FM20 Far Post Corner | Tweaking the good old trick

The fifth season of my Football Manager 2020 save in Mexico is well underway and I failed again. I mean, I wanted to add make the most from set pieces to the club culture/vision. But there was not option to do it between the seasons. So, I decided I will just keep it in my head and will try to tweak/edit/improve set pieces through the season.

It led to the fact I decided to try to recreate the good old trick with the far post corner kick routine.

It's simple. When you want to use a short routine, you place someone to offer short option role.

If you want to use near post routine you concentrate the best options in terms of your best-suited players around the near post. It's logical.

But I made the opposite this time

My idea was to use far post corner delivery but don't place all players to attack far post, lurk at far post etc.

I decided to put most of my players to the near post. Two players are set as attack near post & lurk at near post, two players are set as go forward and one player lurk outside area.

That means at least two, but better three players stay back. And the last one is set to attack far post.

This is my initial set-up as it's available to see in the picture above. The idea was to convince the opponent's defending players to go and defend mainly the area around the near post.

And the main and the most important task you have is to select the best possible player with the best possible tor the attack far post role as he will be here alone. Sometimes against two or three defensive players.

But sometimes only against one...

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This is how it ended in the picture above.

In this case, our young central defender Infante was set to attack far post. This our own newgen was (almost) unstoppable in the previous season for our U20s team in terms of set pieces.

He scored 9 goals in 15 matches and seven from them were from corners.

I found out it's easier to score from set-pieces for my first-team players when they play in the Under 20 league. But this defender was still 17 years old so I thought: wow, that could be great if he will be able to score at least a half of these goals also for the first team.

And he scored the winning goal in the "Campeones Cup" against Salt Lake. But it was not that easy as I thought.

The young Josué Infante. Orange highlighted attributes are the most important to me, the red highlighted attributes are important as well but not necessary. On the other hand, it's obvious he is not the best header or finisher.

I can say, the young Josué scored only twice during the first part of the season. It was clear he is not that good in the top tier matches as against the young and not that good players in the youth league.

And I started to test different players in the attack far post role. But one thing became like a tradition - strikers or defenders were the best here.

The current striker #1 and the key attributes for the attack far post role

I also made one change to the whole set-up during the season as I decided to add offer short option role as it means another defensive player will be dragged out of penalty area position.

Do you know that feeling when you made some change and it worked in the first match after you made that change?

It happened when we played Chivas away. I decided to test Daniel Cisneros in attack far post role.

And, as I mentioned, I added one player to offer a short option. Well, Cisneros opened the score in the 20th minute after the corner kick.

As you can see, 6 players were concentrated to defend near post area, 1 player went close down the corner and 1 is outside the penalty area. Only 1 player defended the far post.

Cisneros was able to beat his only one defender and opened the score with the perfect header.

The main idea behind this routine was complete. See gif.

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Sometimes, it can also lead to an own goal or the player set to attack near post can score. If the players around the near post are able to avoid offside position. For example like this one...

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As I already said, the main task is to select the best possible player for the attack far post role in terms of Off The Ball, Bravery, Decisions or Finishing attributes.

I was not able to sign some good players in terms of "SfS" strategy the same as last year as most players with the right attributes for set pieces are out of our financial possibilities.

But it's fun to test my current own players at least.

Dojaquez (ST), Infante (CD), Osorio (AMR), Cisneros (ST or AMR), Moreno (ST), Lecanda (CD).

The last gif shows two goals by Óscar Moreno, the 18 years old newgen striker, who scored twice in a single match for our U20s against Cruz Azul to seal 2-0 win.

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Note: this is not intended to be routine what will assure you will score many many goals with it. This is mainly about the fact I had some idea what to do and how it ended with the limited options within the set pieces in Football Manager.

It's a different type of the FM20 Far Post Corner routine this time but I really enjoy it.

If the only thing what you want is the download link, read the post again 😉

Goodbye South America, goodbye FM19.

Firstly, I would like to say a big thank you to Vincent Guzman and his perfect guides about South America nations, before Football Manager 2019 was released. It was one of the main reasons why I decided to leave Europe and I wanted to try a different continent.

Now, after almost one year, the FM19 cycle is over. And it was a good decision to try different nations, different league system, different continental competitions and to discover different players.

The first part was in Chile with CD Magallanes and I thought it will be my only club for the whole FM19 time. But I was wrong. As I already wrote in the past, the success with the Chilean club was too fast.

Simple stats summary: Nine seasons, 466 matches played, 327 matches won, 870 goals scored, 27 trophies won, new stadium, most reputable South American club in the world…

…the club growth was perfect in all areas but as I had a lot of time to play, it was too fast and I ended this part of the journey at the end of February 2019 of real-life date.

When I wrote about this part of the save I included my three favourite players. They were real-life players, not newgens. I wrote about the central defender Rodrigo Echeverría and two midfielders Diego Aravena and Tomás Aránguiz. You can read it about them HERE.

I decided to share my favourite newgen from the time with Magallanes. Despite the fact, this young player was not wonderkid and he was not the best newgen from the youth intake, he was able to develop in the player who spent a big part of his career in Manchester City.

His name is Alfonso Reiman and he was part of the Youth Intake of our affiliate club Unión San Felipe in 2021. I bought him for €195k and he played mainly as CM(S).

