FM08 — FM Grasshopper Blog — CoffeehouseFM

Bonjour 👋🏻

Any Football Manager title gives the opportunity to create a parallel Universe, but the retro 2007/08 database (made available by TheMadScientist) allows me to go that bit further and re-write history. Perhaps not as drastic as re-writing history in the same was as Albert Einstein did in Command & Conquer: Red Alert, but still drastic enough to create a new French powerhouse. The season is 2008/09, and here is my update from the shores of the Mediterranean; where it’s my second season in charge of AS Monaco.

Nouvelle Tactique: 3421

Last time out on the blog I mentioned that I would be moving away from the 4231 Target Forward tactic. But this is an evolution, as opposed to a drastic revolution, a few instructions remain the same; as do the set piece routines that proved to be effective last season. The big change for us though is the move towards a three at the back, replacing Wingers for Wing Backs and attacking centrally with two No.10s behind a quick striker (unlike the battering ram of Jan Koller last season).

Season 2008/09 - L’Incroyable Hulk

So, you’ve seen the new tactic…could it help us build on last year’s 7th place Ligue 1 finish and also be competitive in Europe? Answer: Yes.

However, I should firstly mention the new signings who came in and made the 3421 flourish. In particular Givanildo Vieira de Sousa, who had a really impressive second half of the season. You may know him as ‘Hulk’, an FM07/08 beast of a striker who starts out in the database at Vitória in Brazil’s Série B. I signed Hulk on loan from Newcastle, and he is one of three great loan deals:

Yoann Gourcuff (from AC Milan) - €2.9m loan with mandatory €14.25m fee to buy at the end of the season. Arguably the player that transformed us most this season. Seventeen goals and ten assists (all comps), as he played a mix of AM-S and SS-A in the tactic.
Hulk (from Newcastle) - €400k loan with optional €13.25m fee to buy at the end of the season. Hulk’s became a cult figure at AS Monaco, scoring only a couple in the first 5 months of the season before powering in twelve goals in the final few months, most of those goals key too. He went from 3rd choice striker (behind Black Panther Gomis and IronMan Hoarau), to becoming the main central striker at Monaco. Adaptability in FM is a funny thing!
Gerard Piqué (from Manchester United) - no upfront fee loan with optional €18.5m fee to buy at the end of the season. No man in the squad can beat Piqué’s progressive passes per 90 stat of 5.37. He was also the man on the end of a lot of crosses and passes too: twelve goals from Centre-Back. What a player!

Another signing that saw it come together for us was stealing Mamadou Sakho from under PSG’s noses for a measly €800k. A top teenage talent who predominantly played as the left sided Wide Centre Back.

Ligue 1 - 3rd place, Champions League qualification 🎉

We turned last season’s draws into wins and that made the difference in qualifying for the Champions League this year. What has been interesting though is how the 3421 distributed league goals around the side. Unlike last year, where we relied on Jan Koller’s 19 league goals, it felt that this year anybody in the match day squad could score. We only had two players enter double figures for league goals, and even then it was a rather meagre figure of 11 for Jérémy Ménez and 10 for The Incredible Hulk.

UEFA Conference League - Winners 🏆

After a 100% win record in the league phase, we faced some decent opposition in SK Rapid, Werder Bremen and Hearts en route to the final. Nothing could stop the Monaco machine from purring into the showpiece match, where we faced Sicilian side Palermo. Some great FM names awaited us: Barthez, Barzagli, Belletti, Bréchet, Bresciano and Voronin.

So, a cup final for a competition that didn’t exist in 2009…played in a stadium that also had yet to be built (Wrocław Stadium, Poland). I’m still taking this as a massive win for AS Monaco though, it’s their 1st continental honours. After a 1-1 in normal time, we had to thank our lucky stars due to the game going to penalties. Or is it luck? We trained penalties and also had five competent penalty takers line up to smash it home (Hoarau, Gourcuff, Martin, Valbuena and Bastos). 5-4 to AS Monaco in the shootout. Très bien!

Happy New Year

Do I play more? That’s the question I am currently debating. Whilst I think this save has ‘one more season’ left in it, to see how AS Monaco do in the Champions League…I am also aware that FM25 news will be shared sometime in January 2025. Will that kill my enthusiasm to play, or heighten it? Again, it’s something I am debating. There’s also New Years Resolutions to contend with too, and sadly playing even more Football Manager is not currently on the shortlist 🤭

Regardless though, I’d like to thank you for reading/sharing and caring this and previous AS Monaco retro blogs (including the CM4 playthrough). It has been really fun, and I’ve enjoyed blogging an era I previously never documented when playing Football Manager 2008 the first time round.

I hope you are having a nice festive holiday with friends and family, and I am sure I will be back writing FM in 2025 at some point soon. Take care of yourselves 🎄

Tony / FM Grasshopper

Bonjour tout le monde,

It was French Noël in the save when I last left readers. Monaco were 7th in Ligue 1 and aspiring to mount a title challenge in the new year. That new year is 2008. Just a reminder, I am playing the FM 2007/08 retro database made available by TheMadScientist (themadscientistfm.wixsite.com). Huge thanks to him and his Danish fingers.

