Do you remember that moment when you spent your entire free time with the Football Manager sorting everything within the tactics, line-up, set-pieces and more? And do you also remember that moment when you just rotated a couple of players and all your set pieces were fu*cked? I know that feeling. If your answer was “no, I don’t care about set-pieces”, you can skip this post if you’re not interested in how the 2029/2030 season ended. If you’re interested in a simple trick/tip to make it easier for yourself, maybe the following lines will help you. This is what and how I’m doing within my save to save some time for more important things…

SAVE & MANAGE TEAM SELECTION(S)

I know I already mentioned this simple option during this save but it was not detailed, just a short mention. Firstly, I know that I will be playing three competitions during the first part of the 2029/2030 season - domestic league & cup and also the Champions League group stage as we have qualified automatically thanks to the league title.

I like to have most of the things prepared and planned ahead. I usually know which players will stay in the first team, who will leave the club on loan and who permanently or who will be promoted from the youth squad. I like to have it prepared even before the end of the season. At least in my head. That means I can concentrate on different things and just react to some unexpected offers.

My usual approach is that I just open the tactics screen and I set up the starting XI to see it visually. I add the subs (main backup players for each position/role) and I save it as ‘MAIN 2029/2030’. The second step is that I open the set-pieces part of the tactics and I set up all the roles exactly how I want based on the players’ qualities and how I think they should work. The last step is when I go back to the tactics screen and I save the tactic. It’s a “5-3-2 2029 MAIN squad” in our example.

What next? I remain within the tactics screen, I load the same tactic for the 2nd or 3rd slot, clear the squad selection and I start from scratch. But this time it’s about to put the “B”ackup squad selection together. When I have all the roles in the line-up and all subs filled, I save the team selection again - this time as a “B” SQUAD 2029/2030. And yes, the step to make the set-pieces correct is the next one before I go back to the tactics screen and save the tactics as a “5-3-2 2029 B squad”.

If you ask yourself why I include the year within the name of tactic, it’s mainly from a practical point to be able to identify tactical changes I made during the save in each season.

Jaroszewski = exception

I made one thing a little bit differently already during the 2028/2029 season as I decided to play two 17/18 years old newgens as my main/backup right defenders within the CWB(A) role. One of them is Maciej Jaroszewski (click to see his profile). He is a little bit different complete wing-back. He is a physically very well-prepared player in terms of pace. But he is also 193 cm tall with a very good off-the-ball movement and a jumping reach of 20! Some of you probably already knew where this is heading to…

…yes, I decided to add the main tactic as our 2nd tactic option but I added Jaroszewski as our main target for all set-piece routines. Just to test it. The reason why I saved the tactic just because of this player is that they rotate quite a lot with the other one so I can always just switch between tactics (also during the matches) and the main targets will be different players again. The second right defender option is the shortest player within the squad so I really don’t want to have him as the one who attacks the near post or who is set to fight with the goalkeeper…

The first picture shows where you can save/load/manage the squad selection. It also shows the tactic and the squad after the opening match of the 2029/2030 season and the fact that I now have the main tactic selected because Jaroszewski is injured and I will have to use another player. The second picture is an example of the “B”ackup squad selected together with the B squad tactic. Feel free to ignore the injured players at the time when the pictures were taken. You can also see how the squad selection of the main & backup squads are simply divided by the shirt numbers 👀

WHAT? SET PIECES ARE RIGHT…

One of the biggest advantages of what I mentioned above is linked to set-pieces. Why? Example from my save: while my main strikers Hubert Turski and Sebastian Musiolik are both absolutely perfect for set pieces, both my backup strikers are absolutely different players and their physical and off-the-ball skills are not enough compatible with the set-pieces. That applies also to the set-piece takers, not only to target players.

The set pieces and saved tactics are not working properly together in the current (and in the previous editions too) and you have to be very careful what you’re doing. If you don’t care about set pieces, it’s up to you 100% but you can’t fault the game something doesn’t work properly when you didn’t care about it. When you create some tactic with some routines and you save this tactic, the routines will be saved together with the tactic when you will load it again.

That means a very simple thing together with the squad selection management I wrote about above. The main tactic is saved with the routines including the right players in the right roles. The “B”ackup squad selection is saved within the “B squad” tactic with the right players in the right roles. Including the takers of corners, free kicks, throw-ins or penalties. I always knew there will be the right player within the selection.

It gives me:

1. The security I have everything prepared every time I have time to play the game

2. It really saves my time while playing the game because I don’t have to rearrange players within all routines before every game because I am able to just load the squad selection I need and piece it together with the saved tactic & set pieces

3. I also can switch between the main tactic and the main tactic with Jaroszewski (before he will leave) to mix the set-pieces during the match as the tactic is the same, only players within the routines are different.

