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.
The final squad of the save.
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.