The Journey Person. From Field to Favoured Personnel. Episode 7

May 3, 2023

LAST TIME!

There have been developments reader(s). I was offered the Ipswich job and given their history and current position I was incredibly excited to get started. However, there was a snag, Bangor and Ipswich couldn’t agree a compensation package to release me from my current contract. I thought this would be easily solved by a quick rage quit (not a pretend quit for likes, a real one.). This was not the case and even though I resigned as manager of Bangor, Ipswich never came back to offer me the job, instead giving it to Dean Smith and leaving me in limbo.

Up to now I had been very selective around which jobs to apply for, but as I was unemployed I decided to basically apply for everything. I had interviews at Forest Green and Port Vale which seemed to go well. I threw my hat into the ring for the job at Championship strugglers Hull City, who had just sacked Steve Bould, fully expecting to be laughed out the door so I was pleased I even got an interview with their Turkish owner…

I must have impressed them as they offered me the job!

Hull were sitting 19th in the table and seven points clear of the drop zone with six games remaining so I was fairly confident I could do enough to keep them in the division. This was my number one priority. Our remaining six games saw us matched up against, Preston (14th), Sunderland (12th), Sheffield Wednesday (23rd), QPR (6th), Birmingham (7th), and Port Vale (24th)

Board Vision and Culture

Before I even look at my squad I always check the board, and now the supporters, vision and culture. I will try and give them what they want, but in the short term we may have to sacrifice some things in order to stay up.

I was intrigued by what the board wanted and I am actually really looking forward to the challenge of trying to meet as much of it as I can.

Nothing Earth shattering here, work within wage budget, avoid relegation from the Championship and be competitive in the FA Cup (which we are already out of in any case) are the “required” objectives so they will be my primary focus. Working within the wage budget isn’t a problem as we have passed the transfer windows so I won’t be bringing anyone in. Looking ahead to next season I can see the board intends to reduce the wage budget so this may become a factor for another day.

Things got interesting when I looked at the Board Culture…

Even though these are all only “favoured” I am going to embrace them going forward and try and comply with them as best we can. To further facilitate this I have loaded the Turkish leagues so they will be appearing at the end of the season. Perhaps a future job awaits us in Turkey!

Playing entertaining and attacking football is pretty subjective, I often wonder what metrics the game actually uses to measure this, and is it as simple as the brief explanation you get by hovering over the wee ‘i’ to the left.

In some ways the progression from Northern Ireland football to the Championship is a little unrealistic and I certainly can’t remember too many examples of a manager moving from here straight to such a high level but Hull are a team in transition, so maybe the owners decided to take a punt on a cheaper alternative from across the Irish Sea - who knows! Saying that I am now getting paid a massive £33,500 per month up from the £2,200 per month I was on at Bangor.

The Squad

Joining a fresh club and looking over the playing squad for the first time is surely one of the most exciting things to do in every Football Manager save. Whenever I come to a new club I do generally trust my assistant managers assessment of the players, initially at least! I’m old school so I do love to check out those stars and see who my staff believe are our best players.

Once I have identified who I believe are my best players I see what role they actually prefer to play in the hope this gets the most out of them fairly quickly, I find if you do this for your best four or five players you can usually start to create a half decent tactic and use other players to fill the gaps in the side. Doing this can also help compliance with other aspects of your job such as working within the wage budget as quite often you can find a player that seems to be vastly over paid for his worth within the side who you can move on to free up some money.

Step 1 - Identify our best players.

Jacob Greaves - D (LC) 24 years old

Our top player looks to be 24 year old Jacob Greaves, I love the look of him as a ball playing centre back with excellent vision and passing for Championship level along with the old CB stables of Jumping Reach, Heading, Marking and Positioning. One other, often overlooked, facet of a player’s make up in FM are their traits. So often I read or watch content around tactics and player traits are barely mentioned. I ALWAYS take notice of them as they can alter how a player performs in a tactic dramatically. With Greaves we see he likes to switch the ball to wide areas, this coupled with high vision and passing could make for some lovely transitions to wide areas. I am already thinking about a tactic that will have wide men for him to find and given we are currently struggling in the league counter attacks of this nature could be very profitable for us.

Adama Traoré - DM, M/AM (C) 29 years old

Adama Traoré is another player with high vision and passing. He also has a great first touch all of which makes him seem like some sort of midfield playmaker. His lack of tackling, strength and aggression does put me off playing him in a deeper role so perhaps he would be best suited to MC or AMC. His player traits back this up somewhat as he likes to run with the ball through the centre and play out of trouble. I wonder if he could make also be used as a Mezzala as he does have reasonable dribbling and is adept with both feet. Upon my arrival the club already have him up for sale and are asking for £6m. Given his £100k per month wages we may have to let him leave at the end of the season but until then I am looking forward to using him.

Dogukan Sinik - M(RL), AM(RLC) 26 years old

Our next two players are both Turkish nationals which given the board’s culture is probably not a surprise. Sinik looks to me to be an out and out winger. Great pace, good crossing and dribbling. He lacks the technical ability and vision of someone like Adama Traoré to be used centrally or as a playmaker. He also has the player trait of runs with ball down the right and gets forward whenever possible. He is pretty good with either foot so perhaps he could do a job on either flank as an inverted or standard winger.

Ozan Tufan - DM, M/AM (C) 30 years old

Tufan is another good passer in the side so I am now starting to think that longer term we may be able to transform into a possession based side if we wanted to. Tufan has pretty good mental abilities and enough technicals to play in central midfield. I see him in some sort of support role like a Box to Box Midfielder which would dovetail well with his decent finishing and player trait of Gets into Opposition Area (this trait rules him out of a DM role unless I use him as part of a deep double pivot). Like Adama he also likes to run with the ball through the centre, having two guys doing this can have its advantages as well as some disadvantages so that is something to consider if they play together a lot. Tufan is another player that is already transfer listed upon my arrival he is currently being paid £97k per month so I can see a pattern developing here.

Óscar Estupinán - AM (L), ST (C) 28 years old

I am a firm believer that to be successful in FM, and real life football for that matter, you need a top striker for the level you are playing at. You can create all types of build up play whether that be direct or tippy tappy passing but when the chance is created if your striker couldn’t score in a brothel, you won’t succeed. I am encouraged that my coaches believe Oscar is one of our better players but when I look at his attributes I am a little underwhelmed.

Almost all of my half decent tactics use an Advanced Forward (OP, Hackz, dunno…) and I like to go heavy on the Finishing, Composure, Off the ball and Acceleration. Oscar is only elite in off the ball, finishing is fine but I’d certainly like to see a bit more pace to get in behind. He has the trait of likes to beat offside trap which I generally find frustrating in the ME however coupled with Anticipation of 16 and Off the Ball 15 it may well work well for him. I also note his high aggression and work rate so perhaps a pressing forward role would suit him.

I’m content he will do a job for us but long term if we want to progress up the league we will need to find a replacement.

Initial Tactical thoughts

When I first go to a club I like to start from scratch. So what do we know about Hull and our playing squad and more importantly what does this mean when creating a tactic.

Hull are struggling in the league and haven’t registered a win in 17 games going back almost 4 months - Opposition teams are likely to attack us in the short term, potentially leaving acres of space in behind for us to exploit.
Steve Bould, the previous manager, utilised a 4-2-3-1 Formation - The squad is likely built with this formation, or similar, in mind although it is clearly not been working.
Our best player is a ball playing defender with great vision and trait of switching the ball to wide areas - Could he be given licence to play long passes in behind opposition teams who attack as as per point 1? Dogukan Sinik is a speedy wide player that could take advantage of these two points.
Two of our better players (Tufan and Traoré) are similar centre midfielders who both could play as a 10 in a 4231 - As the 4-2-3-1 hasn’t been working I don’t want to play it, but could these two players both play together centre midfield?
We have a reasonable option upfront in Oscar but having checked the squad he is the only option - Whatever tactic we decide upon will probably have to be a one striker system.
The board want attacking and entertaining football as do the supporters who also want a high pressing system - Initially it may not be possible to do all these things especially as we are in a relegation fight. But, on reflection, I may try and implement some of them before the season ends, we should be okay - shouldn’t we!?

Bearing these six points in mind my initial thoughts on a tactic are below.

Taking the team instructions first, I feel like I’ve ended up with a sort of Hybrid tactic. It’s not fully counter attacking and nor is it fully possession orientated.

