Seven friendlies, fifteen league matches and two domestic cup matches. The time I spent with Grenoble during the FM23 Beta, and the opening days of the new FM edition was pressed to just a couple of months due to the World Cup 2022. I didn't have a typical amount of time to build the club or save itself. I delegated most of the things to the club staff after I signed some personnel. The only thing I took over was training schedules because the way how AI set training schedules is a joke, and the assistant managers react very badly to the changes in the schedules. The rest was only about the tactic.

When Tony/FM_Grasshopper shared the idea about making the tactic around three specific roles, my initial thought was that I didn't use the BWM role and Shadow Striker role for a long time. The Target Forward role was a different story as I used this role for almost the whole previous FM edition and it was one of my favourites part of the FM22 save also thanks to Sebastian Musiolik who played this role.

Another thing is that I probably can't play the game just with some randomly selected club and I had to negotiate with Tony that I can play in the French Ligue 2 instead of in the top tier. Why? Because I always need some story, some narrative. And when I found out both Djorkaeff and Giroud started their careers with Grenoble Foot, the decision was made.

The shorter version of this post was published in the Latte Quarterly magazine, issue 13, published on Friday, November 25, 2022.

Tactically, I planned to create something different in comparison with what I will want to use in my main FM23. When I put together information about the players in the Grenoble squad, I knew it won't be some "vertical tiki-taka with linear passes to the channels". I ruled out using Ball Playing Defenders but also playmakers in central midfield. I wanted to create something that would be straightforward, but would be also safe enough. I decided to use a 4-3-1-2 formation, and the BWM(D) was placed in the middle of the flat central midfield.

The first steps

The first thing I did was that I signed three new scouts despite I knew this is not my main save and it will be only short-term. But I wanted to try the new (updated) recruitment system. Mainly the “Top” option as it suggests that it will use most of your scouts to deliver the best possible results. As I set my own rules to try to sign players at the same age as our legendary trio was, it’s clear that I didn’t need scouts with the best attribute of judging player potential, but I needed to know what these players are capable to do right now. All three scouts I signed had a Judging Player Ability attribute of 15 and they were among the first four scouts that appeared in the search filter.

I also lowered the attributes threshold by one point for each excellent, good, and average attribute threshold.  

The second thing I did was I created filters and shortlists for each of these three roles after I found out the Grenoble squad doesn’t contain good enough youngsters who would be able to step up to the first team and they would be allowed as our own exception in terms of the age. And after the first friendly match that was scheduled for the second day of the save, I started manually searching for the best possible players.

After setting everything together, I decided I will search for the ball-winning midfielder by myself and the other two roles will be up to new scouts. The first issue happened when I set up the recruitment focus with the top priority for the target forward and I wanted to create the second top priority focus for the shadow striker role. The limited number of our scouts didn’t allow me to create the second top priority focus because there were not enough scouts. That’s a nice and logical detail.

Probably the best part of the revamped recruitment system is the “In Progress” bookmark within the Recruitment Focus screen. No matter what I set up or what player/position/role I decided to search within the recruitment focus, this bookmark was like radar to me. I had to check it every in-game day and I wanted to know how many players were added here and what was going on.

No matter if it was BWM(D), SS or TM(S), for some reason, I had my favourite adept for a signing from the beginning of my search.

Anthony Lippini – 33 years old former player of Montpellier, Clermont, or Ajaccio, who can play as RB or LB. Yes, you read it right, but his attributes for the BWM(D) role were the best in comparison with all available players, and in comparison, with all our own players. I got him for a two-weeks trial = “regular starter in his prime years” = exactly what I needed.

And the same happened with Yannick Mamilonne who I signed for a trial to play him as TF(S). His bravery, balance, jumping reach and strength attributes made me crazy to sign him not just because of the TF(S) role but also because of the set pieces.

The Shadow Striker role was the only one from these three I didn’t sign some new player(s) to. I was already in the red numbers in terms of the wage budget and there was a bold “0” in the line of the transfer budget. And when even a loan had to be delayed because of not having enough funds, I rather identified the best possible shadow striker from players I had in the squad. I, for example, was not even able to sign Giovani dos Santos as a free player because I didn’t have around €33k for his agent and the club board didn’t give me some more money.

So, my main man was Axel Ngando. A 29-year-old midfielder who is only one year younger than Djorkaeff, he is French, and he can play this role.

Yes, he is far from Djorkaeff’s quality I don’t think he is too bad a player. His dribbling, first touch, passing and off-the-ball movement are solid for the second tier. He was also the only exception in terms of individual training. As this save is not my main save, I delegated the individual training to the assistant manager, but I took over Ngando’s individual training, leave the position/role/duty to “AM (C) – Playing Position” and set his additional focus to the “Attacking Movement” to try to improve his Anticipation, Decisions and Off The Ball. I just swapped it with Final Third after a couple of months to add focus on the Composure as well. I knew he won’t learn a lot and he won’t develop as some young player and that was the main reason why I selected just the additional focus to not make his training regime too hard.