We sold him for €10M four years later to Corinthians and it was a new club record for outgoing transfer. He spent three and a half years with Corinthians before Manchester City bought him for €21M.

To my big surprise, he was not just one of many players here. He became a very important member of the squad and his value was €90M in 2035 when he was 30 years old.

He moved to Bayern in 2037 and to PSG one year later where he is at the end of this save in his 35 years and with 137 caps for Chilean national team.

I didn't have him in my own squad for a long time before he moved elsewhere but it was great to follow his career.

Alfonso Reimann in 2022, 2025, 2030, 2035 and 2040.

The seasons in Chile are from January to December and I knew during the last season already I will leave. I started to look around other nations and leagues.

I wanted a new challenge. And I spotted Arsenal de Sarandí. The bottom team of the Argentinian second tier. The magic of the relegation rules in Argentina is that you can stay in the division even if you end the season at the last place in the table thanks to "Average Points Over 3 Years Table".

And that was also the case of my first half of the season with Sarandí. It was a risk as there was a possibility we will not gain enough points, the club will be relegated to the non-playable third tier and I will have to look for another team.

But we made it, finished 21st in the table but 17th in the Average Points Table.

Since the 2026/2027 survive, I started to build the club on my own and as I like the most - young players, selling the key players to have enough money for club facilities improvement and playing with many own newgens.

We won the promotion in my first full season with the club and we finished 7th in the first season in the Superliga. Sixth place in the 2029/2030 season was the start of the next three years with the first trophies after many years.

We won the Superliga, Superleague Cup, Copa Sudamericana and Recopa Sudamericana.

When I wrote about the 2038/2039 season, the title was "The season like no other" because of some records and perfect results. But the next season, the last one of the save, was even more successful. We won 7 trophies including all 4 domestic competitions and also Copa Libertadores, Recopa Sudamericana and FIFA Club World Cup.

The biggest difference between Magallanes and Arsenal de Sarandí board was the willingness to move the club forward.

Every time we earned some money thanks to transfers or via competitions with Magallanes, the board accepted my requests to improve facilities. That was the main reason why I spent only 9 years with Magallanes but 14 years with Sarandí.

Finances of Arsenal de Sarandí in 2027 vs. 2040

When we won the second league title with Sarandí in 2031/2032 and the first Copa Libertadores trophy, the club still had the bellow average training & youth facilities, average youth recruitment and the board was happy with the level of everything.

And they also rejected all my requests despite a lot of money in the bank and prematurely repaid loans.

But the situation has changed after elections in 2032 and the new board was willing to move the club to the highest level. That was the moment when I got new blood and new motivation to continue in the save. I said to myself I will improve all facilities to the top and the save will be over.

We are in June 2040 and all facilities are within the best possible level except the Youth Facilities as they are "only" Superb and the last upgrade will be done in November 2040.

I mentioned in the last post one of the reasons why I joined this club - the captain Agustin Chocobar. The central midfielder who was able to play in several roles including BWM but also DLP or classic CM. If you missed it, you can find it in the bottom part of THIS POST.

You can see there are several players included in the club details section as Icons or Favoured Personnel.

There are almost all my favourite players from the time with Sarandí including Santiago Ortiz, Lautaro Contreras, Franco Somoza, Damián Guevara, Marcelo Pérez, Darío González or Luciano Cambiasso. 

The last one is probably my most favourite newgen from the Sarandí Youth Intake in 2031. He played mainly as CM(S) or CM(A) and despite he didn't score too many goals, he usually broke the net when he scored from the long distance.

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Luciano Cambiasso in 2032, 2035 and 2040.

I used several tactics during this FM19 save. It all started with defensive-minded 4-1-2-3 but it continued with a more positive version of this formation and several variations of 4-1-4-1.

And (almost) as always it ended with many versions of 4-3-3 with the flat midfield trio - Development of 4-3-3 with Magallanes.

The 4-3-3 with the flat midfield trio was the main tactic for the time with Sarandí as well. You can find some versions and modifications in the previous posts.

The last part of the save, the last half of the season, I used 4-4-2 formation with very simple instructions and it resulted in stupid results (click to see the results).

The Football Manager 2019 save in South America is over. I mentioned it in the Football Manager 2019 (#FM19) - in retrospect I was able to contribute to thanks to FMGrasshopper that FM19 became predictable and I didn't enjoy it as much as previous versions of the game. 

On the other side, as I already mentioned at the start, it was great to discover something new outside Europe. 

If you would like to read the whole South America save from the beginning, just open this link.

Now, it's time to find some ideal challenge for the Football Manager 2020. 

Thank you, everyone, for following the save. 

FM19: Development of 4-3-3 with CD Magallanes

I tried a lot of formations and tactical styles during my life so far. In real life football and in the virtual world as well. But every time I look back there are two formations I prefer the most.

It's 4-1-4-1 and 4-3-3 with the flat central midfield. The first one is great and it was a pleasure to use it in the previous versions of Football Manager but I used only very briefly during FM19 because I wanted to test myself and set the other one properly.

The idea to develop 4-3-3 formation with flat midfield came to me shortly after the start of the 2021 season.

I played with the 4-1-2-2-1 formation or 4-3-3DM, it depends how you prefer to call it, before and we won the first five matches of the season with 10 goals scored and 2 conceded including matches with bigger clubs like Colo Colo or Universidad de Chile.