In possession, I’ve told the boys to pass into space to take advantage of the space I believe teams will leave us in behind. If I feel we are spaffing away possession in certain games I could toggle this on or off and most definitely will during games as the match develops. Counter-intuitively I have also told the team to play out of defence, I like how the side lines up when this instruction is in use and I hope that once we have secure possession at the back someone like Greaves, or the DLP can progress the ball quickly if the right pass is on. I’ve also upped the tempo to perhaps make us go a little bit more direct.

In transition, again a real pet hate of mine in football is Goalkeepers giving away possession by booting the ball downfield, especially if you’ve nobody good in the air down there! So the ‘keeper has been asked to keep it short to any of the defenders. Hopefully this will force us to use Greaves to start attacks as often as possible. I have also asked the players to counter when the ball is won, as I think we will have some great opportunities to hit teams on the break. As with pass into space this isn’t an instruction that I will use 100% of the time it can be toggled on or off depending on how things are going. I don’t think we are good enough to counter press teams so decided not to select that just yet even though the fans may want us to do it.

Out of possession I have gone for a high press with press more often selected and prevent goalkeeper distribution again all of these can be toggled on or off depending how we are doing but generally I don’t really like sitting too deep and I may as well give the fans some of what they are asking for!

We move onto the formation, as discussed I don’t fancy the 4231 based on how poorly the team has been doing. We don’t have three good CBs so a back four is definitely the best, and we only have one decent striker so we need a formation with only one striker. Based on that some sort of 4-1-4-1 or 4-3-3DM was my first port of call. I decided to go with the 4-3-3DM as it should allow us to get some support up to the striker a little bit quicker, although I am keeping all the midfielders on support roles as I want them to work hard defensively out of possession, to start with at least. Perhaps next season we can introduce an IF on attack, but for now it is all hands to the pump while we try and secure our status in the division.

As we discussed I have assigned roles to our best players that they are comfortable in. So Greaves is a left sided ball playing defender, that was the easy one. For the central midfield three I decided to chose mobile roles for both Traoré and Tufan. To make best use of Traoré’s dribbling ability and desire to run with the ball through the centre I made him a Mezzala, and to make use of Tufan’s desire to get into the opposition area I have made him a Box to Box Midfielder. I hope this role and his trait will see him make some great late runs into the box to provide an additional goal threat. At DM I am conflicted still as to whether this player should be a playmaker or not. I had a look at the available DMs and I was pleasantly surprised with what I had available.

In the tactic above I have selected Regan Slater, mostly for his player traits, Tries killer balls often, and likes to switch the ball to wide areas. I can see some lovely direct counters coming from him and/or Greaves. But we also have the option in games when we want a bit more control we could select Adam Forshaw and his player traits of plays short simple passes and dictates tempo. I feel this is an often overlooked element of the game, both of these players will play the same position and role completely differently and can be used in different game situations to our advantage.

Finally we have former FM favourite Kevin Strootman, his mentals are incredible and defensively he trumps both Regan and Forshaw so he could be brought in for games when we perhaps need to be stronger defensively.

The front three currently are Inside Forward Dogukan Sinik who is quick and can exploit the balls played to wide areas into space by Greaves or Slater. Up front I have gone for Oscar as a Pressing Forward largely because he is well suited to it and I want to use something different than an Advanced Forward. On the right hand side I have currently gone for an inverted winger but I am really not sure about it as yet. In a lot of games I have changed this to a simple winger.

Results

So how did we do, we had six games to save Hull City from the drop and started potentially five points clear of the relegation zone if Sheffield Wednesday won their games in hand.

Two wins, three draws and only one defeat in the six games meant we survived quite comfortably in the end and didn’t even need anything from the last game against Port Vale which was a relief. I was surprised with just how strong the side looked with Oscar being particularly deadly in front of goal scoring six goals in six games for us, perhaps I don’t need an upgrade! Our game against Sheffield Wednesday was pivotal and I was disappointed to only draw that game conceding a 91st minute equaliser from a set piece, but the game did have two lovely goals that illustrated the type of goals I had imagined when putting the tactic together.

In the first goal scored by Oscar we see the CB collect the ball from the goalkeeper and play a nice incisive ball into Tufan who turns and plays a lovely pass into space for Oscar to run onto and he finishes emphatically in off the cross bar.

The second goal is delightful. Greaves the ball playing defender picks the ball up and carries it out of defence before playing the ball to the wide area for Anderson who crosses for substitute Tetteh to finish.

Both goals had elements of play that I was looking for and over the six games we scored plenty of our goals in a manner similar to these on our way to a credible 17th place finish twelve points clear of the relegation zone.

ME

As ever this save is not about the clubs or the players it is about ME the manager. I’m now paid over £33,000 per month and have a two year deal at Hull, my own attributes are progressing well and I have somehow got 20 for level of discipline, not sure how! Having left Bangor I am now one of their favoured personnel which, given the title of the series, I am pleased about.

As ever if you have made it this far thanks for reading.

If you come to CoffehouseFM often you may wish to sign up to our newsletter that will send you an email (not very often - promise) collating all the latest posts into one handy little newsletter. I’ve provided the link below and we promise not to sell your email address to the Russians.

Over and Out

FMEadster!

The Journey Person. From Field to Favoured Personel - Episode 6

March 22, 2023

In Episode 5 we secured a back to back promotion to the Danske Bank Premiership. Our task this season was to survive with the big boys, enhance our reputation, and perhaps start to look for a move before our stock starts to fall, as we’d surely taken Bangor as far as we could.

If that tickles your pickle then read on - let’s get into this!

New Board Expectations

After our previous promotion I stated I didn’t feel there was a big jump in standard between Championship 2 and the Championship and this proved correct given we achieved promotion at the first time of asking. This time, however, I do feel there is a much bigger gap in standard between the Championship and the Premiership especially the top 6 sides like Linfield, Glentoran, and Cliftonville. To have any chance of survival we will need to get off to a decent start.

The board seem to share my view and only require us to avoid relegation from the Premiership. I’m not too bothered with the cups as they are only ‘preferred’ and should be easily achievable.

The board culture remains unchanged although it may prove difficult to hit the metrics for “defensively solid” if we are struggling to avoid relegation. The rest I feel will happen naturally with my 4-4-2 DM tactic, that has only had minor tweaks to it from the previous season. Most notable is the instruction to pass into space, I am guessing most sides will leave us space in behind to exploit for the first part of the season at least.

Transfer Window

The club still had no money for actual transfer fees and whilst the board allowed a little bit more in wage spend, it wasn’t significant enough to allow us to make wholesale changes to the squad. With that in mind I was happy to hang on to most of the players we already had and try to improve in certain areas. I felt we definitely needed a goalkeeper, last season we had Patrick McGarvey on loan from Dergview but he is still very young and developing. I did manage to re-sign him on loan but this time as a back up, we still need a proper number one this season. We were also short at Full back and never really replaced Reece Neale from Season one, up to this point I had been relying on a re-purposed centre-midfielder and academy players to fill in at full back.

Finally I felt we needed more options up front. I was still very excited to see what Matty Best could do in the premiership but lets face it, he is still very raw. At the other end of the career cycle we had Jordan Hughes, so long our main man upfront, but time was catching up on him and I doubt he will be able to run in behind premier league standard players. Numbers also remained low in centre midfield especially as I was using one as a right back so if I could get a CM at the right wages, or on loan, I would go for it.

Targets

Goalkeeper - Permanent first choice, I’d even promised this to a few players so had to deliver.
Left/Right Back - Been running with fill in players in these positions and never properly replaced Reece Neale.
Striker - Either a top quality DLF or AF. I think Best could fill in either position if I got one covered this window.
Centre Midfielder - Need numbers and quality in there.

So who did we get in? Remember I have handed over negotiations to my Director of Football so we do miss out on some targets and over pay for others (in my opinion). With this being Northern Ireland there are very few, if any, transfer fees being exchanged, the biggest factor are the wages we can afford to offer people and with a budget of £9k per month that isn’t much compared to others in the league.

Centre Back

We’ve all done this in FM, haven’t we? Planned the window out then on day one you get a message about the availability of a player on your shortlist and the next thing you know he’s in, whether he was a target or not. That was the case here with, Chris Reid, his agent contacted us and told us Glentoran had placed him on the loan list and would not require any fee or wages to be paid by us. I took one look at him and knew instantly he was a significant upgrade on what we had, so it felt like a no brainer to get him in. Perhaps he will help us be “defensively solid”

Goalkeeper

I have found it tough to find adequate goalkeepers during this save, in the end we managed to sign Lewis Deane who had been released by the mighty Warrenpoint Town. Unfortunately his signing didn’t placate some players concerns regarding the strength of our goalkeepers but what could I do. I think he is ‘decent’ so will keep looking for a longer term number one in the meantime.

