FM21 | GAIS: Always prepared? Season 7!

The seventh season of this Football Manager 2021 save in Sweden with GAIS was the longest one. I mean in terms of the real-lifetime that took me to finish the season. But I enjoyed playing it thanks to several things which happened during the 2026 calendar year in the save universe. I had to say goodbye to one midfielder as he moved to China but we also welcomed back one of my favorite players of the save.

We continued with the 3-5-2 formation/tactical set-up. There were no changes to the formation as it still offers a lot in both offensive/defensive ways. And I'm happy to tweak it when I see something what can help for just next match or long term. It's just fun to follow it along.

I was able to convince the club board to improve our training & youth facilities, same as the youth recruitment or junior coaching. Our GAIS stadium was expanded up to 12k (10k seats + 2k for standing) and it reached the maximum of the possible expansion.

It's fun that we were able to play Champions League group stage matches here but the derby match against IFK Göteborg was moved to Gamla Ullevi because of the capacity and interest from both sides probably (Attendance: 18,400 - 9,200 away).

Current facilities, up to December 2026:

  • Training Facilities - Excellent

  • Youth Facilities - Great

  • Corporate Facilities - Adequate

  • Junior Coaching - Exceptional

  • Youth Recruitment - Excellent

My manager profile in December 2026

January/February

I wanted to keep the squad almost the same as in the previous year but it wasn't possible. It's not possible in countries like Sweden. Every quality player will be always wanted abroad. Our Finnish central defender Haris Hakansson (click to open his profile) was bought by PSG for €5M (up to €8M). We bought him for €600k a year ago. Another young player who will spend most of his time in the PSG 2 team instead of playing Swedish top tier or European cups.

My usual aim is to be prepared for a potential outgoing transfer of some key player. But sometimes it's not possible. Central midfielder Peter Magnusson wasn't wanted and there were no bids for him during last year. But Chinese Shandong Luneng came with a €10M bid. I rejected it firstly.

They offered €22M + €5,5M after 20 league appearances and the club board accepted it. Maybe they even took him to the airport and bought him some good place on the plane. If you consider fact that I signed Peter for free after his contract with Brondby expired in 2024 and he got €15,5K per month wage...

It's always annoying to lose a key player but it would happen sooner or later as he was too good to stay in Sweden.

March-May

The Svenska Cupen went well as we made it to the final for the 5th time in a row. The Final will be against Malmö at the end of May. We won both first league matches, Nikolaj Möller scored 4 in these two matches.

And entered the Europa League knock-outs in the second round as the group stage winners. GAIS got that German team and we were 2-0 up against in the first away leg. But they turned the score around and they won 3-2. But we beat them 1-0 at home and made it to the quarter-final.

We beat also Lazio at home but the 2nd leg in Rome was too much. It was 0-0 until the 59th minute when they got a penalty kick after a soft touch during the corner. We scored an own goal three minutes into the extra-time and they scored one more so we went out 1-3 on aggregate.

The time after the end in the Europa League went quite fast in the save. It was full of Allsvenskan matches as the whole June and a half of July was a summer break due to the World Cup 2026 hosted by USA, Canada and Mexico.

Four GAIS players (Strannegard, Möller, Blixt and Berens) made the squad! That's absolutely fantastic achievement for the club.

Btw. The USA won the tournament beating France on penalties in the final. After they beat Canada in the semi-final

Norwegian striker Oscar Aga scored his 100th and 101st goals in his 138th league appearance for the club during a 3-4 defeat at home against Kalmar FF. They were 1st in the table at that time and they were in a good form. But it didn't last for a long time. They didn't win since the match against us - 5 draws and 2 defeats and they moved down to 6th place (click to see their results in April and May).

Back to top

We recovered very well from the opening defeat of the league campaign. In comparison with Kalmar results, for sure. Nikolaj Möller and Oscar Aga were in a very solid form despite we switched from two advanced forwards back to AF+PF(A) combination so they had to get used to it to the new variation.

I also moved my wide players from MR/ML positions to WBs. The main reason was that I wanted to get the most from Anton Snibb and Victor Blixt who are both the best in these positions/roles.

We moved top of the table thanks to six wins and two draws before the summer break.

Dramatic Svenska Kupen final

The last match of this part of the season was the Svenska Cupen final. It was played at the Malmö Stadion so almost all pre-match press conference questions were about the possible advantage of playing at home. I didn't care about it at all.

Matches against Malmö are now part of our competitive rivalry and it's also interesting because both teams are using the 3-5-2 variations (I remember the match when there were four highlights despite playing with the comprehensive highlights. It's hard to surprise each other).

They started better this time and Anton Eriksson opened the score. Oscar Aga leveled the scored three minutes later and Anton Skipper scored from a corner kick (far post routine).

"Don't worry, he will be great"

But the very tight 1st half ended 2-2 as they scored also after a corner.

"Cronwall isn't playing well, I will replace him with Bjerkebo ten minutes into the second half if he will not improve. Bjerkebo is decent in PF(A) role and he is very good as a sub," I said myself during the break.

And I did it exactly as I said. Bjerkebo replaced Cronvall in the 55th minute and Oscar Aga moved to the Advanced Forward role. Bjerkebo did this four minutes later and he saw a straight red card...

Aga played as the lone striker in PF(A) role and all central midfielders tried to support him. All of them have traits like get further forward or gets gorward whenever possible so it was easier and I didn't have to change their duties.

But we had to defend mostly since the red card and Malmö had some very solid opportunities to score a winning goal. But they didn't. And Oscar Aga scored the winning goal from the penalty kick in the 114th minute.

The precise time-wasting, playing for set pieces and lower tempo with shorter passing took us to the final whistle and the trophy celebration despite we played the four additional minutes without injured Christophersen too.

It was our fourth domestic cup trophy in a row. "I think that's a fair point, I always look forward to these games." This press conference reply is a great way how to describe my relationship with domestic cups. I'm addicted to winning them rather than the league or European competitions. It's been for a long time. No special reason, I just love domestic cups.

Svenska Cupen Final 2026

Results January - May 2026

June/July: Welcome back, son!

I don't want to mention all the signed players but two of them deserve it. Firstly, David Moberg-Karlsson. He is 32 years old midfielder who spent the last 8 years in Prague with Sparta. I will be clear - he was one of the players I had in the shortlist almost from the benning of the save with a view to bring him back to Sweden.

I signed him for €62K and decided to play him as DLP(S) within the flat midfield trio. He is not able to play as wing-back due to his physical attributes. Maybe as DLF(S) if I would need it.

He made 9 assists in 10(3) appearances during the second part of the season. That sounds quite good.

The second signing I want to mention is the signing of the midfielder Matt O'Riley. I signed this guy in 2020 for free and he spent two and a half season with us before Burnley activated his transfer clause and he moved back to England for €1.8M.

One and a half season in the Premier League, one season in the Championship after Burnley was relegated in 2023/2024 and a season-long loan in France with Strasbourg playing Ligue 1 in 2025/2026. That was his previous four years.

And as his contract with Burnley (back in the Premier League) expired, I signed him for free. Again.

He still is a great player and I'm sure he will help us again. The things that changed - he didn't want to include transfer clause again and he decided to play for Norway instead of England as he is eliglible to play for three nations - Denmark too.

July - December

When I mentioned PSG 2 recently, one Slovenian promising youngster scored three goals during his trial with us in summer. But Ziga Zec rather signed for the club from Paris.

The game itself played with me again as all the coeficient tables and seeding tables told me that I will start in the Champions League qualifying phase. But we were already in the group stage despite the game says something different. Probably some issue with the calendar year based season format instead of a typical season.

Oscar Aga scored 23 league goals and became the best goalscorer of the season again. Anton Snibb, our captain, made 10 assists from WB(S) position/role. Btw. when I mentioned 9 assists by Moberg-Karlsson in 10(3) appearances, it was enough to make it to top 3 of the league.

We won the league by 10 points ahead of Malmö and 19 points ahead of Kalmar. We scored one corner goal every third match and it was enough to pass the make the most of set pieces in the club vision.

Champions League

We got Lokomotiv Moscow, Dortmund, and Lyon on the group stage. A very strong teams to play against. I'm sure you would not expect Ceballos, Bénes, Kluivert, or Bonazzoli in Moscow. But it's FM.

We drew away with Lyon and we beat Dortmund away at 3:2 after a hattrick by Oscar Aga. We also drew with Lokomotiv at home and we had 5 points after the first half of the group. Oscar Aga scored all our goals.

But we lost 0:3 in Moscow to Lokomotiv and drew with Lyon (1:1) and Dortmund (0:0). Both at home. All great results against these strong teams. We ended third in the group because of a worse goal difference in comparison with Lyon.

It's great to move to the Europa League knock-outs. It will give us more experience, some more money too.

Results July - December 2026

What next?

The aim is to play at least one more season within this save. But probably more if I will have time. I will try to improve the club facilities again.

There are 34 players wanted at the end of this season including the key players. I would like to keep Oscar Aga from some Chinese bids to make him the best goalscorer of the club history. He is missing 25 goals to the record so maybe one more season can be enough...

I'm also currently in the phase when I will probably let some other key players go abroad and will try to play with youngsters from the U19s team and with what I have now. It will give them some development and I will see if the formation is still as good as I think.

And most importantly, the mix of a couple of experienced players and youngsters is by far the best for me. My personal contract also ends at the end of the 2027 season. Maybe they won't give me another one.

One sad thing also happened within the save as Wayne Rooney left the club as he got the offer from Djurgardens to be their new manager. It was great to have him as a player and as a coach during almost the whole save (2021 - 2026).

Thanks for reading and take care.

It’s great to have the first post published on CoffeehouseFM.com. All about the move from fmrensie.net to this place is here.

FM21 & GAIS | Season Six - prove the tactics!

The unfortunate injuries during the second part of the previous season (2024) brought the tactical changes to my FM21 save with GAIS in Sweden. We moved our wing-backs up to the MR/ML positions. It allowed us to try something new despite the main core of the formation was very similar, mainly in an offensive way of our play. I decided to stick with this plan for the 2025 season as I wanted to prove the tactics' quality. Mainly to myself.

How it went? Very well, in my eyes at least. I enjoyed the Allsvenskan 2025 campaign for several reasons.

It was dramatic until the last round. It offered us the option to scout and analyse some domestic players who can be perfect for us in the future. We were able to give debuts to some prospects during the heavy schedule.

Prove the tactics' quality - domestically

Let's start with the domestic cup. The Svenska Cupen became the competition we dominate in. Five simple wins took us to the final where we beat Hammarby 4-3 after the extra time. Oscar Aga scored 12 goals in these six matches as the Advanced Forward. It was our third consecutive Svenska Cupen win.

We began the new Allsvenskan campaign as the reigning champions and we started it in a very good fashion in my eyes. Oscar Aga scored in all opening six matches except the one. The biggest highlight was the big 6-1 win over promoted rival IFK Göteborg after Nikolaj Möller scored four goals. His first goals after a transfer from Arsenal.

Our team spent almost the complete first part of the league campaign in third place on the table. We moved top after the 14th round.

The second part of the season, mostly because of our participation in Europe, contributed to the fact that this season was one of the tightest and the most dramatic until the last round.

I really like the past positions screen within the league overview drop-down menu. Especially this year as you can see how the highlighted top 6 teams were changing their positions. And also how they were able to steal positions in the final round.

We needed a win over AIK in the last round to seal the title. But the 0-1 defeat also saw AIK moved down to 6th place and lost their place in Europe for next year.

Kalmar moved over Örebro because they beat Malmö in the last round (and helped us to win the title too, thanks).

Most goals scored, the second best defense, league title. It all resulted also in 9 stadium sellouts and 98% of the average attendance by capacity in home 15 matches.

Prove the tactics' quality - in Europe

I would like to mention one of my thought about realism. I'm usually the one who absolutely ignore everything related to the realism opinion in terms of you should not do contracts, coaches don't do it in a real life. Or some equivalent of this within transfers, training etc. I like to do 99% of the in-game things on my own because it's a game and I want to play it. I always like to mention why I should let my assistant ruins the training schedules when I can do it on my own.

But there is one thing that would not be realistic and I would be more than unhappy to be non-realistic in this case.

My aim is not to win the European trophy in this save. I don't think it would be realistic to win the Europa League or Champions League with GAIS. Especially as it's only five years since the club was just an average Swedish 2nd tier club known only thanks to one successful marketing campaign.

The fact we were in the Europa League semi-final a year ago was just a coincidence. It won't repeat.

We just had a lot of luck

We lost to FC Nordsjaelland this year in the Champions League 2nd qualifying round due to the away goals rule. That meant we moved to the Europa League qualifying rounds and we made it to the group stage.

The aim was passed. My aim is to be able to participate in the group stage of one of three European competitions. It secures money (a lot of it would be Champions League). We had Wolfsburg, Olympiakos and CSKA Moscow this year in the group.

There were some interesting names as Julian Draxler or Álvaro Morata played for CSKA, Emile Smith Rowe for Wolfsburg or Kenedy for Olympiakos.

We won the group after 4 wins and 2 draws. We beat CSKA and Wolfsburg thanks to two late goals. It was luck, again. If it would be draws, we would not win the group.

The winning goal against CSKA away in 95:43.

It shows me that the tactic I put together can work even against most reputable teams. I know our journey can end in the first knockout stage. And it will be absolutely normal and realistic thing. We are a small club from Sweden.

Our aim is to get to the main stage of the competition(s), represent well the country, show our players in Europe and sell them. And repeat it.

Most common tweaks

Same as with any other tactics, even this one consists of some big or small tweaks. It all depends on our opponent. We can divide these tweaks into simple groups.

  1. The base tactic against most of the teams with two Advanced Forward or AF + PF(A) up and the supportive flat midfield.

  2. The little bit more conservative version with DLP(D), CD(C), shorter passing and distribute to flanks instructions. I'm using mainly against teams with two or more strikers and also against teams using intensive pressing higher up the pitch. For example, during our goal kicks when opponents players are around the penalty area.

  3. The more aggressive version with more pressing intensity and higher tempo. It's usually against the weaker side and I like to use the Mezzala role in the MCR position in this case too.

It really depends on the specific opponent but sometimes I make no changes and just let players play. But it's clear that it works even with youngsters or backup players.

Our U19s team is using the same set-up and they made it to the play-off final for the first within this save. I would say it's another proof that it works well.

I used PF(A) or PF(S) again in the late part of the season in combination with the Advanced Forward. Same as at the beginning of the save when I wrote about the Gre-No-Li. And it looks like I will use the Pressing Forward again in the 2026 season more regularly rather than two advanced forwards.

