FM24 | Honorary save | Six seasons with Reading FC

November 10, 2024

I spent 24 years with Reading FC back in the Football Manager 2017. This time, in FM24, it was only six years. For some, it’s too many years with a single club, especially within the save that’s a journeyman save in some way. But waiting (and hitting the spacebar) for some/any FM25 news resulted in almost a complete save in terms of the longevity and how I started the development of the club itself and some players.

I joined the club at the end of the virtual calendar year of 2029 after three seasons with Perugia and two seasons with Dijon. I decided to wrap up this part of the save with this six seasons summary including details about results, trophies, transfers, finances and tactics.

2028/2029 - the survival

I got the Reading FC job in December 2028 when the club was (rock) bottom of the Premier League with only ten points after 17 matches. The only aim was to try to save the club in the Premier League before a new start.

I set the 4-1-3-2 formation as it was planned before and the fight started. January transfer window is not my favourite part of the season and I always feel I did a bad job during the previous summer if I need to buy new players during winter. But this was not my squad and I need to make some business. As always, I didn’t spend too much money compared with other clubs, and the fact that the most important transfer was recalling my own player from his loan speaks for itself.

Everything worked well and we finished 14th in the table after the final round of the 2028/2029 Premier League campaign.

2029/2030

My ambitions were much higher than fighting about survival. I started improving everything and we were able to finish 6th in the league in my first complete season. That also meant continental qualification.

The League/EFL/Coca-Cola/Carabao Cup final appearance was also a great success for the club despite losing 1:4 to Manchester City in the final.

2030/2031

The main highlight of this season was our Europa League campaign. We finished 6th in the League Phase with five wins and three draws in eight matches and that was enough to progress straight to the Last 16 round.

We played against Rennes in this knock-out round and we won 5:4 on aggregate after a 2:2 draw away from home and a 3:2 home win. The quarter-final took us to France again as we got Nantes. We beat them 3:0 at home in the first leg after one of the best performances of the whole season. We made it to the semi-final despite a 1:2 defeat in the second leg.

The great cup run ended in the final as we lost to Chelsea 2:3 after being 0:3 down already after the opening sixty minutes. But it was a great season in the end despite losing the final.

2031/2032

The fourth season with Reading ended with a silverware. We finished 5th in the Premier League and I was happy with it because it meant we secured the Europa League again. The Champions League would be great but we finished three points behind Newcastle and they also have a better goal difference so we would not be able to move over them.

But it was the Europa League campaign that made everyone happy. We finished 2nd in the League Phase just two points behind Barcelona. We beat Göztepe, Cremonese and Valencia in the knock-out stage to make it to the final for the second year in a row.

The save is full of narratives and this final was not an exception because we played against Dijon - one of my former clubs in this save. After an uneventful first half of the final, we scored the winning goal in the 54th minute. Another narrative was that my own academy players made that goal as a central defender Niall Wright made an assist for a goal by the right wing-back James Norley.

“We are devastated because too few youngsters were afforded significant first-team opportunities this season and we are disappointed that this has been allowed to happen.”

I see you, my dear board members. I’m also devastated we won the Europa League with a half-squad of academy graduates.

2032/2033

After winning the Europa League in the previous season, we qualified for the Champions League for the first time. We did great and finished 5th after winning six matches from eight in the League Phase. It meant qualification to the Round of 16 and more prize money. We destroyed Athletic Club 7:0 on aggregate and made it to the quarter-final. The draw was boring, we got Arsenal and lost 0:3 on aggregate.

We concentrated on the Champions League too much in this season and I let to play many young players in both domestic cups and in the Premier League too. And it was the worst Premier League campaign within this save so far as we finished 8th in the league and we won the last European spot. If I don’t count the first season when I took over the club, we managed to get the least number of points and we had the worst goal difference.

2033/2034

The last season of this “Honorary” save so far. And the last season with Reading. I wasn’t 100% sure if it would be the last one but the info about FM25 delay helped me with this decision as I want to play the game occasionally and I don’t have an urge to start a new save with updated database, transfers etc.

I changed the tactic ahead of this season a little bit and we were flying from the beginning of the save. The easier level of the Conference League gave me one great thing - the opponents were not good enough, I was able to play only with youngsters and backup players and the full-strength squad played in the Premier League.

The average age of the squad within Conference League matches was under the age of 20 in most matches. We won all six matches in the League Phase with 25 goals scored and only three conceded. The knock-out stage was quite easy too as we beat Rangers FC, Austria Lustenau and Slavia Prague before we beat Lens 2:1 in the final match. The winning goal was scored by one of the academy youngsters again.

We won the EFL Cup this season too as we beat Arsenal in the final. The FA Cup campaign ended in the quarter-final again after a 1:2 defeat to Manchester City. Again.

14th February 2034, the new Premier League record high scoring game

But the main point of this season was the Premier League campaign. We fought about the league title with Manchester City until the last round. City had 37 matches played already while we were four points behind them with two matches in hand. We beat Chelsea and Wolves 2:1 and 3:2 respectively and we moved over Manchester City ahead of the last round.

City had to beat Brighton and we travelled for an away match against Everton. City went down early in the match against Brighton. We were 2:1 up after the first half and I knew it was very close after scoring the third goal after an hour of play. City scored two and won 2:1 in the end but we don’t care.

Premier League 2033/2034 champions = Reading FC. We scored 102 goals, conceded only 36 (the best effort of these six seasons) and we gained 101 points. All top five clubs in the table scored 100+ goals in this season.

Tactics through the Reading FC part of the save

Every single tactic/formation had something special but I enjoyed using the last one the most. It offered us the most attacking things and I think we played the most enjoyable football from all the six seasons I spent with Reading.

Maybe I will use it with the next club so there’s a possibility I will write more about it.

The initial 4-1-3-2

A real life replication of 3-4-3

The Europa League 2032 winning 4-5-1

The title winning 4-3-3 DM Wide

The magic of Moneyball transfers

I love buying cheap and selling for a lot of money. Who doesn’t? I had a lot of players I signed for almost nothing in comparison with what I got for them. Japanese national team was almost full of players I would be able to buy for around €5M each and sell them later for ten times as much. At least.

There are some examples in the gallery.

Conclusion

Four cup wins and one league title in the five and a half seasons when the club was bottom of the Premier League in that first season. I think that’s a really good review of this part of the save.

It was great to add some big trophies to the Reading FC history. I’m in the favoured personnel only right now but I’m happy with it.

Dijon continues finishing in the top 5 within the Ligue 1 and they are doing very well in overall since I left them. Perugia, my first club of this save, is struggling and battling against relegation from Serie A every season since I left them. They finished 13th, 15th (twice), 18th and relegated, 17th (twice) and 16th since I left the club after finishing 4th in the opening Seria A season. But that’s history already.

I won’t return for Dijon or Perugia within this save. That’s 100% sure as I already rejected a job offer from both of these clubs while I was with Reading.

“This is my last FM24 club, I don’t know how long I will be able to play this save but I’m one season ahead of the schedule in terms of playing with two clubs already. I feel I will focus on the club development the most now as it would be the one-club save…”

I wrote this in the first blog dedicated to this part of the FM24 save. But it’s not true anymore. With the already knowns news about the FM25, I will continue with this save with another club.

Bonus club - I already mentioned the fact I had a quite long list of possible clubs. The same as I had a lot of favourite clubs/saves within the last 20 years of Football Manager, I also had a lot of favourite players. It’s not only that great regen Loader, but there were many others. If I have enough time, and some of my previous clubs connected with some favourite players would be available within the job centre in the game, I can move here too.

This quote is from the opening post about this “Honorary save.” I don’t know if some of my former FM clubs will be available, but I resigned from my Reading manager job and will wait for the right offer. I know I want some challenge for a couple of months again.

I already added Poland, the Netherlands and Belgium to playable leagues of this save. I thought about going back home to the Czech Republic and play for some my favourite or former clubs within FM saves. I also already had some job offers from Premier League clubs during this last season but I rejected all of them as it was from Chelsea or Brighton. I didn’t think about it as some kind of challenge.

We will see what will come next after I will resignate from Reading job…

Thanks for reading, take care and feel free to join FM Slack.

What FM Slack is?

There were a lot of changes within many social media including Twitter (now “X”) and it’s not the same as in the past. We can’t see many things due to the algorithm, weird preferences and many other reasons I don’t even want to know.

There are many Discord servers and I’m sure they are good and useful. But I will probably always be a bigger fan of Slack. Or better worded the Football Manager Slack. Feel free to join us with this link.

You will find a short channel summary in the ‘generalchat’ so it will be easier for you to navigate through the channels.

FM24 | Replicating real-life lower league tactic

August 28, 2024

I didn’t play Football Manager 2024 for a while but wanted to get back into it. My FM24 save with Perugia, Dijon and Reading was still among the saved files, and I restarted it. I’m in 2030 and at the start of the new season with Reading FC in the Premier League. I replicated all three tactics I used while I was playing with these three clubs in the past. I didn’t have to continue with 3-5-2/4-4-1-1 or 4-1-3-2. I decided to replicate the tactic I’m currently using with my local town team in the 8th tier.

Intro

It’s not a secret that I love playing with the 3-5-2 formation and its variations. I love playing within the defensive line with three central defenders. And I like to play in this way even if we are playing in the 8th tier (from the 10th). We are just amateurs but I’m lucky enough to have a couple of talented young players around who are intelligent enough to think about what they are doing on and off the pitch and they are not only scrolling through Instagram or any other social media…

I’m playing coach and that means I’m playing where is it needed. When we miss the central defender, I play here. When we have enough central defenders, I prefer to play as a CM. I have been playing for my local town club for 18 years. I consider myself a piece of history with all due respect. I love it here. I met my wife here, we live here together with our kids. But it’s probably my last season because of the many stupid and childish things our club board does.

“That was great, I enjoyed how often I was able to play with the ball and I didn’t have to only defend and mark the opponent. It’s a great change in comparison with a defensive line containing only four defenders.”

I still remember this feedback from my one-year-old teammate after the first match while using the 3-5-2 two years ago. It was also my first match as a playing coach. We survived the last season with just regular 10 players in the squad. The rest was from our U19s team and one or two players from the main team (our A team plays in the 5th tier). Many players had to play in different positions and roles but I think it helped them.

My aim for the new 2024/25 season was to improve our squad with some new local players. It turned out quite well and we have 5 new players. Three of them played for our club already in the youth categories so I brought some good lads back. The return of one player also meant the change in our shape…

From 3-5-2 to 3-4-3

The main change was simple: We had more than one player capable of playing as a winger or inside forward. On the other hand, the new player who should be our team's biggest attacking weapon is attacking-minded, and I can’t imagine playing him as a wing-back. Most of our opponents also have strong and big defenders, so that’s why I want to play simple passing football and only long balls.

I decided to keep the formation with three defenders but we are now using both wing-backs and AMR/L positions.

The biggest change, both in real life and in the game too, is that my team is not using three central midfielders after a long time. This is probably a bigger change and difference than the fact there are now AMR/L players. This needs to be balanced the most.

Central defenders? One calm boy & two bulldogs. Or vice versa?

Two central defenders with the stopper duty and one classic CD(D). That’s my most common and the most favourite combination. I’m lucky to have two clever-aggressive teammates back after a long-term injury so I can use the stopper duty.

The aim is to have the central defender with a “defend” duty and both right and left central defenders with the stopper duty. These two can step up to attack the opponent and they are also able to provide the width as I use “Stay wider” individual instruction for both of them.

I like to swap from CD(St) - CD(D) - CD(St) to CD(D) - CD(St) - CD(D) when the opponent team plays with two strikers and the AM player too. That’s usually the most critical and the most risky because both CD(St) players would be too high to press/attack the opponent and there are too big gaps. Both in real life and in the game.

Two CM(S)

As I mentioned already above, resolving the right balance in the central midfield area is key. The DLP and the CM(S) are my favourite roles. I mentioned it many times during the time I have been writing about the Football Manager. I thought about using the combination of these two roles (in the game) but I decided against it to copy the real-life properly.

It’s safe to say that we are using two CM(S) and they rotate between each other. One CM player is a little bit more creative and he should support the attack more. The second CM players should be a little bit more aggressive and something between the BWM and the DLP.

In real life, both CM(S) (including me) are versatile players and we all have something that we want from CM players. Creativity, out-of-the-ball movement, decisions but also anticipation. That means I set up the CM roles in the way bellow. And they switch positions with each other during the match.

Counters? Yes, please.

I know we can play a quality possession-based football but we also now have some fast (or faster than in the past) players. And I want to take advantage of it. That means, when we have the chance counter, we have to try it.

Just wait for the right time, don’t panic all around the pitch with the pressing.

Be sure all players know where their position is and remain patient. It’s not a Champions League (in our real-life example) and the opponent will make a mistake. They lose the ball, they are not fully concentrated, the pass is misplaced…

It happens even in the game.

(I don’t have a full-length video of our goal from the recent tournament but we got the ball in our own half thanks to the tight marking, speaking to each other and our fastest player took advantage of his quickness after a simple through ball.)

Here are some examples of goals we scored during the season. There are goals from the same match so you can see it can be very straightforward while playing from the back but also a build-up with a lot of passes in the middle of the pitch.

Playing from the back

“What the fuck are you doing? Don’t play with the keeper, he is useless. Kick the ball out!”

“For sure. Should we also kick the ball out while our lone striker is 170cm “tall” and their central defenders are a head bigger? We can also play 4-4-2 and I will try to find two or three players who will get a red card every match…”

We are a small town but the same rule applies here as everywhere else. The smaller the town, the more football coaches are around the pitch/pub. Yes, we conceded a lot of goals because of mistakes we made while playing from the back. But we would probably play in a much higher division if we did not make mistakes. I remember we conceded 15 goals in two friendly matches within a single weekend in the summer of 2023. Two-thirds of them were because 1) we had 16/17 years old defenders, 2) a very shy and uncertain goalkeeper and 3) we were learning.

We played against the same opponents this summer. We drew 1:1 and won 4:2 against them. The squads of our opponents were almost the same as last year. Our squad was a little bit better but not because of the new players. It was mainly about experiences and what we learned throughout the previous season.

“I really liked how you played. You had a simple idea of how to close our playmaker and how to reduce the depth of the pitch. It meant we were not able to create something.” That’s probably the best compliment I received from the opponent in a long way. The fact we won was not important too much. This feedback was great after the second match of that summer tournament.

The main thing is very simple - wide central defenders offer the option at the sides of the penalty area, and both central midfielders have to rotate and find the best possible place to create the simple triangle. It’s only about the movement.

The example from the FM24 can be this one. It’s easy, simple and addictive to watch. The good thing is it happened in the first Premier League round - the learning in the game is much faster than in real life :)

Don’t be affraid…

…to experiment and play football you like just because it’s a lower league. I know very well that we can’t play a complex football like Manchester City or a heavy-metal football like Bayer 04 Leverkusen because we don’t have good enough players for it. But that doesn’t stop me trying my best to ensure we enjoy what we are doing.

I know my 20 years old teammate is not good enough neither as a right FB, WB, MR or AMR. He is always between something. He always miss something. One match he is great as defender, the other week he can’t even head the ball out of the penalty box. But he found how and where to stay while he is defending fast or tall player and he is able to think about it. That’s something I consider as my biggest trophy or medal after two years in this role. They are listening and they are learning.

That’s my win.

I don’t know how the real-life season will end. I will find out next year. But in FM24, I finished 7th in the Premier League. We made it to the Carabao Cup semi-final and we made it to the Europa League final where we lost 2:3 to Chelsea…

The best goalscorer of the team was our IF(A) - James Taylor (click to open his profile) who scored 25 goals in 37 appearances. He also added 9 assists. It would be great if my real-life AMR player would have at least ten goals this season.

A couple of pictures from the 2030/2031 season including Niall Wright (my favourite defender) and Derek O’Brien (my favourite signing during my Reading time so far).

What next? One more season with a new tactic…

Take care.

FM Slack alert!

You will find a short channel summary in the ‘generalchat’ so it will be easier for you to navigate through the channels.

FM24 | Honorary save | Reading 2028/2029

May 9, 2024

June 5, 2029. The in-game date of my resignation as a Dijon FCO manager. I decided to leave this French club a season earlier than planned for this save, but I felt it was the best decision in combination with winning the domestic double twice in a row and winning the Champions League in the second season too.

My next aim was to become the Reading FC manager as the club is the last one on my list of clubs I want to play with in FM24. They had their manager who was the fan’s favourite and he was able to keep them in the Premier League by just one point in the previous season.

So, I had to wait…

FM24 save

Nov 10, 2024

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Six seasons with Reading FC

Nov 10, 2024

Honor

Nov 10, 2024

Honor

FM24 | Replicating real-life lower league tactic

Aug 28, 2024

Tactics, Honor

FM24 | Replicating real-life lower league tactic

Aug 28, 2024

Tactics, Honor

Aug 28, 2024

Tactics, Honor

May 9, 2024

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Reading 2028/2029

May 9, 2024

Honor

May 9, 2024

Honor

Apr 20, 2024

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Dijon 2027/2028

Apr 20, 2024

Honor

Apr 20, 2024

Honor

Mar 22, 2024

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Dijon 2026/2027

Mar 22, 2024

Honor

Mar 22, 2024

Honor

Mar 8, 2024

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Life in the new club step by step

Mar 8, 2024

Honor

Mar 8, 2024

Honor

Feb 26, 2024

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Perugia 2025/2026

Feb 26, 2024

Honor

Feb 26, 2024

Honor

Feb 1, 2024

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Perugia 2024/2025 (Promotion party in all clubs)

Feb 1, 2024

Honor

Feb 1, 2024

Honor

Dec 29, 2023

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Perugia 2023/2024

Dec 29, 2023

Honor

Dec 29, 2023

Honor

Dec 4, 2023

Honor

My Football Manager 2024 honorary save

Dec 4, 2023

Honor

Dec 4, 2023

Honor

…waiting was not so long.

It took only around six in-game months of clicking the continue button, and watching a couple of Perugia/Dijon/Reading matches just to let others know my in-game manager person is still alive. And tens of similar press conferences with the same questions and the same reactions no matter what answer I selected.

Reading started the 2028/2029 season horrendously with seven defeats in the opening seven Premier League matches. They gained the first point of the season after a 1:1 draw against West Brom away from home. The first win was a 1:0 win over Middlesbrough in the 12th league round thanks to a goal in the 90+5 minute.

But despite the job security of their manager being insecure, it lasted until the start of December 2028 before the board decided to sack the manager. It was after 16 matches with just 1 win, 4 draws and 11 defeats. Bottom of the table.

The Premier League table after the opening 16 matches.

Will they give me the job?

I already declared my interest in the job back in September but there was nothing to do more. The only real response after declaring the interest was from the Reading fans as they said they want to keep Tyler as the Reading FC manager. But when the board sacked him, I applied for the job immediately.

They sacked him on December 9, 2028, after a 2:3 defeat by Aston Villa. Before the board decided to hire me, it lasted around 10 days and the caretaker manager was able to beat Sunderland 2:0 at home so I took the job with two wins in 17 matches.

I had just three days before the first match against Arsenal away from home. We lost 0:1. I didn’t count some points from this match but conceding just one goal was a positive result.

Worst performing team in everything before my appointment.

Tactic: 4-1-3-2

The same as I planned what clubs I would play with in FM24, I also had a clear idea of what formations I would use with each club. It was a 3-5-2 with Perugia, it was a 4-4-1-1 with Dijon and the plan was to create some 4-1-3-2 formation with Reading. The same as I used in Football Manager 2017 when I played with Reading for many years and I tweaked it a lot.

The main difference between FM17 and the current version is that I didn’t use the Half Back role in FM17. But I will use it as my main role for the defensive midfield position.

The tweaking of this formation began straight in the match against Arsenal. It’s not ideal to tweak and test the formation against the second team of the table with a couple of great young players in combination with the fact you’re at the bottom of the table. But it’s just a game.

My initial idea was to use WB(A) or CWB(S) on both sides of our defensive line in combination with the Half Back role. But the first match gave me enough reasons to start rethinking this selection. Despite the overall tactic is not so risky, using CWB(S) is risky if you don’t have enough players to cover all the offensive adventures and trips by the wide defenders. They are wide attacking midfielders more than defenders.

We conceded eight goals in the first four matches and I had enough despite we gained four points thanks to a win against Leeds and a draw with Chelsea. But the wide defenders were 1) too high up the pitch, 2) too wide and we lost too many simple passes, and 3) they didn’t contribute effectively on both sides of the pitch.

I changed both to FB(S) and lately to FB(A). And our “stay in the Premier League quest” started definitely. We beat Leicester in the league and Charlton in the FA Cup with two clean sheets. We drew 2:2 with Brighton (2nd of the table at that time) and we beat West Ham in the FA Cup. The great bonus was three wins against Liverpool, Manchester United and West Brom.

The bottom place of the Premier League was behind us after these results as we moved up to the 16th place.