We had the first Copa Libertadores group stage match ahead against Liga de Quito at home. I decided to remove the previous formation and created 4-3-3 with set pieces etc. The process was almost the same as with the set pieces.

4-3-3 v2021

The first idea was to use something similar as in FM18 with BFC Siófok when I used CM(S) - DLP(D) - CM(A) as central midfield trio. But I decided to use different roles this time.

As long shots goal were/are 'a little bit' overpowered I decided to use Mezzala with support duty because this role is an ideal choice (in my eyes) to take advantage of players who are capable to shoot from distance.

I used MEZ(S) on the left side of central midfield trio in combination with WB(S) and IF(A). These three players were able to create some very good situations on the left side and enjoyable to watch as well.

For example like this...

Another perfect example of the simplicity of this formation is this goal and usage of a short throw-in. Player in DLP(D) role is set to come short and his main aim is to decide what team will do next. In this example, he switched the ball with the Winger (number 9) and stayed in the right position to receive the ball back from Full back.

He then found our Box to Box midfielder (number 15) who made a long pass to open space for the Inside Forward and Complete Forward was at the end of the whole action with a precise volley.

As I mentioned Box to Box midfielder role, that was the biggest "?" during the first weeks with this version of a formation. I wanted to have DLP(D) in the middle of central trio so I didn't want to use a second playmaker and I also didn't want to use CM(A) this time because of a lack movement in the final third due to several reasons and the CM(A) would almost every time be in the penalty area in the wrong position.

I decided to try BBM and save the BWM role for the future, mainly because this version was less aggressive. The BBM is a demanding role and my main player almost every time had to be taken off the pitch before the end of the match as he was not physically best suited for it.

But...

The midfielder I chose to use in this role was one of these players who were able to score in BBM or Mezzala roles. That meant Tomás Aránguiz scored 20 goals this season as a midfielder and added also 13 assists.

This is the complete first version of my 4-3-3 with the flat central midfield. The Winger on the right side was a player with the most assist this season with 16 assists. He also scored 19 goals from this position.

Probably the most typical assist from winger to inside forward...

As I already mentioned, Aránguiz was our best goalscorer this season from his central midfield position. Our main striker who played as CF(S) scored 17 goals in 43 matches. It's not too many as you would maybe expect or you would want from striker but I liked it.

Same as I liked the number of short assists in the last 40 matches in combination with the rest of these stats.

If something went as I planned it was to create a patient play with the build-up play from the back and midfielders effectivity.

4-3-3 v2023

The year 2023 was the first time when we won the Copa Libertadores with this team. The formation was tweaked a little bit during the previous two years and it resulted in slightly different variation without winger as I switched AMR to IF(A) so we used inside forwards on both sides.

Complete Forward with the support duty remained but there were other changes. We used WB(A) on both sides, one central defender was changed to Ball Playing Defender. Most importantly, the central midfielders roles were changed.

I decided to try Advanced Playmaker with the support duty instead of BBM and that meant I wanted to get rid of Deep Lying Playmaker. Another position in the midfield was now BWM(S) and to have at least one player deeper I placed there Central Midfielder with the defend duty and Dribble Less instruction.

You can see the differences in overall average positions. The version with CM(D) from the 2023 season is on the left pitch, the older version is on the right.

I also tried to defend narrower and in a combination with BWM(S), I moved to Extremely Urgent pressing intensity.

I wanted good "wing style" but with IF(A) on both sides and players in WB(A) and IF(A) roles worked very well together.

And it resulted in this for example...

or this...

This change also resulted in some stats differences. Aránguiz was no more the best goalscorer but he still managed to score 9 goals from AP(S). Sebastian Romero was the best goalscorer with 15 goals from IF(A), Christián Ledezma scored 14 as CF(S) and Joaquín Verdugo 10 goals as another IF(A).

And meanwhile, there were 12 different players who scored at least one goal during the 2021 season, in this version it was by 17 players.

We won not only a domestic league and Libertadores but also the FIFA Club World Cup.

4-3-3 v2025

This was the last season of the save so far and the formation made some other changes again during the previous period. I decided to get rid of Complete Forward role as the only one suitable striker for this role (based on his attributes, not due to coaches rating) was no more our number one striker after I bought a new one.

Another reason to change something was Nicolás Lobos, the young midfielder who appeared in our Youth Intake last year and he was that good that I decided to place him straight to the starting XI.

I still remember the advice from FMGrasshopper during FM18 when he mentioned he likes to use DLP(D) in the left central midfield position alongside Wing back as the DLP(D) is able to cover the space when the wing back moves up.

I used it and Tony is right but I'm an idiot about the positions almost the whole my life.

The role like Deep Lying Playmaker with the defend duty is my favourite role not only in the game but I like to play in this role myself in a real life. I like to sit deeper, dictate tempo of the game, wait for the second balls etc.

That my idiocy about the flat midfield positions is like 🤨😐😊 in terms of the picture bellow. I don't like when the positions are like stairs. I like when they form something like a small "v" and that's the reason why I decided to go back DLP(D) in a combination with BWM(S) and CM(S).

The central midfield with the support duty player (mainly Lobos) has also Take More Risks, Dribble More and Stay Wider instructions so he can act little bit like a playmaker.