Gabriel Rehnberg story

We each have our own story about an inconspicuous player in our Football Manager saves, right? My most recent pick of player in this category would be Gabriel Rehnberg.

This Swedish player was a part of Hammarby's 2022 Youth Intake. The history/career milestones screen shows his simple progress. We bought him from Hammarby for €600k in 2024.

My main aim was to retrain him for the WBR role as his attributes were very solid for it, especially as he was only 17 years old at the time of the transfer to GAIS. He developed very well and he was a very good cover for Victor Blixt.

But as we tweaked the 3-5-2 formation, I decided to move him to the CM(S) role. His development was not unnoticed and Bayern München bought him in summer 2025 for €2M. They allowed him to stay with us until the end of the season on loan. He got €48K per month in München. Compare it with his previous €3K p/m with us. It was great to have him without some wage participation.

He was not the main goalscoring threat from the flat midfield. Rehnberg was not the one who would have the most assists or key passes. He was that hard-working midfielder who is not allowed to be tired, injured or fatigued and he has to tackle until his legs will not fall off.

And he was exactly like that. Consistent holding CM(S) player who scored sporadically. But same as he was inconspicuous in terms of his stats, he was indispensable. Until now.

As he rejected the possible loan extension at the end of the 2025 calendar year. I'm looking forward to following his career in the future of this save.

Rehnberg's stats from 2025

Rehnberg's stats from 2025

The squad at the end of 2025

There are 26 players in the picture from the end of the 2025 calendar year. All of them made at least one appearance during the season. I didn't include players who left the team for a loan in the summer.

  • Oscar Aga made 46 appearances and he scored 44 goals this season (23 in the league).

  • Anton Skipper (central defender) scored 10 goals and made 5 assists in 39 appearances. Most of them within corners or indirect free kicks. Exactly why I bought him.

  • Victor Blixt (MR), Peter Magusson (DLP) and Nuha Jatta (CM) made 10+ assists.

  • A total of 16 players scored at least once. Twenty players made at least one assist.

  • Johan Dahlgren, 18 years old defender born in Arjäng (Sweden) decided to play for Algeria.

  • I have three new players prepared for the next season. They all will be around the starting XI. And I'm sure they will improve our team.

I would like to see our reserve squad back in the 3rd tier (playable league) but I think it won't happen. I'm still absolutely not sure how this works and it's probably only a coincidence. Our reserve squad was there in the 1st season but they were relegated to a non-playable division despite finishing above the relegation zone. I have no idea why.

It would be a perfect step for the youngsters rather than go for a loan to the non-playable league. I don't trust it will happen soon in the save so I rather asked about the new affiliate club and the board accepted it.

We have Motala AIF right now and they won the promotion from the 3rd to the 2nd tier in 2025. It's perfect to see them back in the second tier and I will send some young players here to help them.

The last expansion

The board also decided to expand the stadium again. We will have 12K stadium next season. It started with 8K and it was expanded to 11,047 last year.

If I remember it rightly, 12K is the maximum expansion capacity I set in the pre-game editor when I created this GAIS stadium before the start of the save.

Thanks for reading as always. It's fun save to play and I'm really happy I decided on it. Hopefully, I will have time to play at least two more seasons.

My Scandinavian scouting network

All my Football Manager saves from the recent past had some specific transfer policy. The FM21 edition is not the exception. Same as I usually like to have some aims and goals of the save. It's not a secret that I like to have my squad based on the domestic players. Some of my squads were filled only with the players from the nation I played in. My first team in FM21 is a little bit different. Mainly because of my Scandinavian scouting network.

Around the Lake, Search for Set Pieces, El Buitre filters and many more. The FM21 took me to Scandinavia. That means my scouting and recruitment policy will be very straightforward and easily find out.

"I like to build a domestic squad but I also like to find players in the nearest countries. Scandinavia is an absolutely perfect place to do this. I already have some idea of how to do this. It all depends on the possibilities straight in the game in terms of the number of scouts available.

And it also depends on the area I will be able to send our scouts. I would like to make it even to England in the future of the save if it will be possible but that’s something for the separate post maybe…"

I wrote the quote above in the first post of this save when I tried to share some of my aims of the save.

"Scandinavia refers to Denmark, Norway and Sweden, sometimes more narrowly to the Scandinavian Peninsula, or more broadly to include the Åland Islands, the Faroe Islands, Finland and Iceland. The broader definition is similar to what is locally called the Nordic countries when we want to include all countries together."

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We started with the blank recruitment team. No director of football, no scouts, no analysts, nothing. Our world scouting knowledge was 3%. We didn't have 100% of knowledge even within Scandinavia in 2020.

How the club possibilites changed during the save so far?

The recruitment team development

The save file from December 2020 (the end of the first season in Superettan, 2nd tier) tells me we had Ola Nilsson as our Chief Scout and Kennedy Bakircioglü and Mikael Nilsson as normal scouts. All our possibilities in the first two seasons were limited by finances and our network was a small one, mainly within Sweden only.

Mikael Nilsson has 100% knowledge of Denmark so he was the one who went abroad as the first one while Bakircioglü remain in Sweden and Ola Nilsson was roaming around the whole of Scandinavia.

The world knowledge improved to 5% at this time. Better than nothing, right?

Recruitment team 2020

Two years later, in October 2022, just after the first league title, we received the news about the possibility to sign 4 scouts instead of 2. I replaced Bakircioglü with Jesper Pedersen in 2021 as Bakircioglü went to Elfsborg for more money.

I also had Torben Aakjaer, a very good Danish scout who worked for Manchester United or Zenit in the past. But he remained only about 16 months with us and went to Stromsgodset.

The main difference was that Pedersen spent a lot of time around Europe itself scouting youth competitions like UEFA Youth League or European U20 Elite League and more.

Recruitment team 2022

Recruitment team 2022

Rejected. Rejected. Accepted.

My dream is to have specialised scout for each country within Scandinavia. But:

  1. Scouts willing to sign for us are not good enough

  2. Our board refuses to allow a higher number of scouts in the club

That's why I'm doing exceptions while searching for new scouts. Mainly in terms of adjusting the knowledge level. That's how I find Per Nillson recently (more below).

Scouts searching

It took me 5 requests to increase the number of scouts between 2022 and 2025. That's where we are now in the game universe.

I replaced our chief scout in 2023 when Russian Pawel Naboyshchikov took a job from Ola Nilsson.

The current recruitment team

We still have Mikael Nilsson and Jesper Pedersen, both improved slightly during the save. I signed the best possible scout for Finland and Denmark in Mika Lipponen and Jannik Nielsen respectively.

And in January 2025 the club board accepted my request to increase the number of scouts to 5! I signed a former Swedish national team player Per Nilsson who spent his career with AIK, Hoffenheim or FC Kobenhavn. And worked also for RB Leipzig since 2017 as a scout. He has 100% knowledge of Sweden and Germany. And he has 60% knowledge of the other four Scandinavian countries.

I finished the 2024 season at the time when I knew the next calendar year within the game will take me probably much more time due to real-life commitments.

It was one of the reasons why I decided to slow down my playing time even more and restart the assignments and set everything properly from the scratch.

Recruitment team 2025

You can see in the picture above that all scouts have only one current scouting assignments. It's also because I manually ended all their assignments for a single player or some competition.

Assignments

I divided my current scouts into three groups - complete Scandinavia, Sweden and other specific countries.

Jannik Nielsen, Mika Liponnen and Per Nilsson are set to scout Denmark, Finland and Norway. The first two have 100% knowledge of their respective countries, Nilsson has the adaptability attribute of 16 so I have no concern about him scouting in a foreign country.

Our chief scout Pawel Naboyshchikov is roaming around the whole of Scandinavia. He has two additional conditions - at least very good potential ability and the age at most 21. Naboyshchikov has the adaptability attribute of 20.

"A high adaptability attribute will enable the staff member to settle quickly in a new country but will also help a little in settling in at new clubs and new roles. The faster a member of staff can integrate into their new working environment, the quicket and better they can do their job."

FM Adaptability attribute description.

He has his assignment set only for 6 months and I will revalue it after that. And maybe make some small changes. The big advantage is that he is not restricted to search players from a specific country or age so he is able to find some domestic but also foreign players.

During the first three weeks, he was able to deliver reports about Swedish, Faroese, Welsh and French player. A perfect mix and exactly what I want. For example THIS ONE.

All three scouts who are abroad are set to search for players with Very Good potential ability. Why not only good for example? Because I'm old school man and I like to use the old truth: the foreign player has to be better than your own to be worth buying.

Teamwork & Natural Fitness

The last two scouts are based domestically. Mikael Nilsson is better in scouting current ability (16) and that's the reason why he is the only scout from all who is scouting CURRENT ability rather than potential.

The aim is to find a player who will or who can make the immediate impact. That's why the level of the current ability is set to Superb. And he is also instructed to find players which will fit our current formation.

Mikael Nilsson's assignment

Our second domestic-based scout is Jesper Pedersen who is limited by age (at most 18) and potential ability (good). The aim is to have some overview within the young players and to be able to potentially sign some good prospect.

All of our scouts have also two attributes specified. My attributes threshold is set to 13 from 20. That means these two attributes are also set to this value.

Recruitment team 2025 - assignments

Recruitment package

We started this save with the lowest package available. It cost us around €5K per year. The package level and its value also show how our recruitment developed in quite a short time.

I was able to adjust the scouting budget before the 2025 season as we got more than €12M for transfers. It's not something I would use so it was an easy decision to move money to the scouting budget.

d36e6d9a313826647120864850493283.gif

It allows us to buy the Scandinavia scouting package for €394K per year. This package covers all players in this region. (There are too many players now!!!)

"The package determines the number of players to search through as well as increasing the kowledge level and player role visibility of players covered. Recruitment analysts will also use these packages to suggest potential signings."

FM description of the recruitment package

The recruitment package

The first results

Dennis Collander is one of my main targets for potential central midfield improvement. It would be probably the new biggest transfer fee spent record. He was scouted by Mikael Nilsson who is set to scout around Sweden and he is trying to find players who are able to go straight to the starting XI.

I don't have to say he scored against us a week after I made him our top transfer target...

Scout Per Nilsson who is set to roam in Norway found goalkeeper Andreas Linde. He is Swedish, 31 years old and he is out of contract at the end of the current calendar year. And he is better in comparison with our current number one Viktor Frodig. A great find, Per...

It's interesting that both these keepers were wanted by Bodo/Glimt at the time when I wrote this post.

The future?

I mentioned already and the nearest aim remains the same in terms of increasing the number of our scouts to be able to sign scouts for the rest of Scandinavian nations.

It's probable that the first one when it will be allowed, will be someone specialised in Iceland. Another certain thing is that I will continue with "my own" way of finding and signing players. I like to sign players under the age of 17 with a positive personality - usually Professional, Model Citizen and Perfectionist.

All or most of them for free and without a contract. And I follow their development. Maybe something more about it in the future if the time will allow it...

It's mainly about the patient and I like to make it all in terms of long-term searching and considering the options and possibilities. Rather than to have short-term assignments. The main reason is that I like to have my squad prepared for at least one and a half-season beforehand.

That means I will only have to react if there would be some big sell-out.

That's all my thoughts about my scouting network.

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Thanks for reading.

Take care.

FM21 & GAIS | Season Five = goodbye wing-backs

The unexpected parts of the Football Manager save needs unexpected solutions. The 2024 season brought some kind of this within the save with GAIS in Sweden. I lost four of my five wing-backs during one week due to injures and I had to react. What have I done? Firstly, I didn't panic. And I said goodbye to wing-backs.

I made just several simple things and I hoped it will work. And I would say it worked perfectly. Mostly because I enjoyed watching and following the matches during the second part of the season after the formation tweaks.

Spring & Summer 2024

As I mentioned in the previous post about our Europa League journey during spring 2024, I was forced to divide my team into two groups. I was able to use only three newly-signed players in the Europa League due to the registration rules.

That meant a lot of new young players got enough playing time in the Svenska Cupen and Allsvenskan.

But despite that, we still were reluctant on Oscar Aga's goals or Anton Snibb's assists. I consider it impressive we were able to compete on all fronts and we won the domestic cup for the second time in a row.

It's interesting we were in the final for the third time. We played against Djurgardens for the third time and the final ended with a 1:0 result for the third time. Djurgardens were in all four finals within this save so far.

I was active within the transfer market before the 2024 season. I wanted to offload some foreign players and sign some Swedish players.

Some examples:

I like the signing of Andreas Lindh from Norrköping for €425k. He already signed a contract extension until 2028.

Danish central defender Anton Skipper is also worthy of mention as he became very important in the penalty area at both ends of the pitch thanks to his great attributes for defensive and attacking set-pieces.

I decided to pay €1M for Tom Strannegard and bought him from AIK. I signed him mainly for DLF(S) role but he is able to play in the midfield if it would be needed.

The last player I would like to mention is Peter Magnusson. The Swedish midfielder was part of the 2020 youth intake in Danish side Brondby. He rejected extending his contract with Brondby and I signed him for free in summer 2024.

Model Citizen, great first touch, passing or flair, no release clauses, and a contract until 2027. If nothing more, there is a huge potential to earn a lot of money from his next transfer.

I also bought a young keeper Alexander Krusnell from IF Brommapojkarna for €350K in winter. But 16 appearances were enough to earn him a better address. Brighton bought him for €1.1M and some % from his next transfer.

The young Ghanian striker Kingsford Hudson-Odoi (I shared him in the post about season four) moved to FC Porto for €750K (up to €975K). Some nice profit as we signed him for €8.5K a year ago.

Season's summer restart

The summer and competitive matches started with a 2-2 home draw against Djurgardens as they score the equalising goal in the 94th minute of the match after a very nice throw-in routine. The season restart was also very unfortunate for both our key players - Anton Snibb and Victor Blixt. Both or main wing-backs were injured for 5-6 weeks (Snibb) and 3-5 weeks (Blixt).

That meant we lost our captain and best player in terms of the assists in Snibb. And Blixt developed into a lovely wide player who was wanted by Chinese teams (he refused to go there). And I was able to extend his contract without the release clause as it was only around €1.8M.

It was also just a few days before the start of the Europa League Conference qualifying phase. We started in the second round against Budapest Honvéd.

My backup or cover players are usually youngsters. It was not different in this case. Snibb and Blixt had to be replaced with Johannes Ramberg (17y/GAIS newgen) and Gabriel Rehnberg (17y/Hammarby newgen).

I bought Rehnberg for €600k from Hammarby with a view to retraining him to the wing-back so he is trained in this position and he is playing here too. That's why I selected this role in the pictures to show the key/preferable attributes.