GK - FB(S) - CD(D) - MEZ(A) - DLF(A) - MEZ(A) - FB(S) - DLF(A) - AF = goal. Simple. #FM24 pic.twitter.com/oKjknqMNks
— FM Rensie | Ondrej (@FMRensie) April 29, 2024

Winter transfers break

It’s not so easy to join a new club in the middle of the season. I had very limited time to analyse the squad and I also had to deal with a couple of unhappy players because 1) they wanted a new/better contract or 2) they wanted to leave because they don’t play as much as they would like.

It resulted in some winter transfer business but I will keep it short. The main outgoing transfers were Alex Bailey to Leeds for €37.5M and Erwand Chelbon to Rennes for €23.5M. Some more players didn’t accept offers so they remained in the club. The bank balance was already boosted enough by these two big transfers.

I knew the biggest issue was the defensive line. I bought Enrico Brancadori from Südtirol just for €900k (a stupidly low transfer release clause), Bren Worrall from Bristol City for €8.5M and Elliot Kidner from West Ham for €1.1M. The first two mentioned players are also able to perform in the Half Back role solidly, that’s another bonus for both of them.

The real strengthening of the squad was buying Sam Gerlofs. The young Dutch midfielder is able to play as DLP(S) or AP(S) but also as a boring CM. I decided to pay €17.25M for him because I felt it would be worth it.

TL:DR: We spent €27.5M and we received €65M during winter.

Probably the best decision in terms of the squad and transfer policy within January was when I found out one of the best-rated central defenders Mike Seager is out on loan in the Championship with Bristol City. It felt weird to have the most valuable defender out on loan and I decided to recall him back.

He made 17(1) Premier League appearances and he ended the season with an average rating of 7.01. Our defensive line was much better with him and I also gave him a new contract.

Back on the pitch

After beating West Brom 4:0 at home at the beginning of February, I thought we need some real challenge or some slap to feel the reality again. Luckily, we lost in Newcastle and players went back to the ground.

Six wins followed this match against Newcastle as we won four matches in the league and fifth round and quarter final of the FA Cup. The 3:2 win against Sheffield United in the middle of March was our penultimate win of the season.

We lost to Nottingham Forest and tied with Everton at home. Both these results were dissapointing but I was calm as I was 100% sure we will survive. The FA Cup semi final against Newcastle was cruel. We were 2:0 up, they equalised but we scored our third in the 90th minute. Newcastle equalised in the 90+6th minute and they scored the winning goal in the 119th minute when we already played with ten men because I was not able to substitute. But matches like this happen. Reaching the FA Cup semi final while battling against relegation really was not in a plan.

We didn’t have easy schedule for the last league rounds and it started with a heavy 0:4 defeat against Manchester City. But we beat Aston Villa 2:1 at home and that meant we had safety secured. After one draw and two defeants in the last three matches, we ended 14th in the Premier League while Aston Villa won the league and they became the first team outside Manchester winning the title since Liverpool in 2020.

Results before joining...

Results after joining...

How did the other two (past) clubs do in the 2028/2029 season?

Dijon finished third in the French top tier and made it to the Champions League quarter-final.
Perugia finished 15th in Serie A, just two points above the relegation, almost the same as in the previous season when it was three points above the relegation.

What next?

The main aim of keeping the club in the Premier League was successful. I feel the real club re-building starts now ahead of the 2029/2030 season. There are many more players I don’t want in the club and I am sure I can safe some serious money if I would be able to sell them.

Also, the contracts of two-thirds of staff members end at the end of the season. The club facilities are great but the potential is not fully used because staff members are not good enough. It’s time to find some better ones for all teams.

I set up some new scouting recruitment focusses to find some good UK-based players + some top players outside the UK who are able to gain the work permit.

I will try to improve the tactic too for another season. Do you have some tips on how it can be improved? Just let me know and I will try to take some inspiration.

When I mentioned the potential/great facilities, the youth intake 2029 proved there can be some great new players. The central defender Niall Wright has a lot of potential and I think I will let him play in the next season as much as possible. He just needs to work on some things like jumping and strength.

This is my last FM24 club, I don’t know how long I will be able to play this save but I’m one season ahead of the schedule in terms of playing with two clubs already. I feel I will focus on the club development the most now as it would be the one-club save…

FM Slack alert!

You will find a short channel summary in the ‘generalchat’ so it will be easier for you to navigate through the channels.

Thanks for reading.

FM24 | Honorary save | Dijon 2027/2028

April 20, 2024

“I considered leaving Dijon after this incredible season because I don’t think I can make it again.” That was one of the last sentences of the previous blog post about this save when I reviewed the 2026/27 season with Dijon FCO. I stayed for another season and I also signed an extension of my contract until 2029. I just resigned a little bit and I thought it would give me one season to build some quality squad ahead of the third and the last season with the French club. But I got ahead of myself in time. Why? Let’s find out in this blog.

Transfers

The main priority of the transfer window between seasons was to make the first team squad bigger and to have stronger backup/rotated squad. I signed a couple of young players from around the world. I also decided to sign Mario Mercurio, the left WB or ML, from Perugia as I was happy with him and his development during my first three seasons of the save.

There were some great incoming transfers like Bayron Carilao from Universidad de Chile for €5M, Mário Vieira from Lorient for the €5M(€6M), Jean-Michel Wolf from Metz for €3M or Pablo Cardozo for free after the end of his contract with Nacional.

The outgoing transfers were significant in terms of the bank balance improvement and we earned €113M during this season. There were some big transfers like Vincenzo Trentadue for €11.25M to Manchester City, Yan Fei to Arsenal for €11.75M, Baye Mané (my favourite player from the first season) to Manchester United for €23.5M or Vusi Sergel to Galatasaray for €19M.

All these, and many more, outgoing transfers were more or less forced because these players were wanted and some of them wanted to leave to play for a bigger club. But for example, a transfer of Vusi Sergel to Galatasaray was just because no club wanted to pay his transfer fee around €100M and I decided to hire agent and it took a couple of days to finish the transfer.

He, and some more players, just didn’t want to be in the club and I really don’t want players who don’t want to be here. So, I rather took the money.

Cash transfers 2027/2028 without loans, it would not fit to the screen despite changing the zoom to 85%…

Tactics

The main two changes within the 4-4-1-1 tactics were in terms of player roles’ tweaks and I decided to be more aggressive in terms of out-of-possession. I decided it was enough to play with the shadow striker & wide playmaker roles combination and these two roles were the first changes I made. I changed them to AM(A) and IW(A) as I wanted the more productive and more straightforward role on the right side of the pitch instead of the playmaker.

Another important change was that I got rid of the CM(D) role in the MCR slot. I played mainly with DLP(S) or AP(S). The second option with the advanced playmaker role was useful while playing against weaker sides and the DLP(S), as the more static role in my eyes, was useful while playing against stronger/more reputable teams or stronger teams away from home.

4-4-1-1 2026/27

4-4-1-1 2027/28

One of my favourite tweaks was to change the winger role from the attack to the support duty. The reason was that I didn’t like how many times the winger received the ball with his back turned to the opposite half/goal. That meant he had to make the turnaround with the ball and our play was slower this player also lost many balls because of his dribbling ability. When I changed it to the support duty, the ML player had more space ahead of him and he received more balls with the possibility to run forward rather than only to the side or pass the ball back to the defensive line.

Also, just to mention, I changed the lone striker role from the complete forward to the advanced forward because I didn’t have good enough players for this most demanding attacking role.

One of my favourite goals after changes.

Coupe de France

In terms of the competition review, I would like to start with the domestic cup - Coupe de France. We won it in the previous season when we beat Nantes in the final 1:0. We made it to the final again in the second season after beating Saint-Étienne after penalties in the Ninth round, two comfortable wins against Villefranche and Guingamp and a tight win over Lens.

The semi-final against Monaco was scheduled during demanding weeks of playing every three days and I rotated the squad completely. But we won 3:2 and the second and third goals were scored by our own players. One of my favourite things in FM and football overall.

We played against PSG in the final and we went down after 22 minutes but Bayron Carilao scored a brace including the 111th minute winner and we won the domestic cup again.

Ligue 1

We needed the goal difference rule to decide about the league title holders in the previous season when Lyon lost in the last league round and we moved top of the table.

What about the second season? We were second or third most of the season. Olympique Marseille was top of the table between rounds 14 and 30 but they finished fourth in the end. We moved top of the table after a 2-0 win over Nantes in the 32nd round and we needed a win in the last league round against Nice.

We won 4:1 and Lyon drew 1:1 at home against Olympique Marseille. That meant we finished first again with 79 points (12 points more than in the previous season), Lyon finished second again, three points behind us this time. We improved our goal difference thanks to scoring 12 goals in the last four rounds and we had it better than Lyon again in the end. Just if it would be needed again.

Champions League

I think we were lucky and we had a great draw for the Champions League “league” phase as we faced Adana Demirspor, Boavista, Partizan or Vitória Guimaraes. We lost only to Sevilla 2:4 but we finished 5th with 19 points after six wins, one draw and one defeat.

It meant we went straight to the Round of 16 and we faced Bologna. We won 3:2 in both away and home match and we progressed to the quarter final. We faced PSG in this round and you can se two goalscorers were able to beat them - Bayron Carilao and Mario Etxarri who scored three goals in the second leg away from home as we won 4:1 and made it to the semi final.

We faced another European giant - Bayern München. Despite drawing in the home first leg, we won 1:0 in the second leg in München and German U21 national team player Alexander Lieberknech was our only scorer in both legs.

The final agains Manchester City in Vien was tight but we scored two goals and we were a little bit more dangerous in my eyes and more dominant. Goals by Pablo Cardozo and Bayron Carilao secured the Champions League trophy.

How did the other two (past and future) clubs do in the 2027/2028 season?

Perugia finished 15th in Serie A, just three points ahead of the relegation zone. They scored only 33 goals in 38 matches and conceded 44.
Reading survived in the first season back in the Premier League just one point ahead of the relegation zone with 34 points and a goal difference of -20.

The average age of the squad was 19.55 at the end of the season…

What next?

“I considered leaving Dijon after this incredible season because I don’t think I can make it again.”

This is not true anymore. I did it even better and won the Champions League together with a domestic cup & league. Now, I’m sure I can’t beat it or repeat it and I decided it’s time to resign and leave Dijon despite the Reading FC job is not available right now at the end of the season. But I’m sure I would want to stay with Dijon if the third season is not as successful.

It’s time to click continue button now and hope the Reading FC job will become available…

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Thanks for reading.

FM24 | Honorary save | Dijon 2026/2027

March 22, 2024

The fourth of possible nine seasons of my Football Manager 2024 save is over. It was my first season in France with Dijon FCO. I won two promotions with Perugia and finished fourth in Seria A before I left Italy. I was lucky that the other two clubs - Dijon and Reading - also won promotions in the opening three seasons so I was able to manage Dijon straight in the French top tier.

Just a reminder - I aim to play three seasons with all these mentioned clubs and I’m playing with the blank database full of newly created/fake players and staff. If some of you haven’t read about it before, you can find all the details in this post. All previous posts are at coffeehousefm.com/fmrensie.

FM Rensie Blog

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Six seasons with Reading FC

Honor

Tactics, Honor

FM24 | Replicating real-life lower league tactic

Tactics, Honor

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Reading 2028/2029

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Dijon 2027/2028

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Dijon 2026/2027

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Life in the new club step by step

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Perugia 2025/2026

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Perugia 2024/2025 (Promotion party in all clubs)

Honor

FM24 | Honorary save | Perugia 2023/2024

Honor

My Football Manager 2024 honorary save

Honor

Transfers

As I mentioned in the previous post about life in the new club step by step, the squad was in a very bad condition when I arrived. Especially in combination with the future transfers of some key players as they were unhappy and wanted to leave and play for some bigger club.

All these unhappy players moved out of the club during the summer for a lot of money. Ugo Lacombe, the main striker, went to Manchester United for €14.5M, two players went to Manchester City for around €10M together and Gilbert Cardon (the main left defender) went to Fulham for €25M (up to €30.5M).

I created a top-priority recruitment focus for the right WB(A) and the left FB(S) and the ongoing recruitment focuses for MC, WP(S) and striker.

I spent €34.5M in the end during the first summer including €2.5M for a central midfielder Gianluca Ciucci from Perugia. He is the one young midfielder I shared in the first post about my time with Perugia when I mentioned I can imagine he will be the one who I will take together to other clubs. It was just before he damaged cruciate ligaments and he was out for 7 months. But he is alright.

The only thing I was not able to improve was the position of the left defender. But as it’s my favourite thing to do in FM - I started retraining other players to play here. I can reveal that the main one has one goal and 4 assists in the opening 8 league matches of the season as FB(S).

The central defender Roy van den Bogert is one of my favourite signings. I bought him for €55k from the Czech second league. He was one of the best players of the season, his transfer value increased a lot and his development is also great.

Vusi Sergel signed for just €950k from South African SuperSport United was a bargain and I feel I will have no issue selling him as his transfer value increased to almost €100M. Chinese midfielder Yan Fei signed for €3.4M from Beijing has everything to be a great player but he spent too much time with the national team and missed too many matches due to small injuries. Maybe from fatigue?

The biggest failure was central midfielder Gaoussou Coulibaly. I signed him from Havre AC for €6.5M but he missed 7 months of the season due to injuries. He is now transfer listed at the end of the season as I changed his playing time and he is unhappy that he is not considered as a star of the team after 5 months out of the sidelines.

Tactics

The aim was to build a solid 4-4-1-1 with the shadow striker. When I tried to select clubs for this save, I was undecided between Dijon and AB Copenhagen. I selected the French club in the end but I decided to combine some parts in terms of tactics.

I used 4-1-4-1 with the WP(S) whilst managing AB so I decided I would stick to the 4-4-1-1 but I will try to make it work with the WP(S) role on the right side of the pitch. I put together the tactic I will tweak during the next three seasons and I will mention something about it in the next posts, the same as I did in blogs about my time in Perugia.

Pictures down below show you the initial tactic (left) and how it developed during the season (right). I was too optimistic about the aggressive out of possession instructions and they were the first part I changed after a couple of matches. It was obvious our defensive line was extremely weak, especially against teams playing with the attacking midfielder or with two strikers. It was mainly because of the “Step Up More” instruction - sometimes it was absolutely “normal” that all defenders were out of their positions hunting opponents. So I removed it, the same as the “Higher Defensive Line”.

The main and most visible change is the role of the lone striker. I used the Advanced Forward role probably the most of all in the last two versions of the game but it didn’t work as well as I would have liked in combination with the Shadow Striker behind him. I felt it would be better to use the Shadow Striker role with some support-duty-minded striker. I used the CF(S) in the past a lot including the save with AB Copenhagen, so it was an easy choice. And Baye Mané (screen above within gallery) is developing very well for this role…

Defensively, we were much stronger and compact. Reducing the defensive risk was the best decision considering how the season ended and how many times we were defeated or how many goals we conceded…

Btw. the club board was “very disappointed” for the whole season because we didn’t play a direct style of football as they added it to the board culture. But it didn’t lead to some issues or ultimatum. It was just there for the whole time.

Ligue 1

We had a very solid start to the season with 2 wins, 1 draw and two defeats in the opening five matches. That was solid considering we were predicted to be relegated. But as I already mentioned, we were defensively weak and I made the already mentioned changes. It resulted in 6 matches unbeaten before we lost 1:2 to Toulouse (no jokes here please, I know I had nothing to lose…).

Our best position was third place during the opening part of the season before we started to climb inconspicuously. We were 6th after the 12th round but thanks to good results we moved to the top of the table after a 2:0 win over Marseille in the 20th round. We were first in the table until the 26th round when we drew 1:1 with OGC Nice. It was our fifth league draw in a row. This run of draws ended with a 1:0 win over Lille and our run for the league trophy started.

We tied with PSG and we won the last four league matches. We had Caen and Montpellier in the last two matches, both these teams fought against relegation. But in vain. We beat Caen 1:0 and they were relegated.

PSG was three points ahead of us before the last league round. We needed to beat Montpellier and PSG had to lose against Nantes away from home. The goal difference is the main decisive rule when teams have the same points.

We were 3:0 up in the halftime while Nantes vs. PSG was 1:1. We scored two more in the second half and we won 5:0. The second place was already a phenomenal success but Nantes scored the winning goal in the 88th minute from a penalty kick and beat PSG 2:1.

That means we moved to the top of the table with a better goal difference and won the league for the first time in the club's history.

Coupe de France

I had a dream to win the domestic cup with Dijon to earn a European place but I was sceptical when we got Lyon in the semifinal. We were lucky to beat Nancy after penalties in the tent round as I rotated the squad a little bit. We were 0:1 down against Auxerre at home after the first half but a slightly aggressive halftime talk helped and we scored two goals within a minute before we scored a third one in the stoppage time.

The semifinal’s 3:0 win over Olympique Lyon was very pleasing and surprising too because it was almost one-sided and it was a very comfortable win. The ego-boosting win I would say.

We got Nantes in the final as they beat Lens after penalties in the semifinal. The final was played a week later after the last league round when they helped us to win the league. “You give us the league, we give you the cup.” I know that phrase but it didn’t go this way this time. We won 1:0 and secured the first domestic cup trophy in Dijon’s history.

How did the other two (future) clubs do in the 2026/2027 season?

Perugia finished 13th in Seria A and scored only 40 goals while conceding 50. They played in the Champions League too but won only two matches and finished 26th. A disappointing season considering we finished 4th in the league in the previous season.
Reading is back in a big time as they finished 4th in the English Championship and they beat Luton in the play-off semifinal and Sunderland in the play-off final. A second promotion in the fourth season.

What next?

I considered leaving Dijon after this incredible season because I don’t think I can make it again. But I decided to stay at least for one more season as I have a contract until 2028. There’s also not a job available at Reading FC right now as they won a promotion to the Premier League.

The Dijon board announced they will build a new stadium soon, I also signed a couple of promising players for the next season and I’m interested how some other players will develop. So, I will stay and play at least one more season with Dijon.

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FM24 | Honorary save | Life in the new club step by step

March 8, 2024

It's the same save, a new club but it feels like a new game. The motivation to create something new is high. The mood and desire to build something is so big. At least I got this perfect feeling when I moved to Dijon after three years with Perugia. There was a lot of room for improvement in all areas from the squad building to staff, training regime and mainly - the new tactic. The club change meant I got 100% new motivation to play the game again because of THAT feeling ‘there’s something new’.

It also inspired me to put together some basic things/steps I did in the opening weeks after moving from Italy to France virtually. So, it gave me not only the fresh blood to play the game but also to write about it.

Step #1 - Staff and responsibilities

I mentioned in the previous blog post that I could select staff members I would like to take with me from Perugia to Dijon or select staff members of Dijon I don’t want to work together when I take over the club. I wanted to take two staff members - the DoF and HoYD. Neither of them was interested in moving from Italy to France.

In the end, the Dijon board gave me one condition during the contract talks: I will continue working with their current DoF. He is not that bad but I can imagine having someone better. And I was able to find someone better quite easily but, to be clear, I was afraid the board would fire me earlier than the new season would begin :-)

Knowing the fact I won’t replace the DoF, I decided to concentrate on everything else. There were just 2 coaches out of 9 possible within the first-team squad. There were only two scouts and I fired one of them as he was not good enough. The medical team was also very bad. Also, the current Head of Youth Development was far from the ideal adept for securing the youth teams for the future. It took me about three or four in-game weeks before I was satisfied 90% with the new staff team.

As you can see in the picture below, the staff team was bad. Really bad. Maybe I’m offending the word “bad”. I started searching, comparing and mainly signing new staff members. The new Head of Youth Development Ugo Lafon is 100% a great signing. I signed also the Technical Director as I decided to divide some responsibilities among the staff members to have more time to play the actual game.

In the end, I created a very good staff team. The simple comparison with the rest of the French top tier speaks for itself within the second picture.

Responsibilities - that’s a topic I like to discuss with myself very often. I know many people delegate a lot of stuff but I usually do most of the things by myself. I liked to delegate “Find and sign young players for the future (U19)” to the HoYD but it didn’t work in the previous two versions for some reason. Maybe I had too many players in the youth squad so he had no reason to buy someone new. But the U19 Dijon squad was tiny and the new HoYD already signed three players during the summer so it’s nice to see some activity. The 2nd team is not currently as important because it’s in an inactive league.

I also set the technical director to hire new staff members for both the second and U19 teams, the same as extending contracts. If nothing more, it’s just mainly to try something new for me and do everything by myself.

Step #2 - Tactics

After three seasons of using my beloved 3-5-2 formation, it was time to move to something else. The plan was to use the 4-4-1-1 tactic, the same as I played with Dijon in past. When I tried to select clubs I will play with during FM24, I was undecided between Dijon and AB Copenhagen. I select the French club in the end but I decided to combine some parts in terms of tactics.

I used 4-1-4-1 with the wide playmaker role whilst managing AB so I decided I will stick to the 4-4-1-1 but I will try to make it work with the WP(S) role one the right side of the pitch. I put together the tactic I will tweak during next three seasons and I will mention something about it in next posts, the same as I did in blogs about my time Perugia.