Left/Right Back

I love players that can play either left back or right back. I think it reminds me of old Manchester United fullbacks, from my youth, like Denis Irwin and Clayton Blackmore who regularly filled in on either flank. I managed to get Noel Healy in who had been released by Newry, a right footed left back, who I could surely retrain as a right back. He brought Premier league experience and I felt he would be a great addition to the squad with his decent mental and physical attributes.

I’ve mentioned a few times how we never managed to replace Reece Neal who left on a free to join Loughgall during season one. I have now managed to replace Reece Neale by signing Reece Neal and bringing him back to the Seasiders. His pace is elite for this level and I’m excited to have him on the left and Healy on the right this season!

Striker

I often feel in FM that you are only as good as your strikers, I guess this is true in real life hence strikers always require a premium to be paid. With this in mind, despite the fact that Jordan Hughes was well on the way to becoming a Bangor legend and we had Irish League wonderkid Matty Best in our ranks, I felt we would need to improve upfront if we were to be successful in the Premiership. I didn’t really mind what striker role I managed to fill as long as I had more quality options going forward.

We brought in Ruairi McDonald who had been released by Dungannon Swifts. In reality I’m a little underwhelmed by him, but as I mentioned above a premium must be paid for quality upfront and any promising strikers are quickly snapped up by the bigger clubs leaving us to fight for the unwanted scraps. On the plus side he is pretty quick (always a good thing in FM) and has a good first touch; so we live in hope!

Centre Midfielder

For those still paying attention you will know the next signing, Eoin McPhillips, who previously spent a half a season on loan with us, and will join permanently on a free transfer when his contract with Bray Wanderers in the Republic of Ireland expires around Christmas time. I really like him although he has the dreaded “doesn’t enjoy big matches” in his scout report and I find this does affect him in certain matches, which is disappointing. My Director of Football made him the clubs highest earner on £1,000 per month.

Our final signing of a busy window was Lewis Mackinnon who had been released by Cove Rangers following their relegation from the Scottish Championship. I can see Lewis becoming an integral part of the first team in either the defensive midfield role or as a centre back should Walsh or Arthur not be able to make the step up to Premiership level. Work to do on the physical side of his game but I’m hopeful we could get some uplift there.

Results

I’m sure you are all keen to find out how we got on during our first season in the Premiership.

As with all divisions in Northern Ireland the league spilts after a certain number of games. In this case after we have played everyone three times, so after 33 matches. The top 6 enter the Championship group and play off against each other another couple of times to determine final league placings. The top three of which qualify for various European places, and the teams finishing 4th to 7th entering a European Playoff.

Teams finishing the initial league stage in 7th to 12th qualify for the Relegation group. The side placed 12th after the conclusion of the Relegation group is automatically relegated and the team finishing 11th enters a playoff with a side from the Championship. Importantly the team finishing this group top (or 7th overall) gets a place in the European playoffs.

I have played up to the split in the league as this felt like a natural break to blog from so how have we done?

The early part of the season went really well with some notable victories against Dungannon, Glenavon and Ballymena along with credible draws with Linfield (x2), Larne and away to Ballymena. At this stage of the season we hit a high of 3rd in the league and I started to wonder if we could perhaps mount a title challenge.

Around December I started to really pay attention to the jobs available “across the water” (i.e. in England and Scotland). I felt the time was right to move on while my stock was high. Unfortunately there was never anything suitable and anything I did go for was a non starter.

As we moved into the second part of the season, however, the results took a turn for the worse.

I found the Christmas fixture congestion almost impossible to navigate with our small squad, once we had injuries and suspensions the holes in the playing staff really started to show and the better teams took full advantage. At one point we went six games without a win. I also felt my head had been turned by looking for employment elsewhere, the further we got into the season the more it felt like I was just putting the time in to get to the end of the season when my contract expires. I turned down talks to extend my stay in Bangor and I am content to wait it out for a job if I have to.

A late rally in March meant we finished the initial league stage in 6th place and in doing so we qualify for the Championship group so will, at least, get a European playoff shot at the end of the season. Perhaps European football could tempt me to stay??

As things stand I’ve recently had two positive interviews with Morecambe and Ipswich. Morecambe are sitting rock bottom of League One so will surely be playing League Two football next year which is comparable to the Irish Premiership albeit full time. Ipswich however are sitting just outside the playoffs in League One so perhaps a late charge could see a promotion to the Championship, I have to admit this temps me greatly and I would find it hard to turn down should the job offer come. Remember I am playing REALISTICALLY so money talks, if someone offers me big wages I’m off! Likewise I won’t relocate to another country for £50 per month more. With this in mind I did recently turn down a job offer from table topping TNS of Wales as they weren’t prepared to give me a big enough wage, and they expected me to win the league, and I don’t think underachievement is a good idea at this stage of my career.

As ever if you have made it this far thanks for reading.

Over and Out

FMEadster!

The Journey Person. From Field to Favoured Personnel. Episode 5

February 13, 2023

In Episode 4 we left Bangor sitting second in the Championship with 15 games of the season remaining. Only first place are guaranteed promotion. Did we make it? Read on to find out…

Caution! - This post includes a Newgen that will make your heart flutter.

Results

We did virtually no transfer business during the winter window, O’Reilly and McPhillips left but I decided to carry on without replacing them. We did bring in central midfielder Donal Rocks on loan, from Annagh United, towards the end of the season but he only featured a couple of times as a back up.

So let’s get straight into the results. After playing each other three times the Championship splits in half. The top 6 play off against each other once more and the team finishing top gets automatically promoted and the sides finishing second and third play off against each other for the right to play the Premierships eleventh placed side in a do or die promotion/relegation playoff. I was confident going into the final 15 games that we could secure a playoff spot, and I guess anything is possible after that.

We managed to reach the split in first place after a disastrous run by former league leaders Dundela. In the winter transfer window they lost their three most influential players (a similar thing has happened in real life too). Winger Sean Moore joined Larne, striker Rhys Arnett joined Clintonville and full back Ryan McKay joined Coleraine. These outgoings seemed to derail their title charge completely. We were simply the best of a bad bunch coming through after that, as our own form nothing to write home about. I was pleased, but still felt that being up against the top sides in the next five games would show us that we were still a little short overall, ten defeats seems a little too many for a side sitting top of the division.

Simply the “Best”

Just as I was preparing for the split we got our youth intake. Always an exciting time for us FM players, although in this save I am not that concerned with youth development so I wasn’t overly excited by the whole thing. Who needs a load of one star current ability 15 year old’s in a journeyman save anyway.

But then I looked….and saw this….

I have to admit it has been some time since I got a five star current ability player in a youth intake (yes I know stars are relative, but still.), and I was giddy. Especially given the news we got in Episode 4 that our main goalscorer, Jordan Hughes, was retiring at the end of the season.

First things first though ladies and gentleman. It wouldn’t be a newgen in FM23 without a midjourney face! I headed straight over there like a dog with two dicks and got to work. Drawing on the famous Northern Irish surname of Best, I asked Midjourney for George Best’s grandson, footballer, and here he is. He is soooo fine and at this level he is a monster.

Clearly he had to play, so I threw him in and dropped Hughes to the deep lying forward role. It didn’t take long for Best to make an impact scoring on his debut inside 13 minutes against Harland and Wolf Welders (our last game before the split). His fine form continued throughout the final five pivotal games of our season, scoring a further four goals including a hat trick against Annagh United in very important 3-1 win.

Three wins in our first three games, which included four goals from Matty Best, secured automatic promotion to the Premiership with two games to spare. I was amazed at how easy we found it, defensively we looked really strong and with Hughes and Best up front I always felt we would score. For the final two games I moved Hughes back to the advanced forward role as he was in with a chance of winning the gold boot, which he ultimately did with an impressive 26 league goals for the season.

Me - The Manager

As I keep reminding you, this save is about me the manager and my progression. I don’t care about any of the clubs, or players, my only concern is myself.

So how did I perform against the KPIs set out by the board?

A resounding success I am sure you will agree. I am particularly pleased I was able to adapt to the new board cultures so well. I didn’t revamp the whole tactic but made a few tweaks to try and give the board what they wanted and I am content we managed to do that without compromising on results. Playing more direct was a challenge, I don’t think I could have done much more without fundamentally changing my style of play so this is something to watch for next season.