Inside Forward on the left side newly has Roam From Position, Sit Narrower and Tackle Harder instructions except the default instructions so mostly the same instructions as when I used WM/A within the 4-1-4-1 formation.

Winger with the support duty on the right side has also Tackle Harder instruction and I also try Cross Aim Near Post. And as I mentioned a new striker the role was changed to Advanced Forward.

The previous versions of this formation were not too much complicated in terms of Team Instructions but I made even more simple for this third version and mainly I get rid of shorter passing.

The new striker José Cortés scored 27 goals in this role and Ronaldo Vaca scored 20 goals from IF(A) role as I wrote in the seasonal summary.

This goal I shared to Twitter a couple of days ago as I really enjoyed it.

And there are some other very beautiful goals...

There is also comparison of the overall average positions from 2025 and 2023. If you spotted the difference within the right central midfield role, your eyes are perfect.

I started to use Stay wider instructions for this CM(S) role to try if it will have impact of his position in the midlle 'triangle' as this player was very often close to the centre of the pitch same as DLP(D) or BWM(S). I know he is still in the middle of the pitch in this picture but when I watched matches he was wider and he had better option to receive ball and he had more space around.

I'm not a tactical master and I will not make some professional tactical analysis with arrows, circles and lines. I'm only glad that something I wanted to try to create worked and works with the principles I like and I was able to create something around my favourite role(s) like Deep Lying Playmaker.

FM18 Epilogue | BFC Siófok 2017 - 2045

The long journey has ended. It was one of the longest save I've ever had. And thanks to many reasons also unforgettable. BFC Siófok will always be in my memory as a club I enjoyed managing. Despite the (forced) sacking in the end...

I don't want to repeat myself and I don't want to write about the specific years and specific eras of the save. Not all of you like success and trophies 😜

One of the main key moments of the save was surely the promotion to the top tier but also the fact we won the first league title in our second season in the first division.

And we won it 24 times in a row. MTK Budapest was the runner-up for the most times.

The league titles meant Champions League football. And Champions League meant more and more money.

But it was not as easy as in the domestic league. We finished third and fourth in the group in our first Champions League participation but after some time we were better and better.

We won the first title in 2035 when we beat Tottenham and we beat the same team in the Final after five years to win it for the second time. This trophy was the first of five in a row.

As you can see in the picture below Manchester City was our bogey team but we also beat them three times in the Final.

It had to be City who beat us in the last season of this save as we lost 1-0 on aggregate in the Semi-Final.

Siófok changed from the very average second-tier club to the most dominant club in the country.

I'm sure if I would play it for the next six years I would win six other league titles and we would have 30 league titles same as Ferencvárosi, the most successful Hungarian club in terms of league titles.

But never mind, that was not my dream or my aim. I changed the recruitment policy several times during this save. It went from "Around The Lake" to the more international-based squad and back to the domestic-based squad in the end with 98% of our own players.

Same as we have dynamic rivalries in the game (we 'made' a rivalry with MTK Budapest and Puskás during this save) players and staff are always add to favourite personnel, icons and legends.

At the end of the save we have five people included between Legends - Gerardo Paolacci, György Benedek, Dominik Szoboszlai, Manos Pasas and Keysi Rensie.

Dominik Szoboszlai has a big part in my heart thanks to this save after he signed for BFC Siófok in 2025 and played for us until 2037 before he became a U19s coach and first-team assistant manager later.

Paolacci was my favourite foreign striker, Benedek was our long-serving master at right-wing and Manos Pasas was our record signing from PSG and he won five Champions League titles in five years.

There were a lot of other players I liked and I refused to sell them and waited until we will have enough funds to give them big contracts to keep them around.

We sold 173 players for €1.94B during this save and we bought 161 players for €393M during this save. Just only Manos Pasas was bought for €115M...on the other hand, our own newgen striker László Szalai was sold to Real Madrid in 2035 for €75M what was the club highest fee received.

If you want to know how much we paid to agents, it was €38.5M. Probably the cheap area...

One of my favourite thing within this save was to try to get the affiliate clubs from different nations.

I always had one domestic affiliate in the second tier, some of them were promoted to the top flight thanks to our players who were on-loan there until I made a link with Nyíregyháza Spartacus - an ideal average club in the second tier for 18 or 19 years old players to give them playing time.

But during the time I also arranged a link with clubs in Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Spain or the Czech Republic. And at the end of the save we also had Sydney FC, New England Revolutions, Henan Jianye and FC Hiroshima. Many foreign nations with many newgens who could appear in our own Youth Intake.

🤑🤑🤑

The club developed into an absolutely monstrous thing financially during the time. We had around €1.3B in the bank balance in 2042 and we had more than €1B on transfers and €26.5M on wages per month. 

Board decided to deposit €115M in 2043 and €250M in 2044 into a reserve investment fund. I never had this message before, this is how finances look in 2045.

And we are almost at the end of our journey because we can talk about the biggest pain of the second half of this save.

The club board decided to build a new stadium in 2022 and we moved there in 2024. The Siófok Stadium was great during the first years and the 12k capacity was absolutely fine but as we grew up we had 9k season ticket holders and I'm sure we would be able to have a bigger stadium. At least with 20k capacity...