I’m currently at the beginning of September 2026 when I write this post. We played five league matches (2-1-2) and we are 7th in the table. The club board is “Very Disappointed” by not playing direct football. Maybe it’s something I will have to change soon and I will probably create two styles - Dijon “short” and Dijon “direct”…

There’s an example of a very nice goal we scored and it’s great to see how the players are moving around the pitch while we are attacking.

Step #2.1 - Tactics - Set Pieces

Tactics also consists of the set pieces and I decided to modify what worked quite well during the Perugia time. We have four corner kick goals in 8 matches so far in the Ligue 1. There are also three indirect free kicks and one direct free kick. So, it probably works quite well…

I’m using the near post, far post and centre types of delivery. These routines are very similar in terms of player roles, there are only changes when the routine delivery is near post or centre in terms of what player is set to attack near post within the ranking.

Step #3 - Squad analysis based on the tactics

Setting the tactic before I started planning to improve the squad was important. Or maybe better worded, not improving but mainly refilling the squad. The squad planner is so weak in the first picture for a couple of reasons. I made this picture just after the game switched from Perugia to Dijon and I set the tactic.

Three or four players were unhappy and all wanted to leave the club. All of them would be 100% key players for the next season but they wanted to go out for some time mainly to “play in a better team with better players”. I didn’t know them but I decided I would build the squad on my own and I will let them go. So, I remove them from the planner or move them to the last place within the planner of the specific position/role.

When I did that, I found out I had just two natural central midfielders, one attacking midfielder and zero players who would be able to play as a wide playmaker. It was obvious we also had a problem with both wide defensive positions, we needed at least one new striker because the one who wanted to leave was the best player and the main striker…

The first team squad planner 5/2026

The first team squad planner 10/2026

Step #4 - friendlies

Maybe it can feel like something natural and something normal thing but I like to arrange friendlies by myself. Mainly because I want to decide what level of opponents we will face. I feel it’s very important, especially in combination with the new formation and the new style we will play.

There’s no science fiction in planning these fixtures, it’s probably the same as most of you do it. I like to arrange the training camp since it’s possible in the game because I can take a lot of players here and I can play at least two matches per week, rotate the squad and test the tactics a lot. This was no different.

Step #5 - transfers

I should probably put this step above friendlies straight after the squad analysis but the fact I set the friendlies after I decided about my priorities within the squad, I also knew the time I had to bring the right players to the club before the first friendly will be played. Why? Firstly because I like to have the squad completed before the pre-season starts, and secondly, because of what I mentioned above - players need some time to adapt to the new tactical style.

I created a top-priority recruitment focus for the right WB(A) and the left FB(S) and the ongoing recruitment focuses for MC, WP(S) and striker. All unhappy players who wanted to leave moved out of the club during the summer for a lot of money. Ugo Lacombe, the main striker, went to Manchester United for €14.5M, two players went to Manchester City for around €10M together and Gilbert Cardon (the main left defender) went to Fulham for €25M (up to €30.5M).

In combination with the rest of the smaller outgoing transfers, we received almost €50M. It’s not my style and I’m not really into spending too much money but I knew I needed to improve the squad a lot. I spent €34.5M in the end during the first summer including €2.5M for a central midfielder Gianluca Ciucci from Perugia. He is the one young midfielder I shared in the first post about my time with Perugia when I mentioned I can imagine he will be the one who I will take together to other clubs. It was just before he damaged cruciate ligaments and he was out for 7 months. But he is alright.

Just for an example of my transfers - Mario Etxarri was bought for €1.1M from Ponferradina (3rd Spanish tier if I’m right). I signed him mainly for the WP(S) role after I found him. I’m sure he would be able to play as a Shadow Striker and I will surely test him in this role too.

Step #6 - training

I like to set both team and individual training of the first team players on my own. I’m not sure if I’m doing it wrong or good but this is how I like to do it. The screen below shows my custom view dedicated to the training. It consists of some basic things and some training and fitness-related things I like to see.

Columns with the training role/duty + intensity + individual focus can show me not only what players are focused on but it can also serve as some kind of reminder to change the focus or a reminder something was changed behind your back. For example, the position when some player played the match in a different position. I’m not sure why the game restarts the training when it happens but who am I to understand all these things the game does for our good?

The squad view customised based on the training.

I created two main training schedules when the matchday was Saturday and Sunday while I was in Perugia. In France, it’s almost only on Sunday so far as we haven’t played in another competition so far.

It’s some kind of variation of what I would like to do myself if I were a player. There are a lot of set piece routines sessions, some general training, some physical when we don’t travel to an away game. It’s mainly to just play with it.

As I already mentioned, I have no game-breaking info on how things work and what you have to do to develop the best possible players. I’m doing it mainly as I like it and as I want.

Eight league matches in…

…we started life in the French top tier with four wins, two draws and two defeats as we scored 16 goals and conceded 8. There were three weeks of international break after the game with Lens so I arranged two friendlies as it’s a really long pause to just train.

The fourth place in the table is a very good start, especially as we are predicted to finish 16th. Both big wins against Sochaux and Rennes were highlights so far.

Now, as the most important things are set, let’s play more…

FM Slack alert!

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FM24 | Honorary save | Perugia 2025/2026

February 26, 2024

One month = one season? It looks like it right now. I play quite fast, but finding enough time to finish the season and write about it isn't easy. The end of this 2025/2026 season speaks for itself - it took me one real-life week to play the last league match of the campaign to find out how it will end. The third season within this FM24 save was also the last season with Perugia and the 3-5-2 formation. How the season did end? And how is the future resolved for itself? Let me tell you about it…

Transfers

Let’s start with the last transfer activity within my Perugia time. It’s nothing ridiculous, spectacular or game-breaking. I was active mainly during the summer of 2025 after a promotion from the Serie B as I knew I had to improve the squad a little bit to survive in the top tier. My main target was Alessio Signorelli from Parma who was the best goalscorer of Serie B in the previous season. I bought him for €3.4M in the end, and he became my first-choice DLF(S).

I also bought Nicolas Dimitri - my main central defender in the first season who went to Bari for €250k in January 2024 and played 1 and a half seasons in Serie B. I just bought him back for €400k to have some experience at the back.

Probably the last player I want to mention is André Chaves - a Portuguese midfielder who I bought for €375k from Virtus Entella, a transfer release clause for clubs in higher division strikes again (I mentioned it in the previous blog post).

It was for the first time within this save that we spent more on incoming transfers than we received. It was mainly because Dario Iazzetta left for free as he refused to sign a new contract last year and moved to AS Roma. That means only one major transfer was when Michele Cincillia left for Sampdoria for €550k at the beginning of January.

Stefano Scardino, who was our captain in the opening two seasons, decided to leave the club but the fee was laughable as he left for Benfica for just €83k. Well done, DoF…

You can see one more incoming player in the transfer history screen above, it’s Moreno Peretti. A goalkeeper who came in from Sparta Rotterdam in winter when I was not already in charge of scouting or transfers…

The narrative I needed…

…the reason why I was not involved in scouting, transfers, contracts etc. for the second half of this season was very simple. I found out that the manager Cedric Coste left Dijon FCO and became the new manager of Atalanta Bergamo. That meant the Dijon was without a manager. And Dijon was my next destination within this save. There was only one thing I feared about when I decided to play this save - I was afraid I would leave one club but I would have to wait for too much time before another club job would be available.

I wanted to prevent that situation and I decided to apply for a Dijon job. I went for the job interview and I was successful. I didn’t want to leave Perugia ahead of the end of this season so I was very happy that I was able to negotiate the start of my next chapter and signed a contract with Dijon with a start at the end of the 25/26 season.

Perugia board didn’t have any issues with my decision as I already rejected the contract extension three times and they were happy to let me go at the end of the season. I’m sure our great Serie A results helped it.

They only decided I couldn’t affect the transfers, contracts or scouting including the recruitment focus and they gave all the responsibilities to the Director of Football. I, btw., wanted to take the DoF with me to Dijon but he rejected it. I’m not used to changing clubs in FM so all these things are new to me but most of these things worked very well and were reasonable in my eyes.

As I said, I’m not used to moving between clubs in my save so the next screen is a very nice addition in my eyes. It’s nice you can take someone with you instead of just receiving the inbox message “other staff members left the club because of your departure” as in the past. You can see not so many Perugia staff members were willing to join Dijon.

I would probably change only one thing - the date of joining the new club. I played the last Serie A match on Sunday, May 24, 2026. A day later I should join Dijon. Maybe give the manager at least a week before switching the clubs? Maybe more than a week? I would expect at least to the date when the seasons end/start. Or from July 1? Dijon ended their season ten days before Perugia but I would still set this a little bit differently and gave the manager some more time before switching the clubs.

My decision to join Dijon from the next season also meant they would finish the season with the interim manager.

Coppa Italia & Serie A

We made it to the Coppa Italia third round this season. We beat Reggiana 5:3 and Cesena 3:0 in the opening two rounds but we lost to Salernitana 1:4 after an extra-time. I hope for a better cup outcome in the last season but I will have to accept winning the Coppa Italia Serie C in the opening season of the save will remain the only cup trophy with Perugia.

Our Serie A campaign started with four points from the first three matches as we drew with Cittadella, beat Cremonese and lost to Fiorentina. But we won all three matches in September and we moved up in the table.

On the other side, October was the complete opposite. We lost to Sampdoria (2:4), Lazio (2:3), Milan (2:3) and Torino (0:2). It was a combination of some small injuries, not-working tactical small tweaks and the fact all these four teams are/were stronger.

We made it back on track with four wins and four draws during November and December before we packed the calendar year of 2025 with a 2:4 defeat against Inter.

The beginning of the second part of the season included some very depressing matches like a 1:2 home defeat against Cittadella or a 0:2 defeat against Frosinone away from home. But we were also able to beat Lazio 2:1 away from home and we climbed through the table quite inconspicuously.

The last weeks were absolutely superb from all players and six wins in the last eight matches resulted in the top-four finish. The final 4th place also means the Champions League for the next season.

Alessandro Casella finished the 2025/2026 season as the best goalscorer of the Serie A with 20 goals. I signed him for €85k while we were in Serie C in the first season. He scored 34 league goals in Serie C, 10 in Serie B and 20 in Serie A. I think this is the best possible example of my FM saves in terms of signing players (despite this save is a little bit different because of the blank database and fake players and staff).

My favourite player within three seasons with Perugia.

Goodbye, Perugia

I’m leaving Perugia after 133 matches with a 62% win. We won 83 matches, drew 28 and lost 22. We scored 312 goals and conceded 146. We won promotions from Serie C and Serie B and Perugia will play the Champions League football in the fourth season of the save.

I played only with the 3-5-2 formation and I made only a couple of small tweaks during these three seasons. Nothing revolutionary despite moving to better competition.

2023/2024

2024/2025

2025/2026

How did the other two (future) clubs do in the 2025/2026 season?

Dijon finished 12th in the Ligue 1 despite they were 16th after the 25th round. The interim manager did a great job of keeping the club in the top tier.
Reading finished 10th in the English Championship in their first season back in the second tier. They finished just four points behind the 6th place (Tottenham btw.).

What next?

I will switch to Dijon soon after I hit the continue button, I will create a new save file and I will start creating and tweaking the 4-4-1-1 formation as it’s in the plan of the save for next three seasons…

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FM24 | Honorary save | Perugia 2024/2025 (Promotion party in all clubs)

February 1, 2024

A time flies and the second season of my Football Manager 2024 save is over for some time. For a long time to be absolutely honest. But there was not enough time to write about due to many real-life things, mainly because of the almost five weeks-long illness of my son including a couple of days in hospital before Christmas. But the custom skin edits also played a role in it as I spent many days (maybe weeks) just tweaking the code and reloading the skin to find out I made something I wanted for a long time instead of playing the game. I’m one hundred per cent sure I spent more time with the skin customising than playing the game itself. I’m not sure if it will change in the upcoming time but not because of the skin but because of real-life work and real-life football. Priorities they say. Maybe it’s more about I’m just older…

After a promotion thanks to the penalty shootout win in the Serie C play-off final (feel free to read more about the first season HERE), I hoped to be competitive in Serie B mainly because the squad was even younger than in the first season. And also because of the injury crisis during the season. It surprised me when the pre-season odds were presented and our side was set to finish 1st despite being Serie B newcomers.

No pressure there…

Transfers

It was very similar to the opening season in terms of what I knew - we needed some good players to strengthen the squad. My favourite way how to find some good and cheap players in this save is to use the “Minimum Fee Release Clause (Domestic Clubs in Higher Division)”. That’s how I, for example, found young central defender Alberto Cinelli who I bought for €58k from Giugliano (I can safely say it was the best signing from all in my eyes and in terms of his development).

Lorenzo Di Adario (a new main RWB) is the same example as he was one of the best players of Serie C in the first season - €155k was easy money to pay.

I knew some key players from the first season would attract interest from some clubs. But it’s always sad to lose your key players. And I lost two of three of them during the winter of 2024/2025. The best goalscorer of the first season Francesco Riccio left for €1.4M to Lille. And Antonio Donnarumma, our best central midfielder, went to Fiorentina for a club record fee of €4.2M. Donnarumma left us almost at the end of January 2025, which means I had to react very quickly.

After some brief scouting, searching and comparing, I decided to sign Youssou Keïta from Espanyol. He is one and a half years younger than Donnarumma but he is enough experienced to help our central midfielders who are mainly youngsters. In terms of attributes numbers, he is not as good as Donnarumma but he was also a reason why I made a change in our tactics. And maybe it also led to how our Serie B campaign ended…

The picture above shows the comparison of Keïta and Donnarumma from the end of the season. The attributes are highlighted for the CM(S) role because this role is 1) the base for our central midfielders and 2) all our central midfielders are trained for the CM(S) role. Keïta played only a couple of times as CM(S) but that’s not important.

Donnarumma played 10 matches in Serie B for us, scored one goal and made one assist. Keïta made 7 assists in 17 appearances.

The striker Michele Cincilla was the best signing in the end-of-season summary. I signed him as a possible Riccio replacement and he scored 12 goals and made 3 assists in 23(13) appearances. But he didn’t become one of my favourite players and if there will be some bid in the summer, I have no issue with letting him go.

Coppa Italia

We didn’t play in the Coppa Italia last season, only in the Coppa Italia Serie C so we entered to the main cup competition at the beginning of the 2024/2025 season. We got Potenza in the preliminary round, our opponent in the play-off semi-final. Already mentioned Cincilla scored twice and we won 3:1 despite we were 0:1 down after the first half but three goals within twenty minutes secured our win.

The first round draw decided we faced Bari away from home, one of the candidates for a promotion. It was played a week before the Serie B beginning so I took it as another test. We went 1:0 up after the half-time but the home side equalised shortly before the end. They went 2:1 up almost immediately after the extra-time started but we equalised thanks to a second goal by Casella. Gwaeron Vrede scored their third but the captain Stefano Scardino scored after a corner kick in the 119th minute.

Unfortunately, the hard work was not rewarded and we lost on penalties after Forastiero and Scardino missed their attempts. I know it was only a first-round tie but if someone would need some proper advert for the Coppa Italia, this game would be good enough. I also gained enough confidence we can play against stronger sides in Serie B.

Serie B - part 1

The first part of the Serie B campaign was very good except for one month. We remained unbeaten for the first 12 league matches and we were in a very comfortable position without any relegation fears. When we beat Ternana 3:0 away from home in the first round and Gianluca Giucci scored our third in the sixth additional time, I didn’t even imagine it was his last goal for the rest of the season. I mentioned this player in the post about the first season, but his development got a big knock as he damaged his cruciate ligaments and he was out for 7 months.

It happened at the end of October and there were up to eight more injured players during November and we had to improvise a lot. The results show we were not able to win five matches in a row before some players came back in December and we finished third in the table after the first half of the Serie B campaign. Very solid.

The 3-5-2 for the second season

I already mentioned Youssou Keïta and his influence on our tactics for the second half of the season. I played the first half of the season with the same formation as in the first season but when Keïta came in, I decided to make a couple of changes.

The main was to change one CM(S) role to the Roaming Playmaker role and use Keïta in this role. The CM(A) role moved from the MC spot to the MCL. I also switched the duties of both wing-backs. The other changes were in terms of instructions - instead of using more often pressing, I decided to use Counter instruction within the “in transition” and the goalkeeper should distribute the ball through the Take Short Kicks instruction as it works better (in my eyes) when you have some playmaker role as the keeper doesn’t distribute it only to defenders. But maybe that’s only some of my imagination…

What has changed on the pitch? The main change was in terms of variability of how our attacks looked thanks to the unpredictability of the Roaming Playmaker. I really liked how Keïta operated in the middle of the pitch in both halves of the pitch. I also liked how the RPM and CM(S) players were able to swap their positions just because RPM went deeper for the ball more centrally and the CM(S) player moved to the MCR slot automatically.

3-5-2 v 2023/2024

3-5-2 v 2024/2025

Serie B - part 2

We started the second part of the season with a 1:0 win against Empoli, a 1:2 defeat with Cesena and a goalless draw against Brescia. But we woke up after these three not-too-impressive matches. The search for the right starting XI after transfers resulted in a big 5:1 win against Parma. We had strong February, March and April and despite losing 0:2 against Palermo in the 36th round (they secured a promotion thanks to it) we finished second in the table and won the promotion to the Serie A.

It was not “I don’t want to win the title/promotion” style but, yes, I was surprised it ended like this. Maybe it’s because of the completely fake FM world thanks to the blank database. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. I wanted to compare the first and the second half of the season as I thought we scored more and conceded less after the mentioned tactical tweaks. But the truth is that it was almost identical. We scored 37 goals in the first half and 36 in the second half. We conceded 17 in the first half and 16 in the second half.

While comparing these two parts of the season in my head in terms of the tactics, we played more like a team in the second half of the season. It was much more compact and I thought every player wanted to fight for his teammates. I’m not sure why I have this feeling but it’s not always only about results and goals in my head.

Bari is the loser of this season in Serie B 100% as they were the first in the table for some time twice during the season but they finished 5th in the end and lost to Sampdoria in the play-off preliminary round and their season ended negatively. Sampdoria as the last play-off member won the promotion.

I already know I will lose one of the key members of the squad - the WBL Dario Iazzetta who is set to join AS Roma for free as he was unwilling to sign a new contract with us. That’s also why he played fewer matches at the end of the season to give Mario Mercurio enough playing time before he became the new WBL number one.

Just for your idea, this is the team from the end of the season. The average age of the team - 19.93.

How did the other two (future) clubs do in the 2024/2025 season?

Dijon finished 3rd in the Ligue 2 and they qualified to the promotion play-off. They beat Nancy in the semi-final after penalties and they also beat Metz 1:0 on aggregate to make it back to the Ligue 1 after four years. That means a second straight promotion for Dijon, the same as we did with Perugia.
Reading is back in the English Championship after two years in League One as they finished 2nd in the table just a point behind Charlton.

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FM24 | Revamped set pieces. My pros and cons

January 12, 2024

It took many years but the Football Manager 2024 brought us the new, or maybe better worded, revamped system of how we can set the set pieces. It would be wrong to say it’s completely new because some things didn’t change but I will mention it later in this post.

I wanted to post a couple of things I like but also a couple of things I don’t like (and in the case of some of them I don’t understand why it is like this). So, there are my pros and cons of the revamped set pieces in FM24.

“…new coaches will have a big impact on your careers pretty much straight away as they are the driving force behind our refreshed Set Piece Creator.

This creator marks a significant shift from how we’ve approached set pieces in previous editions of Football Manager. Now, the focus of every routine and scenario is on the players with the most appropriate Attributes instead of their positions in your tactic.” [from the Set Pieces refresh and coaches debut blog by SI].

WHAT I LIKE

1) Priority list. The main change of FM24 is how the roles are divided into its categories: Aerial ThreatBox Threat, Recovery Defender and Creators. This change also brought us a new Priority list.

This list “determines which roles you think are the most important at each type of set piece. If one of your players, based on their Attributes, is ranked number one in more than one role, they’ll be assigned to the one that’s positioned higher in the priority list.”

And I have to say tweaking this priority list and the ranking of my players within this priority list is the best thing within the whole FM24 set piece creator in my eyes. I think I spent more time tweaking this priority list than playing the game itself. I’m in the middle of the second season while writing this, that speaks for itself.

I, for example, like to have Creators set as the 2nd choice while using short corner kick delivery because I want to “create something” rather than just pump the ball to the box. If nothing more, this priority list and the ranking within each category allow you to play with it more than in the previous editions.

The fact the priority list and the ranking allow you to control where the players will be even if you rotate the full squad is, of course, a very pleasing bonus.

I would probably rather use the Decision attribute instead of Long Shots for the creator’s group but that’s for a different kind of debate.

2) Routine frequency. I don’t remember the exact phrase from the previous editions but when you had loaded more than one set piece routine in the past, it always told you something like “the routines will be rotated continuously (randomly) during the match” or something like that.