On a personal level I have a contract until the end of next season on £2,000 per month, and I am studying for my Continental C Licence, I do think my stock is as high as it is going to be for a while so I will be looking to move on during the summer. There is a large gulf between the championship and the premiership in my opinion, especially the top six sides. I am expecting a tough season coming up which could see me come under pressure if results really go south, so it might be better to move on now while my destiny is in my own hands - we shall see.

As ever many thanks for reading this far, I’m really enjoying FM23 this year and to be honest I have to be really disciplined to stop playing the game and write a few words for posterity.

In the meantime I will leave you with a little song, inspired by the star of this post, Matty Best.

Over and Out

FMEadster!

The Journey Person. From Field to Favoured Personnel. Episode 4

February 3, 2023

In Episode 3 we achieved promotion to the second tier of Northern Irish football via a playoff against Knockbreda, our striker scored over 50 goals in a season, and I now had a coaching badge.

Would we survive in the Championship, can someone else score us a few goals, we will get sacked, move on, or stay put?

Let’s get into this, as the visuals would say.

New Board Expectations

I’m not expecting a huge jump in the standard between Championship 2 and the Championship so the board requirement to finish mid table is more than I was expecting, but at the same time, wasn’t daunting. The board also require that I work within the wage budget which is a pretty meagre £4k per month. Mostly they want us to be competitive or just reach the first round in the cups so I won’t bother to even report on those in this update.

One thing I was not expecting was a change to the board culture and I did my best to negotiate these out, but I was, rather unsurprisingly, unsuccessful. So the board now favour defensively solid football, direct football, and counter attacking football. I felt that my switch to a 4-4-2 2DM could potentially satisfy these requirements in its current form, especially given that I will be a newly promoted team and I’d expect the AI to leave space in behind for me to exploit in most games. With this in mind I decided to just turn on Counter attacking and asked players to pass into space. I won’t get too hung up on a culture that is just favoured, my main focus will be on finishing mid table, and keeping within the £4k per month wage budget.

Transfer Window

Currently with so many players still on Amateur contracts, the transfer windows feel like a bit like running the gauntlet. I have very little wiggle room in the wage budget so I can’t just offer improved contracts to players when someone comes in for them. So we start with the players leaving Bangor before me move on to discuss my targets and who my Director of Football was able to get with his 4 negotiating attribute.

Outs

Largs Thistle from the West of Scotland Premier Division offered, left winger, Scott McArthur £700 per month and took him back to Scotland. McArthur had been one of my better attacking players in the Championship 2 so I was sorry to see him leave, but he didn’t even want to discuss a contract with us so there was little we could do.

Rather surprisingly that was all we lost apart from two reserve players that I haven’t even mentioned in this save. Happy days you may think, however, we did lose two players to retirement. Goalkeeper James Taylor (38) and Deep Lying Forward Michael Halliday (44) both called it a day and left at the end of the season. We also were unable to re-sign right back Seanna Foster on loan from Cliftonville. These were not insignificant losses and will need replaced during the transfer window.

Targets - in order.

Goalkeeper - replacement for Taylor
Striker - replacement for Halliday and possibly a second as there was significant interest in Hughes.
Left Winger - replacement for McArthur
Left Back - still hadn’t replaced Neale from the January window
Centre Midfielder - previously identified as a weakness
Centre Back - need more depth for the season in the higher division
Right Back - replacement for Foster, although newgen Saxton could maybe do a job.

Ins

So who did we manage to get in? Remember I have handed over negotiations to my Director of Football so we do miss out on some targets and over pay for others (in my opinion). With this being level 2/3 football in Northern Ireland there are no transfer fees being exchanged, the biggest factor are the wages we can afford to offer people and with a budget of £4k per month that isn’t much!

I did want to start dipping my toes into the world of statistics but to be honest as I was only selecting players that my scouts had watched the options open to me in terms of possible transfers were so limited I was in no position to be that selective. We also don’t really have any proper analysts, I envisage this becoming a more important feature of the save as we move up the football ladder and take over at bigger, more attractive, clubs.

With all this in mind I had to make use of the loan system, and while I think this can be abused in FM I feel a side such as Bangor, if promoted, would be forced to bring in loans to remain competitive, so I make no apology for it folks although I will try and keep it REALISTIC.

Goalkeeper

Patrick McGarvey joins us on a season long loan from fellow Championship side, Dergview. I always find recruiting goalkeepers very difficult on FM for some reason and I definitely plan to try and use some analytics to do it going forward. For now I made sure whoever we brought in had good Aerial Reach, Reflexes, and Handling so McGarvey ticks these limited boxes.

Striker

As mentioned earlier we definitely needed a new Deep Lying Forward to replace Michael Halliday, and I was convinced 50 goal sensation Jordan Hughes would be leaving so I set up a recruitment focus and started to trawl through my options with a view to bringing in two more strikers. Unfortunately, for various reasons we only managed to secure one, James Holland joins from East Belfast and boasts an impressive 13, 11, 11, 13 for the Advanced Forward Quad of Dribbling, Finishing, First Touch, and Acceleration. I had earmarked him as a replacement for Hughes, but with no firm offers ever arriving for Hughes I am now left with two decent forwards who really have very similar profiles, so I am unsure what I can do to get them both in the same team.

Left Winger

Having lost McArthur the search was on to find a suitable replacement. I want an old fashioned winger on the left, so Dribbling, Crossing, Acceleration were my main focuses here. This is the signing I am most pleased with, James Teelan joins us on £525 per month having been released by Newry City AFC. 15 Acceleration shouldn’t be allowed down here, I expect him to “tear it up” this season.

Left Back

Having failed to replace Reece Neal after losing him during the winter transfer window, I was determined to bring in a decent left back as Glover had been ok at best so far. Full Backs, like Goalkeepers, are a problem area for me, I never seem to find any that I am happy with and this season was no different. My scouts kept coming back with targets that weren’t interested, or wanted far too much in wages. In the end I was forced to go into the loan market. I decided to bring Oisin O’Reilly in on loan from League of Ireland side, Galway United. The loan would only last until Christmas but I was hopeful by getting him in we could maybe get off to a good start in the Championship and look to recruit someone else on a permanent deal during the winter transfer window.

Centre Midfielder

Ever since the start of the save I have been concerned with our midfield, I don’t have anyone of the required standard in there apart from maybe Dylan O’Kane, but even that is a push. My scouts really liked a couple of Banbridge Town midfielders and Séan óg Gallagher, once of Bangor, became available so I decided to get him in. Doubts still lingered that we were still lacking strength and bravery in the heart of our team, something I feel we really need, so when the chance to sign Eoin McPhillips on loan from Bray Wanderers presented itself I made the call to go for it. Similar to O’Reilly this loan only lasts until December but I feel it is worth doing to help us get up and running in the new division.

Centre Back

If you remember last season I managed to get through with only three recognised CBs at the club, Ryan Arthur , John Boyle, and on loan Australian Ryley D’Sena. I would almost certainly require upgrades in this position to survive life in the Championship. Right away I managed to extend D’Sena’s loan from Larne, but I see him as a back up option really. I still needed a first choice CB, one who can dominate at the back and give us the foundation upon which to build. I was very happy to secure, Aaron Walsh on a free, on £300p/m after he was released by Loughgall. I think he, alongside Ryan Arthur, could form a formidable partnership in this division.

Right Back

Unable to secure Foster on loan again from Clitonville I set up yet another recruitment focus for a right back. I wasn’t too concerned because I felt newgen Antoni Saxton could do a job for us if really required. In the end our scouts came back with a number of recommendations but we were continually unsuccessful in our pursuit. That was until we moved for Odhran Smyth who had been released by Premiership club Dungannon Swifts. As before I requested that my Director of Football negotiate the deal and I was pleasantly surprised when the news item appeared in my inbox that we had been successful. Not least because Smyth could also add depth to Centre Midfield if required. My pleasure was as short lived as a drunken Orgasm as I noticed his wages, £800p/m! That made him easily the highest paid player at the club and used up all my available wage budget. I think this will be a ONE year thing, I’m not Dan Gear, I don’t pay RBs £800p/m.

This deal concluded our business for the transfer window and we got started on our first season in the Championship, how did it go? Read on to find out…

Results

We have played up to the start of January and are 23 games into the 38 game season. We play each club three times before the league splits in half and we play the other 5 clubs in our split once more. After that, the top club will be automatically promoted, and the second and third placed sides play off against each other with the winners playing a final relegation/promotion playoff against the Premiership’s 11th placed team.