When I asked about the possibility to have a new stadium again I found out it usually takes at least 20 or 25 years before the board will think about the new stadium again. 

Just in the half of the penultimate season of the save I realised I can finally ask about a new stadium.

The board rejected my request due to a small fan base.

If I take it from a selfish point of view, it's absolutely stupid. But it's probably right in terms of how the Football Manager is set up and 'coded'.

This is not an official statement of SI but I think the fan base in FM works within the specific area so as we are a small area near the Lake Balaton we are unable to attract the same amount of people as in Budapest for example. 

And that's probably the reason why they rejected my request four times due to the same reason. When it happened for the last time in June 2045 I decided to leak this into the press.

The board invited me to a meeting and I was sacked because I criticised the board publicly. And that's the end of Keysi Rensie's journey and relationship with BFC Siófok...

It took 10243 days, 1110 wins, 268 draws and 155 defeats. BFC Siófok scored 3460 goals and conceded 1166 goals. Keysi Rensie ended his Hungarian journey with a 72% win percentage, 24 league wins and 42 cup trophies.

Life Around The Lake after Keysi Rensie...

Keysi Rensie didn't leave the game immediately and he decided to follow BFC Siófok for next years. Mainly because of his sons Jiri and Robert...

Gary Monk took a charge of BFC in the summer of 2045 and he decided to change the whole squad. He spent €545M on new players during the first season in a charge and sold players for €39M.

What about the Rensie brothers? The younger one, Robert, was sent for a loan spell to Japan where he spent the season with FC Hiroshima. The older one, Jiri, was sent to the reserve squad.

After 24 years, BFC Siófok didn't win the Hungarian first division as MTK Budapest finally won the league title.

Jiri Rensie was released by BFC Siófok in summer 2047 and he ended his professional career later and became Director of Football when he was 33 years old. He became a DoF of Nyíregyháza Spartacus in 2049 and started his new chapter as a boss.

Later, in 2051, he moved to FC Vysočina Jihlava in the same role.

Siófok won the league between 2047-2050 four times and they are dominant again but without some European success.

Gary Monk was a manager of the club until 2050 and there were only five domestic players in the first-team squad after so many changes.

The first team squad included players from Australia, Brasil, Colombia, Netherland, Italia, Portugal, Serbia, Spain...

Meanwhile, the older son Jiri became Director of Football, Robert came back from Hiroshima and he then went for loan spells with Mezökövesdi SE, Nyíregyháza Spartacus and Duna Aszfalt TVSE and he signed for the last mentioned club as a free player in summer 2048.

He is playing the third Hungarian tier and during the 2049/2050 season, he played 30 league matches, scored 4 goals and made 19 assists. In 2050/2051 he played 27 games, scored 4 goals, made 20 assists and helped the club to win promotion to the second division.

In the 2051/2052 season, he played 36 league goals, scored 2 goals and made 21 assists. It looks like he found the right club...

The journey and FM18 adventure of Keysi Rensie end there.

The board of BFC Siófok decided to build Keysi Rensie Stadium with a capacity of 56,102 in 2050 and the club moved there in July 2052. 

The weird and very high Keysi Rensie Stadium during the Hungarian Super Cup between Siófok and Videoton. Keysi Rensie was there but only in the stands, not in the dugout...

Thank you, everyone, for following this Rensie's journey...

FM18 | Watch and learn

It’s not a secret my favourite formation in Football Manager is 4-1-4-1. As I wrote in one previous post I switched back to this formation in my main save with BFC Siófok. I decided to use the one I used in FM17. It’s a very simple formation with fewer team instructions and it was very effective. 

I spent a week in Liverpool recently due to working duties and because I wrongly copied the saved file of my Siófok save to a working laptop I played with Werder Bremen, the save from FM18 Beta.

This is not a tactical analysis or guide on how to do it, I just only made some notes during the matches and decided to put it together in the post.

1st Match

The first match in this post was a home league game against Augsburg. I started with these roles and team instructions were Play Out Of Defence, Mixed Passing, Prever Short GK Distribution. The mentality was Standard and we used Fluid Team Shape.

First issue – mixed passing. As we played with balanced width I saw many wrong passes. There was a lot of misplaced passes from DM/D or CM/S to sides as our players in WM/A and WP/A positions were too far from the central player(s) and the opponent’s players were able to steal the ball very easily.

We were 1-0 ahead thanks to a goal just before the half-time we conceded a goal in the 89th minute and the match ended with a 1-1 draw.

We conceded this goal after we won the ball back after the long ball from the opponent’s goalkeeper but our CM/S misplaced another very easy pass in the middle and Augsburg sent the ball behind our defensive line and Dong-Won scored with a precise strike.

2nd match

The second match was an away league game against Hertha. I made a couple of changes.

We started with DLF/S instead of CF/S, DM/S instead of DM/D with Hold position instruction and FB/A instead of WB/A (on the left side) and FB/S instead of WB/S (on the right side).

As I wrote about misplaced passes and a lot of interceptions I decided to change the width to fairly narrow and we used short passing. We also get rid of Play Out Of Defence instructions and Team Shape was changed to Flexible.

Hertha played this match with only 10 players from the 8th minute after the red card and they went to compact defensive shape. It resulted in many more intercepted passes from our side and we doubled the number of misplaced passes in this match.