But FM24 has changed this “random change” to a very useful thing Set Piece Frequency. This popup window appears when you create/duplicate/load a new routine and you can decide what routine will be used more often, average or less often. The most important thing in my eyes is that you can change this frequency manually whenever you want. Just hit the button with the routine name and click on the “Modify Routine Frequencies” option.

I, for example, had my best aerial threat player injured for two weeks so I changed the priority and used the short routine more often than the routine with the near and far post delivery.

3) Overal-design-overhaul. I don’t play this because of the graphics quality or design. But I have to say the overall change of the creator is good and it’s a welcome change after so many editions (FM16 - FM23) with the same green pitch.

The popup windows, like when you click on the player dot on the pitch, feel more familiar and more natural. It’s also nice and useful that you can see all the important things in one popup window - the player, his key attributes, the role he is assigned to and there’s also another button to change his group. As I said, it’s a useful change.

There is nothing unnecessarily flashy here, on the contrary, everything seems quite decent. It looks better and it fits better to the skin overall.

WHAT I DON’T LIKE

1) Throw-ins. The already mentioned blog by SI has a chapter about the throw-ins. It’s called “A more authentic approach to throw-ins”. But how “authentic” it would be if you would come to the training camp of some big club and you would tell the manager and coaches they are not able to set up the throw-in routines for the defensive and middle third of the pitch? Just leave it random and let your players what they want to do.

Yes, in FM24, we can influence how your throw-in routines will look only if it’s a long throw-in routine within the attacking third of the pitch. One of my favourite routines in the Football Manager, but also in real-life football, is a clever movement of the players in combination with short delivery. Just a simple pass & move after a throw-in. But the only thing I can influence within throw-ins now is the long throw-in routine.

The rest is influenced by the AI and players. I select “work the line” or “retains possession” and I have to pray my players will have enough sense to not make something stupid. You can have as many set pieces coaches as possible or you can do all your set pieces by yourself but this is something you can’t influence in any way. Stupid in my eyes because as you can’t edit the routine, you can’t even select the right players for the right roles based on the priority list.

“Throw-in will be taken by the most suitable player on the designated side of the pitch.” But what about the rest of the players? Nothing. There are not even the key attributes for each role within the throw-in routines when you click on the players’ icon. When you switch to attacking routines, you can’t even see the names of the roles. The “middle third” throw-ins don’t even have the defensive routine available.

“More authentic” = more automated.

Also, the screenshot below shows when you hit the preview option within the defensive third routine of the defensive throw-in. I can’t influence where my players will be. I can’t influence the priority list. I can’t influence the wrong position and roles.

But it’s more authentic.

I just want to control my team and my players. Instead of this, I can see my player staying forward while he is set to mark the far post…

2) Defensive routines. Just one routine? Really? Another thing I really don’t like is the absence of the defensive corner and free-kick routines. By the word absence, I mean mainly the fact you can have only one defensive routine for all corners and for all free kicks.

You can have separate routines for shooting range, and wide and deep free-kicks. But you can have only one routine for defensive corners. The box with “Remove Routine, Reset to Default” and other options doesn’t offer the possibility to create a new one or duplicate the current routine in the same way as within the attacking routines.

There are also some new visuals “to illustrate how strong teams and individual players are at both attacking and defending set pieces” within the data hub in FM24. But even if you know that your next opponent has a dangerous near-post routine, you have to adjust your defensive routine before the match because your general defensive routine is based on the zonal marking without marking the near post. And next week you are playing against someone else who prefers to deliver corners to the far post. The only option is to create and save all the possible variations and load one of them ahead of every match.

3) Posts marking set-up. When you join a new club or you start a new save, there’s a simple “quiz” with a couple of questions about how you want to set up your set pieces. One of these questions is “What posts do you want players marking whilst defending?”. Three possible options in the game: both posts, near posts, or no posts. Do you miss some options? No? I do.

I miss the “Far post” as one of the options. It’s my personal preference probably but I have liked to use Mark Far Post for many years. But the current version of the game and the set piece creator offer only already mentioned options for the automatic set-up of set pieces. That means even If I would like to let my set pieces to some coach (I don’t want to), he will always ignore defending the far post area.

“Why am I always conceding goals from far post corners? Why did the set piece coach do nothing with it?” So, I have to take responsibility for set pieces and set it all by myself.

4) Type of delivery vs. corner taker. When I started creating routines in FM24, I was happy with the option “Set player XYX as the default taker from both sides” and the fact you can have it both ticked and unticked and you are not forced to use one option or the second one. But I found one thing very annoying.

When the popup window appears and you are trying to select the possible corner taker, you have “left footers” and “right footers”. But it doesn’t matter if you select the type of delivery as inswinger or outswinger, it will always search only left food players for the left side and right foot players for the right side.

And you can’t move the right-footed player to the left side and vice versa. Not sure where the player labelled as “either footed” would end. Maybe some description would be enough because right now, the only way how to influence who will take the corner is to switch between inswinging and outswinging delivery.

COACHES AND WHAT DIDN’T CHANGE

1) Set piece coaches. For me, personally, it doesn’t matter if there are set pieces coaches in the game. But that really is just a personal thing because I don’t trust AI and I rather do everything by myself in the game in terms of tactics, set pieces, squad selection, training etc.

So, I think the only reason why I should have the set piece coach in my save is that he is doing routines I can’t set by myself. Like throw-ins. He is helping with the set-piece training sessions. But on the other side, I’m responsible for set pieces so the game probably will always consider myself as the main one.

2) The movement. One thing that changed is that roles don’t have more than three key attributes. For example, a player who is set to attack near post had 6 key attributes in the past including Jumping Reach, Strength, Heading, Off The Ball, Bravery, Finishing and Decisions. In FM24, there are only the first three attributes.

It’s because it was divided between Aerial Threats and Box Threats. The box threats players now have anticipation, finishing and off the ball. But the roles as attack near post etc. are the same. It’s logical to use someone as a box threat if he has the mentioned three attributes higher than the aerial threats. I’m glad SI made this a little bit easier and reduced the amount of key attributes for each role.

But nothing has changed to the fact that your main aerial threat who is responsible for attacking the near post should be able to move at the right time to the right place, not only be a tall player with a lot of strength. No matter if the off-the-ball attribute is here or not.

CONCLUSION

The overall change of the set piece editor is useful and good in my eyes. It was much needed and I think it has some potential for sure, but I hope it won’t stop with this overhaul, and it won’t be like this for another seven or eight years as with the previous set piece creator.

Things like set pieces will always be a little bit complicated and not easy to implement in the game because of the style of this game. It’s based on the positioning and the off-the-ball movement principles. It will always have some limitations. I can understand it.

But it would be nice if the game would not create its own limitations in terms of “authentic-automated” routines you can affect. It kills the enjoyment from actual playing and it creates more “watching how someone else/AI is playing” the game.

All pictures in this post were taken from the game while using the default FM24 skin. It’s not a mistake but I made it on purpose to avoid some potential bugs within my own custom skin while using some outdated files.

Thanks for reading as always. Take care.

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FM24 | Honorary save | Perugia 2023/2024

December 29, 2023

It took me around one month to finish the opening season within my Football Manager 2024 save. The save I named “Honorary save” and the plan is to play with three different clubs with I played for in the previous 20 years of the Football Manager series. If you would like to read more about this save, feel free to open this post.

The opening three seasons will be (or should be) played in Italy with AC Perugia. I would like to try to play with the same formation/shape as when I played for each club in the past. And Perugia was the club where I started using the 3-5-2 formation the most.

Another different part of this save is that I’m playing with the blank database - no real players, no real staff members. Everything is fake and created by the game through the “add players to playable teams” option.

The 3-5-2 for the opening season

I didn’t want to limit myself with some rules about using the same team instructions as in the past. Firstly, I played with Perugia fifteen years ago and some of the team instructions don’t exist in the game anymore. Secondly, I played the game differently fifteen years ago (read = ”tick all the instructions and we will see what will happen”).

That means I kept the 3-5-2 formation, but I customised the instructions and intensity of the tactic within the players available.

As I mentioned already, I love to play simple football. Everyone who knows me a little bit thanks to previous posts and saves, is aware that my favourite central defender role is the one with the stopper duty. This blank database was generous to me and created almost all the central defenders with the key attributes for this role.

Almost like I would tick some button in the game set-up to create everyone as CD(St). I decided to make it to my advantage and I’m using both right & left central defender with the stopper duty. The middle one was changed from the BPD(Co) to CD(Co) and to CD(D) throughout the season.

As I already said, it’s a very simple and not so demanding and intense tactic in terms of pressing. The most important thing is that both CM(S) players have the hold position of individual instruction. But it doesn’t affect their movement up top and they still can reach the area around the opponent’s box to finish second balls or support the offensive phase overall.

The focus play down the left/right instructions worked very well as we were able to use both wing-backs properly. The amount of their assists during the season speaks for itself.

I don’t think I will change something major for the second season of this save. Maybe, but only maybe, I will be changing both wing-backs‘ duties from support to attack and back to have both of them with the same duty. I think it will be possible in combination with CM(S). But we will see.

Coppa Italia Serie C

The cup competition was a welcomed exit from the league competition. It was also good that we played mostly against teams from the other two Serie C groups so we were able to compare with other teams too. We needed an extra-time win straight in the first round against Carrarese as I rotated the squad and it was almost our end.

But the rest of the competition was great for us and after beating Catania, Ancona, Fermana and Cesena (semi-final), we made it to the final against Alessandria. It ended with a 6:3 win on aggregate after two wins and we were able to lift the first trophy of the save.

Serie C

Despite the relegation from the Serie B, the promotion back from the Serie C was not the main aim. Neither the club board nor myself. We started the season very well and we were top of the league between the fourth and the 12th round. But we moved down and we were mostly third or second in the rest of the season.

We were behind Pescara most of the time as they were great and top of the league for almost half of the season before Cesena moved over them and they won the straight promotion to the higher division.

We overcame Pescara in the end and we finished second in the table. Just one point behind Cesena with 90 points. We beat some records during the season including the most wins in the club's history or most points gained too. But the main one was the amount of goals we scored across the 38 matches – 118. The goal difference was 90 goals in the end. We beat the league record by Piacenza (78 goals) after 26 matches were played…

The second place in the table meant we reached the promotion play-off and we had to wait for two in-game weeks for the first opponent in the play-off quarter-final. It was Pescara, probably the hardest possible opponent. But we beat them 5:2 on aggregate. We also beat Potenza (2nd in the Serie C group C) mainly thanks to a perfect away performance in the second leg.

The play-off final was very tight against Pro Vercelli (5th in the Serie C group A). The first leg away from home ended with a 2:2 draw and I was positive ahead of the home second leg. But it the second leg was only about penalties in the end. Condellos scored from a pen in the 12th minute, we equalised from a penalty in the 29th minute. And that was all for the rest of the match. No more goals, no more big chances, mostly only ineffective set pieces. It went to the penalties in the end we were the luckiest team as our goalkeeper Eligio Spagnolo saved two of their attempts and we won the play-off and the promotion to Serie B as well.

Signings were key - most of them

When I created the save, the squad contained around 18 players. I promoted some youngsters from the youth teams but I was 100% sure I had to sign someone new (better) to be able to compete in the league for the whole season. Especially as some of the „key“ members of the original squad were not „key“ in my eyes after I checked their attributes.

As you can see in the picture above, the strike Francesco Riccio became the best Serie C goalscorer with 34 league goals. He scored 47 goals in 50(2) appearances in all competitions this season.

Another striker, Alessandro Casella, who played most of the season as the DLF(S) was another key member of the squad as he made 46 appearances, scored 37 goals and made 21 assists. Central midfielder Antonio Donnarumma would be among my most favourite signings (and players overall) during the first season. He gave us the needed experience and calm in the central midfield area and some of his assists were delicious.

Dario Iazzetta who played as our main left WB(A) scored 11 goals and made 21 assists. The right WB slot was the only position where I had to sign someone on loan because there were no available or interested transfer players in the summer. I went for Yannick Dan from Hellas Verona in the end and it was a good choice. He was very solid, mainly during the first two-thirds of the season before I started playing also our own youngsters to give them more playing time in this position/role as it was more clear that I wouldn’t be able to sign Dan permanently.

The only not-so-good signing was a young central midfielder Gerard who I signed on loan from Mallorca for the second part of the season. But he didn’t get enough opportunities mainly because he injured himself during the training session a couple of days after his arrival. And I decided to use my own players in the end.

Gianluca Ciucci

One of the side things of this save I thought about was to take some player or players within all three clubs I will with. After one season with Perugia, my current hottest candidate for this role is 17-year-old central midfielder, Gianluca Ciucci.

I played him as the CM(S) and he was in the starting line-up in all last four play-off matches against Potenza and Pro Vercelli. His development so far is very good and I’m looking forward to if he improves further.

How did the other two (future) clubs do in the 2023/2024 season?

Dijon had a great season in the French Championnat National (3rd tier) as they finished 2nd in the table and won the promotion to the Ligue 2. Nancy finished first with 78 points, Dijon second with 77 points, Sochaux third with 76 points and Chateauroux fourth with 75 points.
Reading did very well in the Sky Bet League One in comparison with real life. Despite the points deduction, they managed to finish 6th and reached the play-off. But they lost to Lincoln on aggregate and didn’t win a promotion.

Note about the blank database

The major advantage of this blank database is that is not boring. I have no urge to buy the same players again and again, the same as I’m not searching for the same coaches and scouts because I know they are good and free. I had to scout more properly because I didn’t know the majority of players. And thanks to the fact that players were added to playable teams randomly, the leagues are not as predictable as in real life or in the traditional database.

Just an example: Sassuolo ended 2nd in the Serie A while Lecce was third and Frosinone fourth. The big clubs Milan, Juventus and Roma ended up outside of the European cups. Leicester didn’t even make it to the English Championship play-off, the same as Southampton. Lyon won the Ligue 1, Leverkusen and RB Leipzig ended in 15th and 16th places in the Bundesliga, AZ Alkmaar won the Eredivisie and Ceske Budějovice ending third in the Czech top tier despite their being a total mess in real life and bottom of the table.

And to be honest, it's probably exactly the best thing I could make because it’s a great refreshment after so many years. In combination with the faces from FMUGens pack and “ultrarealistischen NewGAN-Facepack” by FMRocknRolla & FM.Z Community it’s perfect.

FM Slack alert!

You will find a short channel summary in the ‘generalchat’ so it will be easier for you to navigate through the channels.

Take care.

My Football Manager 2024 honorary save

December 4, 2023

When I started thinking about what kind of save I would like to do in the Football Manager 2024, it wasn’t an easy decision. Especially as some of the new edition’s features, including the option to transfer the FM23 save to the new edition, were announced. One part of me decided to continue within the save with VVV-Venlo. But when I won the top tier three times in a row and the club board was refusing to improve the club in terms of the new stadium, I lost the motivation to continue with this save.

The second option I thought about was to just open one of my favourite books “The Football Shirts Book” by Neal Heard and just select some club with some quality shirt(s).

Another way I thought about was to start a save with Reading FC. Many of you who have followed me for some time will know that it’s a club that I have been following for many years despite not living here. But who doesn’t support/follow some foreign club, hm? I had one of the best saves in my CM/FM history back in FM17, they are in a total mess right now in real life and it’s depressing following all the things around the club.

But in the end, I decided to do something I didn’t do for a long time. Journeyman save. In some way…

Honorary save with a lot of memories

Do you remember what was your first-ever CM/FM club? I don’t remember it. I know I always was that type of young FM player who was interested in similar youngsters/wonderkids and I wanted to bring them to my current club no matter how hard it was. It’s still the same in some ways after many years. I saved almost all my money during my FM23 save with Venlo to just buy one player for €25M to play just a couple of in-game months before I ended the save.

I decided to make some kind of honorary save in the Football Manager 2024 because the FM24 edition will be the last of its kind. The same as I decided there will be the FM24 Rensie skin, the last of its kind.

The decision to make the honorary save came to my mind also thanks to following all the circumstances around the Reading FC as I wrote above. The other reason was that I had some fantastic saves in the last 20 years about I didn’t write about. Or maybe better worded - I didn’t write about them in English and they are not saved/archived somewhere because most of my writing in English is on one hard drive as my old WordPress blog after I moved here to CoffeehouseFM.

I wrote about a lot of my saves in my native language at the old forum-based website I led for some time. I learned a lot about FM but also about writing during this time and I think it was one of the main basics before I started writing for a living. Good old days.

The save summaries from the Football Manager 2015 until the Football Manager 2023 are still available to read here on the CoffeehouseFM website as you can see in the posts’ summary below. The newer = the more detailed. But that’s only nine editions of twenty. What happened before?

Save summaries from FM15 to FM23

Oct 6, 2023

FM23 | Nine and a half seasons with VVV-Venlo

Oct 6, 2023

Sep 30, 2022

FM22 | Ten years with Warta Poznan

Sep 30, 2022

Oct 8, 2021

FM21 | Ten years with GAIS in Sweden

Oct 8, 2021

Aug 27, 2020

FM20: Celaya FC - ten years of club development

Aug 27, 2020

Sep 28, 2019

Goodbye South America, goodbye FM19.

Sep 28, 2019

Oct 10, 2018

FM18 Epilogue | BFC Siófok 2017 - 2045

Oct 10, 2018

Sep 10, 2017

FM17 | 24 years with Reading FC

Sep 10, 2017

Oct 4, 2016

FM16: Seventeen years with AB

Oct 4, 2016

Oct 18, 2015

FM15: Twenty years with Spartans FC

Oct 18, 2015

Keep calm and head down

…there were a lot of great saves before I started my first blog(site) in a language called CzEnglish. I have some screens and some pictures from old games saved at several places but it’s not too much detailed archive. But I remember most of these saves by the Football Manager in the last twenty years.

As always, when I got this idea, I was 100% sure it was the right thing. The more I thought about it, the more I was sure it was a perfect idea. And as always, I was so excited and ambitious, that I was sure I could play with all the clubs I managed in the last 20 years…

…luckily, I woke up at the right time and told myself it was time to think a little bit rationally and not be an idiot. I have two small kids, I have a time-consuming job and I love being outdoors a lot. Playing & coaching my local town team, riding and running etc. And the Football Manager is not even around my top 5 priorities right now. It’s just something I love but I don’t want to spend all my time with it.

Dijon, AS Roma, FK Zarkovo (3rd Serbian tier), RCD Mallorca, uncountable amount of saves with Sparta Prague, Tranmere Rovers, York City FC, Derby County… There were a lot of English saves when I was around my twenties as I loved playing here. I initially planned to select five clubs I would switch between during FM24.

But I have to be realistic. I decided to select three clubs. Two of them are from the time before I started to write in English. One of them is from a more recent past.

Tactics - then & now

The good thing about my Football Manager saves from the past is that I, for unknown reasons, remember the tactics I used with each club. When I played with the BFC Siofok, my main tactic was the 4-3-3 with a flat midfield. When I played with York City FC, it was all about a proper 4-4-2 formation aka all the balls had to go to the top and players like David McGurk, Martyn Woolford or Manny Panther were on my shortlist for a long time within a game but also within a real life when I was searching results and line-ups.

I also remember when I tried my favourite tactics with three central defenders for the first time. I still remember how I used four playmakers within a 4-1-4-1 formation while playing with AB Copenhagen in FM16 and many people didn’t understand how is it possible it works together.

The simple aim is to use the same tactic as in the past with the same club. And try to make it better than in the past. It won’t be easy to show exactly what instructions were in some tactics because it was changed in the game recently. Some instructions don’t exist anymore. Some were renamed or moved elsewhere.

But the main common thing of all my saves is clear (probably) for all - make the most of set pieces. With some new features and designs of set pieces, it can add a new dimension to the save I will try to create new routines for each club and I will try to manage the stats of set pieces for all clubs separately.

Three selected clubs + bonus

Before I made the final decision on the three clubs I would try to play with in FM24, I had a long list of clubs and tactics. Naturally, many of these clubs were from the saves from the recent years but as I said, I narrowed it down to two clubs from the non-English-blogging era and one from the more recent time.