I was pleased with the start we made but was conscious that we had a couple of players on loan until Christmas time so we needed to make the most of it. After the initial positive start I felt results have been very up and down, I rarely know before a game how we are going to perform. In some games we dominate and play well and in others we don’t seem able to get a foothold in the match no matter what I do.

I am enjoying the challenge of FM23 I feel that in almost every game I am required to make some adjustments, something which wasn’t the case in older iterations of the game. I especially enjoy the amount of changes the AI manager seems to make during the game, it certainly keeps me on my toes at least.

Given we are a newly promoted team with only minimal improvements on last year I am content to find us second in the league. I think this speaks to the fact that the league itself is very well matched with any team capable of beating another on any given day; apart from Institute. It is rare in football that a team will have lost 7 of 23 games and still be sitting second.

Sitting second in the league at this stage is fantastic but I don’t expect it to last. Our form is very variable and I fully expect some of the sides around us to go on longer winning runs in the second half of the season. If we could hold on for a playoff spot that would be more than acceptable, and would exceed board and fan expectations.

Tactically, as mentioned, we have stuck with the 4-4-2 2DM system from the end of last season, although I do adjust the in possession instructions a fair bit in game depending on our oppositions affect. If they are coming onto me I like to use play into space and in transition I tell the players to counter. Being a newly promoted team this happens a fair bit, and to be honest I don’t mind too much as it helps me to hit the board culture. It also means we play to our strengths with Jordan Hughes’ runs in behind still causing havoc amongst opposition defenders. Whilst not scoring at the rate he did in the Championship 2 his 18 league goals in 23 games is a major factor behind our success.

Imagine my disappointment at this news item then. Hughes is only 33 so I’m a little surprised by this and immediately ask him to reconsider but it is no use. The one thing I am clinging to is the fact we are a semi-professional club and Hughes is on an Amateur contract so does the wording of this mean he will actually stay…Answer in the comments.

Personally we signed a new contract until the end of next season on £2,000p/m making us the fourth highest paid manager in the division. I did add a clause for a reduced amount of compensation to be paid should I get another job. I will revisit my options at the end of the season, but with the current wage budget I don’t feel there is much more I can do for Bangor so it may be time to look elsewhere. Perhaps, if we were to get promoted things could change, but even then I think we will be very much out of our depth.

I shall leave you with some footage of Hughes’ latest hat-trick for the mighty Seasiders against Harland and Wolf Welders, I will miss him.

As ever many thanks for reading this far, I’m really enjoying FM23 this year and can’t wait to see where this save ends up.

Over and Out

FMEadster!

The Journey Person. From Field to Favoured Personnel. Episode 3 #FM23

January 12, 2023

In my last post we left Bangor top of the Championship 2 at the half way mark of season one.

Can we get promoted or will it all fall apart? Will we get a new contract, will we get the sack, or will we accidently resign? Read on to find out!

Transfer Window

Our last post took us up to the January transfer window, so where better place to start than there.

Having disabled the first window I was excited to start considering some signings. If you remember back in Episode One I outlined that I wanted to keep the save REALISTIC and one way to do this was to utilise staff more. With this in mind I have decided to only search for players that have been scouted by our three person scouting team. I have left the recruitment focuses to my Chief Scout but I have, from time to time, made requests to help direct the searches. Club chairman, Graham Bailie, employed a Director of Football, so I have decided to use him to negotiate any deals we decide to make, can’t wait to see what a negotiating attribute of 4 will produce.

With us sitting so well in the league I was retistent to actually make too many signings. If we got promoted I probably would need to strengthen the team significantly anyway, and if we stayed in the Championship 2 our targets would be very different. So I decided any major moves would wait until the Summer. That didn’t stop other clubs coming in for our players which soon became a cause for concern as the vast majority of them were on Amateur contracts. Let’s start there.

Outs

We lost three players in the window, all were offered contracts by other sides and simply left.

Gareth Beattie - decided to drop down a few levels and sign for Belfast Celtic. Beattie was a back up Full Back so no real loss here.
Darren Gibbons - Our backup Goalkeeper (aka “the Jockey”) moved to Ballymacash Rangers to become their Number one, we had cover in the reserves so again no real loss here.
Reece Neal - Our first choice Left Back, who had been performing pretty well, decided to move up a division and accept a contract from Championship side, Loughgall. This did cause me some concern, and added to the loss of Beattie I wanted to bring a replacement in. We did have Glover who I suppose would do a job for us until the end of the season if necessary.

What then were our targets? As mentioned in the previous episode it was the midfield that worried me the most, and specifically our lack of physicality in there. I was also on the look out for another forward. I was relying heavily on Michael Halliday as a Deep Lying Forward, and at 43 he was struggling to see out 90 minutes and our back ups hadn’t really offered much.

So we wanted;

A Striker
A physical Centre Midfielder,
A Full Back

Let’s see how we got on

Ins

We managed to fulfil only two of our three targets.

A Striker - Jack Sharvin joined us from Intermediate side Crewe United, on an Amatuer contract that was negotiated by our Director of Football - bravo. Sharvin did come through the Sheffield United academy so I am hopeful there is some underlying ability there.

I desperately wanted someone to win aerial duels for us in certain games and Jack’s Jumping Reach of 15 is fantastic for this level. His technical ability is also reasonable, and would be fine for the level above. At 23 we may not see any improvements but I feel he could do a job for us nevertheless, for a couple of seasons at least. There is a slight spoiler in the image above, you can see he has performed well for us since his move, more on that later.

Physical Centre Midfielder - 19 year old Lewis Barr joined us on loan from Premiership side Crusaders. You can see he immediately adds some physicality, and no little quality, to our midfield that I feel will be vital in the run in. Crusaders required no wages be paid by us which was even better.

I wasn’t able to bring in a full back, but around mid January I received the hallowed news item…A preview of our youth intake. According to my Head of Youth Development this was a “Golden Generation” and contained not one elite prospect, but four! Two of which were full backs. I decided to hold off on getting anyone else in, with the hope that our intake may provide the back up full back we needed.

One of them certainly would and here he is, Unambitious Antoni Saxton, Manchester born with Irish heritage apparently. He will certainly provide the cover we need on both flanks. For Newgens I have used faces created by @TheFMU which are available over at the View from the Touchline website. I think you can agree they look pretty cool and installing them is easy enough. I also asked an AI program to create a backstory for Antoni Saxton which you can read here if that interests you.

To be honest the youth intake was pretty good and if I was doing a one club save I’d have been pleased. The reality is though, I intend to be long gone by the time these 15/16 year old’s are ready for first team football. I’m really only interested in those that can help me now, or in the near future. I did end up signing seven of the players but only Saxton and one Romanian winger went into the first team squad. The other five could, however, be used as back ups in the next couple of seasons.

Results

Having reached the half way point of the season top of the league, suffering only one defeat, with a seven point advantage over second place Dollingstown, I was fairly confident we would secure automatic promotion to the Championship. The board were happy too, offering to extend our contract by another season on the same £1,700p/m; which I readily accepted.

Could we keep the form going?

After our imperious first half of the season, results in the second half were mixed. I felt we were starting to lose control of games in defensive transitions but our scoring ability (aka Jordan Hughes) meant we managed to keep going. The defeats against Moyola, Armagh, and Dollingstown could all be excused, in a way, as these are decent sides, but it was the 2-2 draw with Distillery, and the 5-3, 4-3 wins against Banbridge and Tobermore respectively that concerned me more. These were games we should have won easily but conceded poor goals to allow the opposition back into the game. Having played FM for so long I play the game by feeling how it is going more than deep tactical insights, and in these games I just felt we were too open and this was further compounded by a really poor showing against Queen’s when we were simply played off the park by a mid table side.

Once everyone has played each other twice the league splits in half with the top six sides playing each other once more to determine the final league placings. The side who finishes top are automatically promoted, while second place enter a playoff against the 11th placed Championship team. Our final day defeat to Queen’s meant Dollingstown passed us and moved into top stop just as the league split.

All was not lost, we had five games left to retake our rightful position at the top of the league, Armagh surely wouldn’t catch us, would they…

Our first game after the split was against Queen’s once again. Having lost twice to them already, the most recent of which was less than a week prior, I felt I had to change something. I noticed on the change list of the latest ME patch that there had been a change to how often/when the AI manager used a Segundo Volante so I thought why not give that a go and drop the two CMs back to the DM line and play a Volante alongside a standard DM. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to use 2DMs in a 4-4-2 as this is generally how modern teams line up in the defensive phase of play. Remember that the positions you see on the tactics screen show how your team will line up in the defensive phase of play.