The most passes combination was between CM/S and WP/A and between our FB/A and WP/A. We had 16 shots in this match and 9 of them were long shots. Six of these long shots were by our CM/S and CM/A.

It was a very ineffective performance by our side and it resulted in the winning goal in the 88th minute by Hertha after the set-piece.

3rd match

The third match of this short analysis of my thoughts was the last Europa League Group Stage match against Galatasaray. What did I change?

  • Sweeper Keeper/Defend

  • DM/S – Hold Position & Close Down Much Less

  • CM/A – Shoot Less Often instruction added

  • CM/S – Shoot Less Often, Close Down Less and Hold Position instructions added

  • WP/A changed to Inverted Winger/Attack

  • DLF/S changed to DLF/A during the first half of the match

  • Mentality remained Standard, Team Shape changed to Structured.

  • Team Instructions – Shorter Passing, Play Narrower, Use Tighter Marking and Prevent Short GK Distribution.

These changes resulted in a very comfortable 3-0 win over a strong Galatasaray side thanks to two goals by Deep Lying Forward Johannes Eggestein and one goal by Full Back Ludwig Augustinsson.

We had 18 fewer intercepted passes than in the previous match against Hertha. Five of them were by our CM/A and three of them by DM/S. When I changed Sáček to Llorente in the second half Llorente had also 3 intercepted passes during the last 17 minutes.

The second goal by Eggenstein was very nice as both full-backs, both wide midfielders and all three central midfielders participated in this play same as Eggeinstein as DLF/A was included in the pre-final phase at the opponents’ half.

During the next matches of this save I played some other matches and made some other changes and I ended with this set-up and it resulted in these results…

Both wide players have “Cross Aim Near Post” instructions. As you may saw in your own games there are many crosses by wide players aimed straight at the keeper or in the wrong direction.

I tried to reduce these wrong passes with this instruction and it seems it was better.

I removed narrow width as with short passes and standard mentality is it good enough to pass my expectations.

This is one of my favourite goal from the second season of this save. Despite it was scored before these changes I really like it so I wanted to share it…

FM17 | 24 years with Reading FC

It was a pleasure, isn't it? If you read the previous part of my Football Manager 2017 save with Reading you know I decided to end this journey at the end of the 2039/2040 season. As we started in 2016, this save lasted for 24 virtual years.

We started as an average Championship team and ended as the best club in the world.

The proper fairytale.

I'm sure I don't need to go back and repeat the same words I wrote in the past in a couple of parts. When I finished the FM16 save with Akademisk Boldklub I thought about to not write about FM17 save.

It was mainly because I wanted to play with Reading just for a fun and share some things about the game on Twitter for example and write a post just only time from time. But as this save continued I enjoyed it more and more. Mainly thanks to the development of players like Danny Loader, Liam Kelly, Josh Barrett and more.

All of you who followed this save know there were a lot of great players and it same as was a joy to watch their development it was also very sad to see when they retired or when they decided to leave the club.

The last man from the original squad was Danny Loader. I don't want to write other paragraphs about him as I wrote a single post about him but when he retired in 2038 I very quickly found out it's time to end this save because it will not be the same.

If you ask me what was my TOP 5 moments of this save I will say these...

1. Promotion to the Premier League

We were very close to the promotion just in the first season. We finished 6th in the Championship but we lost to Cardiff in the Play-off Final after extra time.

Reading won the promotion in the third season when we won the Championship with 112 points.

33 matches won in a season, Jake Cooper sets new league average rating record (7.77), Dominic Samuel became the new best goalscorer in the club history with 72 league goals and of course, 112 points were the new Championship and club record.

2. Danny Loader

As I said above I don't want to repeat everything that was written already. Danny became a first-team regular in the first season in the Premier League. If I remember it right it was the fourth season of the save.

He was lucky Dominic Samuel (our striker number one) was injured and I decided to play Loader instead to send him to the lower league for a loan spell.

And he delivered and became our first choice. The rest is history. He played the most matches and scored the most goals in club history. I only don't know why he was not more involved in the England national team as he played only about twenty matches.

3. Champions League

It was the fifth season I called "Dream season". We overachieved straight in the first season in the Premier League and finished seventh in the league. The next season we won the Premier League. Just only two years after the promotion.

And we also secured our first Champions League Group Stage place for the 2021/2022 season. We started this season as a Europa League finalist from the previous season as we lost to Real Madrid in the Final.

In the 2022/2023 season, we won our first Champions League. We played with Benfica in the Final and we won 1-0 after the extra time thanks to a goal by Dean Castle. It was the first Champions League trophy and we won this competition 16 times this year.

I think some people around the community hate me just because of this. Mainly in Football Manager Slack...

4. Tactical changes

This is one of the things which kept me interested in the save for a long time. Same as I set side challenges in the game like transfer policy or development I also want to try some new formations and I'm interested if the same players are able to play in a different system.

In this save we started with a 4-3-3 formation. This one we used for the first two and half years. It was slightly modified during this time but the main things remained in the same way.

A couple of months before promotion to the Premier League I decided to change formation to 4-3-1-2. This one was so good that I wrote two separate posts about it because I changed some things during five seasons and I decided to publish a post about both versions.

I also decided to drop back a player from the Attacking Midfielder position to Defensive Midfielder with various roles so it resulted in a 4-1-3-2 formation.