A simple example of how my three corner kick routines are changing while changing tactics and the squad selection for each match or during the match. You can easily see the changes in the players positioning and roles.

I still check the set pieces and if everything is alright but I don’t have to make big changes and spend my whole available time playing the game by changing everything.

There is a very nice example from the opening match of the 2029/2030 Ekstraklasa campaign. We started with the main squad & the main tactic with Jaroszewski set as the main target man for set pieces. But the first corners and free kicks didn’t look alright and he was out of the right position so I changed the tactic to the main v1 where central defenders and both strikers are set as the main targets. It resulted in the goal from a wide free kick as the only summer signing Robert Kreso scored with the back post header. Jaroszewski got also a slight knock and he was replaced by Cichos. The smallest defender of our squad is also set as the second corner taker when Cvijan is not on the pitch. And as you can see, Cvijan left the pitch in the 78th minute and Cichos made an assist from a corner in the stoppage time. The ideal example of everything that I wrote about together in one match :)

THE 2029/2030 SEASON’S SQUAD

As I already mentioned above, we signed just only one player during the summer of 2029 ahead of the new season and it was 20 years old Croatian central defender Robert Kreso (click to see his profile). I bought him for €2.6M from Hajduk Split and he was one of our main three central defenders.

There were two major outgoing transfers during this summer as I sold Sergey Lyakh (the Belarusian newgen) for €6.25M to Hertha who I signed for €210K six years ago. And central defender Bartlomiej Kozlowski to Dinamo Moscow for €8.75M (bought him in 2028 for €3.2M from Wisla). The rest were loans to some of our affiliate clubs or small transfers.

When the new Ekstraklasa campaign started at the end of July 2029, we had 27 players in the squad. Three goalkeepers and 24 outfield players. These players were divided into the main squad, the backup squad and the remaining young players were set as available to play for our U18s team. Nothing complicated.

The average age of our main squad (without subs) was 25,1, the average age of our backup squad was 19,6 and the overall average of our squad was 21,3.

THE 2029/2030 SEASON SUMMARY

The previous season was exceptional with 34 wins in 34 league matches. We didn’t make the same in this season. Thank God. We won 27 league matches and drew 7 games in the 2029/2030 season with 94 goals scored and 16 conceded. That’s about 5 more goals conceded than in the previous season. Our unbeaten run continues in Ekstraklasa for more than one hundred matches but I’m sure it will end in the upcoming season that will be the last one of the save.

The biggest change in our success was that we were competitive in the Champions League. Due to our poor results in the previous season and the lack of other competitive Polish clubs in Europe, we lost the place in the Champions League group stage so we had the last chance to make it straight to the group thanks to the league title. I also knew it was probably the last chance to make something in this competition.

We finished bottom in the group last season. We got Bayern, Atlético and Ferencvarosi in this season. And we did great with 4 wins, 1 draw and 1 defeat. Bayern won the group only thanks to better goal differences in head-to-head matches. But the progress to the knockout stage was already fantastic. We beat RB Leipzig 6:4 on aggregate in the first knockout stage and made it to the Quarter-Final where we lost to Bayern 0:1 and 1:2 and it was the end of our journey. But to make it so far in the Champions League is and will be one of the main highlights of the save.

TURSKI, YOU’RE GOD!

“I think one of the three will beat Henryk Reyman’s 1927/28 record,” wrote Tony/FM_Grasshopper when I published a post about the previous seasons and where I wrote about Hubert Turski scored 34 goals in Ekstraklasa and he was very close to beat the hundred years old competitions record. And Tony was right. Hubert did it in the 2029/2030 season.

If I remember it right, Hubert had 20 league goals when the first part of the season ended, which means opening 19 matches from 34. He needed 17 more goals to level the record at least. The same as in the previous seasons, he had not the best start to the spring but the finish was perfect.

He had 31 goals after the 30th league round and he needed 6 goals to level or 7 goals to beat the record in the last four matches. I think he already saw himself in some beach bar so he scored five goals during our 7:2 win away from home against bottom Bruk-Bet Nieciecza. We all knew he was very close. We drew with LKS Lódz and Legia and beat Arka Gdynia and Hubert scored four from our five goals in the last three matches to make it to 40 goals in the 2029/2030 season! And there we have a new Ekstraklasa hero. I can’t see someone will beat it.

I usually ask myself what next? at the end of each season. This time, the answer is very simple. Just one more season. The end of the FM22 cycle is already here. Many people stopped playing or writing about it. I will try my best to finish one more season to have another 10 seasons long save. I’m not afraid I will lose my best players (Thurski, Cvijan and Jaroszewski), I will play the last season with my own newgens or buy some domestic talents. Just to enjoy the time when I will have time to play.

I will divide the team again, I will create my selections for each competition in line with the tactics and set pieces. And maybe, maybe there will be some news about the new game…

Take care.