AC Perugia Calcio - this will be my first club and the starting point of my virtual manager. I remember I didn’t play with Perugia for a long time like 15 or 20 seasons but I remember I liked that save. It was that save when I tried the 3-5-2 formation for the first time after reading a lot about it. I also remember it was one of the first saves when I just didn’t pick some big club and destroyed everyone because of money. I remember I was proud I selected some club with a rich history, with some amazing former players and I was able to read a lot about it. So that’s the first one.
Dijon FCO - I will try to move a little further north within Europe as my second club should be Dijon. I remember I liked playing with their club badge when I was creating some simple graphics for the save like headers etc. But I remember this save mainly because of Raphaël Cacérès. Raphaël is only one and a half years younger than me in real life. I played most of this save with the 4-4-1-1 formation and Raphaël played as a lone striker and as the AM player when he was older within the save. Cacérès was Dijon’s player during 2010-2013 with a short loan spell with Troyes. I don’t remember the exact number of goals and assists he made during this save but it was a lot. He was my typical FM player/hero - unwanted and not good enough at the start of the save, hidden somewhere in the reserves, I promoted him to the first team, found him the right role and I remember him since that moment.
Reading FC - I already mentioned I had quite a lot of English-based saves in the past. I was a big fan of lower leagues and I enjoyed starting from the bottom of the playable competitions. I remember I downloaded some custom database with the 10th tier activated and there were too many clubs to choose from that I didn’t even start that save. As I enjoyed most of these saves including some short saves in Northern Ireland or Scotland, all of them were beaten by my FM17 save with Reading. The same as many people follow me just because I decided to release my custom skin, many people still remember the days when I managed Danny Loader, Liam Kelly and more of these young players. This save was a mix of 4-1-3-2 and 4-3-1-2, which means I will try to adapt to this narrow formation.
- It’s probably not only about the save itself and how much I enjoyed it (24 years of the save) but it was also a great time in terms of my FM website where many great people also shared their FM articles - Oliver Jensen aka @fmFutbolManager, Mike @BrazierFM, Chris Johnson @randomfilming/@FM_BlackCrow for example. It was great to follow all of them in the next years as they developed into great FM authors and they have/had their websites with great posts.
Bonus club - I already mentioned the fact I had a quite long list of possible clubs. The same as I had a lot of favourite clubs/saves within the last 20 years of Football Manager, I also had a lot of favourite players. It’s not only that great regen Loader, but there were many others. If I have enough time, and some of my previous clubs connected with some favourite players would be available within the job centre in the game, I can move here too.

It’s somehow interesting and sad too that all these teams are in the third tier at the start of the save…

The set-up of the save?

I can’t play with one club forever. That means I will play 3 seasons with each of these three clubs. I put them as my favourite clubs so I will also see news about them within the game. And I can spot if they will be without a manager.

I will use the same formation/tactic for all 3 seasons within each club but mostly as the core shape, I can change roles, instructions etc. Just make the tactic better than before.

I also decided to try one new thing. I say new but some of you probably know it. I didn’t want to use the “fake players/staff” option within the game because you can very easily find out what player is it as he has only a different name. But thanks to @Jord, who notified me about the “blank database”, it all clicked on.

The game set-up is straightforward - England, Italy and France are not the only loaded nations but I loaded some more to have more players in the game. With “Add players to playable teams”, there are more than 16.5k players at the start of the save, that’s more than enough.

I started the save with the “Your World” game mode just for the narrative because it is my world now with the blank database. After many years, I also didn’t disable the first window transfer activity because I thought it didn’t matter with the blank database and because I didn’t know the players.

The save set-up

Player search view with the facepack

To improve the newgens, I decided to download the “ultrarealistischen NewGAN-Facepack” by FMRocknRolla & FM.Z Community. I’m using the pack with shirts as it reminds me of the old times.

You can find me in the Football Manager Slack or on Twitter.

Take care.

Follow @FMRensie

FM24 | A short-term tactic challenge - saving Birmingham City in the Championship

November 29, 2023

When you are creating a custom skin, you need some save to be able to test all the things you edited. In my eyes, it’s ideal to test it with a nation/club that already includes logos and player faces because they are licensed and you don’t have to spend a lot of time waiting while the skin reloads every time.

This is not a must thing to do, you can test your skin changes by reloading your skin absolutely how you want but the more graphic add-ons you have, the more time you will spend reloading the skin. And that’s how this short-term tactic challenge happened. By testing the skin. And as a complete coincidence…

I just needed to test how the skin looks in terms of club primary/secondary colours so I started a new save with France, England and Italy loaded. I holidayed for a couple of months to be able to check the ‘FM Stag Stats’. I moved from France to Italy and to England to see more than just one club and league too. Before I ended up as a manager of Birmingham City just because I needed to test the match scoreboard within the EFL competition…

Bottom of the English Championship

As I said, it was just a coincidence this save/challenge even happened. I just wanted to play some FM matches and test some set pieces but I didn’t have enough time and energy to start the main long-term save. I already finished the post about one season with Sparta and when I checked this save, Birmingham was bottom of the English Championship after 27 matches with a 6-point gap to safety.

I had absolutely no idea what sort of players were in the squad. I had no idea who is good and who is not. I know only some players. Juninho Bacuna only because he is the brother of former Reading player Leandro Bacuna (I had to check it because I was confused and I thought FM had the wrong first name…). Krystian Bielik. And the one and only Oliver Burke…

I don’t know why but I thought it could be a good challenge for me…

How it went with the tactical approach

I went to the Tactics screen and I loaded the same tactic as I used with Sparta and I tried to fit Birmingham players into it. It was not easy and the first match showed me I have to make changes. Not too many but I had to change everything in all areas - instructions, positions & roles. The only thing remained - a balanced mentality.

Step #1 to safety | Saturday, 20/1/2024 | Stoke (Away): I kept the formation and instructions from the Sparta Prague save and I selected some players who didn’t play too much in the previous time of the save. A couple of players were also pissed off even before the kick-off because I decided to play them somewhere else - Krystian Bielik for example, who I thought can be a solid option for the CM position. We lost 1:2 - Léris opened the score in the 27th minute, we equalised in the 76th and they scored a winning goal from a penalty kick four minutes later. I didn’t expect we would beat them 5:0 just because the tactic worked in a different save. That’s not how it works…

Gaps, mistakes and changes

The first match showed me three things that I was 100% sure I had to fix (or at least try to fix) to survive in this competition.

There were too many gaps between all lines. Almost all deflected and second balls were won by Stoke players in that match. The gap between the defensive line and two central midfielders was like a big crater.
There were too many mistakes in possession and passes. The game suggests 89% of passes were completed but I probably saw the remaining 11%…
Too much “complicated” playing style can’t secure enough points.

Is there some gap between the defensive line and the rest of the players? And can I see it?

I decided to move the AM player to the DM position. I didn’t want to use a half-back because there were already three central defenders. I didn’t want to use a playmaker role in this position (more in the #3). In the end, I went with the Anchor role. This role should secure me the player will risk less, he will hold his position and he will fill the big gap between the lines. Another change was to reduce the intensity of pressing. I reduced it to just “Counter-Press”. So, a higher defensive line or high press was not included.
The first thing I did was remove the “Pass Into Space” team instruction. It could be very risky and it showed again thanks to this if you don’t have good enough players.
The main point of this bullet point is that I was sure I had to make it as simple as possible. There are no such good players as in the save with Sparta. There were not good enough players to play as BPD = I changed the back three to CD(St) - CD(D) - CD(St). There were not good enough players to play as AP(S) = I changed this role to MEZ(S) and the second MC role was changed to CM(A) because no central midfielder was physically capable of playing as a BBM for more than 30 minutes before he fell to the pitch.
- I mentioned how I wanted to make it more simple - that’s why I removed the Play Out Of Defence instruction. There were too many situations when the defensive players wanted to play football in dangerous areas and they were not capable of doing it. It led to mistakes and to both goals we conceded against Stoke.

“Bikes” on sides remained

One thing remained the same I kept a Complete Wing-Back role on both sides of the pitch. The players available in the squad were physically well-prepared. For example, Ethan Laird (22 years old) was one of the main weapons of our team in this short-term challenge. His five assists in the first five appearances as CWB(R) speak for itself. But more later…

Step #2 to safety | Tuesday, 23/1/2024 | Middlesbrough (Home): Just three days after the first match we faced Middlesbrough, the 11th team in the league table. Ethan Laird made two assists and we won 2:1 thanks to a late goal by super sub Tyler Roberts in 90+1.
FA Cup intermezzo | Saturday | 27/1/2024 | Brighton (Home): I would rather not play this match as I was afraid some player would pick up some injury but there was a week without the mid-week match after this cup game so I took it as another option how to improve the tactic. We lost 1:3 despite being 1:0 up after eighteen minutes…
Step #3 to safety | Saturday, 3/2/2024 | West Brom (Away): A thought opponent to take some points from. They were in the play-off spot for a long time but we were another team they lost points with and also moved down through the table. The match ended with a 1:1 draw.
Step #4 to safety | Saturday, 10/2/2024 | Sheffield Wednesday | Away: Crucial match for both teams. But more crucial for us. Sheffield Wednesday was the 23rd before this match. The aim was to win to finally catch up with the teams ahead of us. It was a dominant display and we won 3:0 thanks to a hattrick by Lukas Jutkiewicz. The “Focus Play Down The Left/Right” instructions paid off 100% in this match as Jutkiewicz scored two from these three goals after crosses from the right side of the pitch after an assist by CWB(S)…

Step #5 to safety | Tuesday, 13/2/2024 | Blackburn (Home): The home match against Blackburn (6th in the table prior to the match) was the most dominant so far despite they were 1:0 up early in the match. We scored two goals after a short corner kick routine, one goal after a cross from the left side and one goal by AF after Jutkiewicz won the header after a longer pass from the defensive lines and we won 4:1. The most important thing was we moved up to the 22nd position after this win when the 32nd round was completed.

Steps #6, #7, #8 and #9 to safety | 17/2/2024 - 5/3/2024: After a perfect 4:1 win at home against Blackburn, we faced four more teams from the top 10. The first one was Sunderland and we earned 1 point for a 2:2 draw as we were 0:1 and 1:2 down and all four goals were scored in the 1st half. We moved down to 23rd in the table as Sheff Wed won away against Millwall.
The fourth in the table Ipswich was next. And we drew 1:1 here after this lovely goal by young Jordan James.
Southampton at home, they were 3rd in the table ahead of the match, they were 2:0 up after 28 minutes but we managed to draw it 2:2 after goals by James and Jutkiewicz.
Another match against a team with the play-off ambitions - Hull City away. Again, Hull went 2:0 up after 26 minutes, we overturned the result to 3:2 thanks to three goals within 15 minutes after the break before conceding the third goal in the 82nd minute - 3:3. That means four points for four draws against teams from around the play-off spots.
We remained 23rd in the table after these four matches with ten matches left to play…
Step #10 to safety | Saturday, 9/3/2024 | Millwall (Away): The important 2:1 away win in the tenth match of this challenge thanks to goals by Anderson and Stansfield. I had to rotate the squad a little bit because some players were tired a lot after previous matches. But the red card in the second half also helped us and we moved out of the relegation zone after this match as you can see…

Making a star from an unwanted veteran

I didn’t share one change within the tactic. It’s connected to the striker position and I decided to change the PF(A) role to the DLF(A) role alongside the Advanced Forward. The main thing was that Scott Hogan was injured and I couldn’t use him as PF(A).

I used that PF(A) role in the first match against Stoke, he scored one goal but it was not a good enough performance and I didn’t like what I saw. I decided to use 34-year-old Polish forward Lukas Jutkiewicz as the DLF(A). Jutkiewicz has good enough attributes of Aggression, Teamwork or Work Rate to be a decent PF(A) but I wanted to change it. I decided to play him as DLF(A)…

…Jutkiewicz made just 4 appearances for the previous time of the season before I started this challenge. Only three of them were in the league and all of them only as a sub. I didn’t have too high expectations and he absolutely smashed even the smallest expectations.

He made 11 appearances - 10 in the league and 1 in the FA Cup against Brighton. He didn’t score only against Ipswich and Millwall. He scored 12 league goals in these 10 mentioned league games and made one assist. It’s definitely the best possible script for how to make a hero from someone who was unwanted here…

The player overview and form screens below are made after the 37th round.

Step #11 to safety | Saturday, 16/3/2024 | Watford (Home): The same goalscorers - Keshi Anderson and Jay Stansfield secured us three points after a 2:0 win over Watford. They had some chances but we were in control of the match against the side from the middle of the table and we moved up to 19th position prior to the international break in March 2024.

Does FM spy on me? I’m absolutely sure FM knows when I am happy with how the save goes. Just three days after a 2:0 win over Watford, two e-mails related to injury news came to my mailbox. Our main keeper John Ruddy is out for up to 10 weeks with a hip injury. And Lukas Lutkiewicz is out for up to 4 weeks with a thigh strain.

Another thing was that three players of the starting line-up came back from the national team crumpled up like paper and were unable to play the next match due to fatigue.

Thank you…

Steps #12, #13, and #14 to safety | 29/3/2024 - 6/4/2024: Despite losing key players due to injury and due to fatigue from the national team duties, we were able to beat Queens Park Rangers 1:0 away from home thanks to late goal by Jay Stansfield. It was important mainly because QPR were bottom of the table ahead of the match and we needed to increase the gap.
Preston at home, another important match against a team in the relegation battle as they were 18th. And we won 1:0 at home thanks to a wonder strike by Juninho Bacuna.
The 41st round took us to Leicester, the second team on the table and despite scoring a nice corner kick goal, they beat us 3:1. It simply was a different level. Despite the last defeat with Leicester, we remained 18th in the table with 6 points ahead of the 22nd place with five matches to go.

Step #15 to safety | Wednesday, 10/4/2024 | Cardiff (Home): The next opponent had no issues with the relegation zone but they were still able to reach the play-off place. I wanted at least four points from the next two home matches including this against Cardiff. Calum Robinson scored the first goal of the match in the 19th minute and Cardiff took the lead. But Jay Stansfield levelled ahead of the end of the first half and Jordan James scored a winning goal in the 67th minute - 2:1. We moved to 17th place in the table with 9 points gap ahead of the 22nd place…

Relegation Battle

With four matches to go, eight teams still could be relegated. I think our draw was probably the most ideal of all teams as we had three teams behind us in next three matches and we needed three points in the next one agains Coventry…

“Birmingham was in 24th place when Rensie joined and will be pleased with the progress they’ve made since he arrived.”

Step #16 to safety | Saturday, 13/4/2024 | Coventry (Home): Our match was the last one of the 43rd round. I already knew the results. I knew a win would be enough to leave the relegation struggles behind us. Keshi Anderson sent us ahead after seven minutes but the game itself was very tight and Coventry equalised in the 79th minute. Lukas Jutkiewicz, not fully fit after an injury, came to the pitch and he scored a winning goal in the 82nd minute to secure us three points - 2:1!
= Birmingham FC SAVED in the English Championship.

The final two weeks

We knew we couldn’t be relegated and the main goal was accomplished. I wanted to finish the season so I played the last three matches of the season without fear of the result. We won both remaining away matches against the table below-placed teams - both with a similar score of 2:1 against Rotherham and Huddersfield. In the end, Rotherham was relegated while Huddersfield didn’t.

The last final match of the season was against Norwich at home. Norwich beat us 2:0 as they were a better team and won deservedly. I’m glad I was able to secure Championship participation for the next season earlier than in the last match of the season against such a strong side.

In the end, Birmingham finished 14th in the table after playing 19 league matches under ‘FM Rensie’ - 11 wins, 5 draws and 3 defeats. Just seven points behind the last play-off place despite the last place in the table ahead of these last nineteen matches.

Birmingham results since I took over the club in January after the end of the skin testing…

Conclusion

As always (or as usual), something that I didn’t plan was enjoyable. A couple of tactical tweaks and survival was not impossible despite the bottom place when it started. Using Lukas Jutkiewicz as a DLF(A) was a great choice and without doubt, it would be much harder to survive the relegation battle without this change.

I also liked Jordan James as CM(S) with Get Further Forward individual instruction. But the key change was to change the AM role to the DM to give the team more stability and more security in the middle of the pitch.

You can compare both versions from the Sparta save and this short challenge with Birmingham. I wrote this usually in line while I was playing so it’s more like a diary of a couple of in-game months. And I enjoyed it.

Thanks for reading.

Follow @FMRensie

FM Slack alert!

You will find a short channel summary in the ‘generalchat’ so it will be easier for you to navigate through the channels.

FM24 | Creating a domestically dominant tactic

November 20, 2023

“How would the season have to end to be considered successful?” This is among the most common questions in almost all interviews/surveys around the fans’ scene. I don’t remember, and I don’t know some fans of AC Sparta Prague who would say something different than “We have to win the league title. Nothing more is important.”

I consider myself a Sparta Prague fan too. And I absolutely agree with this statement. Domestic domination was always the most important to me. There’s nothing better than winning feeling after beating the biggest rivals Slavia Prague and Banik Ostrava. Sparta won the league title at the end of the 2022/2023 season in real life, after a long nine years.

Winning one league title in nine years is not a domination. So I decided to play one season with Sparta during the end of the Early Access version and create the most dominant tactic as possible. The save continued even after the full version of the game was released because I enjoyed it + I had a lot of real-life work and I lacked the right mood to start the main save.

Background

I’m sure not many of you have detailed background about the Sparta Prague history and I don’t want to turn this into Wikipedia. The most important thing is that AC Sparta Prague is the most successful Czech club in history.

The club celebrates its 130th anniversary in November 2023. Mainly, the club won the Czech league title at the end of the 22/23 season. After a long nine years of waiting since the last league trophy. It was the club’s 37th league title in the history.

Also, I remember many coaches and many playing styles, formations, and tactics that Sparta has been using during my whole life. But it was Brian Priske (Danish coach) and his colleagues who returned Sparta to the winning days. But they also brought back the winning mentality. And fans are loving it.

They like to play a 3-4-3 formation as the main one with slight tweaks depending on the opponent or competition. It’s an ideal combination for me as my favourite formation is with three at the back. It was easy to create something between real life and the FM universe.

Formation & instructions

The main difference between real life and my formation is that Sparta (or Brian Priske) plays with AMR/AML players. It doesn’t matter if they are wingers, inside forwards or something else. They just use both WBs and AMR/L positions.

I like to use more players upfront while using the three-at-the-back system so I rather use only left and right wing-backs and two forwards. My usual 3-5-2 systém usually contains also a flat central midfield trio but I changed it for this case to use the AM position.

There are two things that took me out of my comfort zone slightly in terms of the player roles. The first one is connected to the roles of central defenders.

I’m not a Ball Playing Defender role advocate too much and I rather used the ‚boring‘ CD(D) role instead in combination with CD(St) – my favourite role of all in terms of central defenders. But I wanted to beat this wall in my head and replicate the back three, at least partly, with a real life. That’s why I decided to use the combination of BPD(D) – CD(St) – BPD(D).

The second role I’m not used to using too often is the Advanced Playmaker in the MC position. Especially when there are only two MC players. If you would wake me up in the middle of the night after a couple of beers, I would always say my first choice would be the DLP(S) role.

It was always some kind of security. Using the DLP(S) in combination with wing-backs was always my first choice.

There’s just one difference between these roles in terms of the individual instructions as the AP(S) doesn’t have the Hold Position instruction. No matter the role description or instructions, my personal feeling about these two roles is (was) mainly about the security I mentioned above. The DLP(S) is the right role for me to sit deeper and distribute. The Advanced Playmaker was always a more chaotic player in my eyes. And yes, there’s also a possibility I set the tactic wrong and I didn’t match the AP role with other positions/roles rightly.

But this time, it was about to try it properly for the whole season. I saw Michal Ševčík as the best-suited player for this role mainly because I wanted to give him enough playing time and as much as possible room for development. He is a real talent and it’s only a matter of time when (not if) he will show it in real life too.

His season’s stats are very good including the „FM Stag Stats”. The fact he was selected to the EURO 2024 Czech squad at the end of the season speaks for itself. He just made a great progress and he had a great season.

Michal Sevcik - the main AP(S) player for this save and his statistics from the season.

The first league round = the first (and last) slap

The original formation included Complete Wing Backs with attacking duty both on the left and the right side. It looked good during pre-season but we played against some weaker sides. And when we lost to Club Brugge in the final pre-season friendly 0:1, it should be some kind of alert to me.

But I ignored it and left CWB(A) in the formation. And it didn’t pay off.

It’s not usual to see Sparta playing against Slavia or Viktoria Plzen in the first league round of the new campaign. It’s usually around the tenth round of the campaign. But I don’t have real fixtures so we played against Viktoria in the first round. As I already mentioned, they are one of the three strongest Czech Teams currently. They showed me I shouldn’t ignore all the gaps behind CWB(A) players.

And, yes, they beat us 2:1 after scoring goals thanks to counter-attacks and crosses from the wings where they had enough time as both CWB(A) players were at the same line as our forwards and were not able to track down.

I changed it to CWB(S) after this match and it kicked off…

My favourite role? Box to Box midfielder

One of my favourite parts of this one season-long save was watching the Box to Box midfielder. Maybe it was because of both players I used here but it was really good to watch this role working even harder than in previous versions. Both defensively and offensively.

It worked very well in combination with AP(S) and AM(S). It created a simple triangle in the middle, these three players skillfully complemented each other and at least one of them was always available in the right place to receive the ball.

Also, this goal after a perfect counterattack finished by BBM is one of the best examples.

A typical AM goal

I already mentioned the attacking midfielder several times. There was also one simple change. I had this role with the attacking duty at the beginning but I changed it to AM(S) with Get Further Forward individual instruction. Firstly, it helped with what I wrote above as it created the right shape in the central midfield. Secondly, a player in this role has slightly more room and time to hit the right moment for his run up front.

