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.
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).
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 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.
FM Slack alert!
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.