Rehnberg is developing nicely but none of these two is that good as I would like but they are young, maybe it will change in the future if I will have time to play.

Bad luck?

It started quite well as Rehnberg picked up the assist in the next league match but he went off with the sprained knee ligaments in the next match (a 3-2 defeat against Honvéd) too. So I lost another one.

Bad luck II?

I wanted to write something about how these two youngsters were good and how they developed and how many assists they made during the absence of Snibb and Blixt.

But I can't. As Rehnberg was injured a week after Snibb and Blixt, Ramberg (the WBL cover), injured himself for 4 weeks ten days later.

All four WB players out in the same time.

The reaction?

I was without wing-backs. Only one left in the squad for the right side of the pitch (17 years old Dutch newgen).

It was just before the Europa League Conference 2nd Qualifying Round 2nd leg against Honvéd. We were 2:3 down after the first leg and we needed to beat them at home. I decided to make a slight tactical shift.

I left three central defenders here but changed the central one from the stopper duty to cover duty.

And I moved both wing-back roles to the midfield area and set this role to the winger with the support duty. Our new tactic changed from 3-5-2 with wing-backs to 3-5-2 without wing-backs

The formation after tweaks with players from the last match of the season.

The reasons were simple:

  1. I wanted to keep the three at the back

  2. I also hoped it won't affect our wing-play-style too much

  3. And I also thought about the simple thing that both Snibb and Blixt, same as their covers, are also able to play as MR/L so we can potentially use this formation in the future.

I really liked mainly our domination through the game. Oscar Aga scored his most typical goal after he beat the offside trap and collected the ball after a pass from one of the three central midfielders. And Anton Skipper scored from corner .

Testing month

I decided to keep this formation also for the next matches to give it more time and also, I still didn't have my wing-backs back after a one-match. Logically.

I gave this set-up a go for a whole August 2024 + the Svenska Cupen Second Round match against lower league side Spanga IS.

We were able to make it through to the Europa Conference League after beating Asteras Tripolis and Bordeaux. We were 0:2 down in the first away leg against Bordeaux but Oscar Aga scored three goals after three assists by Isak Bjerkebo (MR - Winger/support).

The only loss was against Kalmar FF in the league when I played the complete cover/backup team to rest key players for the reply against Bordeaux.

The last match of this testing month was against Spanga IS, the team from the lower league. I played backup/young players + Snibb and Blixt in ML/R slots. They were after injuries. Snibb made three assists, Blix scored once. But it was a very easy match. Five of these 7 goals were after set-pieces. But all worked nicely.

The first month with 3-5-2 without wing-backs.

Negatives?

As you can see in the fixture screen, we conceded quite a lot of goals within this month. The main and most visible CON of this type of formation was surely the absence of wing-backs and their natural ability to cover the flanks.

In some matches (AIK, Bordeaux away or Kalmar), it was really obvious the three central defenders are not able to cover everything.

The most typical and the most effective solution to this issue, while we faced the opponent with players in AMR/L or two and more strikers, was that I set my MR/L players to mark specific player within the individual instruction.

It was mainly the AMR/L opponent or WBR/L players. It's something that helped with defending a lot and I will use it in the future.

The Recent Matches Analysis screen in the game tells me that We've conceded 1 of 12 shots attempted from outside the penalty area and it's highlighted within negatives as the opposition goals from long-range shots.

Not sure exactly what is negative to concede one goal from a long range. But we all know what to think about statistics in FM21, right?

Especially when one of the positive things from the last five matches was that 0 of the 0 assists created by the team come from the right and from outside of the penalty area. Well done for 0 assists, lads!

Nine goals were not enough

I decided to keep this set-up until the end of the season at least. We played three uncomplete months with it.

We played quite a lot of matches due to the Europa Conference League group stage participation and because we had some domestic league matches in hand. It led to a big rotation in the squad to keep most of my players fit.

It's nice to see things like a hattrick by William Johansson (click to his name to see his profile and make your opinion) who really is not good enough. But he ended as our second best goalscorer of the season with 12 goals during 1,210 minutes on the pitch.

The great league results secured us the second league title of this save as we won the Allsvenskan again after two years.

The highest points haul in the club history in 2024

The picture below shows you the results in autumn 2024. You can see it went down very well even in the Europa Conference League group where we faced Feyenoord, Rotor and Sheriff. But as it stands, not even a 9:1 win is enough to progress from the group.

As we lost to Feyenoord at the beginning of November, we need to beat Rotor at home. But we were able to manage only one point for a 2:2 draw.

The Rotor Volgograd (Russia) squad, full of experienced newgens/regens/grey players with the Champions League level of attributes, beat Feyenoord at home in the last match.

So, even if we would beat Sheriff by a double or triple-digit score, we would finish third in the group because of the simple rule of a number of goals scored in the matches against Rotor.

But it's incredible that both my strikers ended the match with a 10 rating as Strannengard scored 4 goals and made 1 assist. And Oscar Aga scored 5 goals and made 2 assists.

Can I rotate the rotated squad?

I already mentioned the fact I rotated a lot during the season. The facts screen in the game tells me that we used 31 players in the league during the season.

It was 37 players across all competitions when I counted also players who left the club during this calendar year.

Sometimes, I felt exactly as the headline above stands - some players considered backup players were also fatigued and I had to promote some youngsters from the youth team. Mainly during the period when I had to change the formation too.

The first team players sorted by minutes played during 2024

Facts from the 2024

  • Oscar Aga scored 48 goals in 47(4) appearances (25 goals in Allsvenskan - the best goalscorer). [Karl-Alfred Jacobsson is the current holder of the club record with 145 league goals. I don't think I will have enough time to overcome this number with Oscar Aga as he has 74 now].

  • Central defender Anton Skipper, mentioned above, scored 10 goals - all from set-pieces.

  • The club has 67% of the squad filled by the domestic players | 80% in Allsvenskan.

  • The average age of the club is 21 | 24 in Allsvenskan.

  • Training facilities were improved to Great | The youth facilities are now Good.

  • I was able to improve the youth recruitment to the Average level. The latest request for another upgrade was rejected, same as for the Junior Coaching budget - Good now.

  • Andreas Isaksson joined the club as the new Goalkeeping Coach while Ronny Johnsen took the Manchester United offer to become their U23s manager after he spent one year as our reserve coach.

  • The competitive rivalry with Djurgardens IF was established in the game - probably mainly because of our three cup finals.

  • Julius Lindberg (mentioned for example here), one of the most important players of the first two seasons, was released in November 2023 as his contract was not extended. He didn't find the new club and he retired at the age of 25. I really didn't expect this and I would probably keep him in the club if I would even think about it for a second. The same happened to Meinhard Olsen, Fredrik Martinsson, Nikola Ladan, Fredrik Lundgren or Marcus Sangré, all under the age of 30 and all released in previous years. It's weird...

The changes I made during this season were forced tweaks but they will remain permanent now.

Thanks for reading.

FM21 & GAIS | The European tactical tweaks

I'm enjoying using the 3-5-2 formation within FM21. A lot. And I also love tweaking it for specific matches and specific opponents. The main core of the formation usually remains the same but even the small tweaks and changes are enough to beat a much stronger opponent. Or make it harder for them at least. Some of these small tactical tweaks took me to the Europa League Semi-Final during spring 2024.

It reminds me of the post about the Next match only option I wrote in February this year. One of the main changes is that I was following these matches in the Europa League knock-outs even more closely and I did some more tweaks during the match. Mainly because of the quality of our opponents. Or individuals.

I would like to mention also one quite important thing to make relevant to the tactics and the squad we used. Our domestic season, in Sweden, is based on the calendar year. We played the Champions League group stage during the autumn of 2023. I tried to bring some young Swedish players to the club during the winter before the new season.

But as the UEFA rules tell us we were able to change/replace or add only three new players.

That meant we played the Europa League knock-outs mainly with the players whose squad status was changed from important players to backup. Because I wanted to get rid of them or to have them only as a cover option.

That was another reason why I followed matches closely because I wanted to adjust all small details against strong opponents.

The base formation for the 2024 season that we are using for the domestic league and cup. And the default set-up for our matches in Europe.

Champions League third place

I mentioned our Champions League appearances in the previous post (HERE). We were able to beat Rennais and drew with them and Juventus so we earned third place in the group.

I would be lying if I would say it wasn't surprising. Probably the same as when we were 2:0 up against Chelsea in the last group match before they turned it around.

For me personally, the main win of our Champions League group stage participation is the prize money. The club earned around €19M and we don't need to care about finances for some time.

If you read the post about season four, you know we didn't retain the league title so we can't compete about the Champions League again in the summer. We will try to earn some in the Europea Conference League but that's the future.

The Champions League road in 2023

The Champions League road in 2023

Europa League 1st Knockout Round - Lokomotiv Moscow

I was absolutely not sure what to expect before the first match against Lokomotiv. Same from them and from my own team. But when I saw Justin Kluivert in their team, I was sure it will not be easy.

They used a 4-4-2 narrow diamond in the first leg in Sweden and Kluivert scored their only goal just after the start of the second half. It ended at 1:1 and I knew I have to score in Moscow to have some chance. This was the moment when I started making changes also during the game as the first home leg was almost with the main formation and without changes.

I was also without Viktor Blixt, my main WBR, and his cover was not registered. The young central midfielder Mogens Hartman played here. He was set to WB(D) because I didn't want to see him around the opponent's area. I wanted to defend and wait for counters despite I had to score.

I also made an already typical switch from CD(St) to CD(C) against two strikers in combination with the AM player. And Kluivert was tackled hard.

No intensive pressing, very low risk, and also defensive mentality for the second half after we were 1:0 up thanks to Oscar Aga's goal after a throw-in routine. The shorter passing and lower tempo from the 65th minute.

The passive and boring style paid off as we scored our second after a counter in the added time and we won 2:0 and 3:1 on aggregate to make it through. Yes, they were better. But we went through.

Europa League 2nd Knockout Round - Schalke 04

Schalke is doing much better in my save in comparison with a real-life and they were great but both matches reminded me of the previous stage against Lokomotiv.

Their main formation under Manuel Baum was 4-2-3-1 with Jordan Lukaku as the left wing-back treating everyone from the first until the last minute. He was incredible and he also won the penalty kick before Windtzheimer sent Schalke ahead.

I had to play Theis Pedersen despite he doesn't want to continue in the club but I had no other option for the DLF(S) role as most of the players were injured or not registered.

But he levelled the score and gave us some hope for the second leg. It was for the first time in a long time when I used a defensive mentality from the beginning of the match. Yes, I was scared of being destroyed by them. When they didn't borrow the ball in the first 10 minutes, I was sure it will be a very long match to follow.

Some of my players were still able to press around the pitch and we were exposed a little bit in several areas. It resulted in some tweaks. I moved our defensive line deeper, same as the line of engagement. I also told my players to press less urgently.

It was waiting for a miracle and we did it again. Bjerkebo scored after a free-kick routine and Aga finished a perfect counter in the 90th minute.

Europa League Quarter Final - RB Leipzig

Nkunku, Alhaier, Kramer, Adams... we faced a very strong side in the Quarter Final. And they also use a variation of 3-5-2 with one player in the AM position instead of the flat midfield trio. Both their wing-backs were absolutely perfect in the first match, the only shame for them was that strikers were unable to score after their passes.

Luckily, we were able to defend very well as we played with almost all instructions set to default and a cautious mentality this time for the whole match in combination with shorter passing. I also switched both WB players to defend duty during the match. Their wing-backs were like Rocky in his prime, my wing-backs (the best in the Swedish league) were like Rocky on the beach.

giphy rocky.gif

This change really helped to stop a lot of their attacks and to block a lot of crosses.

I decided to keep it again for the 2nd leg, especially as I didn't have Blixt available in the WBR slot and CM Hartman had to play here. I also lowered the defensive line and we played with the defensive mentality.

Hartman made this perfect one-touch assist before Oscar Aga sent us ahead seven minutes before the end of the 1st half.

It was really only about defending. And some luck. Christopher Nkunku scored the penalty in the 73rd minute. He ended this match with a 9.1 average rating and 20 key passes. But we scored with a 1 shot on target. Their 35 shots (16 on target) were not enough. We were through thanks to an away goal.

Europa League Semi Final - Everton FC

When I'm thinking about the semi-final matches backwards, it's obvious we were lucky to be in this phase. First of all.

Secondly, we have no chance against Everton. It was like to be back in the Champions League group again. We only didn't concede too many as against Chelsea. But their qualities were not comparable with ours. I love my players so it's not something against them.

Everton is using a 4-4-2 formation and the first leg was only about how long we will be able to hold the goalless scoreline. It lasted until the 77th minute before Gylfi Sigurdsson, one of my favourite players, scored from a direct free-kick. And Richarliason added another one-two minutes later.

They could score three or four more in the last 10 minutes but I went ultra-defensive.

I will be clear - my favourite thing about these two matches against Everton was we scored one goal in the home match. Nuha Jatta gave us the lead, Oscar Aga didn't convert the penalty kick and they turned the score around and won 4-1 on aggregate.

No tweaks or changes helped. It was only about to not concede a lot of goals. I'm sure it would be 5:0 or 6:0 (or more) in both matches if I would didn't play with the defensive mentality.

Positives & negatives

All the things have some positives and negatives. And this is not an exception. I mentioned the fact about our domestic season that is based on the calendar year. I'm not sure if it's a clear negative thing because we played 8 friendlies before the first match against Lokomotiv.

But the team would probably be better prepared from the competitive matches than only from friendlies. We played the first league match just after we came back from Germany. We played 4 Europa League matches before the Swedish league started. But that's a reality and I don't consider it too negative.

The clear positive was the option to test all players in the squad. As the new players who were not able to register for EL got a lot of chances in the Svenska Cupen and Allsvenskan. I was able to realise who will be able to play at the highest level. Both domestic and continental.

Gained experience, money earned and reputation boost are the main positives for sure for the whole club. Same as the fact that the Swedish champion will start the Champions League qualification journey in the 2nd round instead of in the 1st one.

It's not intended to be some kind of tactical analysis. It's just my thoughts and notes from playing the game. I'm usually doing just some logical and simple things rather than overhaul or change the system completely.

Thanks for reading.

My FM21 Attacking Corner Routines

We all have some development as Football Manager players. I'm not an exception. I always wanted to score as many goals as possible from the set pieces. But I turned from the horny set piece creator to score a lot of goals to the patient player who is enjoying making small changes and tweaks. And every goal scored from some set piece routine is the best reward. These are my FM21 attacking corner routines

I like to watch the match on comprehensive highlights to be able to see my routines. It slowed my playing time down but I really like it. I don't have to reach the far future, I rather follow the save slower and see the impact of my tweaks.