We also played with 4-3-3 wide with a defensive midfielder and with a flat central midfield trio as well.

And the last formation I used was my favourite one - 4-1-4-1. I didn't write about this formation, I just only published some screens about it on Twitter and in FMSlack. As I used the Wide Playmaker role in the FM16, this year I created 4-1-4-1 with wingers at both sides and after one season I changed the left winger to the wide midfielder.

I also experimented with Deep Lying Playmaker and Roaming Playmaker in the DM slot but that was mainly because of formations we faced in different competitions. But the most important thing is this formation was and will be my favourite.

5. Consistency & development

We talk a lot about the way in this save. The philosophy was very easy from the start - just play with 10+ players from the original squad as long as it will be possible.

Finances were tight at the start of the save so I had to sell most paid players to balance the books. I'm sure I sold some players I would normally keep in the squad and I like their style in the real life but it had to be like this.

For more than 15 years I had almost the same squad, respectively the starting XI and our key players were mostly the same as players like Liam Kelly, Josh Barrett, Jake Cooper, Dominic Samuel, Luke Southwood developed in world-class players. At least in my eyes of course...

If nothing more I'm sure this squad policy and philosophy helped all these players to develop into perfect players despite nine from ten FM players would don't trust to all of these players they are able to play Premier League regularly or they are able to win Champions League for more than ten consecutive years.

As you know I had a couple of seasons during them I bought many foreign players despite I knew they will not receive a work permit. It was a part of my way how to stay interested in a save and I made a solid profit from these players despite after some successful season I didn't need money or sell players because of financial struggle.

It was only part of the game and I wanted to have fun.

From a historical point of view, I'm used to playing mainly with domestic players. And it doesn't matter if I manage the team from England, Serbia, Denmark, Bolivia... I like to play with players from that nation. And I decided to develop a squad mostly from my own newgens.

It was my last aim of this save. At the end of the 2039/2040 season, I had 29 players in the first-team squad and 21 of them were from our own academy.

That’s all for this part of the Reading FC save in Football Manager 2017.

Thank you everyone for the continuing support and thanks for reading.

FM16: Seventeen years with AB

This is the last part of my FM16 AB save. You were able to read the last season summary and story about regen Nichlas Meyer in recent time and this part is about club changes during the long seventeen years with the club. 

We started as a semi-professional club and ended as the best Danish club and part of the Champions League knockout stages.

It all started in 2015 when I took charge of this club. We were a semi-professional club in the third Danish tier. We have won promotion straight in the first season from the 2. division to the NordicBet Liga.

We stayed in NordicBet Liga for another three seasons before promotion to the Superliga. We finished 7th in the two first seasons in the top flight, second in the third season and we won our first league title in the fourth season in Superliga. There were another nine league titles in the next nine years...

Finances

When 2015/2016 started club had a balance of about -£200K. During the last seventeen years, we made a big step forward as we had more than £100M. We had no money for transfers at the start and we had more than £150M before the last season.

Staff

At the start of this save we had three coaches including a goalkeeping coach and fitness coach and one assistant manager. The coaching team was bigger and bigger during the save including the reserve and U19 team.

Before the last season, we had 24 coaches for Senior Squad, 5 coaches for the Reserve squad and 14 for the U19 team.

The most famous coaches during the years were Cesc Fabregas, Dennis Bergkamp, Michu, Thomas Sorensen, Lasse Schöne, Miroslav Klose, Jon Dal Thomasson, Kasper Schmeichel, Urby Emanuelson or Magnus Wolf Eikrem...

There were also two coaches - Nicolai Hogh and Rasmus Hansen. These two players were in the squad at the start of the save and I signed them as a coach after their retirement.

Save stats, league history and records

I think it's not needed to write many words about it. The most important thing is that we won ten league titles in a row and 11 domestic cup trophies overall. We were also twice in the Champions League Semifinal and once in the Europa League Final where we lost on penalties.

During the last three seasons of this save we were unbeaten and we finished this save with 131 matches without losing. It was from 13th October 2028 until 9th May 2032. We also have a record of 84 wins in a row.

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During the 2024/2025 season, we were able to keep 11 clean sheets in a row and we had 108 points from 36 matches in two seasons in a row.

My stats

Same as players or coaches there was progress by myself during the save. I started with the low attributes and finished with some "20".

Memorable players & icons

There were many players during this save about I could write many words. As I wrote Nichlas Meyer was my most favourite player.

I also want to mention Alexander Tved Hansen. This midfielder came to our club in 2019, became captain for more than ten years and played more than around more than 300 matches.

Sergei Eremenko were a great player as I wrote earlier and one of the legends is also defender Lars Sorensen who was in our club for ten years and he provided many important assists.

I can't forget about Thomas Randrup who was in our club from 2016 same as Nichlas Meyer or Martin Hansen who has voted European Golden Boy twice. Goalkeeper William Thorhauge was also a great servant for many years despite he was no our no.1 he was patient and reliable.

Players who were in the club for many years had to play the last match of this save in the starting XI. (rounded) It was the emotional end of save especially when Nichlas Meyer scored the winner and Lars Sorensen was PoM...

FM16 is over for me and I want to thank you for your support here and on Twitter. It was a very good choice as I really enjoyed this save.