I also dropped our mentality down from positive to balanced in the hope we could control things better rather than get involved in a basketball game. I had also enjoyed using Foster as an attacking wing back on the right but I had noticed, in games we struggled in, we were being countered on our right side constantly. To avoid this I have gone for two standard full backs, on support, to ensure we always have defensive cover. I removed the wide midfielder, who was sitting narrow on the right and replaced him with a winger on support. I feel this change allows us to play on the counter attack more as we don’t need to retain the ball whilst Foster gets forward to provide width. We could now hit either flank in transition or go through the middle with our Segundo Volante. Add to this I was still using new signing Sharvin up front who’s stats were showing a high level of aerial prowess, I felt we had more routes to goal now and also became more defensively solid at the same time.

That was the theory anyway. With this tactic being mainly built to deal with Queen’s I decided to play a higher defensive line as they had very little threat in behind. I will probably toggle this up and down depending on the opposition forward players.

So how did we fare? We had a point to make up on Dollingstown in five matches.

A lovely turn of results, I was particularly pleased with our control of the games. No 4-3 or 5-3 results here, and more importantly no defeats, as well as two very enjoyable 1-0 wins. Those of you paying attention will notice only four results here, instead of the promised five. Up until this point Dollingstown had won all their games so it looked like we would be remaining one point behind them going into our last game, who would be against…Dollingstown!

However Armagh City did us a little favour.

So we would play Dollingstown last in the knowledge that a draw would see us Champions and automatically promoted. I was confident we could do it, given our recent form. That was until Jordan Hughes picked up a yellow card in the 48th minute against PSNI meaning he would be suspended for our pivotal last game. By this time Hughes had scored 49 goals in all competitions.

We simply couldn’t fill this gap and we lost the title decider 2-1, which meant if we were to gain promotion it would be through a playoff against the Championship’s 11th placed team, Knockbreda.

Look at league positions history :vomit:

Playoff

Going into a playoff was a bit of an unknown really, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Knockbreda but I didn’t think the gap would be too big between the top of Championship 2 and The Championship. I was glad to bring back 49 goal hit man Jordan Hughes to the line up and hoped he could fire us through this two legged affair, achieving a promotion in season one of my Journey would be fantastic.

A first half hattrick from Jordan Hughes took his tally to 52 for the season and put us in a commanding 4-0 lead at half time. The first half goals are below, please note the following, Low Cross, Long ball from the back to Sharvin to flick on, and pace in behind all are evident in these goals. The recipe for success for a 4-4-2 like this in my opinion.

I was very confident going into the second leg, to be honest 5-2 flattered Knockbreda, and I felt we would beat them away from home too.

So it proved to be a 3-2 victory at Breda Park (where I snogged a girl once back in my school days) again flattered Knockbreda and did give me food for thought regarding our defence once we move up a division. That’s for another day, today we celebrate our 8-4 triumph, get ready for the Championship boys!

Me - The Manager

All this is lovely but it is not what this save is about. This save is all about ME (not Match Engine), and my progression through the game. If you remember back in Episode one I said that my aim will be simply to please my employers and improve my reputation. So if my employer wants boring defensive football, that’s what I’ll try and deliver. If they care about the cups, that will be my focus. In this case back in Episode one my Chairman stated they required me to work within the wage budget and finish the top half - TICK. In the cups they only asked that we be competitive, which we were -TICK.

What about my own personal progression, we managed to convince the board to send us on a coaching course and we got our National ‘C’ Licence, which led to a decent improvement in our attributes, 10 for discipline - NICE. We also now earn £2,000p/m having been promoted which makes us the highest paid manager in the Championship so I can see us staying here for a little while yet.

As ever many thanks for reading this far, I’m really enjoying FM23 this year and can’t wait to see where this save ends up.

Over and Out

FMEadster!

The Journey Person. From Field to Favoured Personnel Episode 2. #FM23

January 3, 2023

In the last episode I introduced you to the first club of a journey person save, my hometown club, Bangor. In this episode we will go through the first team squad, take a look at my starting tactic and discuss my thoughts behind it. We will finish with a look over the first half of the season as we begin our quest for the top.

First Team Squad

Goalkeepers

At the outset I should say only seven players in my first team squad actually have a contract, the rest are on Amateur deals so could be taken on a free at anytime, so don’t get too attached to anyone. Looking first at the goalkeepers, Taylor and Gibbons, and to be honest I’m not too keen on either of them. My coaches love Taylor, rating him as one of the best players at the club which is a worry in itself. He is better than Gibbons mentally and has decent distribution but Gibbons out scores him in the goalkeeping fundamentals of Handling and Reflexes. I’ll probably trust my coaches on this one and start with Taylor, but at 38 who knows how long he will be around.

Defenders

We only have three recognised Centre Backs at the club and one of those is Ryley D’Sena who is on loan from Premiership rich boys Larne. I’m happy with Ryan Arthur, I can see him being very dominant at this level, with his aerial prowess and decent mental ability, he is also one of the players who holds a contract at the club earning £220p/m. Boyle and D’Sena will battle it out for the other spot which will probably be as a no nonsense centre back. Given their lack of technical ability I think it would be best for them to concentrate on defending our box and clearing the ball downfield. At Right Back we have another loanee, Seanna Foster from Clitonville who I rate as the best player at the club. One thing Iike to do is to play the best couple of players in their preferred positions or roles when I first join a club, to me there is less chance of mucking the whole thing up when I do that. So, although, at this level, Foster might do a lot of damage on the right wing, I will start him in his favoured position as an attacking wing back. On the left side our coaches love Reece Neale who is technically poor but mentally and physically strong, so I will be less adventurous with him, so will probably start him as a Full Back on support. Beattie can provide cover on the right or left, while Hume could play on the left or potentially as a fourth centre back looking at his jumping reach. I’m reasonably content with the defence although I can some concerns regarding pace, and first team cover could become an issue if we suffer from a lot of injuries or suspensions.

Midfielders

It is the midfield that concerns me the most, and having disabled the first transfer window there is very little I can do about it. Only three recognised Centre Midfielders are at the club and one of them is Lewis Harrison who is unbelievably listed as the club captain and has a proper contract, stealing £110p/m from the club. I can see absolutely no use for him at all apart from some aggression. Strength 2, Bravery 5, Tackling 4, there is no way I’m trusting this fella in my midfield. That leaves us with just Aaron Harris and Dylan O’Kane, both of who are ok at best. O’Kane is decent in the tackle and Harris has some technical quality so perhaps a simple CM(d) and CM(s/a) combo is the way to go. Tom Mathieson could maybe work as a CM(a) with his pace and reasonable first touch and finishing, but strength 2 really makes me soft in central positions. On the wings we have Scott McArthur on the left who I like the look of as an old fashioned winger, good pace, dribbling, and touch means he should be able to beat a man and get the ball into the danger zone for us on a regular basis. Glover is still young and looks good as a back up winger or full back on that side. On the right, we have Mathieson who my coaches like and while he is quick he lacks the technical quality of McArthur on the left. Conor Sullivan is interesting, a 6 Foot 4” winger who also has good pace but very little else at this point of his career. As mentioned, I don’t like the midfield at all and when you look at them collectively you can see we really lack strength, bravery, composure and concentration across the whole unit. They are also really small, Sullivan and Glover aside, none of them are taller than 5 Foot 10, I will need to watch all this in our early games.

Forwards

I’m more encouraged with our attacking options than I was for our midfield. We have six forwards on our books but two of them will be reserves at best so I haven’t included them. Jordan Hughes looks like he could be a great advanced forward, Finishing 13 and Composure 11 are more or less elite at this level. He also has good pace which I love for at least one of my strikers. After that things are a little less clear. In real life I have watched a bit of Bangor and have been impressed with Ben Arthurs’ hold up play so I was hoping for more physically in game than I got. I still think he could do a good job as a Target Forward linking up with Hughes. My other option is veteran Michael Halliday, who at 43 is older than me and that’s saying something. I remember him at his peak playing for Northern Ireland’s greatest team, GLENTORAN. He still has great technical ability 15 first touch, 11 Finishing and 10 Technique are all encouraging, add this to decent vision and passing I can see Halliday operating as Deep Lying Forward and linking up with Hughes, or perhaps a static role in AM strata such as an Enganche or simple Attacking Midfielder support depending how I finally set up the team. Adam Neale, brother of FB Reece Neale, will be my back up advanced forward. Once again, Arthurs aside I am concerned about a real lack of strength and jumping reach in the front line.