And the FM21 version is perfect for it because I knew before the save started it won't last for too long. That means I don't see a point to speed up just to progress.

Attacking corners - near post

It's still one of my favourite type of routine/delivery. I usually see something like "just place here the best header and that's enough". In some way, yes, that's right. You need a very strong player. But as I mentioned in the past, set pieces are about the off the ball movement in the current stance of the game.

I usually try to test what player will fit the best here. I also liked to placed the best possible player to Lurk Near Post rather than into Attack Near Post role because it was more dangerous at the beginning of the save.

When I signed Niklas Backman, he was a logical choice for the attacking routines as the main man. He is brave and his decisions are up to 15. Heading and Jumping Reach attributes are also very good.

But he didn't deliver and his off the ball movement (6) during corners was a joke. Another prove of my theory. I really looked forward to using him as the focal point but I had to try another player.

The examples of goals by Markus Nakkim.

My FM21 attacking corner routines - near post

Sometimes, the ball can make it to the far post when players around the near post don't hit it. And it can look like this, that's why I have one player set to Lurk at Far Post.

Attacking corners - short

I started using the short routine straight after the start of the save. But I removed that routine during the first season because I realised I didn't have good enough players for the key roles - the taker and the one who offers the short option.

No matter what I tried, it usually ended with the offside or with bad decision of the "come short" player who decided what to do late and the opponent took the ball. Or worse, he just hit the opponent and the same repeated three or four times in a row.

But I started using it again during the save when the quality of my players was higher and some of the players developed the key attributes.

I don't know if my theory about the off the ball movement is right. But I will live with it. Especially as the striker, who is set to attack near post, is able to score from the far post area because he is able to find the space. And another player is able to find him unmarked with a well-placed cross (see more in the video below).

Time from time, I switch the Go Forward role to Attack Ball from Edge of Area. But I always try to keep two players with Lurk Outside Area role to protect the deflected or cleared balls.

My FM21 attacking corner routines - Short

2020 vs 2023

I mentioned that I used the short corner routine at the beginning of the save. The routine looked slightly different but the main point was the same. Two players were set to lurk outside area to help with everything around the penalty area.

It worked well with the wing-back within these two players as he was helpful quite often with thanks to his speed and also crossing ability.

The biggest difference is that the players who should be the main threat for the opponent were set to attack the far post as I wanted to see the cross to this place or to offer enough space around the near post for the short option.

You can see how the routine looked like in 2020 HERE. As I already wrote, the same as the save, the club or the league developed through the four years, players also developed and their decisions are much better within the short routine. That's why I decided to try it again with small tweaks and improvements. And I gave my players another opportunity to prove this routine can work.

Not working short routine in 2020 season

Thre examples from the recent time within my save with GAIS. I'm not playing too fast so it's quite young examples.

Youth teams as the best testing

One of my favourite things for probably the last three FM editions is to check the highlights of my reserve/B or youth teams. All my squads play with the same tactic. That means all teams are using also the same routines.

I consider this as a fantastic testing option for how my routines work for other teams. And I always receive the info about the match to the mailbox with the simple Watch Highlights button so it's easy to just watch the goals. I like to do it, especially if I see one of the defenders is in the scoresheet as it means a corner or free-kick goal.

But I like to check it also because of the throw-in goals because my U19s team is scoring quite a lot of goals thanks to the shrot throw-in routine.

And if I don't have enough time to watch highlights, or I forgot to do it, I just check the youth team analyst report/scoring and assists screen. Unfortunately, and I have no idea why, but you can't select more than the last 5 matches here within the youth team.

Attacking set piece search filter

I wrote about it in the past (here) and I'm still using the same method. You can find some very good players, not only for set pieces, with the filter including the key attributes for roles like attack near post, mark keeper etc.

Most of these are useful also for the defensive routines as some of these attributes are the same for both attacking and defensive roles.

It's mainly about playing with the values of the attributes within the filter. You can set all of these attributes to 15 but you can't expect it will find some player when you play outside of the top nations/leagues. Or better worded, it won't find players who are not interested in transfer/loan to your club. And the reasonable value/expected transfer fee/wage also play role in it.

I have set the attributes threshold to 13 in this FM21 save for the best attributes - bright green. So, I also set the default value for these key attributes to 13. If it finds some players, good. If not, I will lower all the values. Or only some of them.

In the example below, I lowered attributes to 10 except the Bravery and Off The Ball attributes. It found nine players. I can see the values of these 7 attributes straight thanks to the custom view. We can all spot that 19 years old Finnish striker Joni Kovanen looks promising and I started scouting him.

Training?

As I shared in the post about the fourth season, this is my current training scheme. Set piece sessions have their place in it but usually only the delivery and attacking corners sessions prior to the match.

I don't have more right now, also because I still remember what Oliver Jensen suggested some time ago during FM20.

You may or may not know this but the reason you didn’t notice any difference with more set piece training is because you can only get boosts once for a match from those sessions, so if you put three attacking corners sessions before a match, you get the same boost as you would just having one attacking corners session.

I asked SI when I wrote about training and they said that you can add many in the week but only one session will work. Doesn’t make sense that you can do more sessions. It should limit to one before each match.

One thing I will change probably in the future is the defending session on Thursday to attacking free kicks. But that's not so important.

I just want to say that your main player for the corners doesn't have to be the strongest defender just because of heading or jumping reach. It's more about combining all the required attributes together. And just to think about simple things. It's not as complicated as some FM players think and they rather ignore set pieces.

To be honest, leave the set pieces by default, especially the throw-ins is a really bad idea in FM21. But that's a different story.

Latte Quarterly - OGC Nice: November 2020

I was recently asked to join the OGC Nice FM21 save by @LatteQuarterly to help them with set pieces within the save.

I couldn't refuse. It's always great to do something together with Matt, Tony and with other members of the Board of Directors of Latte Quarterly.

Feel free to read about how November 2020 went in the save. I'm not usually into sharing saves but this is really enjoyable. Mainly thanks to all involved around. Thank you.

FM21 & GAIS | Season Four

The fourth season of my FM21 save with GAIS in Sweden started with releasing players and saving money. We were able to offload players/wages around €30k per month and it helped our budget a lot. But probably none expected we will look at this number with a big smile at the end of the season because of the prize money we earned and received during the second half of the season.

Personally, it was probably the best season from these four I played within the save. Not because of the results, number of goals scored/conceded or something different realted to succes.

I just enjoyed playing it, tweaking the tactic or set pieces and it was really rewarding when some my player scored a goal after corner/free kick/throw-in exactly as I imagined in my head while creating that routine.

The key moments of the season

The Sebastian Larsson story

This is something I didn't expect. I didn't expect it at 0%. But as always, this game surprised me. I enjoyed one season with Wayne Rooney and I decided it's a good idea to sign another experienced player in Sebastian Larsson.

Former Swedish international player (131 caps, 10 goals) spent the previous four years with AIK after leaving England after almost twenty years. He was available for free, he was willing to lower his wage demand from €20k p/m to €12k p/m and I gave him a one-year-long contract.

My plan was to use him as DLP(S), the same as Wayne Rooney. And I wanted to use him as our main set-piece taker because his crossing, corners, free kicks, penalties are perfect. I should rather say they were perfect.

  • He signed on Thursday, December 1, 2022.

  • I set his training in a similar way as to Wayne with half intensity and I set him as our routines taker.

  • I was thrilled with the new signing during the press conference on Friday, December 2, 2022, at 10:41.

  • The next day, on Saturday, December 3, 2022, at midnight, I received the e-mail stating:

Sebastian Larsson has announced his decision to retire. After talking the matter over with friends and family he has decided that his best option is to retire while he's still in his prime. He intents to retire on Monday, December 19, 2022.

  • Fifteen days later, on Sunday, December 18, 2022, at midnight, he informed us he will retire the next day after he made the final decision.

Midfield overhaul

I knew there will be some work to put the squad together before our fourth season. Mainly because of the Rooney's retirement. And also because Burnley FC (English Premier League) activated the release clause of Matt O'Riley.

It was €1.8M. The board in line with the Director of Football accepted it. Same as I would have to accept it.

I signed him for free in September 2020 as he was a free agent. He was our best midfielder, CM(S) or DLP(S), it depended on if Wayne Rooney played in the previous season. I added England and Premier League as a playable nation/league just because of him from summer 2023.

Matt O'Riley after his move back to England

The fact Sebastian Larsson retired didn't help me either. And it resulted in the fact I realised I don't have enough central midfielders.

Poor management, poor planning. Probably.

Tomas Ganning, Samuel Adrian and Kwadwo Karim Oppong (screen below) were signed to fill the midfield slots. All of them are able to play as CM(S) and also as DLP(S). Especially as I'm using the CM(S) role with Hold Position instruction. Experienced Daniel Pedersen was signed too but he moved to CD(St) role later in the season. But that's a different story.

But as the first season progressed, I still felt it's not enough. I thought we were missing something despite the I was happy how Ganning got used to CM(S) role in combination with Adrian as DLP(S).

I was on my typical trip within the player search screen tweaking the searching filters during the summer break in June. And I decided to sign Dan Gosling. Another English midfielder within this save. He is younger than Rooney when he signed.

Dan Gosling profile after he signed for GAIS in July 2023

But it didn't work out this time as I would like. Dan played very well but he was unfortunate and he damaged his cruciate ligaments at the end of November 2023. That meant 8-10 months out of the game and he decided to retire.

He made 18(2) appearances and added 3 assists, 1 yellow card and 1 red card.

Tactical & training tweaks

The main changes for the fourth season were two:

  • I changed the Pressing Forward role to DLF(S) - the signing of Hudson-Odoi helped to make that decision and I wanted to involve this striker even more within the 3-5-2 formation in the build-up.

  • The Whipped Crosses instruction was added - it helps slightly to both WB players in combination with Cross From Deep instruction. And also maybe during set pieces - can't confirm this 100%.

  • I also tried to change the midfield flat trio during the end of the season. I moved DLP(S) to the middle and CM(A) to the MCR slot. And I tried Mezzalla on support for example against FC Basel and it worked perfectly. It's something I will consider using in the future of the save.

I also made some adjustments to the overal training schedule. Both versions for "Saturday match" and "Sunday match" schedules were updated slightly.

I added more tactical sessions including the one from the General "pack" for the day after the match when we play on Saturday. Maybe it doesn't work as I would expect but I like to think it can help my players to gain tactical "feeling" in combination with a match review session.

You can see the example of training weeks while the match is played on Saturday/Sunday. Or when it's various due to mid-week match. I like to do everything on my own so I tweak it a lot while playing.

Ghanian future (s)

Many people have Scandinavian clubs connected with scouting, buying and developing African players. Some of these clubs, I'm sure most of you will think about the FC Nordsjælland, have this system at the absolutely top level.

I will be clear. It's not my main aim of the save to be another club like this. I like to have a mostly domestic-based squad. Or at least regional-based squad in this type of the save in Scandinavia. I have no issue not have only Swedish players in the squad and I really enjoy having Finnish, Danish, or Norwegian players here too. It's just part of my Scandinavian scouting roaming system.

But I couldn't refuse to sign two players. Both of them are Ghanian youth national team players. Both of them are ready for the first team football already in my eyes and they were almost for free.

If nothing more, their possible future transfer can boost club finances a lot. Kingsford Hudson-Odoi was bought from Hearts of Oak for €8.5k. He will play as DLF(S). And he is the main reason why I decided to try DLF(S) role after three seasons with the Pressing Forward role.

Kwadwo Karim-Oppong came from Berekum Chelsea for €25k. And I will develop him as DLP(S).

The season

Same as in the post about the third season, we can divide the season into three parts. The first one is about the Svenska Cupen. We lost 0-1 in the final last year against Djurgardens IF. We made it to the final again after wins over Eskilstuna, Norrköping, Norrby, IFK Göteborg and BK Häcken.

And we faced Djurgardens again. This time, we won the trophy thanks to a converted penalty kick by Oscar Aga in the 18th minute.

As the reigning champions of the Allsvenskan, we weren't the main favourites for the league title trophy again. I didn't expect it as well. Mainly because I didn't know what to expect from our first appearance in Europe (more later).

We were moving between the first three places for the whole season but we were 2nd most of the time. Exactly as you can see in the picture with the past positions.

Malmö FF moved to the top after the ninth round and remained here until the end. They won the league for the first time since 2017. And they deserved it for the consistency.

The European experience

I already mentioned our first participation in some European competitions. It was the Champions League thanks to the league title. And we started in the 1st qualifying round = a long way to the group stage through four qualifying rounds.

But we made it. The first two matches against Gap Connah's Quay were easier than a friendly match against our own youth team. There was simply a too big gap between both teams. Sorry.

Other opponents were stronger but we were perfect and we gave everything to the qualifiers and ditched some league games around. I would be happy even with the Europa League or the Europa Conference League. But.

We beat Dinamo Zagreb, APOEL, and also Basel and made it to the group stage with Stade Rennais, Juventus and Chelsea. The 2-1 win at home against Rennais gave me some boost. Chelsea and Juventus away were not playable for us. But we tied with Juventus at home and with Rennais away and secured the third place and Europa League knock-out stage.

We were 2-0 up against Chelsea at home in the last match but they scored four goals within 22 minutes to make it 2-4 and it ended 3-4. A perfect match at the end of the season.

The club earned over €19M thanks to Champions League prize money so I think just the number speaks for itself.

Season ticket holders

If you read the first blog post about this save, you maybe remember I shared some info about the "The Fanager" campaign. This project was introduced by GAIS during the 2017/2018 season in a real-life. One of their fans got the option to become a manager of the team for one match.

It connected the club with their fans and they increased the season ticket sales by 21,9%. One of my aims of this save was to bring fans back to the stadium and increase the average attendance and the number of season ticket holders.

We started with the 560 ticked holders. But thanks to the promotion to top tier and thanks to the league title win in the 3rd season, we are now in an absolutely different world.

The number of season ticket holders increased to 5,115 before the 2023 season.

The average attendance also had some development and the promotion to the top tier gave it a big boost. We were around 1k in the first season. If there would not be a derby match against Örgryte, we would be under 1k probably. The first two seasons were almost similar, the difference was just in tens.

But the first season in the top tier increases the average attendance by almost up to 4k. And we also saw our first ever stadium sell-out of this save. It's more regular now. Our stadium was sold out 7 times during the 2023 season just in the domestic league.

Average Attendance 2020-2023.png

Average attendance is affected by the fact we played four Champions League matches at the Gamla Ullevi stadium with a capacity of 16,600 seats. If I would count only the league and cup matches, our average attendance would be 7,609.