FM16: In love with Wide Playmaker

There are many variations of 4-2-3-1 formation around the FM Community during FM16 time. I played with it too during the first seasons with Akademisk Boldklub but I changed it to 4-1-4-1 after ten years in charge of the club. 

It took some time when the team played as I want. Especially some roles did not work and I tested it for more than one year when I was happy with that. One of the most important roles is Wide Playmaker.

I never used a tactic where wide playmakers were included but I really like this role because they are very versatile and they could play more in the centre of the pitch but also as wingers.

What the game says:

“The Wide Playmaker will act as the team’s primary source of creativity, drifting inside to find space from which to play the killer ball and create chances. Coming in from the wing allows the Wide Playmaker to escape the hustle and bustle of central midfield and can result in him being unmarked by opposition players.

Defensively the Wide Playmaker will take up his position on the wing to provide cover for his full-back; however, his is not expected to make as many tackles but instead, he should take up good defensive positions and provide another body in the defensive line.”

This is our 4-1-4-1 formation with False Nine, Deep Lying Playmaker in DM position or Roaming Playmaker in central midfield.

There were some changes during the last seasons and it ended with Mentality and Team Shape change as we now play with Counter Mentality and High Structured Shape. Thanks to it we conceded a really low amount of goals as you can read there.

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But let's concentrate on the Wide Playmaker role.

What player instructions we use?

Get Further Forward, More Direct Passes, Close Down Much More, Roar From Position, Dribble More, Cut Inside With Ball, Shoot Less Often, Cross Less Often.

This role was probably the most problematic for us because we have many typical wingers or inside forwards but it was not a problem in the end.

One of the players who had to change his playing style was our regen Nichlas Meyer who is played mainly as a winger. But he played newly as Wide Playmaker and he had the best statistics from all our players.

I chose another midfielder - Martin Hansen - as an example for this post. He has decent attributes for this role but he does his job very good.

A typical movement

There is one of our most typical movement leading to scoring chance or goal.

Hansen has the ball in the middle and our Wide Playmaker is upfront and Full Back is on the right side.

Hansen passes the ball to Dupuy (BBM) and Full Back move forward. The Wide Playmaker has two options - he could go to the centre or to the side. If he goes to the right side he will wrongly fill the space and Full Back would have to go back with the ball.

Dupuy passed the ball to Full Back and Wide Playmaker stayed just around the penalty area. Full Back is attacked by two players and WP is free. There is one-two between them...

...and Full Back continued his move to the penalty area and he received a pass from WP who continued to the penalty area as well between defenders.

As you can see Full Back very quickly passed the ball to the WP who moved before the goal and then scored easily...

It's important to say that Full Back is very important as well in this scenario. Both players have set Attack duty.

My Full Backs have very often the most assists per season because they very often go forward and have key passes to the goals or chances because WP sits narrower and cuts inside with or without the ball.

Average positions

This is the Average positions and a Heat map of Martin Hansen in a Champions League match against Leverkusen...

...and comparison between domestic league match and Champions League match against Dortmund.

Our regen Nichlas Meyer plays at the left side as Wide Playmaker and this is a screen of his stats in the 2030/2031 season and comparison (heat map & passes) of a league match against FC Kobenhavn and Champions League match against Real Madrid.

Typical counterattack and goal by Meyer after assisting from Full Back...

I'm also very happy with how Wide Playmaker defends in the case of High Pressing mentality. He really good cooperates with central midfielders when we lose the ball and he is able to get the ball back very quickly thanks to his more central position.

As I wrote earlier I never used this role before this save with AB but I have to say it's great if it works rightly in cooperation with Full Back. If you have some question, just let me know there or on Twitter as any feedback is appreciated...

FM15: Twenty years with Spartans FC

This is the final part of my Football Manager 2015 career with Spartans FC. It was the best choice I could have done. I spent there 7270 days and received 106 awards. On the lines below, I look back on twenty years with Spartans FC.

I started this save as a 28 years-old manager with a regional reputation and very bad attributes as you can see on the screenshot. After 20 years in charge of Spartans, I have World Class reputation and “much better” attributes.

I was 7270 days in charge of Spartans FC. We played 1097 matches, we won 718 of them. We drew 204 matches and lost 175 games. We scored 2584 goals and conceded 1290 goals. We won 33 cup competitions and 13 league competitions. We were promoted four times.

We bought 101 players for a fee around 105M£ and we sold 61 players for a fee around 221M £. Highest fee spent was 11,75M £ for midfielder Juan Fernando Diosa in summer 2031. The highest fee received was 55M £ for Serbian midfielder Darko Popovic from Real Madrid.

There were a lot of famous players in the club during the past twenty years. Many interesting a quality footballers. Alisdair Sutherland, who could play on every position at the left side, has the most league appearances for club – 418 matches.

He is the oldest player who played in a competitive match. He played against Motherwell when he was 35 years and 265 days. He is the clubs oldest goalscorer as well.

Fastest goal? John Wilson scored against St. Mirren after 8 seconds. Another two records hold Graham Paterson. My favourite player of this save. He holds the record of most assists in single-season – 26 in 2023/2024. And this player scored 140 league goals for the club, no one scored more.

We finished this save with 335 matches without defeat in a row in Scottish Premier League!

The history of Graham Paterson

More screens from the save