Let’s kick-off right from where we left off…

January 2008 signings ✍️

It is certainly not a ‘war chest’, but €7.5m is a modest amount of money to improve the squad with a couple of players. In fact, I went a bit further than just a couple…

Mathieu Valbuena

Bafetimbi Gomis

Michel Bastos

Yohann Pelé

Guillaume Hoarau

Mathieu Valbuena (€2.5m from Olympique de Marseille)
In real-life, Dwarf-ish Mathieu Valbuena had a great Ligue 1 career with Marseille. Signing him for €2.5m is a great piece of business, as it not only improves us…it also weakens a geographical and sporting rival. He can play across the front line, but he featured mostly as a Shadow Striker or right Winger in my current 4231. He even scored against his old club too 😀
Bafetimbi Gomis (18 month loan deal with option to buy €3.2m from AS Saint-Etienne)
Bafe was the original Black Panther, before Marvel got their hands on the rights to make movies in his image. I’m screaming the house down with frequent “Go Miss” as my striker netted 5 times in his first eleven games. Sadly though, a knee injury forced him to call it a season in the final two months of the league campaign. The good news is that I have Gomis for one more season before making the decision to sign him permanently from ASSE.
Michel Bastos (€2.9m from LOSC Lille Métropole)
I loved Bastos in these early FMs. In real-life he went on to Lyon, but he did not win much in the end there as it coincided with PSG’s real-life dominance from 2012. But he’s quality, and he proved to be a great addition as the attacking Wing Back in my 4231 with 7 assists in 17 appearances.
Yohann Pelé (€3.5m from Le Mans Union Club 72)
Club captain Flavio Roma got one last dream move in his career as AC Milan opened their cheque book to sign our Goalkeeper for €3.5m. Looking to immediately re-invest, I could have gone big on Hugo Lloris, but Yohann Pelé was the cheaper option (he also isn’t tainted in my mind for one day moving to Tottenham either). It’s worth noting that he’s no relation to the Brazil great, but I hope he will be a solid option between the posts nevertheless.
Guillaume Hoarau (€1.2m from Le Havre, with a 6 month loan back agreed)
Jan Koller is irreplaceable, but I accepted he would leave me for Celtic at the end of the season. A similar mould of player exists in Guillaume Hoarau. 192cm tall and still only 24-years-old, he will be a decent player in the future. For that reason I loaned him back to Le Havre for the rest of the season to provide him with adequate playing time.

My approach with these signings was grounded in the real-world. I thought it best to go and get Ligue 1 established players because (1) they know French football and (2) they are already physically conditioned into the cycle of the league campaign. I needed new January signings to ‘hit the ground running’, and that’s why I went with these guys. But did they secure European football?

Season 2007/08 - Heartbreaker 💔

“Just about”, is the answer to the previous question. But it could have been so much better!

I usually have a good record of final days in Football Manager games. But this season was a heartbreaker…dropping from 4th to 7th as a result of a 2-0 defeat in the Parcs des Princes to PSG; whilst everybody else won around me. This meant no Champions League, and we relied on Olympique Lyonnais to do us a favour by winning the Coupe de France against lower league opposition (SC Bastia). Even then, Monaco will have to deal with many Euro Cup qualifiers in pre-season just to get a shot at a European campaign! For the first time in a long while I was left wondering if I was going to get the sack in FM, considering the Board wanted Champions League football.

Alas, they have decided to stick with me for a bit longer…

Target Forward - how did Jan do?

A sprain to Jan Koller’s knee ligaments meant he missed all of February and March, a period which happens to see us drop points in five of eight league games. It is probably fair to say he was essential to how we play, and this is to be expected since I built the team around his presence last time in the blog. If he could have stayed fit for the whole season then he may have topped the Ligue 1 goalscoring charts. Instead, Jan Koller makes do with 19 goals in 30 Ligue 1 games…which is 3rd highest scorer in the league behind Djibril Cissé (20 goals for OM) and Frederico Chaves Guedes (24 goals for OL).

Big Jan is also where you’d expect to see him in the Data Hub too. Decent amount of headers, with a good win rate. Hard bastard.

But I did see a dip in Jan Koller during the final two months of the season, and his four goals are evidence of that. This could be due to the injury, his upcoming move to Celtic distracting his focus, natural decline as a player in mid-30s OR a combination of all of those things put together. The beauty of FM is that we will never know but it’s meant parting ways with Jan is perhaps right for everybody: virtual him, virtual Monaco and non-virtual me.

Děkuju Jan xoxo

Nouvelle Tactique pour 2008/09 🔜

So, with big Jan leaving, the most sensible thing is to adjust the Target Forward tactic. As I alluded to earlier in this post, Guillaume Hoarau is a solid option for the physical approach upfront but I cannot expect the same results as what I was getting from Jan Koller. We will have to play slightly differently, tweaked instructions and perhaps roles/formation too. I will save that for a future post, as I fully intend to play at least one more season of this 2007/08 database in FM24.

Thank you for reading / sharing and caring.

Tony | FM Grasshopper (p.s. now on Bluesky 🦋)