Every day/week/month/year or season we play within the Football Manager can be a learning point in my eyes. Or you will just experience something new. As I mentioned at the beginning, I really enjoyed playing this fourth season.

It was also probably the fastest season of my FM21 playing thanks to it despite I wrote this post while playing. There were times when I forgot about the time before I realised I didn't experience anything like that for a long time.

I also found out that I have more foreign players in the squad than probably for the whole last two FM editions together. That means I will try to get back to a more domestic-based squad in the near future. The 5th season of the save will probably be my penultimate or last one for some time. Let's enjoy it.

FM21 | Wayne Rooney: Keeping the biggest star fit

Everton, Manchester United, Everton, DC United, Derby County. And GAIS. The last club is not from a real-life CV of Wayne Rooney. It's from my Football Manager 2021 save in Sweden. The former England national team player (120 caps/53 goals) signed for my GAIS team for one calendar year. I knew he will require some special treatment considering his age or physical attributes. If you are interested in how that one year/season went with him, feel free to read.

The first thing that some of you can think about it is that it's not a common type of signing within my FM saves. And that's right. I'm usually playing with young players and I usually avoid signing veterans. That word sounds too harsh for me and I won't use it too often as it reminds me something different than just older footballers.

But same as the game is changing, my time for FM is changing too and my playing approach is different too. At least in terms of the club/player development. I won't be able to play 10, 15 or more seasons. That means I will rather concentrate on the present than the far future.

Wayne Rooney after he signed for GAIS in October 2021

I will use the profile shared above as the base picture for several parts of this post. I mentioned his physical attributes already and we have to take them into account while considering Wayne’s position, role but also training regime.

Pros & Cons

You can find seven pros and four cons in the coach report. I will start with the cons as they are logical considering his age and physical abilities.

  • Agility - "Lack of agility results in an inability to react quickly to dynamic changes of direction." - I read it as the more intensive pressing can lead to more ball losses for example. And it showed exactly like that in the latter part of the season when his passes completion ratio decreased.

  • Unlikely to improve - no need to explain, it's clear what it means and his progress went down during the year.

  • Athleticism - the combination of his strength and fitness level influences his performances in matches and training.

  • Peripheral - I had to find out what this exactly means. I didn't consider it as important in combination with the fact he is also a leader. It goes against each other in my eyes.

Most of the pros are connected to the fact he is very respectable footballer. He is experienced with the international football, he is considered as a leader and he is enough ambitious.

Despite his injuries in the past, he still is brave enough and he is able to play in several positions. All nice things but we all know we won't see him as our leading goalscorer and the most dangerous striker in the league.

The right role

The game suggests that the Deep Lying Playmaker with the support duty is his best-suited role in both CM and DM positions. But I'm not using DM position within the 3-5-2 formation so it was easy to choose.

  • AP(S) - ruled out due to Agility

  • Mezzala - ruled out due to Acceleration + Stamina

  • CM(S) & CM(A) - ruled out due to Acceleration + Stamina + Tackling

  • Box To Box midfielder - ruled out due to Acceleration + Pace + Stamina + Tackling

  • Ball Winning Midfielder - ruled out due to Agility + Pace + Stamina + Tackling

  • Carrilero - ruled out due to I'm not using that role

  • Roaming Playmaker - ruled out due to Acceleration + Agility + Pace + Stamina

The DLP(S) role was an easy decision in the end. Also in a combination with the Tries Killer Balls Often, Comes Deep To Get Ball and Tries Long Range Passes traits. The fact I'm using DLP(S) in my 3-5-2 formation was only a bonus.

Training & rest

Most of my players have demanding training schedules including postion/role/duty and additional focus training in combination with some trait learning. And also with the double intensity level.

Wayne Rooney is the exception. Because I wanted:

  1. to ensure he won't spend the whole season with some injury

  2. play him as many times as possible

  3. there was no reason to give him a high demanding training regime while he won't improve thanks to it

I went for a simple training approach. The DLP(S) as the position/role/duty training. And switching between corners and free kicks as the additional focus.

The intensity level was set to half. The picture above is from the end of the season after Wayne played 5 full matches from the last 8.

Injuries

Wayne had only four injuries during the 2022 calendar year. The first one ruled him out of action for 4 weeks with the sprained knee ligaments just at the start of the pre-season in January. It was his longest injury of all. The rest three injuries were for 11, 3 and 6 days.

I will be clear. When the first injury for four weeks ruled him out, I just thought "fuck, and that's it". But it was good. And I'm pretty happy with how it went and I now can think that the light training regime helped it.

Set pieces

I know there are many other footballers who are considered as set pieces specialists. But Wayne has/had great technique and perfect attributes for corners and free kicks. Yes, I dreamt about seeing a direct free kick during the season. Something similar as in the video below.

But it didn't happen. Wayne scored two goals during his one and a bit season. Both were from the penalty kick. He didn't convert two more penalties.

I set him as my main corner and free-kick taker. Maybe the routines were not good enough or his teammates set for specific roles within routines were not good enough to convert his crosses. I'm not sure but one thing is clear - I expected much more from set-pieces thanks to his perfect attributes for them.

Set Piece Takers custom view

I recently saw one of his corner routines from a real-life as he is the Derby County manager. And his players scored against Middlesbrough.

I tried to replicate it but due to limited options in FM, I had to do some exceptions and compromises. My main squad didn't score with this routine during the year, our youth squad scored twice or three times with it. But not particularly like in that video. I'm already looking forward to trying something new.

Rooney & GAIS

October 7, 2021: Wayne Rooney signed

  • The former English national team player signed a one-year contract with GAIS on October 7, 2021.

October 17, 2021: The 1st goal

  • It took him only 10 days before he made his debut in the GAIS shirt. As I wrote in the post about the 2nd season, there are no registration restrictions so I was able to play Rooney straight after his signing. He scored in our 1-0 win over Västeras SK and this win sealed us also the promotion to the top tier.

December 2021: The new captain

  • Some experienced players and previous captains left the club before the third season. Rooney was my first choice for the new captain despite he wasn't with the club for too long. Also, his Leadership and Teamwork attributes (17 & 16) influenced it of course.

January 2022: Sprained ankle ligaments

  • Injured himself during one of the first training sessions of the pre-season and he was out of action for 4 weeks and missed the main physical sessions to gain fitness before the new season but it didn't affect him.

February 27, 2022: Two assists against Helsingborgs

  • He leads the team in winning the Svenska Cupen group including two assists during a 2-0 win over Helsingborgs as he prepared both goals for Oscar Aga. It was his only two assists in the domestic cup but he helped us to reach the final when we lost to Djurgardnes.

June 2022: The first player of the save with the rating of 10 (in a friendly)

  • If he would be considered as a player suited only for friendlies, he would be in the top 3 for sure. He scored once and made 9 assists in 11 appearances. He was the first player who got a 10 rating in the match. Shame it was only a friendly against a lower league side. But he scored once, made four assists and 13 key passes. It was great to watch.

July 1, 2022: The decision

  • He informed me during June he wants to retire at the end of the season. I tried to Reconsider the Retirement option but he refused and he decided to retire.

September 6, 2022: Rooney = the new GAIS coach

  • I knew I will try it but I didn't know when it will happen. I decided to offer Rooney the job offer at the beginning of September to keep him at the club within our staff. I wanted him as an assistant manager but he refused this staff role. Same as the role of the U19 manager. He wanted to be a coach. So he will be our coach from October and his retirement from his playing career.

October 2022: 14 from 15 possible

  • He was able to play 14 from possible 15 league matches during the second part of the season. He missed only the first one at home against IFK Göteborg due to suspension.

October 2022: The end of the fairytale

  • We needed to win in the last league match as you maybe know if you read the previous post about season three. Rooney led the team against Djurgardens, made the assist for the first goal and ended the match with a 7.9 rating. Most importantly, he was able to celebrate the league title trophy after the full-time whistle.

Rooney played 2 Superettan matches and scored one goal.

He made 23(2) appearances from 30 possible in the Swedish top tier. Wayne scored once (missed two from three penalties) and made 7 assists. He was voted the man of the match twice and he ended the season with a 6.87 average rating.

Wayne is a leading player within Clear Cut Chances created with 15. But I really don't know if that number and this stat overall are right due to all mistakes and bugs within stats and analysis in FM21.

Questions & answers

I asked some questions, mainly myself of course, after I signed Rooney in October 2021. I shared them within the season timeline in the post about the second season.

  • Will he ensure we will stay in the Allsvenskan? Yes. He helped to win the league title.

  • How many matches he will be able to play? 30(2) appearances in all competitions combined.

  • Will he make a lot of assists from set-pieces thanks to his perfect corners and free kicks attributes? No. Only one assist.

  • Will his signing boost the club finances or the match attendance? No. The average attendance increased but mainly because of the higher competition rather than signing Rooney.

  • What shirt number will he use? 10.

  • Will am I able to convince him to stay in the club as a coach? Yes.

Wayne Rooney as a coach

The selection of Wayne Rooney's assists - the first one against Helsingborgs in the Svenska Cupen, the rest in the Allsvenskan.

*Featured image source: wallpaperflare.com

FM21 & GAIS: Season three - drama until the end

I didn't know what to expect from the first season in the top tier with GAIS. But it's clear it exceeded all expectations I had before the season started. My team continued to play with the 3-5-2 formation and I enjoyed it with slight tweaks here and here during the season. We overachieved and didn't meet the media prediction before the season (14th). It was a perfect drama until the end and it was all decided with the final whistle of the last league round. Are you interested? Let's read it.

Three targets = three new signings

I had a simple plan of what to do before our first season in the top tier. I knew I want to sign three players. Each line needed one player. 

I knew this before the end of the season, and I would do the same even if we would not win the competition. 

But I have to be clear, the Wayne Rooney signing before the end of the 2nd season was unexpected for everyone, and I didn't count on it. It's four signings potentially, but I will count Wayne to the previous season. 

Wage budget increased after the promotion to €196k, so we had almost double the money. 

The first one

I scouted many central defenders during the previous season, and I would like to sign many of them. But I didn't. I had to remember I signed one already. 

His name is Emil Agerbaek. This Danish central defender is 19 years old, and I signed him for free in summer 2021. But he wanted to go on-loan, and he was reluctant to sign the contract without this clause. 

He went to Viborg and played in the Danish top tier. It's a free signing. He has his contract with us until the end of November 2024 with the wage of €2.5k p/m only. 

Emil should be with Viborg until June 2022, but I recalled him from the Danish side because he had to play as left defender instead of central defender, and also because I decided to give him a chance. 

The second one

Another aim before the attempt to avoid the relegation from the Allsvenskan was to strengthen the flat midfield trio. 

I was not able to sign my main Swedish target as his club wanted more than €200k for the transfer. That meant I signed the first target within the players with the expiring contract. 

Kaan Kairinen - 22 years old, Finland.  He signed for free, and he is a very well-rounded central midfielder. He can be very good in the CM(S) or DLP(S) role. And in the RPM role with some development as well. 

His arrival gives me some freedom within the midfield line. I can use Wayne Rooney, who is not physically strong enough already. But I can also use some youngsters in combination with Kairinen or Matt O'Riley and Nuha Jatta. 

The third one

I mentioned Daniel Sterner in the blog post about the second season. He was our best goalscorer of the season as our main PF(A) player. But I thought it won't be enough to score the same amount of goals in the higher and better competition. 

Other strikers, Lindberg, Aga and the newgens, were good enough for the 2nd tier but I didn't trust their consistency. So, I didn't stop searching for a new striker. I still have around €50k p/m available within the wage budget if I counted the wage of Kairanen already. 

My main target was to sign a new Pressing Forward. I decided this player can be a foreign player. And I found him in Vladimir Rodić. The 28 years old wide player has great attributes for this role. 

And I signed him for free as his contract with Hammarby was expiring. He was born in Belgrade, Serbia, but he decided to play for the Montenegrin national team. 

Rodić is aggressive, brave and his teamwork and work rate are good enough too (read=at the level of the attributes threshold). He is physically well too. The fact I would be able to use him wide if I would switch from 3-5-2 formation is only a bonus. Or if I would need to replace my WB player.

I gave him a contract for three years with €6.5k p/m without some clauses (except the relegation release clause), only bonuses for goals and assists. 

Season three, part 1

I decided to not use the season timeline this time and just divide the season into three simple parts by the fixtures. The season, based on the calendar year, started with the winter pre-season including friendlies and Svenska Cupen. As I mentioned in a previous post, I consider matches in the domestic cup as more friendly matches to test players, tactics, set pieces...

We didn't make it through from the group stage in the second season but we were more successful this time. We won our group with 7 points after two wins and one draw. Oscar Aga scored four goals in these three group stage matches.

We were able to beat AIK after penalties in the quarter-final (I wrote about it here in the Next Match Only piece).

The semi-final was against IFK Norrköping, another bigger top tier club with a higher reputation and better players. But Oscar Aga scored in the 1st minute and we made it to the final thanks to a 1-0 win.

Here is always something special and something that you don't expect so the final match against Djurgardens IF was played at the end of May. Two and a half month later after the semi-final. They are the Allsvenskan's titleholders during the last three years and the biggest contender for 2022 too.

We conceded from a corner (the first corner goal conceded in this save, thank you #MythMike) and lost 0-1 in the final. But it was great to make it that far. The cup matches also earned us €102,590 on TV Revenue. And we also earned around €275k through the gate receipts just in May (when the final took place).

Season three, part 2

The first season in the top tier within this save, and the first one since 2012 relegation in a real-life, started absolutely fantastic.

Wayne Rooney led the team as the new captain to his probably the last season of his playing career. We started with a perfect away 4-1 win over IFK Göteborg in the Göteborg's derby as IFK is one of our two fierce rivals.

Oscar Aga was in absolutely perfect form after I moved him to the Advanced Forward role last season and he proved it in the first part of the league campaign with 14 goals in the 15 appearances (more stats below).

There were a lot of goals scored but also conceded in the first month. The 3-3 home draw with Örebro was a perfect example of our own learning how to play in the top tier.

But there were also four consecutive 1-0 wins with 4 clean sheets at the beginning of May. We played and experimented with a more conservative approach against different formations and it worked.

The last match and the 5-1 home win against Djurgardens was absolutely perfect revenge for the cup final defeat. And it was also great to see our performance despite I didn't make some tactical changes like short passes or something like this.

Our main 3-5-2 formation just worked perfectly against the strong side. And we were top of the table after the first 15 matches of the league campaign.

Season three, part 3

This part of the league campaign including 15 matches is probably able to divide into the other two parts. To the first 14 matches and the last match of the season.