Like this example…

How did it end for the senior squad?

As I already mentioned, the defeat on the opening match day of the season was also our last domestic loss until the end of the season.

We beat all our rivals in the rest of the matches. We scored the highest number of goals in the Czech League history and set a new record in terms of gained points + a low number of league draws and defeats + most league wins in a season (32), most team goals scored (101), most matches won in a row (21).

The league title was secured just after two matches against Viktoria Plzen and Slavia Prague in the championship group (top 6 teams).

We also won the domestic cup after beating SK Sigma Olomouc in the final absolutely without issues. Domination.

*You can also see the central defender Martin Vitik scored 11 goals. They were all from the set pieces. I wrote about this player recently in the post for the View From The Touchline website. You can read it HERE.

The main squad I used during one season - players’ basic statistics on the right side - apps/goals/assists/average rating.

U19s incredible run

One of the things I have liked to do as a Football Manager for many years is that reserve or youth squads are using the same tactic as the senior squad. Like „one club = one tactical philosophy“ but I don’t want to create some super fancy title here. Sparta as a club has the same philosophy set and at least the reserve squad (currently playing in the Czech 2nd tier and currently managed by former Finnish international player Tim Sparv btw.) trying to adapt to the similar principles of the game.

It was easy to set the same formation even for the U19s team. They had no competition in the domestic U19s league but their performances & results in the UEFA Youth League were exceptional.

They had the same group as the senior squad within this save and they lost only to Atlético Madrid 4:5 away from home. But except for 1:0 and 2:0 wins over PSG, they destroyed their opponents in the rest of the matches. Including a 4:0 win over Juventus, a 6:0 win over Real Madrid or a 5:1 win over FC Bayern in the knock-out stage. I decided to go and watch the final match played in Nyon and the U19s team beat Real San Sebastián 11:0. It was 7:0 after the first half. To be absolutely clear, I had to check it in the morning after if it really happened.

UEFA Youth League 2023/2024 Final

UEFA Youth League 2023/2024

Conclusion

As I mentioned at the beginning, AC Sparta Prague is the most successful Czech football club. It’s my favourite club. I had the advantage of knowing all the players and I knew where to play them. On the other hand, there are still big competitors like Slavia Prague and Viktoria Plzen in the league. Both in real life and in the game. But the domination is definitely underway and this can be always a save I can return to during FM24.

I forgot to mention one thing – transfers and squad policy. I let Tomas Rosicky, the DoF, decide about transfers. We sold a couple of players to Arab nations including Lukas Haraslin who is a key member of the squad in real life. But as I didn’t play with wide midfielders, he was not happy with playing as WB and I had no issue letting him go. And some more. That means I played a lot of games with youngsters. For example Daniel Rus – 17/18 years old striker who, for example, scored four goals in 3 domestic cup appearances or 7 goals in the league. It would absolutely be the best save in terms of developing these talents and dominating domestically.

I know it’s not domination to win the league title once but, in all modesty, I know I would win the league with this formation in the next years too…

You can find the tactic on the Steam Workshop, feel free to try it…

FM Slack alert!

You will find a short channel summary in the ‘generalchat’ so it will be easier for you to navigate through the channels.

Featured image © AC Sparta Praha

Follow @FMRensie

FM24 Rensie Custom Skin

November 9, 2023

Football Manager 2024 is the 20th game in Sports Interactive’s Football Manager series and will be the last of its kind. It means also the last Rensie custom skin of its kind.

The Football Manager 2024 custom skin edition is a collection of the work I have done through the years since I started making skin(s) in 2016. There are edits within the player overview/profile, staff overview, club overview, match screens, both player and staff popup profiles and many more things including player faces within the tactics or team talk screens…

I’m sure you will realise how many small things were done within this skin throughout the years mainly by playing the game. As your save progresses, you will find more and more small things I edited.

Selectors

One of the most useful things within the skin is 100% the selectors. They are across various screens. They are in the player overview/player attributes page. They are also within the home screen where you can find many useful things including data hub widgets, reworked finances widgets and more. You can also move the vertical dividers to make these three widgets wider or narrower.

Selectors within the player overview also include the tweaked analyser polygon and a completely new analyser polygon dedicated to new set pieces roles in the FM24. As always, don’t forget to untick the “Automatically override custom panels” in the Preferences to avoid constantly refreshing the custom panels.

FM Stag Stats

The same as in the FM23 I added the data metrics to my custom skins. These data metrics were made by Adam/FM Stag. You can find them in the player overview tab and in the selector on the right side of the player overview screen. The same as in the selectors within the player attributes screen and player pop-up profile. I adapted it to all these three parts separately to ensure the table fits properly while using the 1920x1080 resolution with 100% zoom, both in-game and on Windows.

Gallery

Club Overview

Player Overview

Player Attributes

Player Overview

Player Attributes

Player Overview

Player Attributes

Home screen selectors

Transfer Offer Screen

Club - Affiliates

Tactics Screen

Competition Overview

In-Between Highlights

Half-Time

Match Review

Q&A

What resolution is this skin created for?

I’m using the most common 1920x1080 resolution with 100% zoom. The skin works with the Full Mode and Windowed as well. If you play in Windowed mode, the screen will be a little bit lower in height logically but I tested the skin in both Full and Windowed mode to ensure widgets and panels don’t move wrongly. Don’t forget to set your Windows Zoom to 100% too before you will say it doesn’t work.

Does the skin include the Instant Result button?

Yes, it’s easier to add this button than to answer all questions about why it’s not in the game.

Why do the panels in the home screen or player overview reset?

Untick the “Automatically override custom panels” in the Preferences.

Is it the best skin?

Personally, it’s the best skin I made and I’m happy with it. Overall, NO, it’s not the best skin. If some other creators around the FM community would like to promote this skin, don’t call it ”The best skin” or something similar. It’s not true. We already have four or five “best skins” on YouTube… Thank you.

If some of you want to host/share this skin on your website, insert the link back to this post, not the direct download link.

Does this skin support background images?

Yes, there is an alternative ‘client object browser.xml’ file in the skin folder/panels/client_object including examples and the read-me file on how to allow background images.

What font(s) are you using in the skin?

The font of the skin is Source Sans Pro. The shirt numbers are made with the Puma 2022/2023 font. If you would like to use the default GT America Standard font, quit the game, go to the skin folder and delete the ‘fonts’ folder.

I like one panel in the skin by Wozzie and two panels in the skin by Flut. Will you add everything to your skin for me?

I’m very grateful for every feedback and I will always try to repair it if something in the skin doesn’t work properly. But no, I won’t update the skin just because someone likes something different. If you would like to learn something about skinning, just go to the SI Forum/Skinning Hideout, there are always people who are willing to help.

Did you know you can make the “Stadium Tour” with the Rensie skin?

Yes, this little hack still works. You can find all about it in this post - HERE.

Credits & thanks

Wozzie for all his work and inspiration.
Tom - TCS/WTCS as he is always able to help in the skinning hideout of the SI Forum or Twitter. The same as with Wozzie, his TCS skin is always an inspiration.
FM Stag for his updated data metrics.
snowofman, MustermannFM, _Ben_, Groot, Flut and many more for inspiration and continuous help.
FM Grasshopper for testing the skin and all the help.

A side note about the credits: I always try to make notes straight into the XML files. That means you can easily find what panels/widgets were taken from other skins no matter if I let them how they were or I modified them. I'm making the description/titles of widgets mainly because of myself but also because of other authors/creators to ensure it's 100% clear where it was originally used. Even if it would be only one person who would open that XML file. It’s just about to pay at least minimal respect to other creators. For example this…

How to install:

If you’re in the game just quit the game to eliminate crashes or issues with the game.
Download the skin.
Move the “FM24 Rensie” file to your skins folder Documents/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2024/skins and unzip the folder.
Run Football Manager 2024, go to Preferences and select the “FM24 Rensie” skin on the Overview screen or in the Interface tab.

Conclusion

If you think this work deserves some kind of donation, you can send how much you want to the CoffeehouseFM website account. I don’t want to use it for myself. We will use it partly for funding the website in the future and for some charity (as I did in the past).

Thank you.

Donate

Update notes/Changelog

v3 UPDATE FEBRUARY 14, 2024

Fixed the inset of the linked header within the Season Stats in player selectors
Adjusted the 'horizontal_offset' from 15 to 3 in the match caption panel small to have all texts aligned to the left
Fixed the 'select_event' ID within the Scouting overview panel to show action buttons again
Edited the post-match (press officer) report with results/league table & reactions
Reorganised the player's personal details in the player overview + changed the colour of "Age" from white to "FM24 accent"
Edited the inbox headline part - added unread messages info & staff ID number with the option to copy = you can simply edit the pictures of the Press Officer, Personal assistant etc. (credit to 'BouFitty')
Edited the inbox news category colours to "fm24 accent" - all of them.
Added the role duty into the Formations widget within the match selector
Edited the match players bar widget (the bottom part of the match) (tweaked the file from the WTCS skin)
Edited the layout width (from -3,-9 to -2,-7) of the inbox
Added Preview Location left/right toggle buttons to the set piece creator screen to avoid one more click
Added the unit training summary with rating to the Training Overview (inspired by the Olas Nick/Light Skin)
Edited the inbox summary of the player's training report (inspired by the Olas Nick/Light Skin)
Edited the inbox injury report
Edited the inbox with the players' development update
Edited the inbox with the players' fitness update
Edited the scouting knowledge map in the human manager profile
Added "praise/criticise" buttons to the training widget within the player overview selector
Added captain icon to the match players bar widget
Added Player Statistics + Analytical Data + Customise buttons to the match stats tab within already played match
Added Win/Draw/Loss percentage Record to human manager profile
Added the preferred formation info to the human manager profile details instead of media handling (not working)
Edited Team Selection inbox content - added pitch background, pitch width from 350 to 450
The main menu strip (under the title bar/search bar) was changed from primary/secondary colours to "blue grey 800"
The team squad facts within the team squad screen were changed from primary/secondary colours to FM24 accent & bg (text)
The stadium overview was edited
Club overview edits: the stadium info now includes icons; the trophies widget moved to the middle of the right side;
The right top container is now a tab bar with: the club/board culture; club facts; league history graph; and key players (from Tato skin/deleted the player card graphic and adapted the whole container to the FM Rensie skin layout with personal details); key staff (from Tato skin/edited fonts & boxes & added more attributes too all five staff members); fixtures & results (from Tato skin/edited fonts); the Last starting XI (from Tato skin)
Increased the width of the modal popups when you open the data hub or instant result, for example
Increased the width and height of the modal popup of the individual instructions
Increased the width and height of the modal popup of the team selection advice
Edited the instant result popup overview
And many small tweaks…

v2 UPDATE DECEMBER 12, 2023

Fixed issue with the custom backgrounds + added the alternative client object browser.xml with read me how to change it
Fixed disappearing info in the player overview details
Added the custom view button back to the Schedule/Fixture screen
Slightly reduced the width of the match time bar in the match title bar
Changed colours for low & high stat within the "Last 5 matches" column in the custom views
Changed colours of the status icons slightly
Added the Assistant speech bubble advice column back to the custom view within the opposition instructions screen
Added the picking buttons back to the team squad screen
Fixed the bug with the 'Ask Agent' button within custom views
Added 'Biography' tab to the non-player profile and made it the default tab
Added the "Non Player History" widget to the non-player profile with career/job history instead of player achievements (the wrong file was linked)
Added the "Notable Events" as a new widget to the match selectors
Added the "Match Momentum" as a new widget to the match selectors
Added the "Formations" of both teams as a single widget to the right match selector with a vertical pitch
Added the "Recommendation" widget back to the scouting centre views after the property ID was changed
Fixed height of the rows within coaches’ training categories appointment
Added the CoffeehouseFM.com logo to the sidebar with the link
Added the CoffeehouseFM.com link to the logo within the intro panel on the start screen
Changed the colour of three small icons within the tactics pitch from purple to bg (buttons/custom/tactics/pitch switch - thanks TCSSkin for finding it)
New start screen background image instead of the 3D manager scene
Edited how the formation looks like during the match for both home & away teams (the roles of your opponent appear after 10-15 minutes of the match depending on the quality of your analysts)
Edited the Pre-Match Tactical Advice screen
Allowed custom views via the right mouse button within the scouting centre panel and scouting centre recommendation
Edited colours within the mailbox item with the award winners/placing to match it with the rest of the skin
Edited & cleaned the Staff overview screen
Changed the tab headings from subtle box to contrast box with the blue grey 900 colour
Added the ID button in the titlebar from the Sas/FME skins + tweaked it to match it with the skin colours

Download v1

Download v2

Download v3

As always when updating the skin - quit the game. Go to the Documents/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2024/skins and delete (or backup) the original version of the skin before you copy/paste the downloaded updated version.

Also, don’t forget to clear the cache folder in the App data and don’t forget it’s like a new skin with the updated config file so the colours of the attributes will be changed to default.

Follow @FMRensie

FM Slack alert!

You will find a short channel summary in the ‘generalchat’ so it will be easier for you to navigate through the channels.

FM24 (Early Access) | One season to improve the history

November 3, 2023

I would like to change and improve many things in the history of this beautiful planet. If I would be able to. But I’m not able to do it in the real world. But thank God, or whoever else is responsible for it, I can change and improve the history of many football clubs around the world thanks to the Football Manager. So I did it again during one season while playing with Danish side Viborg FF during the FM24 beta/early access.

Why Viborg in beta?

The reason why I started playing with Viborg is very simple. I just needed some save while I was editing and preparing the FM24 custom skin. Yes, that’s the only reason why. It was just a random selection and I just needed some teams with normal primary/secondary colours to test several things within the custom skin.

The secondary reason came to my mind while clicking the continue button. I had a perfect save with the AB Copenhagen many years ago and I realised I had a short period of this save when I was checking the AB results more than I would have liked. It almost looked like I would like to go back here…

Viborg FF

I won’t add here long paragraphs from Wikipedia about the history of this Danish club. I needed to know only two things - the club was founded in 1896 and they didn’t win the Danish top tier in this long, almost 130 years history.

The only connection I had to this club was, that I knew one young Czech midfielder Jan Žamburek is their player after he joined them from Brentford some months ago and I remember him thanks to writing about him while he was a Czech U21s vice-captain. And that’s it. I didn’t know more about the club but I didn’t need to know it. I was sure it would be just a couple of months-long save.

**Christmas is coming.**

Everything you need is this perfect jumper. Or not. I just found it on Google. Sorry.

Real World game mode = the best motivation to continue playing

The new FM edition brought three ways to start a save – ‘Original’, ‘Real World’ and ‘Your World’.

Original: Players will be at the clubs they play for in the current Football Manager database at the start of your game, reflecting the most accurate real-life data.
Real World: Players will start the game contracted to the clubs they were with on the real-life date your Career begins. They will then move to their new club on the same date as they did in real life.
Your World: Club squads and budgets will be set at the date your game starts, and only players who joined before that date will be at your club - with all future transfers (for Real World mode) cancelled, giving you the opportunity to change history.

My decision to take on the Real World mode was the best decision and I had to say it was the main reason why I didn’t end this short save after a couple of weeks or months. When I started the save, the senior squad was full of players and I thought “All right, that will be good to test some things and maybe I will find some new players.” It takes only a couple of in-game days to realise how wrong I was.

There was a healthy number of players at the beginning and I had enough to choose from ahead of the opening friendly matches. But then, it all started.

As the description of the Real World mode suggests - players will start in your club but they will move elsewhere on the same date as in real life. Both permanent and loan deals. And there were 12 future transfers already set. And as the save progressed I found out most of these future transfers are players from the starting XI.

Every time I started to be happy with some player and his performance in his position/role, he left and I needed someone new. It was really challenging and it kept me going further, mainly during the first half of the season because I wanted to know how it could end. Even that mentioned Czech young midfielder left the squad as he joined the Czech top-tier side Slovan Liberec in real life for a loan spell at the beginning of September.

If you check the incoming transfers in the picture below, half of these players are 18 years old or younger and they were signed by the Director of Football for the youth side. I made only one signing as I bought Andreas Gülstorff from FC Nordsjaelland.

Another uneasy part of the squad building was that almost all new incoming players were injury-prone. Serginho, Nigel Thomas, Jean-Manuel Mbom or Jamie Jacobs. They all played one match and they needed rest for the next two weeks.

It resulted in the situation when the two most experienced players - Jakob Bonde (30y) and Jeppe Gronning (33y) played almost the most matches as central midfielders. I only helped myself with two youngsters to rotate the squad when it was needed. But the combination of the Real World mode and transfers delegated to the Director of Football is really challenging. I’m not used to playing like this and I like to make scouting, transfers etc. by myself. I wanted to fasten this save thanks to delegating the stuff. But it wasn’t easy to follow how he the DoF did nothing…

Never fell in love with a loan player

I’m not a big fan of football/sport phrases but this one is quite a good one and it fits to this save with Viborg. One of the already arranged incoming transfers was a loan deal with Isak Jensen. This 20-year-old Danish midfielder is originally from the Odense Boldclub but he played also for Sonderjyske before he joined St. Louis City in 2022.

He has strong both feet so I knew I would be able to play him as AMR/L no matter if it’s a winger or inside forward role. The young Isak who is touted as the next Brian Laudrup in the game played mainly as the IF(S) within the 4-2-3-1 formation. He made 25(1) appearances, scored 10 goals and made 6 assists before he injured himself just ahead of the end of the season. It was not only about the numbers but I really liked his playing style and I’m sure he can be one of these young Danish players who can be a good signing for many of you.

Slovenian defensive army

It isn’t too often to have three players of the same nationality playing alongside the defensive line in a foreign country. But it happened to me in this save during the second part of the season. I had three of four defenders from the same nation - Slovenia.

Zan Zaletel was already in the club and he played the most matches of this trio.

Anel Zulic was one of the arranged transfers and he came here for free from Radomlje. He had some injuries but he was very good in the second half of the season and he would be my top three recommendations for your saves if I had to suggest some players. He is only 19 years old and he already was a part of the national team. A lot of room for improvement 100%.

The last one was Srdan Kuzmić. He came from Mura but he was sent on loan to IFK Göteborg for the first half of the season before I decided to recall him. He was my first choice for the right defender in the second half of the season and he made 7 assists in 14(1) appearances. The same for Zulic, he can improve a lot.

“A good old 4-2-3-1 Gegenpress”

As the game created the 4-2-3-1 formation with two defensive midfielders automatically, it was the first thing I changed and moved both defensive midfielders higher up the pitch to the MC position.

The original Gegenpress tactic created by the game itself has a lot of out-of-possession instructions and the intensity of the tactic is very high. It was obvious already in the first friendly match against Club Brugge (2:4 defeat) that it can’t work with these players for the whole season. We were 2:0 up against Brugge but conceded four goals in the second half.

I decided to use this heavy tactic with Much More Often Trigger Press, Much Higher Defensive Line, Higher Press etc. against weaker opponents while I was considered (or maybe better worded, I expected) to be a better and more motivated side.

When I was playing against bigger teams like FC Copenhagen, FC Midtjylland or derby matches against Silkeborg, I removed most of these mentioned instructions and I left only Higher Defensive Line & Mid Block.

There was also one change in terms of the role of our striker in the middle of the season. I used Advanced Forward with Alasana Jatta but after he decided to leave the club in the summer, I decided to give a chance to Anosike Ementa who is better as DLF. And it worked great too.

My favourite version of this tactic in the second half of the season.

The first league title

As the post title suggests, I wanted to improve the long history of the club and I wanted to win the league title for the first in almost 130 years. We lost only one league match during the whole season. It was against FC Kobenhavn in the 7th league round. The famous FC Nordsjaelland didn’t even make it to the Champions Group as they finished 7th in the Preliminary Phase.

The tactic offered a lot of goals - we scored 95 goals in 32 matches and conceded 45. We won the league with 83 points, eight points ahead of FC Kobenhavn and 22 points ahead of FC Midtjylland and AGF.

I’m sure some of these players would be good even for other saves. I would like to mention mainly these:

Ibrahim Said - Nigerian winger made 30(2) appearances, he scored 9 goals and made 17 assists in the league and cup. He has the most league assists - 13.
Mads Sondergaard - a twenty-one-year-old Danish attacking midfielder was my first choice for the AM(A) role and I think he did really well. He scored 10 goals and made 9 assists in 26 league appearances. I think it’s good when I consider I always had issues setting the AM position/role effectively.
Anosike Ementa - an unknown player to me before this save. As I already mentioned, he played mainly as a sub in the first half of the season but he became the first-choice striker in the second half of the season after switching from AF to DLF role. He was also my main target in terms of corner & free-kick delivery. He scored six goals from corners in the second half of the season. He ended as the third-best goalscorer in the league with 16 goals and he had the highest average rating of our team with 7.36.

And that’s it. I would upload the tactic to the Steam Workshop but it’s not possible during the beta/Early Access.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy FM24.