The last thing I did was I asked him to remove the “Runs With Ball Rarely” trait as it doesn’t suit this role.

The main point of my 4-3-1-2 tactic was to create enough space to give Shadow Striker enough room for his runs around the opponent's half. I set both MCL & MCR to CM(S) roles and both these players got Hold Position, Take More Risks and Run Wide With Ball instructions.

The last one was one of my favourites within FM22 and I decided to try it again. The important thing I like to do while using this instruction is to place the left-footed player in MCL and the right-footed player in MCR. The reason is simple – they can cross with their strong foot from the wide area, and they don't have to cut back to pass/cross with their weaker foot.

Team instructions

As I already mentioned earlier, I knew there are no superstars in the squad. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible. I decided to use just Pass Into Space – to try to take advantage of a lot of runs by Shadow Striker and both WB players, Play Out Of Defence and Whipped Crosses – because all strikers including newly signed Mamilonne are strong.

The important part of the "in transition" instructions was the "Distribute to Target Forward".

I decided to use it instead of Take Short Kicks or distribution to the central defenders because of what I mentioned already – any defender in the current Grenoble squad was good enough to create something. That also lead to the fact I decided to use No-Nonsense Centre-Back. The execution of this idea in all wet FM dreams is very simple – either the goalkeeper or the centre-back will pass the ball to the target forward who will hold the ball or pass it to the space and the shadow striker will go alone to the penalty area or create a chance for some other players. I'm glad I was able to fulfil this idea with the goal I made the simple graphic below.

The More Often Trigger Press was one of the first things I usually removed during matches because I already had Pressing Forward here, and the Shadow Striker also had trigger press set to "more often", so it was not needed to have it collectively too. And it was a role-coaster in combination with the BWM role sometimes.

Limitations and possible changes

As the season progressed, I decided to make two main changes. I added the Shorter Passing instruction, and I removed the No-Nonsense Centre-Back. Why? Despite there being a lot of great situations thanks to the distribution to the target forward, I thought I will lose all my nerves from too many long passes by No-Nonsense Centre-Back.

This role has More Direct Passes instruction by default. I will be clear – I'm not used to this style of football. I hate long passes and I hate having my neck blocked after every match in the Czech lower league I play in in real life. When I removed this role, it returned to the normal regime in my eyes and the passing style in our play was more pleasant to watch. The fact I added Shorter Passing had nothing to do with this, but I had a couple of small injuries in the squad and some worse players had issues with keeping the ball, they made a lot of dribbles, and we lost the ball too often.

Results

The media prediction of Grenoble was to finish 15th in the league. I finished the save after 15 matches and we were 4th in the table with 30 points with 8 wins, 6 draws and 1 defeat. Just two points behind the leader FC Metz. We also won both the 7th and 8th French Cup rounds 2:1.

Only two teams beat us – OGC Nice in the first friendly match (2:4) and AS Saint-Etienne in the league at the beginning of October 2022. My highlight would be probably a home 4:0 win against SM Caen (they were top of the league at that time) in the middle of autumn as both Axel Ngando and Yannick Mamilonne scored two goals. 

Our "key" players

Anthony Lippini as our main Ball Winning Midfielder was the right man for the hard job in the centre of the pitch. He had 3.9 clearances/90 minutes after these 15 matches – the best from all in the league. But he also received 8 yellow cards in 14 appearances, so he confirmed the BWM reputation.

Axel Ngando as our main Shadow Striker scored 11 goals (only Charles Abi scored one more goal), made 9 assists and he was the best-rated player from all in the league with 7.71 average ratings. It only confirmed that a good system can create a star from the average player. It was also fun how the narrative of the save can develope quickly even if it’s only a very short save like this. When Ngando was in a very good form, the message in the mailbox appeared: “Nice Ngando! Former Grenoble favourite Youri Djorkaeff has heaped praise on Alex Ngando after his inspired performance…”

What better message can you get when you try to replicate someone?

Yannick Mamilonne as our main Target Forward scored 10 goals and made 1 assist. He was the second-best-rated player in the league with a 7.47 average rating just behind Ngando. The data hub section tells me that he had 1.94 progressive passes per 90 minutes (1.26 more than the league average) – but who knows if it works properly right now. He was also a top performer in terms of headers won/90 minutes – mainly thanks to the distribution towards him and set pieces as he was the main target. Five of his 10 league goals were from corners.

Conclusion

The Grenoble squad offers average players and it would take a lot of time to rebuild it if it would be my main save (mainly in the future, who knows?). But as the starting point for the new edition? That was good because 1) I discovered some new players, 2) I had the option to use some roles I didn't use for some time and 3) it confirmed to me what I don't want to use as my playing style.

I also tried the same tactics without changes in a different save with Reading FC. I played only five league games and one match of the English league cup. I won all of these matches and it worked absolutely perfectly. Mainly thanks ideal strikers’ combination in the squad. You can check a couple of screens and notes in this Twitter thread.

Thank you, Latte Quarterly for the possibility.