The Tactic

It is time to look at a formation and style of play for Bangor. Usually I start with one of the presets and adjust from there but this year I am going alone. In real life there wouldn’t be a handy preset to get a new manager started.

After reviewing the squad we learned / decided the following;

We have only 3 CBs at the club so this probably rules out playing any variation of a back 3.
Our CBs aren’t quick or that great positionally so a high line is out of the question.
Seanna Foster will start as a Wing Back on attack.
We only have three CMs who are actually very weak so we probably can’t play with any variation of a midfield 3 either. Given the state of the CMs should we bypass midfield altogether?
Scott McArthur will start as a Winger on the left.
Jordan Hughes will start up front as an Advanced Forward alongside either Ben Arthurs as a Target Forward or Michael Halliday as a Deep Lying Forward.
Our best Forwards can’t jump

With the seven points above in mind, the most obvious starting formation for me is a flat 4-4-2.

Roles

We’ve already discussed the player roles in the squad review so none of them should be a surprise. The one role I didn’t mention was the use of a Wide Midfielder on the right. As discussed, Foster is one of the best players at the club and I am using him as wing back on attack on the right side. I want Foster to be our main attacking outlet on the right, and to give him the required space I have opted to use a wide midfielder ahead of him who I have also instructed to sit narrower. I feel there are two advantages to this, first it gives the flank to Foster, and second, it will hopefully help bolster our central midfield where I think we are particularly weak physically and technically. The only other player instruction I am using is on Reece Neale at Left Back, who we noticed, in the squad preview, was poor technically so I have told him to take fewer risks with his passing. I want him to just give the ball to McArthur who I will rely on to break the defensive lines through his dribbling and crossing ability.

Team Instructions

If you remember the season preview from episode one Bangor are joint favourites with Moyola Park to win the Championship 2 this season. This influenced my decision to start games on a positive mentality, although I am open to drop this back to balanced if I need to get better control of the game. In possession I considered increasing the passing directness to slightly more direct but in the pre season friendlies I felt we were going long too often and without any physical presence upfront we rarely managed to build any meaningful attacks this way. I also considered focusing our play to the flanks but again I didn’t feel the need to “force” this to happen. I hoped it would happen naturally anyway, but if not I would turn it on. In the end the only in possession instruction I went for was low crosses as neither Halliday or Hughes were good in the air but both had relatively good off the ball movement.

In transition I haven’t gone for the ever popular counter press as I just don’t feel we have the physicality across the side to adequatley pull this off. It would also upset the defensive structure of the 4-4-2 and leave us open to counter attacks. Given we are going to start most games as favourites we may be playing into our oppositions hands by offering easy counter attacking opportunities. Counter is definitely an option and I have had it on sometimes but it is not something I want to start with in games, if we find ourselves pushed back or ahead early in a game I will certainly tell my players to counter more often but otherwise we will be sensible upon winning the ball. Once again I have only ticked distribute to Full Backs for our Goalkeepers. The reason for this is I really hate just spaffing the ball forward aimlessly especially to small forwards. I feel our attacks are best built through our full backs, If Neale gets it he won’t take risks and we should be able to get the ball to the talented McArthur fairly easily. If the Goalkeeper opts to use Foster, he is very attack minded and has the quality to carry us up the pitch with the help of the wide midfielder on that side.

Out of possession we have already decided we don’t want to play with a high line and this effects our line of engagement as I want the team to remain fairly compact so a mid block is perfectly fine although I do want us to press “More Often” once the opposition reach our block. A new instruction this year is the ability to ask your defensive line to step up or drop back. Initially I left this on default but after a few games I noticed we were conceding a lot of chances to balls over the top. This “issue” was later addressed by SI in a recent update but prior to that I decided to ask my defenders to “drop back” once the press was beaten. I found this largely solved the issue and didn’t impact on the rest of our tactic too much, even before the patch, so I have left it as is since. I certainly think it has helped hide the limitations of my centre backs pretty well. If you are interested in what exactly this new instruction means I recommend checking out the Cult of FM Athletico Madrid save on Youtube where Jack explains it very well. Jack’s stuff is very informative and there are no histrionics that we see from other, more popular, visual content creators, he also works for SI so knows what he is talking about. I’ve enjoyed discovering his channel this year.

Variations

I also set up a variation of the base tactic which I intended to use in games when I believed we were the underdogs or during games when I wanted to hit the opposition on the counter attack. The first big change is the introduction of Ben Arthurs as a Target Forward instead of Deep Lying Forward, Michael Halliday. Consequently I removed the low crosses and now told the team to hit early crosses, if this didn’t produce enough balls in behind I would turn on pass into space. We now also counter upon winning possession, everything else remains the same apart from mentality which I have dropped back to Balanced in this variation.

Results

So how have we done? Well things have been going really well, but to be honest I’m unsure how much is down to me and how much is down to the fact we are one of the favourites for the league anyway.

Those of you still paying attention will have noticed that the vast majority of our goals have come from Jordan Hughes. He has been absolutely fantastic for us, his relative pace in behind defences has caused problems for our opposition in almost every game. A large number of his goals have come from balls over the top of the opposition defence so it may be the case that his effectiveness will be reduced post patch but I haven’t seen any evidence of that so far. My other concern is the fact he is responsible for around 68% of our goals in the league and he could be snapped up by any other club at any time as he only holds an amateur contract with us. Behold his four goals below against Banbridge that included a perfect hat-trick (HEART EMOJI).

At the halfway point of the season Hughes has 32 Goals from 22 starts in all competitions (there are a load of them) outscoring his XG by 12 clear goals which is a fantastic return. Checking out the @FMStag benchmark stats we can see that his chance conversion of 29% is Elite level along with his shots on target per 90. Put these metrics together and you can see why his goal return is so high. My only concern is whether my tactic is capable of producing goals from elsewhere in the side should Hughes move on or get injured, I’m not so sure it does, but for now I will enjoy it while it lasts.

That’s all for now, in the next episode we will see how the season finished and discuss any transfers I manage to make during the January window. It certainly would be nice to get promotion in my first season as a manager!

In the meantime you can catch me on Twitter

Over and Out

FMEadster!

The Journey Person. From Field to Favoured Personnel. #FM23

November 19, 2022

Welcome to Part One of my new Football Manager 23 save, “The Journey Person; From Field to Favoured Personnel”.

I started blogging back in FM19 as a way to record my saves for posterity, and over the last few iterations of the game I have had a lot of fun with my alternate reality built around former KGB agent Ruslan Chepiga. This year, however, I wanted to do something different.

It has been a long time since I did an actual long term journeyman save (*or Journey Person, don’t assume gender) so this year I am going to try and work my way up from the depths of the third tier in my home country of Northern Ireland to, hopefully, the very top of world football.

Aims of the Save

The journeyman save is nothing new to the FM content creation scene, so I won’t be breaking new ground here, but I have a few aims and rules that I would like to outline at the start. As mentioned above this won’t be a #CreativeFM series but I do require you to use your imagination a little bit now. I want to take you back to Summer 2013, a simper time before, Brexit, global pandemics, economic crashes, and war in Europe. Blurred Lines and Get Lucky were in the charts, what a time to be alive. I am having a walk close to my new house in the outskirts of East Belfast with my wife of almost 5 years. She turns to me, her green Irish eyes glistening in the street lights, and asks, “Is this the time to have kids?” For some unknown reason, I said, “Yes”. Fast forward to 2022 and I am knackered, I’ve aged about 20 years, and I no longer know what the point of it all is. Nobody told me it was this hard.

In a sliding doors moment - for the purposes of this save we are going to pretend I turned around and said, “No chance love, kids aren’t for me.” I have no doubt this would have inevitably led to a divorce but at least I’d have been free to pursue this fictional career in football management. The new me wants to become the greatest football manager in the world but having never played the game, nor studied for any badges, the road will be a long one.

Taking that as a starting point I want to try as far as possible to make decisions throughout the save how I would actually make them in real life. For example, I have a decent job so I wouldn’t be in a position to manage full time until the wages offered at least matched what I am earning now. Also, I wouldn’t upsticks and move to China or England for a few extra quid a week, it would have to be a really good offer. This decision making REALISM will also form part of the player interactions and press conferences I have. We all know the right answers, we all know how to get lovely green responses in team talks, but this year I am going to say and act how I really would in real life.