Follow @FMRensie

FM23 | Nine and a half seasons with VVV-Venlo

October 6, 2023

Normally, I would be desperate to play more and write more. Normally. But not this time. I’m not enjoying it. Mainly play Football Manager 2023. And writing about it a little bit too. I feel that I am forcing myself to write. But a couple of recent days gave me a new positive mood about the game and writing because I read some very good blog posts. Listening to CoffeePodFM by Ed & Shrew also put me back in the FM mood.

When I see the gaps between my blog posts during the FM23 edition, I can see everything I did with my kids. The amount of books I read instead of playing the game because I enjoyed it more. The same as walking/running/cycling outside rather than playing this edition.

I finished the 9th season on August 25, 2023. It took me almost another month to play half of the 10th season. Every time I loaded the game, it was like a miracle when I played at least one match before I hit the quit the game button because I decided to do something else. I wasn’t interested in developing players and I was not angry when my team lost. That was the moment when I finally told myself it was time to end the save and move on despite I didn’t finish the 10th season. It took me 14 real-life days to play one single match. That speaks for itself…

MY TIME WITH VVV-VENLO

The club development

Stadium - decent. Training facilities - average. Coaching staff, recruitment, scouting… everything average or below average. Finances? Just enough to buy decent breakfast for the entire squad.

A typical start of most of my Football Manager saves.

When this save started in 2022, the bank balance of the club was around €900K while the transfer budget did not exist and the wage budget was over-spent.

When this save ends in 2031, the bank balance of the club is over €128M, the transfer budget is €45M and the wage budget is €5.9M with €3.1M available. Quite good for a not-too-ambitious club from the Eredivisie and the three-time league champions.

Patiently waited for the same answer

The capacity of the De Koel stadium was 8k at the beginning and it was increased to 12k after a promotion. The stadium ‘saga’ became very boring during the last three seasons. Every time I asked about building the new stadium, the answer was always the same.

“We believe our ambitions for the club can be achieved without the need to leave our current home.” I know there are many factors and many things have to work out before the club board decides about building the new stadium. We were not able to sell out the stadium for every match. But when the season tickets were sold out for four seasons in a row, I thought it could be enough. But it was not.

One last try

When I played the last match of the 2031 calendar year, I decided to try it for the last time. It would be the only thing that could convince me to move this save for the next FM edition. But the answer was the same again and I decided to not continue. “Please, don’t waste our time in the future.” That was the last response by the club board when I tried to convince them for the last time.

On the other hand, training & youth facilities were improved from below average to the state of the art & superb rating. Same as we were able to improve the junior coaching and the youth recruitment to the maximum.

The way forward

We won the promotion to the top tier straight in the first season as we ended 2nd in the Eerste Divisie four points behind PEC Zwolle. The progress itself was very quick in terms of the results and the final positions within the top tier.

We finished 5th in the opening season after a promotion to the Eredivisie followed by finishing third in the next two seasons. And we finished second in 2027 and 2028 ahead of the three league titles in a row between 2029 and 2031. We were second in the half of the last season, just two points behind Ajax.

Thanks to the already mentioned league results, we played in all three European competitions during the save. How did we do in Europe?

Champions League maximum: Lost to Atlético Madrid in the quarter-final in 2029/2030.
Europa League: Lost to Lyon in the Round of 16 in the 2025/2026.
Europa Conference League: Winners in the 2026/2027 after beating Celta Vigo in the Final.

I’m usually quite pedantic in terms of the domestic cup priority and I really like to make the domestic cup very important in my FM saves. But this year’s edition was different and I didn’t pay big attention to it and my team was knocked out very early as I played backup players or very young newgens. Venlo only won it twice during this save - in 2026/27 & 2029/30, both after beating Ajax in the Final.

As you can see in the picture above, we were 2nd in the table when I decided to call the day of this save. Just two points behind Ajax.

There were draws mainly while playing on Wednesday/Sunday but I’m sure we would be able to win the fourth league title in a row in the second part of the season as our key players would be full of energy while not playing in the Champions League as the possibility to progress to the late knockout stage was very small.

But it doesn’t matter and it’s not important now as the save won’t continue. The brief summary in terms of competition milestones? One promotion & three league titles, domestic cup winners twice, domestic Super Cup winners once. And one Europa Conference League trophy.

Boosting my own tactical ego

The most enjoyable and the most crucial part of this save (mainly to play it for too long) was the tactical part. As I already mentioned at the beginning, I was not too interested in developing young players/newgens this time. Probably the least from all the recent saves I can remember. On the other hand, I enjoyed creating & tweaking the tactics the most in this edition.

It started with the four opening seasons and playing with just one central defender. Tweaking the “Lone central defender” tactic was really good and I really enjoyed it while improving the squad patiently and slowly. If I played with some more common formation, I’m sure I would stop playing after these four seasons because I would already be around the top of the Eredivisie.

But I rather decided to challenge myself. For example by not buying the players I needed for specific positions. I rather keep my own players and retrain them. Free, loan, free, free… that was the most common type of fee in the transfer history. Since we made it to the European competitions, it was around €5M. The maximum of this save was €8M for Antonio Milambo. Until the summer of 2031 when I decided to buy Santiago Giménez for €25.5M because why not? I knew it would be the last season of the save and I had a lot of money. And he was still only 30 years old and good enough to play as AF, CF or False 9.

The pressing forward with support or attack duty was my first choice alongside Advanced Forward for most of this save but if I had to select the most enjoyable part from all, it would surely be two seasons when I decided to use the False 9 role in combination with the Advanced Forward and the CM(A) roles.

It was the most fluid football we played within this save.

It was also probably for the first time in a very long time that I decided to use the False 9 role and it worked.

The most favourite versions of these two formations within my FM23 saves. The evolution of both is documented in the previous posts, at least the most important things for sure.

Three legends of the save

Everyone who read at least something from my Football Manager saves in the past knows a simple thing about my squad building. Or maybe better said, what I like to do within my saves. It’s related to players from the original squad and how I treat the players during the save. There are always some more recognised players. Not sure about the word “recognised”, I’m sure I would be able to select a better word in my native language but I’m sure you understand what I mean.

If it’s possible I always try to keep one or more players from the original squad. I’m not starting my saves somewhere in the 6th or even lower tier so there’s always a chance these players will be able to compete at the highest level. This save with VVV-Venlo was not an exception. One of the reasons why I started it was to play with the midfielder Richard Sedláček who I have known from Sparta Prague youth teams for a long time.

There were four key players - team leaders. Defender Rick Ketting, midfielders Richard Sedláček & Yahcuroo Roemer and striker Nick Venema. But the reason why it’s only about three of them is that Rick Ketting decided not to renew the contract with the club in 2028 despite being a leader, and captain and we just won the league title. The even bigger surprise was when he signed as a free agent with Dudelange, our affiliate club from Luxembourg.

If I start with Roemer, he was originally the best AMR player in the squad when the save started but I didn’t want to play with AMR's position. He moved down to the MR slot and he made 18 league assists in the opening season of the save as we won the promotion to the Eredivisie.

He was our main MR player and he didn’t make less than 26 appearances during a single season. His best season in terms of assists was the 2026/27 when he made 14 assists in our last season while using the “Lone central defender” formation. When he had an ideal day, he was perfect. Roemer didn’t play for a different team thanks to this save as his career is connected just with VVV-Venlo from 2016 to 2032.

My fellow Czech midfield maestro Richard Sedlacek came to Venlo a season ago before this save started but he didn’t play more than a couple of minutes due to a long-term injury. He was my main DM player no matter what role I tried and used at the beginning of the save. He was perfect as the DLP but also as DM(D) ahead of the lone central defender. He had 15, 10 and 12 assists in our first three seasons in the league. He didn’t drop under the average of 7 in the first eight seasons of the save.

When we moved to the 3-5-2 formation, he was also the first choice for the DLP(S) or DLP(D) role later. Sedlacek was the vice-captain and he scored the title-winning goal when we were crowned the Eredivisie champions for the first time. He didn’t score too many goals but even if he would score just this one, it would be enough. If I look back, if I wanted something super-narrative, I couldn’t wish a better narrative than this. When Rick Ketting left the club, he was our captain for the last two and a half seasons.

The best for the end? Nick Venema. A nightmare for many FM23 players who played in the Netherlands or played against him in a different country. I was lucky to have him in my squad. I was also lucky he never wanted to leave the club and I had enough money to give him the best possible contract when he wanted to improve his wage and bonuses.

35 league goals in the first season when we won the promotion to the top tier. 35 league goals in the opening season in the top tier after a promotion. He scored 70 goals in 75 matches in two first seasons of the save. I knew there was something special. He played mainly as the Advanced Forward.

When the save progressed and we started playing in Europe as well, he slowed down in the domestic competitions a little bit. But when we won the Europa Conference League in the 2026ú27 season, he scored 27 league goals in 33 appearances and 14 goals in 15 Europa Conference League matches.

It’s not for the first time as it happened in my previous saves, but Venema’s best Eredivisie seasons were the first one and the last complete one. As I mentioned already, he scored 35 goals in Eredivisie after our promotion. He scored 34 goals in 32 appearances in the 2030/31 season.

As it stands, he played 394 competitive matches for VVV-Venlo during this save between 2022 and 2032. And he scored 305 competitive goals. Incredible.

Final words

“Has this been my favourite blogged FM save? Probably not, but I am ok with that. I cannot always find the most epic save ever or have the greatest in-game moments. Alternatively, this has not been a bad save either.”
FM Grasshopper in his "10 years at Ceuta" - Plazas de Soberanía #FM23

This quote above is probably the best characteristic of my save as well. I loved the opening seasons in combination with challenging myself tactically. I liked the connection with a couple of players and I like the fact that VVV-Venlo will be another club I will follow closely in real life, also because of Richard Sedláček or Nick Venema.

It’s time to move on now. The Football Manager 2023 will not be among my favourite and most played FM editions. But it surely had some positive things and I learned a couple of new things too. Hopefully, I will enjoy the FM24 a little bit more. Both in terms of playing and writing.

Thanks everyone for reading.

Thanks everyone for supporting our website.

CHFM ☕️🏠❣️

FM23 save with VVV-Venlo Blogs

Oct 6, 2023

FM23 | Nine and a half seasons with VVV-Venlo

Oct 6, 2023

Jul 10, 2023

FM23 | VVV-Venlo: A patient way to the league title

Jul 10, 2023

Jul 3, 2023

My FM23 training strategy

Jul 3, 2023

Apr 20, 2023

FM23 | Four seasons with the lone central defender

Apr 20, 2023

Apr 15, 2023

FM23 | Preparing to change tactics

Apr 15, 2023

Feb 21, 2023

FM23 | 2025/26 with VVV-Venlo: Not ready, inexperienced

Feb 21, 2023

Feb 7, 2023

FM23 | A third season with Venlo: Don't be too shy

Feb 7, 2023

Jan 24, 2023

FM23 | An ordinary match with a great comeback

Jan 24, 2023

Jan 13, 2023

FM23 | VVV-Venlo and Lone Central Defender - the first season in Eredivisie

Jan 13, 2023

Dec 20, 2022

FM23 | VVV-Venlo and Lone Central Defender - match analysis, key changes and promotion

Dec 20, 2022

Nov 30, 2022

FM23 | VVV-Venlo & Lone Central Defender - searching for the right one

Nov 30, 2022

Nov 16, 2022

FM23 | Before I passed the opening day and hit the continue button properly...

Nov 16, 2022

Oct 17, 2022

FM23 | Building tactics around one central defender with VVV-Venlo - part 1

Oct 17, 2022

FM23 | VVV-Venlo: A patient way to the league title

July 10, 2023

Three in-game years can take a couple of days for someone. It was more than two real life months for me including writing a summary blog post about it. I wrote about my Football Manager 2023 save in April this year for the last when the fourth season ended. It’s now June 2029 in my save universe and I finished the third season in a row of developing the 3-5-2 system.

We also earned a lot of money thanks to the Champions League or big outgoing transfers and we are around €100M bank balance now. One long era of league domination also ended and I thought it was the best time to write again.

BACK IN TIME

It is May 2029 in my FM23 universe when I started writing this post. If we take a quick look back in time within this save with VVV-Venlo, maybe some of you remember I spent the first four seasons of the save using the “Lone central defender formation”. I wrote about these four seasons in THIS POST.

I decided during the fourth season that I should end at the best. I knew I won’t be able to win the league with this formation while conceding so many goals and some other limitations. Finishing third in a quality league, as the Eredivisie is, is the best result I was able to achieve with this.

FM23 save with VVV-Venlo posts

Oct 6, 2023

VVV, FM Saves Summary

FM23 | Nine and a half seasons with VVV-Venlo

Oct 6, 2023

VVV, FM Saves Summary

Oct 6, 2023

VVV, FM Saves Summary

Jul 10, 2023

VVV

FM23 | VVV-Venlo: A patient way to the league title

Jul 10, 2023

VVV

Jul 10, 2023

VVV

Jul 3, 2023

VVV, Others

My FM23 training strategy

Jul 3, 2023

VVV, Others

Jul 3, 2023

VVV, Others

Apr 20, 2023

VVV

FM23 | Four seasons with the lone central defender

Apr 20, 2023

VVV

Apr 20, 2023

VVV

Apr 15, 2023

Tactics, VVV

FM23 | Preparing to change tactics

Apr 15, 2023

Tactics, VVV

Apr 15, 2023

Tactics, VVV

Feb 21, 2023

VVV

FM23 | 2025/26 with VVV-Venlo: Not ready, inexperienced

Feb 21, 2023

VVV

Feb 21, 2023

VVV

Feb 7, 2023

VVV

FM23 | A third season with Venlo: Don't be too shy

Feb 7, 2023

VVV

Feb 7, 2023

VVV

Jan 24, 2023

Tactics, VVV

FM23 | An ordinary match with a great comeback

Jan 24, 2023

Tactics, VVV

Jan 24, 2023

Tactics, VVV

Jan 13, 2023

VVV

FM23 | VVV-Venlo and Lone Central Defender - the first season in Eredivisie

Jan 13, 2023

VVV

Jan 13, 2023

VVV

Dec 20, 2022

VVV, Tactics

FM23 | VVV-Venlo and Lone Central Defender - match analysis, key changes and promotion

Dec 20, 2022

VVV, Tactics

Dec 20, 2022

VVV, Tactics

Nov 30, 2022

VVV

FM23 | VVV-Venlo & Lone Central Defender - searching for the right one

Nov 30, 2022

VVV

Nov 30, 2022

VVV

Nov 16, 2022

VVV

FM23 | Before I passed the opening day and hit the continue button properly...

Nov 16, 2022

VVV

Nov 16, 2022

VVV

Oct 17, 2022

Tactics, VVV

FM23 | Building tactics around one central defender with VVV-Venlo - part 1

Oct 17, 2022

Tactics, VVV

Oct 17, 2022

Tactics, VVV

A 3-5-2 EVOLUTION IN THREE SEASONS

I was very motivated to start the 2026/2027 season with a new formation as it was also a new motivation to continue playing this save. I knew I have some challenges ahead and that was the best possible that could happen to my save.

The first challenge was to find the right players for both left and right wing-back positions because I didn’t use this position before and I had too many wingers. I had two options: I could buy a couple of new players or I could start retraining/replaying current wingers to wing-backs. I think many of you who know me a little bit knew the answer immediately.

Yes, it was the second option. Yahcuroo Roemer, originally M/AMR started playing as a wing-back with the attacking duty. He is not and he will never be a perfect wing-back, mainly because of the defensive phase of the game but I wanted to take advantage of his acceleration/pace and very solid dribbling/crossing/technique. He managed to make 10+ assists in all four seasons so I think it’s not a disaster. Especially as his 14 assists were enough to be the best in the league in the first season after this change.

On another side of the pitch, Quilindschy Hartman was our main man for the WB(S) role while I preferred the support duty on this side of the pitch. It’s obvious he was better in terms of defending and his best assist record was 6 assists in the 2027/28 season. He had CM(A) on his side in central midfield so his main aim was to cover his side and the area behind the CM(A).

The last season with the “lone central defender formation” was our most aggressive from all four seasons. The second challenge was to decide about the pressing/aggressiveness approach within the 3-5-2. Will I be more cautious? Keep the high press? Something between?

The latter was the answer for the opening 25/26 season with the 3-5-2. I kept the mid-block in combination with shorter passing and playing from the back.

2026/27: The main change, obviously, was there were three central defenders instead of just one. And I was able to use my favourite role as the central defender with the stopper duty. The left wing-back started with the CWB(S) role and I kept it for the whole season despite it was not 100% good enough. But the player in the DLP(S) role next to the CWB(S) was able to make a lot of dirty work while the CWB player was everywhere around the pitch except his position. Another change was within the attacking duo as I decided to use the CF(S) role instead of the PF(S/A) next to the Advanced Forward. The reason was simple - both Nick Venema and Sydney van Hooijdonk were able to play in this role so I wanted to have this deadly duo in these two most dangerous roles (at least in my eyes) = Venema scored 27 goals & van Hooijdonk 21, just in Eredivisie. We finished 2nd in the league and we won the Europa Conference League after beating Celta Viga 1:0 after an extra time in the final.
2027/28: The second season with the 3-5-2 and I decided to make some changes. In terms of instructions: Distribute To Centre-Backs replaced Take Short Kicks and I added Much More Often trigger press. In terms of player roles: the BPD(D) was changed to a simple CD(D) in combination with the CD(St) and CD(D). The left wing-back was changed to WB(S) instead of CWB(S) - I had enough of seeing this player everywhere due to the roam from position default individual instruction. The CM(A) role changed to AP(A) and DLP(S) to BBM. The reason for changing to BBM was that I changed also the WB role so I didn’t have to worry about some big gap here. And I also changed CF(S) back to PF(S) because I felt I want to see more pressing activity by this player and Sydney van Hooijdonk is still more familiar with it. We finished 2nd in the league again. Richard Sedláček made 12 assists in the league as AP(A), the same number as in the previous season as DLP(S). It was our first season in the Champions League and we made it to the Round of 16 where we lost to AC Milan 1:4 on aggregate.
2028/29: The in-possession instructions didn’t change. The in-transition instructions changed in just one thing - I decided to use the Distribute To Specific Team-Mate instructions and it’s linked with the Ball Playing Defender with Cover duty. It’s probably one of the main changes because I decided to use this role instead of my beloved CD(St). The reason was that no matter which player I used in the CD(St) role we started conceding some stupid goals after long balls, the same as when we used just one central defender and he was alone in the defensive line. It resulted in some very good passing plays and I also was able to start retraining one central midfielder to the central defender and take advantage of his passing and decision abilities. It also resulted in six clean sheets in the last eight league matches and bigger stability at the back. Maybe it was only a coincidence but I like the idea of a deeper “passer” central defender. I also decided to change the left wing-back to attacking duty. And the flat central midfielders were CM(S) with hold position instruction & CM(A) & DLP(S). Also, the right-positioned striker was DLF(S) for most of the season changing to False Nine time from time. Mainly because of the fact that Nick Venema and Sydney van Hooijdonk were out of action alternately. We made it to the Champions League Knock Out Play Off Round this time where we lost to Lazio 3:4 on aggregate. And domestically? Read bellow…

3-5-2 v2026

3-5-2 v2027

3-5-2 v2028

END OF THE AJAX DOMINATION

2018. That’s the year when someone else than Ajax won the Eredivisie. It was PSV Eindhoven. Ajax won the 2018/19 season, the next was was cancelled because of COVID. This save started in 2022/2023 and Ajax won it every ear. That’s nine titles in a row. I’m sure it would be ten if that 2019/20 season was not cancelled.

We won the promotion from the second tier in the first season of the save. We ended third in 2024/25 & 2025/26. We ended second in the 2026/27 & 2027/2028. What was next?

Yes, we won the league in 2028/29 and we ended Ajax’s league domination.

A proper narrative

Our best position this season was second place after the second and 21st league rounds. We were inconsistent due to a combination of many matches and quite a lot of small injuries. But we moved up slowly after elimination from the Champions League and we reached the top spot after the 30th round.

We played against Feyenoord at home in the last round and we needed to beat them or at least earn a point for a draw but Ajax would have to lose some points. While Ajax was 2:0 up already in the last round, we scored our only goal in the 50th minute after the club captain Richard Sedláček scored the winning goal.

It’s a super and proper narrative as this Czech midfielder is one of the main reasons why I play with this club in the Football Manager 2023. I made him a captain after Nick Ketting left the club before this season. And it ended in the best possible way.

OVERALL CLUB DEVELOPMENT

The on and off-the-pitch events during the last three seasons had the biggest impact on our finances for sure. At the beginning of the 2026/2027 season, the first when I changed formation, we had around €25M in the bank balance. At the beginning of May 2029, just after the end of our season (ignoring the European places play-off that other clubs play), we have €99,5M in the bank balance.

The Champions League prize money had the biggest impact as we made it to the Round of 16 and to the Knockou Out Play-Off Round in the last two seasons. And we also won the Europa Conference League in 2027 but the Champions League money always had the biggest impact.