We started with a derby match against IFK Göteborg. It ended with a 2-2 draw as Daniel Sterner scored the equaliser less than thirty seconds after he replaced Vladimir Rodic. The most important thing about the match was the attendance - 8,000. The stadium was sold out. For the first time of this save. And for the last time so far.

The squad was in very good form for the rest of the season. I think it's important to remember one thing - it was our first season after promotion. But despite this fact, we were at the top of the league since the 8th round.

We were 10 points ahead once but it was influenced by Norrköping's and Djurgardens' games in hand. But we lost the top spot after the 29th round as we lost to Varbergs away while they were fighting to exit the relegation zone.

Miracle, please?

Norrköping didn't lose since July and our 2-0 win over them. They only drew 4-4 with BK Häcken. But they won all other matches and made it to 1st place before the last round.

We played away against Djurgardens (3rd in the table), they had Elfsborg (7th in the table) at home.

It was by three points. We needed to win and we needed also Elfsborg's win to match 66 points at the top of the table. It would ensure us the league title because the league rules are:

  • Goal Difference (28 GAIS vs. 24 Norrköping)

  • Goal Scored (55 GAIS vs. 45 Norrköping)

The league table before the last round

It's clear we needed some kind of miracle and collapse of Norrköping at the same time. They were in very good form + we played away against one of the strongest clubs in the league = not an easy combination.

It all started as I expected. Norrköping took the lead just six minutes into the match after Leo Bengtsson opened the score. And we were under the pressure from the beginning. But we didn't concede and the 1st half ended goalless. There still was some hope despite I expected the flash popup window in the left bottom corner will tell me that Norrköping scored the second goal.

I kept the side the same and I hoped for a miracle. And I was still saying to myself that the second place for the newly-promoted side is still absolutely fantastic.

The kiss for Rasmus Alm

But Rasmus Alm scored straight after the 2nd half kick-off and Elfsborg equalised. Another hope was given to use after Rooney + Aga magic in the 60th minute as we took the lead against Djurgardens.

Rooney's magic assist & precisse finish by Aga.

Rooney's magic assist & precisse finish by Aga.

The incredible story of what can Football Manager offer continued as Rasmus Alm, Elfsborg's right winger scored his second goal of the match in the 70th minute. That meant we moved back to the top of the league 20 minutes before the full time.

The match feed at the beginning of 78th minute of the last Allsvenskan round

My team played absolutely fantastic in the 2nd half (at least in my eyes) and we allowed nothing to Djurgardens. The final dot was made by Victor Blixt (the right CWB for this match) and young Danish midfielder Mogens Hartman - CM(A). He is just 16 years old and I signed him for free from AaB during the season. He's still under the youth contract...

The final whistle meant we won 2-0 and Norrköping lost 1-2 at home.

GAIS moved to the top of the table and won the Allsvenskan thanks to better goal difference as both top teams had 66 points.

Goals and highlights from both these match.

The Club & Squad

I would say that we all playing one save with one club have a very similar aim - to develop the club as much as possible. This was only our third season and it's clear that I won't be able to reach the same date of the save as in the past, before FM20 more specifically as the playing time decreased more after FM19.

I think I would be at least two or three seasons further normally. The reasons are not important. But it means a change in my approach slightly.

My first thing what I would do in previous editions would be to try to improve all the facilities and all the recruitment parts of the club to have the best possible newgens. But is there a point when I know I won't be able to see these newgens to develop?

My club is in-depth. Or we were in red numbers (around -€1M) before the end of the third season and before we got the prize money for the league title. So, is there a point to even try to invest in the youth facilities and to risk the club financial status because of this?

I tried to make some board requests but they rejected all of them due to poor finances. And it gave me food for thought to concentrate on proper scouting, player searching and recruitment for the current time rather than only for the future.

How the new ones did?

  • Emil Agerbaek - recalled from a loan to make him one of the main three central defenders. He made 35 appearances, scored 2 goals (both from near-post corner kick routine), played 3,180 minutes with a rating of 6.94. No special progress in terms of development but a very good year for him in terms of playing time.

  • Kaan Kairinen - he was signed with the view to be an important player. Kaan was important at the beginning of the season when Rooney was injured but he didn't meet the expectations I had from him. He made only 12 appearances in the starting XI, the other 11 as a sub. He scored 2 goals and made 4 assists and I changed his agreed playing time from Important Player to Regular Starter. It resulted in his unhappiness. If someone will be interested in him, I have no problem to sell him and save his wage.

  • Vladimir Rodić - same as Kairinen, I signed him with a view to having him as the starter. And he was our important player in the first half of the season. But his playing time decreased in the second half of the season and more players get their chance. On the other side, he earned a call-up to the Montenegro national team for the first time since 2016...

  • Markus Nakkim (click to see his profile) - the 26 years old Norwegian central defender was signed for free from Mjondalen in August when we didn't have any cover for the central defenders due to injuries and we would be forced to change the formation or play some other players here. Former Valerenga or Viking player made 11 appearances and became an important player. Will play him as our main CD(St) next season probably.

GAIS squad at the end of 2022. Green - newly signed players, red - newly signed Danish youngsters

I mentioned the young midfielder, Morgens Hartman. I signed also Theis Pedersen, another young Danish player. While Hartman was for free, Pedersen cost us €3k. Yes, that's right. I'm sure they both will be wanted very soon elsewhere.

The young Danish blood

Rooney?

If you read the post about the second season, there was a part about the Wayne Rooney signing including several questions. One of them was: Will he ensure we will stay in the Allsvenskan?

I think we should rewrite it to Will he fire us to the league title? And the answer would be YES! What about other questions? You will find out in the next post if you will be interested in...

Take care...

My counter-corner ballad

There were times when I almost every second day shared the message starting "One for FMSamo klaxon" in the Football Manager Slack. It meant I scored a counter corner goal. It was really often and we enjoyed scoring these goals. It's really great to see the simple counter with a rippling net at the end. Sadly, It's not happening too often in my saves within FM20 and FM21 but when it happens, it's like a great ballad.

It's not that long from the time when we remembered some old saves in the FMSlack and also the FM18 save with BFC Siófok was mentioned. I think it was FM17 with Reading and the save with Siófok during which I enjoyed the counter corner goals the most.

I had a lot of great newgens around both teams and there were a lot of fast players. Simply, they were absolutely perfect to fit the counters.

I didn't see too many goals after corners since the FM18 probably. And maybe that's also the reason why I enjoy a lot every time I see it.

I wrote about conceding from the set pieces and counter goals last year during FM20 save with Celaya FC. But my defensive corner kick routine is different in FM21. And I enjoy it.

Why so cautious?

My most common defensive corner kick routine contained only one player who is set to Stay Forward and one player was set to Edge of Area. I was usually afraid there won't be enough players in my own penalty area.

I decided to change this approach because I wanted to stop being so cautious. And I wanted to use, not completely, but something new.

It led to the new system of defensive corner routine. With two strikers around the half-line line and one player as the edge of the area.

If you would open that post from FM20, there is a picture of my routine where five players were set to defend zonally all the positions within the 6-yard box. There were other players set to go back so it was almost like the invitation for our opponents to make a picnic in our penalty area. And score a goal as a dessert.

FM20 (left) vs. FM21 (right)

The defensive part

You can see there are changes within the main defensive part within the 6-yard box. We now have here only three players instead of five. As I'm using 3-5-2 formation, I am able to use all my three central defenders who are (or they should be) strong and brave enough to defend crosses.

I didn't play many seasons so far, but I saw that the near post routine is more frequent so I like to use the best central defender in terms of set pieces as the one who is set to Zonally Mark Six Yard Box Near Post. Simply - the first one in the line.

Most of crosses are headed or cleared away exactly by this player.

You can also see one player Mark Far Post. I will be absolutely clear to you, I didn't want wan to place some player here. I wanted to have two players at the edge of the area. But I accidentally left one player here and he saved at least four headers in the first couple of matches. The opponent flicked the ball nicely to the far post.

And I decided to keep that player here. It happened several times within the end of the first season and during the second season too.

The decisive part

Maybe the word decisive is not the right now in this case. But I am sure that if players around the 6-yard box clear the ball, the rest of the players in the penalty box cand decide what will happen next.

  1. If they will be quick (with their decisions but also physically quick) enough, they can win the cleared ball and start the counter.

  2. They don't have to start the counter if they win the ball, but they can keep the possession. And what happens when you have the ball? You don't concede.

  3. If they will not be quick (-||-) enough, the opponent can make another attack/cross/keep possession.

  4. It's mostly about the three players who are set as Man Mark. They usually make the runs to wide areas when the ball goes here.

  5. The player with Edge of Area role should be the brain of the counter if 1) the ball is cleared to him, 2) or he wins the cleared ball, 3) or he makes the right run forward and support the strikers.

The strikers

The key attributes for Stay Forward role are Acceleration, Agility, Pace, Strength, Balance and Anticipation. That's what game says.

I would add also the combination of teamwork and work rate attributes. There are many cleared balls by defenders far from the box but most players (in overall, not only strikers) with low values of these two attributes are not willing to help to others and they just stand at the half-line.

They are just waiting for that final pass into the box. At least I think about it in this way.

My main strikers for the 2022 season and their key attributes for Stay Forward role

Oscar Aga has teamwork attribute of 11 and workrate of 10. Vladimir Rodić has both of 13. Rodić is playing as our pressing forward. And it's not a surprise he wins/collects more balls than Aga. He is more willing to help.

On the other hand, Aga is quick enough to beat defenders with the run from his own half. I see this very often but it doesn't lead to scoring chances every time.

How it can look?

One of my favourite examples is only a couple of matches old. I scored this goal during the pre-season after the promotion to the top tier.

There are also two new players in the key areas. Kairinen as the one at the edge of the area made a perfect quick pass to the Rodić who is our pressing forward and he was able to keep the ball and found Aga.

Our advanced forward made the rest and scored very nice goal.

Another very nice example is from the second season. Charlie Weberg won the header at the near post and cleared the ball to the right side. Daniel Sterner (Pressing Forward) helped the team with a perfect deep run to win the ball.

And he also moved down the right flank and Nuha Jatta rebounded his shot. I would like to see a pass from Sterner more but I can't have everything :)

Nuha Jatta, the goalscorer, also deserves a prise as he made a perfect run forward from the edge of the area position/role.

Conclusion

  1. As always, rule number one is to use the right players in the right roles. The small striker defending the near post area is wrong, right?

  2. If your player makes a lot of runs but the counter ends by losing the ball, try to use another player here. Sometimes even the player trait like 'runs with ball down right' or 'hugs line' can make a big difference (insert :eyes: emoji).

  3. Don't expect counter corner goals in every match. I didn't write this post because of this reason.

  4. The best part of this game is don't be afraid of experimenting. And set pieces, no matter how many bugs they consist, are ideal to have fun. Or to find out you made something wrong :)

  5. Btw. I conceded 0 corner goals in the first two seasons with this routine. #MythMike incoming...

  6. Have fun.

FM21 | Next match only

Do you consider tactical changes for just one match when you know you’re underdogs? Or you just have some feeling it won’t be your day? I’m the same, especially after the promotion to the top tier in my current save with GAIS. It’s not about the complete tactics overhaul in my case. I like to make small changes. Did it pay off? Let’s talk about the Next Match Only feature in FM21.

It’s one of the traditional 1000+ new features of the new edition. You can’t see this button within a normal Tactics screen but it appears in the Tactics screen before you will enter the match.

button.png

One of my favourite things within this save in Sweden is that our season is based by the calendar year. There is a long time between the seasons and I have a lot of time to think about several things.

And the transfer window is also a long one so you can count it as a positive thing too despite I like to have my movements early.

And there is also a domestic cup before the league campaign starts. Three more matches in the group stage which you can consider as other friendly matches to test your own things if you don’t have big ambitions to win the cup.

That was exactly our case.

We won our group after a draw with Elfsborg and wins against FC Linköping City and Helsingborgs IF (finally!). And we got AIK in the quarter-final. One of the big clubs in Sweden. Despite they are not the title candidates right now, I knew they can hammer us.

Meeting with the opponent

As I mentioned, I’m not the type of FM player who would change the formation completely. I like how my 3-5-2 is developing within this save. How the roles are working and how our players are performing.

That means I am happy to ignore one of the advice within the Tactical Meeting before the match. My assistant suggested switching from 3-5-2 to a 4-2-3-1. One of the reasons was to use newly signed Vladimir Rodić in a different role in a wide position specifically. But I signed him to play as our main pressing forward (more about it in a different post).

Another part of the advice usually is the opposition instructions but I’m using rarely too many as my assistant suggests.

It’s only about pressing intensity – always within their playmaker or the deeper central midfielder. But only if some of his attributes are not good enough and our pressing can cause him issues.

I took nothing from this screen. Not because of I would not trust to my assistant but mainly because I felt he is not right in this case and I will make my own changes (same as in 9 from 10 occasions, but that’s a different story).

But also because of the bug in the left bottom corner where the Expected Tactic widget appears and it always shows the 4-4-2 formation no matter of the opponent and their tactic.

Finding the main threats

When I check their schedule screen with my fixture view including the formation, the game suggests they used 4-4-2 Diamond Narrow formation in all previous matches in the Svenska Cupen.

It’s also the preferred formation of their manager – Willy Sagnol. Yes, that one.

I was sure about one thing when I checked some of their previous matches before our match against them and from seeing their tactics.

Both wide defenders will be high up the pitch and they will provide a lot of runs forward, many crosses and also a lot of support.

Eric Kahl (LB) is one of their best-rated players just behind Erik Ring. This young winger or striker scored 4 goals and made 2 assists in the Svenska Cupen group stage matches. All as the pressing forward. That means we need to take care of him properly.

AIK formation before the match

Let’s cover it

I’m not using many team instructions in my tactic. I like to use Higher Defensive Line and Higher Line Of Engagement. It worked perfectly with three central defenders while one of them is playing mostly with the Stopper duty.

But knowing we face attacking-minded wide defenders + two strikers + AM player + we are underdogs, I decided to make small tweaks for next match only.

Both defensive line and line of engagement switched back to Standard and we used Cover duty instead of the mentioned Stopper duty.

And both our WB players changed their duty to Defend instead of Support. The main reasons are (probably) obvious.

  • WB(S) is more attacking-minded with Get Further Forward

  • WB(D) is instructed to Hold Position and he doesn’t roam from his position too much

  • WB(D) is also instructed to Take Fewer Risks

I also switched our passing from standard to shorter and I hoped it will lead to shorter and safer passes between WB players, DLP(S) and CM(S) as both these central midfielders have also Hold Position instruction.