I am going to make more use of staff than I normally do. We have seen across content creation in recent years the increased use of the Director of Football as one example. I will fully utilise my staff and take on board much of their advice, if I find us contantly disagreeing I may look to replace them, but if they are there to do a job I will use them. I think this will keep the save fresh as I hopefully move up the divisions, and the backroom staff grow. It is unlikely that I will have a Director of Football or a Technical Director in the third tier of Northern Ireland so I will be far more hands on with the day to day running of the club early on in the save than I would be later on at a club like PSG for example.

Finally, I will only really be interested in furthering my own career and keeping my current employers happy. If they want Route One defensive football then that is what they will get, if a certain trophy or rivalry is important to them then they are the ones I will be focusing on. This won’t be a save where I find a pressing tactic that works and I just keep using it at different clubs. The jobs I take and the state I find the clubs in will determine how I approach things with that team, I hope this will keep the save interesting for the next 8 or 9 months.

What do I want to achieve? I want to become the best manager in the game. How you measure this is open for debate, but as a starting point I want to attain a 5 star reputation and I want to be the world’s highest paid manager. I have thought about how long this could take as I am a fairly slow player and I may decide to make this a two year FM journey and start FM24 where I finish in FM23 but we shall see.

My next aim is in the title, I am going to keep a count of how many teams I become at least favoured personnel for, I’m not ambitious enough to try and have stadia named after me, or become a legend; favoured personnel will do fine. I did once get a business studies school report that said, “Chris set very low standards last year and so far this year he has failed to meet them.”

The image below is my profile, looking happy, as the game stands on day one. Not much to write home about but I will return to this screen as the save progresses to see how I develop. I’m the highest paid manager in the division and I would be among the highest paid in the division above, £1,700p/m is not a bad wage, so it could be that I stay here for a while yet - providing I don’t get sacked. We start with half a star reputation so only another four and half to go - easy.

I should point out that I have French and German as fluent, I am going with A-Level French and GCSE German as qualifying as fluent (sue me). Favoured clubs are also true, having so many may seem odd to English readers but here in Northern Ireland it is not uncommon for people to follow a team from NI, Scotland and England. Dundela are there as my grandfather used to be on the committee, my family are social members there, and I went to Dundela Primary school which shares a fence with the football club. I’ve spent many a happy Saturday at the “Hen Run” when the Glens were playing away from home. Interestingly, the ground was also used in filming for the brilliant film “The Keeper” which was based on the life of Manchester City’s German goalkeeper from the 1950s, Bert Trautmann. If you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it.

Game Set up

For any journeyman save it is important to carefully consider what active leagues you set up with. Fully playable leagues are processed by the AI in much more detail and should mean these leagues remain competitive for longer especially if/when we start to play in European competition, or want to move to a job abroad. With this in mind I have selected the “big five” leagues (England, Germany, France, Spain, Italy) as fully playable. In England I have made all the available divisions fully playable as it is more likely for me to move to the lower reaches of England and Scotland than those farther afield. I have also added the leagues of neighbouring countries, I have already mentioned Scotland, but I have also added Republic of Ireland and Wales. This will make recruitment more realistic and hopefully give me the option of making realistic career choices by potentially making the small move to Ireland or Scotland for example.

I also selected the advanced set up and loaded all Northern Ireland players, all Scottish players, all European Internationals, as well as players of a national reputation in Argentina and Brazil. This has given me a player pool of around 70,000 and represents a balance I am happy with. I may change this as the save progresses, we shall see where the adventure takes us!

Finally I have selected to disable the first transfer window, in my opinion this should always be ticked as in real life the transfer window has already happened and is reflected in the game anyways. My love / hate relationship with attribute masking continues, this year I have decided to keep attribute masking on. Attributes are not realistic, we all know Pep isn’t sitting at home checking Foden’s passing attribute but I do think they are a necessary evil. By masking them I think this adds to the realism somewhat without going full Dan Gear attributless.

Why Start at Bangor?

Last summer I moved from my beloved East Belfast out to the newly awarded City of Bangor, on the North Down coast . The slim chances of ever returning to the office full time meant I was no longer constrained by the prospect of a long commute everyday and the idea of living farther from Belfast was more palatable.

The settlement of Bangor dates back to the 6th Century and the formation of Bangor Abbey, the grounds of which are still in use today, at this time Bangor was one of only four recognised settlements in Ireland. Similar to other monasteries at the time, the settlement came under sustained Viking attacks and was eventually completely destroyed in 824. It took another three centuries for the monastery to be rebuilt.

Bangor awarded City Status.

In 1605, during the plantation of Ulster, King James I granted lands in North Down to a Scotsman, James Hamilton, and he began to develop the area as a town. New homes were built and Scottish migrants brought over to live in them. Hamilton’s descendants, the Ward’s, continued to develop the land, building a park and a castle, and even tried to introduce Cotton Mills to the area during the industrial revolution (this never really took hold and after a series of fires the mills were closed down in the 1850s.).

Bangor’s role in the region changed with the coming of railway in 1865. A direct rail link to Belfast meant Bangor became a place of leisure and entertainment for wealthy Belfast professionals to take a vacation from their busy city life, or in some cases move permanently, which led to the building of a number of Victorian Villas that overlook the harbour to this day. This expansion slowed during World War I but picked up again during the 1920s and 30s and the creation of many art deco buildings in the region which have since been demolished, although Pickie Fun Park remains and is still a firm favourite for children in the area - my own included.

In the years following the Second World War, Bangor continued to grow as a tourist resort and a commuter town, this did begin to change in the late 1960s as foreign travel became affordable and many families started to holiday in Europe rather than visit the seaside at home. Many B&Bs closed as a result but at the same time the population grew quickly as people moved from Belfast to escape the troubles there. The latest census reported the population of Bangor to be 61,000

Having followed East Belfast giants Glentoran my whole life, I have recently taken a closer interest in my new local side, Bangor, even attending a couple of games with my eldest son.

The Northern Ireland leagues are fully licensed on Football Manager and playable right down to the Premier Intermediate League (third tier) where Bangor currently play, so it is surely one of the lowest rep leagues in the vanilla version of the game.

Bangor was formed at the outbreak of World War I as an amalgamation of a number of smaller clubs in the area that had to fold because they lost so many players to battle. For most of their history Bangor occupied the lower reaches in the various leagues they were in, but I can actually remember Bangor being relatively good when I first started watching football in the early 1990s. They won the Irish Cup in 1993 and qualified for Europe three times between 1990 and 1995. You can obviously read more about them on their Wikipedia page, but in short since their heyday in the 1990s various financial and administrative blunders has seen them plummet down the leagues in Northern Ireland. Culminating in them being relegated to the Ballymena and Provincial Intermediate League (4th Tier) at the end of the 2016/17 season. Promotion back to the Premier Intermediate was secured just before the Covid-19 pandemic, and last season Bangor finished 2nd in the Premier Intermediate narrowly missing out on promotion in a playoff with Knockbreda.

What’s next?

To be honest the club doesn’t matter in this save, my only priority will be to further my own career and line my own pockets. With that in mind I will be paying particular attention to the board vision and supporter expectations. At Bangor on day one, the only requirements from the board are a top half finish and to keep within wage budget. I am hopeful I can manage both fairly easily. The supporters only requirement is to be competitive against local rivals Ards should we play them (Ards currently share a ground with Bangor and play in NIs second tier.). Supporters would also like us to make the playoffs, so this would require us to finish at least second in the league. The ever unreliable season preview provided by FM has us as joint favourites for the title with Moyola Park. I will be interested to see how newly promoted Ballymacash Rangers get on as in real life they have received heavy investment and have started the season very well, remaining unbeaten after seven games and sitting top of the league.

One other thing about Northern Ireland football is the sheer amount of cups, it must rival Brazil in this regard. I actually see this as a good thing as success in one of these minor cups might give us a little rep boost.

Final words

I hope you enjoyed this little introduction to my main series this year. In the next episode I will take you through our first team squad, my thoughts on a tactic, and review our first few games in charge. I’m really looking forward to see where my journey takes me and I hope some of you will join me as well.

If you are still looking for more to read can I recommend you head back to the CoffeehouseFM homepage, the quality of blogging coming out of “the house” over the last few days has been fantastic.

As ever thanks for making it this far.

Over and Out

@FMEadster!