transfer the statistics backed up my initial appraisal - a shrewd signing.
In the end we made a total of 10 signings. 8 free transfers with fees paid for Omar Faraj (£200k) and Santiago Mele (£500k). Despite our financial position our board are still allowing us to reinvest 100% of transfer fees accrued.
Club Vision & Tactics
With promotion comes changing expectations and at IACC it was no different. Our board knew the challenge ahead and thus decided we had to change tack.
This would be a huge shift from our first season, not to mention a massive philosophy change for me, Ed Lasso. I don’t recall over playing defensively solid football (not deliberately) nor counter-attacking football. Challenge accepted.
The ‘eventual’ tactic settled upon. Tweaks are made ahead/during some games but this is largely where we begin each game
A cautious system…well I never. Safe to say I wasn’t sure about this but I was keen to give the board what they wanted. Plus I was a little bit scared of getting thrashed week in week out if we tried to play expansive football - so there’s plenty of logic behind this. I sometimes switched the role of my PF depending on the opposition. My WM-A is asked to sit narrow and I sometimes used a WP-A in that role (switching the central AP to a CM-S). All in all - this functioned well from the off.
Argentine League Cup
Well, I’m not quite sure I expected this…
Pre-season friendlies showed me that this tactic had legs but I still didn’t expect to perform as well as we did. A host of new signings…better opposition, this was dreamy. A solitary loss to Velez our only blemish in an otherwise perfect cup ‘group’ stage. We sat back, surrendered possession but in areas of the pitch that wouldn’t hurt us. When we won the ball back, intercepted or opponents’ attacks broke down we countered at pace and in numbers. It really was a joy to watch. Unfortunately we fell at the first hurdle once into the knockout rounds but a phenomenal start to the new season. I was far more confident at competing going into the league stage of the season.
Liga Profesional de Fútbol
The end of the League Cup stage more or less coincides with the European summer transfer window. This is also a transfer window in Argentina but being £5m in the red, unless I sold I wasn’t bringing anyone in. It was at this stage that our board removed my allowance for scouts to zero and scrapped the scouting budget. Not ideal. But we were full of confidence with the squad we had. We were right to be confident.
Wow. Second place. After our showing in the league cup I was definitely hopeful, yet a part of me always assumed we’d ‘regress’ to mid-table anonymity. However, we surpassed all expectations and deservedly finished a club record high of 2nd only 5 points shy of the imperious Boca Juniors. Another truly historic season for IACC and one I really, really enjoyed. I’ll be looking to dissect our ‘Cautious 4-4-2’ in a separate blog to better demonstrate how well it performed throughout this season. But for now, I’m simply soaking in the sweet, sweet reality of a 2nd placed finish in our first season back in the top flight of Argentinian football.
Copa Argentina AXION Energy
So how would we fare in the truly weirdly formatted and scheduled Copa Argentina? These games just seem to pop up randomly and then disappear for months. But when they came around we seemed to enjoy them.
Last season we went our at the first hurdle but we were determined to do better this season.
We snuck through on penalties to then not concede any more goals on route to the final. The semi final shootout against rivals Belgrano was excruciating to watch as we eventually ran out 8-7 winners scoring all our penalties. IACC had reached their first final in history and faced an in-form Tigre side.
Glory is a carnival!
We dominated throughout and finally made it pay with two late second half strikes. IACC’s first ever silverware and surely Ed Lasso is on the road to legendary status at the club. This capped off a really enjoyable and successful 2nd season.
Performance Overview
As much as I’m keen to blog separately about how this season went tactically I’d like to highlight a few keys to our success this season.
11 goals from corners (2nd place had only 6)
43% of shots on target (2nd in the league)
494 dribbles made (1st in the league)
22 goals conceded and 11 clean sheets (2nd best in the league)
22nd place in Salary per annum spend
Just a few snippets to highlight how we fared this season compared to our peers. I did enjoy the amount of dribbles completed (almost solely when counter attacking). We were also very reliable in possession.
I wanted to give a huge shout to our £500k signing Santiago Mele who was brilliant in goal this season. I feel his statistics don’t quite do him justice (even though they’re solid). He was ever present and a wall between the sticks. 11 clean sheets and he earned his debut with Uruguay during the season. It was fully deserved. My only concern is we’ll lose him to his £2.8m release clause very soon.
The main reason for our success was in our prowess in front of goal. With the switch to 4-4-2 Cucchi was primarily used as an AF-A with Contreras PF-A/S/D. As a partnership they were pretty formidable and with Faraj in reserve we had a potent strikeforce.
Contreras ended up as the league player of the season as he added 6 assists and a record 7 player of the match performances. Not bad for a free signing.
What Happens Next?
So what next? We’ve surpassed all expectations by years & have established ourselves as a true top flight team. Continental football awaits but the club remains mired in over £5m of debt. Some of our players are becoming attractive to potential suitors and we have to raise money somehow. I’m hopeful the continental football may provide some much needed cash, however, I’m under no illusions that I may well lose one or two key players in the January 2024 window.
But what a season ey?