WB(S) vs. WB(D)

More patience, bigger stability

All the things above were done with one aim – make us less vulnerable and make us more compact and solid in the defensive line.

I didn’t want to allow our players too much freedom same as against weaker sides when I expect our own domination and the fact we will be the team who will dictate the tempo of the match.

If I would use the team fluidity in the game, it’s connected to what I wanted to do – to be more structured.

Main tactic (left) vs. tweaked tactic (right)

In-match changes

I did fewer changes during the match than I expected before the kick-off as I thought we will be absolutely no danger in the attacking phase but we were even too adventurous in my eyes.

I forgot to mention that I didn’t set some opposition instructions in the end. Not even again wing-backs or again Erik Ring at the top.

The simple change from the stopper duty to cover duty was enough. Same as the support/defend duty change for both wide players.

I made three tweaks during the second half and extra-time (spoiler klaxon!). I set our passing to Much Shorter and our tempo to Much Lower.

It was mainly because of the fact that most of our players were out of energy during the extra-time and I wanted to slow down the game and frustrate the opponent. With a frequent time-wasting in the extra-time 2nd half as well.

The last change was PF(A) to PF(S) mainly to help midfielders with pressing, tackling and winning the second balls in the later stage of the match.

Result?

It resulted in the 0-0 draw after the first 90 minutes and it remained goalless also after the extra-time. And the match went into penalties.

I was lucky that the best penalties takers (Rooney, Eriksson) were still on the pitch and the other players have a good combination of composure and penalties so we were lucky and we won 5-4 on penalties because one home player missed.

We were able to stop their best players, mainly their best striker Erik Ring who was almost invisible. And I like how many their crosses we were able to block.

The clean sheet is always a good sign as well.

I mentioned above why the hold position and shorter passes can help us with the passes between WB players and CM(S)/DLP(S). The passes graphics don’t work in FM21 as it doesn’t show properly but the numbers are in the analysis (not sure if they are 100% right as the stats don’t work properly).

If I wanted more passes between each other and more triangles, it went well. Blixt and Rooney on the right side & O’Rilley and Snib on the left side.

Comparison with previous matches

The main thing I was interested in even before the match was how the average positions of the team will look.

I was pleased the main aims worked well. Our players sat back patiently, our defensive line was much lower and we were able to stop all the attacking efforts of their offensive trio.

But mainly, our wide defenders were able to defend/block much more shots and crosses after their duty was changed.

Comparison of two cup matches. Left – against Linköping as favourites, right – against AIK as underdogs.

*Please ignore the bugs in this picture as there are the same teams twice and I had to select FC Linköpings City at the right side. It’s not my fault that there are some bugs for several consecutive years despite many people reported them. Btw. this picture is like a treasure, it took me only five attempts and the game restarts to make it work.

I also want to share one picture. It’s in the Team Report/Match Analysis where you can find the last 5 matches and some positives and negatives. I selected matches with Elfsborg (1-1), Helsingborgs IF (2-0) and AIK (0-0).

All these matches were against favourites and teams with a bigger reputation and better players. In all these matches I reduced the defensive line against two strikers and switched CD(St) to CD(Co).

You can see some nice positives here related to this – opposition touches to goals ratio, opposition goals from shots in the penalty area (0 goals from 29 shots inside our penalty area).

What’s the point of Next Match Only?

Despite I saved the more cautious tactic, I can use the Next Match Only in the future whenever I will want to change just one thing. The one specifically found and prepared against a specific opponent.

I know we could do the same even in the past without this feature/button but ask yourself how many times you forgot about that one thing you changed for that one match and you forgot to revert it back…

I didn’t forget now, it all reverted back to the original for the next match.

And that’s the time when it starts again.

FM21 & GAIS: The simple tricks and the promotion

It looks one month of a real-life is enough to finish the one season in the virtual world of the Football Manager 2021 for me. I recently ended the 2021 campaign with GAIS and we earned the promotion to the Swedish top tier at our second attempt. The game didn't make it easy for me. Not because of a bad run of results or injury crisis. Or anything like this. But too many small bugs in this version are taking the motivation playing the game out of me.

I had a clear plan of what to do before the second season in terms of transfers, squad building and finances restructure.

It's not a rocket silence and I'm sure most of you is doing absolutely the same automatically. I just wanted to exit all the real-life shits thanks to writing about something that I like to do.

Improve the squad & decrease the wage budget

This sounds like a plan. Not an easy plan but it's doable. Maybe some of you will remember what I wrote in the post about the first season when I wrote about the promotion playoff with Helsingborgs.

I didn't see a point to play with players I don't want in the club for next year and I will try to sell them."

I realised I have more than only two or three players with this status in my head. And I decided I will use them as the main resource for saving money.

Our wage budget in the first season was €111,512 per month. But we finished the 1st season over this budget by €7k p/m. One player (Haris Cirak - €2.9k p/m) was sent on loan to FC Inter Turku already before the end of the season.

I was able to sell or release 6 from 7 unwanted players during January 2021. Midfielder Adnan Maric moved to Vejle BK for €100k as the record club outgoing transfer. We earned €155k in total but it mainly saved almost €41k p/m on wages.

Mervan Celik, 30 years old Swedish striker, who spent almost the whole season injured, moved to Akhisarspor for free. He was the best-rated striker in terms of star rating. I rather saved €7k p/m than to risk he will be injured for another season. I couldn't believe he got €20k p/m in the Turkish second tier.

Transfers summary - season 2021

Better players for less money

My main aim for the first opened transfer window was to strengthen our defensive line. In the end, I brought players to all areas including the new goalkeeper who will fight for the number 1 spot.

We brought 10 new players to the club. Two of them were confirmed before the save started. While Daniel Sterner will be a PF(S) backup. Paradoxically, Sterner has €3.3k p/m what is more than players I brought to the club as the new members of the starting XI.

The wide defender Harun Ibrahim will probably play only for reserves. His training rating during the first weeks of the pre-season was below 6. That's not a good start.

The wage budget for the 2021 season was decreased by the board to €109,738 per month. Nine from 10 new players were signed for free. Only 20 years old Norwegian striker Oscar Aga cost us €17.25k.

The newly arrived players have €32,425 p/m together with Oscar Aga as our new highest-paid player with €9.25k p/m. In combination with renewing contract of Nuha Jatta, we still were under the budget limit.

Wayne Rooney in the town!

Yes, you read the bookmark title right. The one and only Wayne Rooney is the new GAIS player.

"Göteborgs AIS have signed English veteran midfielder Wayne Rooney on a free transfer."

It's not a secret there is a lot of English players available to sign for free when you are playing in Scandinavia. No matter their age or quality. It was also the case of the midfielder Matt O'Riley when we signed him for free in September 2020. He is our key midfielder and he is our main RPM in the second season.

There were a couple of players I would bring to the club for a trial before the end of the 2021 season. But I didn't do it in the end.

Because I found Wayne Rooney here in the list of free agents. And it was that typical moment when you ask yourself "What if...?"

Yes, I tried it. And yes, he accepted our offer.

I still remember Wayne's beginnings when he started playing the Premier League at the age of 16. And that debut goal against Arsenal. He is only one and a half year older than I so I always followed his career. You will always compare the same old (or almost the same old) footballer with yourself. I played the competition for the U17 category when I was 16. Wayne made his Premier League debut.

I recently saw some posts about the fact he has never lived up the expectations. It's even in that screen above and in FM, despite it's connected to his time with Derby County.

I didn't think about signing this kind of player in my save. It's not the usual way within my saves. Especially as we were just promoted to the Swedish top tier.

Contract details:

  • Length: 1 year (October 2021 - November 2022).

  • Wage: €12.25K p/m.

  • Signing On Fee: €13.25K.

  • Agent Fee: Doesn't have an agent.

  • Appearance Fee: €550.

  • Team Of The Year Bonus (Division): €8.5K.

  • Unused Substitute Fee: €140.

Wayne is 35 years old now. He was able to make 40 appearances (37 in the starting XI) for Derby County in the English Championship in the 2020/2021 season + scored 8 goals and made 4 assists. He didn't play since his departure from Derby. But that doesn't matter.

  • Will he ensure we will stay in the Allsvenskan?

  • How many matches he will be able to play?

  • Will he make a lot of assists from set pieces thanks to his perfect corners and free kicks attributes?

  • Will his signing boost the club finances or the match attendance?

  • What shirt number will he use?

  • Will am I able to convince him to stay in the club as a coach?

There are many unanswered questions right now. We will know the answers next season. He is considered as the DLP(S) right now. Where you would play him when you consider his attributes and traits in combination with the roles I'm using - RPM - CM(A), CM(S). Let me know if you want...

I decided I won't give him some hard training regime. Just the playing position and normal intensity. At least for the start before I will see what he will be capable during the matches.

There were 14 days between the last four matches of the season when we already had the promotion confirmed. It was only about who will be crowned as the league winner. And as there is a no registration window or deadline, I was able to try him in the competitive matches!

I set him as the inswinging corner taker and all the free kicks. And I played him as the CM(S) who has Hold Position, Take More Risks and Shoot Less Often instructions, same as DLP(S) role.

He played both last league matches and he scored his first goal for the club in his debut. It was also the winning goal and also the goal that sealed us the league title.

The less clauses and bonuses, the better

Some contract negotiations are really painful. Sometimes, it's because of the player itself. Sometimes, it's because of his agent. Or because you don't have enough money to fill his requirements.

Appearance Fee, Clean Sheet Bonus, Sell On Fee Percentage... we all know it. I have nothing against most of bonuses & clauses, some of them are deserved for players. But I like to remove some of them if it's possible.

Mainly Yearly Wage Rise, Sell On Fee Percentage and Top Division Promotion Wage Rise. The last one only if I'm not in the top tier, of course.

I think I did a very good job between the first and second season in terms of the wage rise for another season.

The screen below is sorted by the wage commitments for the 2022 season. You can see there are minimal wage rises. Only newly signed keeper Viktor Frodig refused to sign without the 10% of yearly wage rise clauses. And he has also top division promotion wage rise of 35%. He will get a big pay rise if we will go up.

Players I would like to keep for at least two seasons

Players out of contract at the end of 2021 - need to decide who will get the new one

I didn't select or highlighted newgens as they are in the middle in these pictures with €37 p/m wage as youth. Svensson and Eriksson got their pro contracts at the beginning of 2021 season. The rest is doing well in the U19 league but the contracts will depends on the next youth intake.

If I will take our highest earner - Oscar Aga - as an example, it resulted in this. He wanted 15% yearly wage rise, 35% wage rise in case of promotion to the top tier, 15% sell-on fee.

I was able to remove all these clauses after I raised the Seasonal Landmark Goal Bonuses by €1k for both 10 and 15 goals bonuses. But there are not wage rises for the next two years. I like to do the same even with my own players while renewing their contracts.

One transfer window is enough

I'm not sure why but I have it like this for many years. Maybe from the beginning, I'm playing FM, I can't say it 100%. But I'm considering it as my another weird thing I'm doing in FM in the last couple of years.

Probably all nations & leagues around the world have two transfer windows during a single season (please, let me know if you know some league with only one transfer window, thank you).

Superettan transfer windows & squad registration dates for the 2021 season:

  • Sunday 15th November 2020 to Wednesday 31st March 2021 (before the start of the season)

  • Thursday 15th July 2021 to Wednesday 11th August 2021

Despite this fact, I love to sign players only during the first transfer window mainly.

That means I have the main core of the squad already in the team before the season starts. I don't like to buy players in the middle of the season from unknown reason.

I remember I needed new players many times in the past but I rather usually continued with scouting/searching the right player for the summer and used the youngster for the rest of the season.

It's like bad squad management (if it's not related to some long-term injury crisis) when you need new players in the midway through the season. At least in my eyes. I consider it the same in real-life football too.

That's why I usually want to have the complete squad for the whole season ready before the new campaign starts. And just add some youngsters during the season.

Season timeline

[Rich_Web_Timeline id="3"]

Daniel Sterner - the unexpected hero

Daniel Sterner (as I mentioned and shared at the beginning of this post) came to the club from Täby FK for free before the 2nd season. It was one of two transfers confirmed before the save started. I think I would not sign him when I consider his attributes/age/wage.

But the more I let him play, the more I like him.

He caught my eye already during pre-season as PF(A). He had something different than other players. I'm not sure what exactly.

He was considered as the backup. And not even as the first sub choice. He made it to the pitch on 75th, 66th and 83rd minute in the first three rounds. He didn't even play in the fourth league match.

But both Aga and Lindberg had some minor injuries. And Sterner took his opportunity as the main PF(A).

He started with one assist against Norrby, one goal against Örgryte in the derby. He was not playing too well against Degerfors and he was subbed before the sixty minutes were played. But he scored seven goals in next four matches in May and moved to the top among the best goalscorers of the league.

The new league campaign started against Akropolis.

He didn't score in the last part of the season and he is waiting for a goal more than 10 matches. But he scored 15 league goals in 26(3) appearances and he ended the second-best goalscorer of the league. Only Oscar Petterson scored more (18).

In overall, I didn't expect he will feature in more than 5 games as one of our subs. That speaks for itself probably. My finances will be tight in our first season in the top tier. And that means Daniel will play a lot of games again.

Daniel Sterner and his stats in the 2021 season

Season review...

I planned to write something about the season and I wanted to use some parts from the season review.

But this new feature headline doesn't work properly. It was one of many bugs in this edition I found during these two seasons and it pissed me out completely. And will rather stay silent and end this post with this.

Sometimes, it's not easy to play this game. I don't have to mention the fact we invest sometimes even more time into reporting or editing the game than playing. And I don't like it more and more...

Take care...

FM21 & GAIS: The first testing season

Predicted to finish at 9th place, overachieved, finished third and lost in the promotion playoff against Helsingborgs IF. That's probably the shortest summary of the first part of my save in Sweden with GAIS.

It started in May 2020 so I didn't play the domestic cup as the group stage is scheduled for the spring of every year.

I decided to write the (probably) most important things of these months of competitive matches in the timeline and you can switch between the 10 bookmarks/dates. The pictures are normally clickable and they will open in a new tab to ensure you can see the whole image if you are interested.

Why testing season?

It took me almost a month of real-life to finish the 7 in-game months due to more important commitments in the real world. I knew about this before and I'm sure I won't play as much as in the past. I named this season, or maybe better this year, as the first testing season. The reason is simple.

I tested the new league with the schedule based on the calendar year rather than from August to May. It was also about trying to know new players and try to find some good players around Scandinavia.

It was also about creating the required views, shortlists, filters, and other things I like to make during the first season to have it ready for the rest of the save if I will not change the way of recruitment, club philosophy, or strategy.