Small barriers

Despite very healthy finances, the club board stuck in 2022 or 2023 when the save started. They are rejecting improving the training or youth facilities, they are rejecting improving the junior coaching, and they are rejecting the numbers of staff. Despite finishing in the top three in the league and competing in Europe very well, their response is still the same: “…it’s good enough for our club.”

I really like this save so I will continue in it until the new FM version but it would be great if the club board would switch their AI minds to the modern era of the club. Including expanding the current stadium with a capacity of 12K or building a completely new stadium. Especially as I know we will earn some (a lot of) money again in summer and during the next season.

I’m looking forward to playing the next season as I already signed a couple of very talented and promising players to refresh the squad a little bit. Especially as both our goalkeepers will leave the club. A long-term backup Ennio van der Gouw didn’t want to renew his contract and Marius Gersbeck, our number one in the last three years wanted to go back to his native country so I decided to end his contract as it would take so long to sell him.

There will be a small change maybe in terms of tactic as I would like to try to use the False 9 role instead of DLF(S). I’m not sure how it will end but I think I have at least two ideal players for this role…

Thanks for reading as always. If you would like to see something from my save, just let me know.

Some contextual updates from the save will be available in FMSlack or via my Twitter account as always.

Follow @FMRensie

My FM23 training strategy

July 3, 2023

Originally, I started writing this post at the end of January 2023. It took me only five months and a couple of days to finish it. I had an idea to share some of my training schedules because I enjoy creating new ones quite often and I like how my players are developing and their training rating is high overall. That means created schedules and the training strategy is not that bad.

It doesn’t matter it took me so long to finish the post because I kept the same strategy for the whole save so far and it was the same in the first season when I started writing about it as in the seventh season I’m in now.

As the official game manual suggests, the training can be handled in as much or as little depth as you want…

It can be handled entirely by your Backroom Staff, using a selection of pre-set schedules and sessions.
You can pick from those same pre-set schedules and devise your own training calendar.
Finally, you can be fully hands-on, tailoring each Unit, Session, and Schedule to your full requirements.

… I can’t say I’m doing everything by myself because of the squad’s policy I’m using. I have three teams within VVV-Venlo - the main one, the reserves and the youth team. I’m doing both team and individual training for the main & youth teams manually and completely on my own. The reserves training regime belongs to their manager.

MAIN SQUAD

My training approach for the main (and also youth squad no matter if their schedules are the same or different) can be divided into three groups or three parts. You probably guess one of them is a pre-season part. And you’re right :) Historically (read as my whole life), I have pre-season connected to summer and January + February. But that’s based mainly because I live in a country where the football season usually has at least two month’s break. That means I have to adapt my real-life experiences to the nation/league where I play the Football Manager in.

Pre-season: At least 1 month before the opening competitive match, it depends on when the game allows me to start the pre-season. It’s usually about 5 weeks in FM23 save in the Netherlands.
- This part of the training schedule is the hardest and most demanding. I usually run these schedules until the end of August despite the league having already begun.
- These demanding schedules are also used in the opening two weeks of the winter 1-month long break.
During the season: These schedules are created and divided to make it available when the match is on Friday (mainly in the 1st season of the save as the Netherlands’ 2nd tier has the match day set to Friday), Saturday and Sunday.
The end of the season: These schedules contain some same sessions I’m using during the season but there are significant changes to make the training easier and less demanding. It includes a lot of tactical things, more set-piece sessions and more recovery sessions. I used it usually for the last 3-5 weeks of the season.

I’m playing football for almost entire of my life. The older I’m the more I think about the training schedules and sessions. In real life of course. Especially as I became a playing coach in my local town team and I need to prepare training sessions for 15 players. Most of them are youngsters between 18-22 years old.

I know from my own experience, the training sessions have to include also some fun. Not only drills. And that’s, for example, the perfect example of the schedule I create for the last part of the season when the sessions contain goalkeeping sessions like one-on-one and more. But it’s more in my head because the game doesn’t include something like that. We have some sessions like team bonding or community outreach but that’s not what I would like to see within sessions.

I, for example, like to dedicate at least two or three training sessions during the month to just have fun. I know it sounds stupid maybe but I like to use smaller balls (the standard size is 5, so we are using the size 3) for some technical sessions like keep-ups etc.

But the Technical part of the training contains things like chance creation/conversion and so on. These things are very specific to some parts of the playing style or specific things like transition or playing from the back. And there is no technical training session within the General tab.

The already mentioned team bonding and community outreach sessions are dedicated to connecting within the local community and making some social contacts. Maybe we could have some technical/fun/competitive sessions within this Extra-Curricular tab. But it’s just my thoughts.

A couple of training schedule examples can be seen in the screenshots below.

RESERVE SQUAD

As I already wrote above, the training regime of the reserves squad is in the hands of the manager of this team. It’s not because I would be lazy or I would ignore the development of players in this squad but the reason is very simple. The reserves squad contains 3-5 players and I decided it’s not worth investing time to create schedules for them.

There are only players who are not good enough for the first team + they are too old to be in the youth team + they were not wanted even for a loan in some lower league and their contracts will expire at the end of the season.

The best young players who are too old to be in the youth team and they have high potential are already in the first team so they have the same training regime as other first-team players and they are allowed to play for the reserves squad. The rest of the reserves squad is players who are on loan - all green-highlighted players - currently, 18 when I wrote this and that means only 9 players are in training.

As the save progressed, the number of players in the reserve squad was reduced even more as the young players were on loan mainly to our affiliate clubs.

You can see the main difference is that all these players have also an additional focus in comparison with the other two squads. Every manager/coach has his own strategy.

YOUTH SQUAD

“Extra Sessions quickly result in fatigue and tiredness among your players; however, it is less of an issue for youth teams, who are more likely to benefit from the additional time spent learning and developing. There is as always, a fine balance to be struck, and the risk of over-training a young player could result in burnout.”

— Football Manager Manual

As the quote above suggests, the youth players are more likely to benefit from the additional time spent learning and developing. The training schedules for the youth team have no free day and no free sessions. The young players are able to last more and a quality training regime is more important until they will reach the age of 18 years old.

TRAINING INTENSITY & TRAINING INTENSITY SCHEDULING

This is something that’s connected a lot to all teams mentioned above. I decided to try something new within FM23 and like how it works. My usual strategy in the previous versions was that all players under the age of 18 had double training intensity. I usually set the double training intensity for all players until they were 24. But I decided to try and use the training intensity scheduling option within the game for FM23.

Firstly, the strategy with the double training intensity remains the same for the U18s team and young players.
Secondly, all the players in the first team are set to use the automatic training intensity.

You can find the Training Intensity Scheduling screen within the Training screen and there’s a “Rest” tab in the menu. It “Automatically set training intensity and rest based on player condition.” This description says all about it.

I have it like this:

Very poor & Poor condition = No pitch or gym work.
Fair & Good condition = Normal intensity.
Excellent condition = Double intensity.

The only exception to this set-up are players above their thirties, and they all have their training intensity set to normal. I don’t if this is only a coincidence or if it works as I wanted, but this set-up really helped me during the two latest seasons of the save when I played in three competitions, and there were a lot of matches in combination with the Champions League.

When some players are really tired, I’m using the good old manual rest for 1 or more days.

Edited custom view for the Training/Rest screen with some additional info.

My favourite developments

There are a lot of players who developed very well during the previous seven seasons. But if I would have to select someone, it would be (probably) newgens named Astrij Markaj and Rick Schotanus. I had him for four seasons in the squad after purchasing him for €4M from Club Brugge in 2025 when he was 17 years old. The 2028/2029 season was his fourth and the last in our club as he will join Brighton for up to €13.5M in summer 2029.

The secondly mentioned player is Rick Schotanus. It’s a player I signed for free from De Graafschap as a 16-year-old defender in January 2026. He spent some time in the youth team, he was also one season on loan in Belgium with Mechelen and he was a WBL backup in the 2027/28 season. I really liked how he performed in the second part of the 2028/29 season and he even replaced my first choice. His development is really good and I need to give him a new contract.

I’m not sharing this as something you have to/should follow. It’s just my thoughts and what I’m doing in FM23. I’m not the one whose main priority is to develop all youngsters into wonderkids. The older I am, the more important criterium for positive training/development is the feedback from players in terms of their training rating/performance.

Also, don’t forget one important thing - it’s still only a game. Let’s play it, improvise and try new things continuously. I’m currently at the end of the 7th season of the save. I didn’t produce wonderkids and sold them for €100M. But I sold around 35 players who are in Netherlands’ and Belgium’s top and second tiers. It was not always for millions but the bank balance of my club is now around €100M thanks to Champions League prize money and these transfers. That’s what I like.

Thanks for reading.

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FM23 | Four seasons with the lone central defender

April 20, 2023

Four seasons, one promotion, Europa League knock-out stage and 100% fulfilled expectations. That’s a very brief and simple summary of my Football Manager 2023 save with the VVV-Venlo so far. I decided that the fourth season of the save will be the last one using the formation with just one central defender and two defensive midfielders. How did we do in the save so far with this not-so-traditional formation?

The background

I wrote about the idea behind this formation continuously during the Football Manager 2023 and there isn’t a single blog post without mentioning it. I’m a long-term fan of using three central defenders, both in-game and in real life. I also enjoyed using the more traditional two-central defender system with the Half Back in FM22 while having both wide defenders as WBL/WBR instead of DL/DR.

And I wanted to make it the opposite - one central defender and two defensive midfielders. That’s how the idea of “the lone central defender” came to my mind. I know I thought about how the tactic itself can look already during the FM22 and I also tried it in a short save before the FM23 was released. The results were encouraging despite I used different roles. Mainly for defensive midfielders.

Tactic development

I had a lot of initial ideas and plans on how to use, develop and piece this tactic together. Some of them remained both in my head and on paper. Some of them ended up in a bin after a couple of matches.

One of my naive ideas was to use the complete wing-back role. That was very naive as I realised very quickly it will be impossible to use CWB(S) in combination with just one central defender. This player was too adventurous and too offensive-minded. The lone central defender was really too alone at the back and the defensive midfielder with any role was unable to fill the space or act as another central defender. Not even a player in the Half-Back role.

Selecting the right wide defender roles was crucial during the opening months of the save. Not only to not be so frustrated while watching our defensive phase but also for the possible success of the save/team. It ended with playing with the customised FB(D) role and it was the best possible decision.

It’s safe to say that another change was because I was a little bit naive. I wanted to use the CM(A) role, especially as this role was (should be) tweaked for the FM23 and the player within this role should operate higher on the pitch in comparison with the previous versions. It worked on average. Another reason why I changed this role to AP(S) after the first season was that I wanted one more player in the middle of the midfield area to be able to help to the central defender and to both defensive midfielders.

Original idea - 2022

2022/2023

2023/2024

2024/2025

2025/2026

Probably the most changed position/role within these four seasons was the ML position where I tried roles such as WM(S/A), IW(S/A) and also a classic Winger role. I used the W(S) role in the last season on both sides of the pitch as I decided to take advantage of the decent crossing abilities of my players.

Both main players for these positions/roles were able to play on both sides so it was also nice to swap them time from to time to get some refreshment and see what they can do with their inclination to cut inside or to stay wide etc. It’s still just a game so why not keep trying, experimenting and playing?

A couple of team instructions were changed during these seasons too. Mainly within the out-of-possession. I tended to be more cautious a careful. Mainly during the opening two seasons while the long balls and defending were not the best friends in the FM23. But the decision to not be so prudent and cautious within the defensive line and pressing was a good one as our playing style was even more attractive and joyful.

The main man

I mentioned that finding the best roles for the wide defenders was crucial at the beginning. Finding the best possible central defender who will be capable to operate alone was even more important.

When the save started, I found Rick Ketting here the main central defender. He would be one of the main central defenders even while using two or three central defenders so it was a no-brainer to use him as my main man. And he was great and of the best-rated player no matter if it was the second tier or in the Eredivisie after a promotion.

I decided to refresh this position during the second season and I wanted to find and sign someone even better. I found Lubomír Šatka and signed him for free from Lech Poznan. I didn’t want to lose Ketting so I moved him to the DM position and he played as the central defender when Šatka was unable to play.

There are no other names worth mentioning because these two players were really the only two who deserve some special mention. Some youngsters played a minor part but they will get more chances in the upcoming seasons in which I will use the 3-5-2 again. But Ketting will still be there…

**“Lone Central Defender” search filter**

How did we do?

When I look back to the previous four seasons, it’s safe to say it went very well and it’s another edition of the overachieving despite the save is not over yet and I’m happy to continue playing it again after almost one and a half month away from the game due to several reasons.

2022/2023 = a promotion to the Eredivisie from the 2nd place
2023/2024 = 5th in the Eredivisie
2024/2025 = 3rd in the Eredivisie
2025/2026 = 3rd in the Eredivisie & Europa League Round of 16

We didn’t win some trophy. We didn’t make it to the later stages of the domestic cup for example - the quarter-final in the first season was our best result so far.

We didn’t win a domestic league title so far. And maybe we won’t win it in a competition with Ajax, PSV or Feyenoord. But I’m happy with how the save went so far, especially with the not-so-traditional formation.

In comparison with my previous saves and previous FM editions, my team conceded a lot of goals. It was 50 or more goals in three of four seasons. And that’s a lot. The second season of the save, the first one in the Eredivise, was the worst in my eyes - we scored 63 and conceded 57 in the league. The goal difference of just 6 goals but still finishing 5th in the league was really weird.

I decided during the fourth season that I should end at the best. I knew I won’t be able to win the league with this formation while conceding so many goals. Finishing third in a quality league as the Eredivisie is, is the best result I was able to achieve with this.

The fifth season, 2026/2027, was already kicked off while finishing this post as I started writing it almost two months ago. Going through the opening seasons and reflecting on what everything happened gave me some new motivation to continue playing and writing. The same as the process of creating and tweaking something different.

Using the 3-5-2 formation is not something new to me. It’s my favourite formation in recent years both in the game and in a real life. I’m using it also as the playing coach of my local town team in real life and my players/teammates enjoy using it. So do I.

And I’m sure I will enjoy using it even in the game.

Again.

Previously in FM23 save

Oct 6, 2023

VVV, FM Saves Summary

FM23 | Nine and a half seasons with VVV-Venlo

Oct 6, 2023

VVV, FM Saves Summary

Oct 6, 2023

VVV, FM Saves Summary

Jul 10, 2023

VVV

FM23 | VVV-Venlo: A patient way to the league title

Jul 10, 2023

VVV

Jul 10, 2023

VVV

Jul 3, 2023

VVV, Others

My FM23 training strategy

Jul 3, 2023

VVV, Others

Jul 3, 2023

VVV, Others

Apr 20, 2023

VVV

FM23 | Four seasons with the lone central defender

Apr 20, 2023

VVV

Apr 20, 2023

VVV

Apr 15, 2023

Tactics, VVV

FM23 | Preparing to change tactics

Apr 15, 2023

Tactics, VVV

Apr 15, 2023

Tactics, VVV

Feb 21, 2023

VVV

FM23 | 2025/26 with VVV-Venlo: Not ready, inexperienced

Feb 21, 2023

VVV

Feb 21, 2023

VVV

Feb 7, 2023

VVV

FM23 | A third season with Venlo: Don't be too shy

Feb 7, 2023

VVV

Feb 7, 2023

VVV

Jan 24, 2023

Tactics, VVV

FM23 | An ordinary match with a great comeback

Jan 24, 2023

Tactics, VVV

Jan 24, 2023

Tactics, VVV

Jan 13, 2023

VVV

FM23 | VVV-Venlo and Lone Central Defender - the first season in Eredivisie

Jan 13, 2023

VVV

Jan 13, 2023

VVV

Dec 20, 2022

VVV, Tactics

FM23 | VVV-Venlo and Lone Central Defender - match analysis, key changes and promotion

Dec 20, 2022

VVV, Tactics

Dec 20, 2022

VVV, Tactics

Nov 30, 2022

VVV

FM23 | VVV-Venlo & Lone Central Defender - searching for the right one

Nov 30, 2022

VVV

Nov 30, 2022

VVV

Nov 16, 2022

VVV

FM23 | Before I passed the opening day and hit the continue button properly...

Nov 16, 2022

VVV

Nov 16, 2022

VVV

Oct 17, 2022

Tactics, VVV

FM23 | Building tactics around one central defender with VVV-Venlo - part 1

Oct 17, 2022

Tactics, VVV

Oct 17, 2022

Tactics, VVV

Thanks for reading Follow @FMRensie

FM23 | Preparing to change tactics

April 15, 2023

“It’s the beginning of April 2026 in my save. It’s Saturday, April 4, 2026, to be absolutely precise. It’s my 40th birthday. It’s also a matchday and we are playing Fortuna Sittard away from home. We are reaching the end of the fourth season of the save and we as the VVV-Venlo club are doing really well. We are aiming to finish in the top three for the second season in a row and that means we will secure a place in the Europa League again. But instead of concentrating on the nearest match against Fortuna, I’m doing a lot of admin things. Why? Because I decided the upcoming weeks will be the last while we will play with the “Lone central defender” formation within this save. Four seasons is enough.”

If I would write a diary, the notes from this day of my Football Manager 2023 would (probably) look something like this. It’s just two weeks after the annual youth intake and we were out of the Europa League knockout stage with just five domestic league matches ahead. I thought about this for a while already but the final decision was made after the last match in March when we beat Go Ahead Eagles at home.

The “Lone central defender” formation will be replaced with the formation I love most of all. Mainly in real life as I used other formations in the previous ten editions of the game more frequently. I will change our shape from one central defender to three at the back. But I will try to keep very similar principles of the activity in our play as I wanted from my players in the last two seasons.

If you’re interested in what I did in terms of preparations for the tactical switch in-between seasons, feel free to continue reading this post.

#1 Creating the new tactic within the tactics screen

The most logical thing first. I created a new tactic within the tactics screen and set all the instructions etc.

The only thing I didn’t set so far was the set pieces because I wanted to play the rest of the season with the different formations and players would be in the wrong roles around the pitch within set pieces. That’s something I will edit ahead of the new (pre)season.

The tactic, roles and instructions can be different and it all can change during the next seasons as I will try to develop the 3-5-2 formation but this is what I will use at the beginning.

Creating the new tactic in the tactics screen is the first thing I did mainly because all the remaining things I did (and wrote about) are connected to it. And the following steps depend on creating a new tactic.

#1.1 Set the new tactic as the primary tactic within the training

The next step connected to creating a new tactic is I went to the training overview screen and I set the newly created tactic as the primary trained tactic. The pop-up box tells you that it affects “your team’s tactical identity, also used to influence training schedules”.

#2 Deciding about the squad for the next season

I decided to use one of the new Football Manager 2023 features - the squad planner - as a part of this tactical change. I already had the new tactic created within the tactics screen. When I opened the squad planner screen, I just switched to the “Next Season” button and selected the “FM23 3-5-2 2026” tactic. And everything was correct and well prepared to start planning the next season.

I’m not the biggest fan of this screen or I would use it every in-game day but I find it nice and useful in this exact example. I like to include some loan players for specific positions and roles. I also like to select players for different positions in both flat back and midfield lines. For example, I like to have exactly three central defenders (main one/backup/youngster) for the DCR position. And the same for DC and DCL. That means these players will play in this position and they know it.

It’s also based on their preferred foot and the side they prefer to play at. It’s also nice I’m able to create a new recruitment focus on this page if I would think it’s needed - in the right top section of the screen…

#3 Searching potential new players for specific roles

Targets for the upcoming transfer window are very easy. As I played with just one central defender in the previous four seasons, I don’t have enough central defenders which are good enough. There are two ways how I can search for new central defenders. The first one is connected to the squad planner screen I mentioned already as I can create the new recruitment focus straight in this screen.

Or I can go to the standard player search screen and I can load the search filter and search view for the central defender that I made already at the beginning of the save when I wanted to try the best possible lone central defender. The search filter parameters are still the same and the main things I want from the central defender are still the same.

I prefer searching for players on my own by setting the exact things I want to find but I just wanted to try which players will appear in the recruitment focus so I created a new one with the top priority as I want to find the potential new player(s) very soon.

#4 Changing individual training

Probably the last thing I considered as an important part of the tactical change was to change the individual training of our players. Our wide players (defenders & midfielders) are the best example. As my main roles during the first four seasons were FB(D) and W(S), I wanted to change all of these wide players’ individual training to WB(S) as I will play most of them as WBL/WBR players from the start of the next season.

I will probably use CWB(S) role but I won’t train these players for this exact role as it’s really demanding and I want my players will focus on most of the key attributes for the wing-back overall.

Players that were trained as DM(D) will change their position/role focus to CM(S) role. Some players were trained as WM(S) in the previous two seasons but that’s something that I will change as soon as I will decide where these players will play.

These position/role/duty changes were made also for our U19s team, especially since it’s already after the annual youth intake and we signed the best ones already.

What next? That’s easy - let’s play some matches and develop another tactic.

Thanks for reading.