The 3-5-2 formation also required testing and it was great to follow its development it. It will continue for sure. It went from a more conservative approach with a lot of clean sheets to aggressive pressing with a more risky playing style. We conceded 3 goals in a single match only twice per season. One of these matches was in the last match against Helsingborgs in the worst moment. But that's life...

Season timeline

June 2020:

Four wins from the first four league matches including four clean sheets. Julius Lindberg scored two goals in the first two 1-0 wins against Umea and IK Brage. Nikola Lada (our DLP) scored twice from the penalty kick against Ljungskile SK during a 4-0 win.

We started the season and save itself with this version of the 3-5-2 formation. It's something I will try to develop for the entire save duration. The Much Shorter Passing instruction helped us to keep the ball during the pre-season very well so I decided to keep it here.

July 2020:

We conceded our first competitive goal after the first five matches as we tied 1-1 away with Västeras SK. We ended July undefeated in the league campaign as Julius Lindberg scored 7 goals in his 8(1) appearances. We first in the league table, much higher above the expectations.

August 2020:

The best goalscorer of the league campaign after the first two months of the season, Julius Lindberg, was ruled out of the action for up to 2 weeks on August 1 due to a gashed upper leg. It was just a day before the 'Original derby' against Örgryte IS, our main local rival. We were 1st in the table, they were 9th.

We played at home and I was interested in how many people will visit the match as all our previous matches had under the 1k attendance. But the 0-0 derby draw was seen by 5,981 fans what will be undoubtedly our biggest attendance of the season I would say.

September 2020:

We remained the one and only undefeated team after the first half of the season. Fifteen matches resulted in 8 wins & 7 draws. We scored16 goals & conceded just 3 goals. It earned us 2nd place just two points behind GIF Sundsvall. Considering the pre-season media prediction about 8th or 9th place, it's much above the expectations. Even my own expectations.

I want to have my squad based on Scandinavian players but I noticed there is a lot of players around and a lot of them free. I have a keeper on loan from Ipswich btw. A lot of free agents appears in the scouting centre/recommendations. I just took this one for a week trial, I think he can be very good as DLP(S) or RPM. In terms of mental attributes, he is better than my current players.

It resulted in signing the midfielder Matt O'Riley. The 19 years old playmaker produced by Fulham academy was a free agent. He signed for free and he became the highest earner of the team. He considers our club as a stepping stone and it means he has a €1.9M release clause & €1.4M Non Promotion release clause in his contract. Both will mean a big profit if he will ever leave.

October 2020:

There was the first Youth Intake of this save in September 2020. A couple of midfielders took my eye but they would be not good enough for most of you. I promoted four of them to the first team to boost the rotation policy in the second half of the season. Central midfielder Anders Svensson was the best one of these players in terms of the star rating. It’s still related to my current squad so it’s not that relevant but all these four promoted players played at least 5 competitive matches.

The board elections happened at the beginning of November and current Chairman Jonas Andersson won it for the second time so he will continue in his role for the second term.

The Svenska Cupen draw took place at the end of November as it will be played during the spring of 2021. The group of four teams consists of GAIS, Ljunkskile SK (both 2nd tier) and Falkenbergs FF (relegated as the bottom team of the top tier) and Helsinbgorgs IF (14th team of the top tier table).

The last-named team was also our opponent at the end of this calendar year…

December 2020:

We were second after the first 15 matches but we took the 1st spot back after the 16th round and we remained at the top until the 24th round. But our end of the league campaign was not good in terms of results due to several reasons:

  • Minor injuries of key players

  • Younger players and newgens got their chance

  • We were too much dependent on goals by Julius Lindberg

The team won only one match in the last month of the regular season (1-0 away in the derby against Örgryte IS). We only tied 2-2 at home against Akropolis in the last match of the season thanks to a late equaliser by Lindberg who was not fit to play the whole match. And it leads to the fact we moved down to the 3d place in the league table and the promotion playoff.

vs. Helsingborgs home

The first promotion playoff match against Helsingborgs IF took place at The GAIS Stadium in Göteborg. It was quite disappointing to me that only 2,378 fans attended the game as it was more than 3.5k less than our highest attendance during the league campaign (derby game against Örgryte IS).

We took the lead in the 38th minute after a perfect throw-in routine and lovely Meinhard Olsen’s finish.

Max Svensson equalised four minutes later and gave Helsingborgs the away goal advantage. Meinhard Olsen was brought down of the pitch twenty minutes before the end of 90 minutes and the young Arigon Zekaj took his place. To be absolutely clear, Zekaj is not the best young player you saw in the game. And he will probably not continue with us in the next years but he took his chances rightly in the past and he deserved to play some part.

And he scored the winning goal in the 82nd minute after the assist of Nuha Jatta. That means we won 2-1 at home the first leg.

vs. Helsingborgs away

The second match against Helsingborgs had to be played without several players from the regular starting XI.

The best goalscorer Julius Lindberg was suspended due to yellow cards ban. Anton Snibb [(WB(S)], Matt O’Riley [(DLP(S)] and Nuha Jatta [CM(A)] were all only among substitutes due to fatigue.

Argion Zekaj (mentioned in the previous timeline bookmark) started as our Advanced Forward. One of our newgens Johan Wahlberg started as one of our three central defenders because the rest of our central defenders were not ready for the match. Other CD(D) – 29 years old Boris Lumbana from DR Congolese – played his last game for the club as his contract expired at the end of the calendar year.

The 16 years old Anders Svensson (mentioned in the bookmark about the Youth Intake) started from the beginning as our CM(A). I did it despite the some more experienced players were available (Adnan Maric, Joackim Aberg) but I didn't see a point to play with players I don't want in the club for next year and I will try to sell them.

"I have faith in you, get out there and make a difference."

Players looked motivated, inspired and motivated or pleased before the match kick-off.

But it was the home side who took the lead as Max Svensson scored from a close range with a simple tap in the 11th minute.

Czekaj had a great opportunity to equalise in the 33rd minute after good defensive work and the individual solo from the half of the pitch but the Helsingborgs‘ keeper saved his effort from the close range.

Helsingborgs was closer to win the tie after the first half of the second match as they lead 1-0.

Zekaj, the not good enough youngster, was close again in the 56th minute but Joelsson saved his nice curling shot again.

I slightly adjusted the team instructions after sixty minutes of play to be more aggressive in terms of pressing. I also removed the DLP(S) to not use a playmaker role and subbed Ladan off despite him was our best player so far in the match in terms of the match rating. But I wanted to make our play a little bit straightforward instead of searching the playmaker every time.

But the more experienced home side played the final part of the match much better and they scored their second goal of the match in the 84th minute thanks Andersson and third in the 89th minute thanks Hafsteinsson.

Helsingborgs won 3-0 on the second leg and 4-2 on aggregate.

Max Svensson scored twice and made two assists in these two matches. He saved the great form for the playoff as he scored his 3rd and 4th goals of the whole season…

Julius Lindberg

I mentioned this player within the timeline bookmark(s) but he deserves his own part of the post. Soon 22 years old Swedish footballer, originally from IK Kongahälla, finished the league campaign with 23(3) appearances, 17 goals and 1 assist.

As I wrote in the timeline, he is not a natural striker, he is a more wide player. But I decided to play him as our main Advanced Forward in a combination with the Pressing Forward.

Julius Lindberg with attributes selected for the Advanced Forward role

When I open the coach report, I can see my assistant manager added Fairly selfish player (the third icon from the left within cons in the picture above) within the cons.

But is it really a negative thing when I want the goals from him?

He played as Advanced Forward. He is not a creator, I just want goals from him. That's another reason why I'm trusting mainly myself.

I'm not too much into the stats but when I open his xG rating from the 2020 league campaign, even I am able to see he did very well.

When the striker position is selected in the coach report: "Julius Lindberg is performing around average in every area in key statistics for this attacking role." It's "above average in every area" when it's a wide position.

His best match was in the middle of October when we beat Trelleborgs 7-2. He scored three goals and made one assist. None of his 17 goals was scored from a penalty kick.

I know he is not the best and I will be able to find many better players but I'm curious how or if he will develop in the future. For some reason, I feel he will be even better next season if he will stay injury-free...

Central Defender with the Stopper duty

Firstly, I don't want to talk about the whole 3-5-2 formation we are using. Mainly because it's not a finished "product" as it will take more seasons to make it work really well in combination with better players.

Secondly, I wanted to mention just one single role. It's the Central Defender with the Stopper duty role. I'm using it within my 3 at the back as the central one.

I experimented with this role in FM20 while I was changing from Stopper to Cover duty depending on the number of strikers our opponent was using.

Stopper against one striker, Cover against two or more strikers.

"With a Defend (Stopper) duty, the Central Defender will push ahead of the defensive line and close down players before they got to the area."

That's my main aim for this guy. There are still two more central defenders who can cover the defensive line if the stopper would fail to win the ball or the opponent would pass around him.

Charlie Weberg - the key man in both positive & negative way

My main man for this role during the first months of this save was Charlie Weberg. The 22 years old defender was our only loan player in the squad. He was with us from Helsingborgs IF (do you know why the negative way in the headline already?).

Yes, he couldn't play against his club in the promotion playoff when we lost 2-4 on aggregate.

I thought about cancelling his loan when the save started but I kept him in the end. And he became my favourite player because he played really well in the CD(St) role.

He was able to step ahead exactly as I wanted. He has a Positioning attribute value of 13 (one of his best) and it surely helped him as "This attribute reflects the ability of a player to read a defensive situation and position themselves accordingly..."

His tackles won ratio was 87.18% at the end of the season. He made 0.26 blocks per 90 minutes and he made only 1.37 fouls per 90 minutes.

Weberg finished the season with 96.80% of pass completion what only reflects the simplicity of the dribble less, take fewer risks, and shorter passing instructions. He made 157 interceptions (12th in the league). He also had the highest average rating of all.

Btw. the Interceptions-made stats screen will be a good source for searching for a new central defender in the future.

Some examples of interceptions/push ahead...

You can see his pros & cons in the picture above. Cons also include the potential transfer fee and the estimated wage. Both are out of our limits. It's unlikely we will be able to sign him again, 100% not as a permanent deal.

Behind the wall

One of my favourite moments of the first season with GAIS is the fact we had the best defence from all teams in the competition.

  • 30 matches played

  • 19 clean sheets (Mathias Karlsson 15x, Harry Wright 4x)

  • 18 goals conceded in 30 matches. The only team that kept it under twenty goals conceded in the season. The league winners GIF Sundsvall conceded 20.

  • 0 goals conceded from corners.

  • 1 goal conceded from the direct free kick

  • 1 goal conceded from the indirect free kick

  • 2 goals conceded from penalties

While I'm the one who enjoyed these great defensive stats, our fans would like to see more goals probably. We scored 40 goals in 30 matches (not too much if you consider we scored 7 in a single match). But GIF Sundsvall won the league with only 38 goals scored.

We had 1265 average attendance in the first season. Only 15% of our capacity. No team sold out the stadium in any match during the whole season. The titleholders Sundsvall had 4196 (49% of their capacity). The AFC Eskilstuna (finished 14th and avoided the relegation in the playoff) had 2544 - more than double of ours.

Something to improve for sure. Hopefully, we will be able to bring more people to the stadium in the second season.

The second season, 2021, will offer the Svenska Cupen group matches during the spring. And we will continue in clearing and overhauling and improving the squad and the club in overall. It won't be easy. But it will be enjoyable for sure.

FM21 & GAIS | Gre-No-Li

Gunnar Gren, Gunnar Nordahl and Nils Liedholm. Gre-No-Li. These three Swedish footballers are known mainly to two groups. Swedish and AC Milan football fans. This attacking trio was the main reason why Sweden won the Olympic tournament in London in 1948. They were also the reason why AC Milan fans like to remember the 1950's. And one of them, Gunnar Gren, spent part of his playing and coaching career with GAIS. My FM21 team.

Brief history...

As I mentioned they led Sweden to Olympic gold at the 1948 Olympic tournament in London. They were born on consecutive Octobers in the early 1920s and they formed one of the most successful front lines in world football.

A short time after this success, Gunnar Nordahl moved to AC Milan. Gren and Liedholm joined him in the 1949/1950 season after Nordahl convinced the Milan club board to 'give' him his Swedish friends.

The trio's most noted achievement at the club level came the following season when Milan won the scudetto. Liedholm and Nordahl also won the title in 1955, while Liedholm won two more titles in 1957 and 1959 after both Gren and Nordahl moved away. Gunnar Nordahl was the overall top-scorer in five of six Serie A seasons between 1949 and 1955.

When Milan beat Sampdoria in the debut match of Liedholm and Gren, one journalist at the game was so impressed by the displays of these two that he compared the pair to Michelangelo and da Vinci.

Gre-No-Li. Gunnar Gren, Gunnar Nordahl and Nils Liedholm. Source: AC Milan Facebook.

Pelé ended the dream

But not everything was great. The Swedish FA refused to let play professionals for the national team at that time. They missed the World Cup 1950 because of it.

The World Cup 1958 was played in Sweden and the FA decided to make the change. It was the last chance for these two of these three players to win the biggest trophy of all. Liedholm and Gren were 35 and 37 respectively during the tournament and they were called-up to the squad. It was too late for Nordahl as he had already retired.

Sweden progressed to the final with Gren scored in the 3-1 semi-final win against West Germany. It was symbolic as the semi-final was held in Gothenburg, the Gren's hometown.

This tournament didn't have a good end for Sweden. The World Cup 1958 is remembered mainly because 17 years old Pele who scored twice in the final as Brazil won 5-2.

What does this have to do with FM save?

We are calling ourselves managers and all these three great players decided to stay in football after their playing careers. They all moved to the dugout and became managers.

Nordahl was a play-manager of AS Roma before he was a manager of many Swedish clubs during the 60s and 70s.

Nils Liedholm was an assistant coach in Milan before he became the manager. He also managed Fiorentina, Verona, AS Roma or AC Milan again twice.

Gunnar Gren was the oldest one from the trio and this started with him. He managed AC Milan but when he came back to his homeland he was a player-coach of GAIS. And thanks to his great performances for IFK Göteborg back in the 1940s, he has a statue before the Gamla Ullevi stadium in Gothenburg.

Sweden is a logical step to me also thanks to this. Some rare footage from 1975 of these former players and coaches below.

Who was who?

The old truth says everyone wants to score goals. But someone also has to create them. Despite the Gre-No-Li is labelled as attacking trio, they were not all strikers.

Both Gunnar Gren and Nils Liedholm were more creators and both of them liked to play deeper. Liedholm was known because of his elegance of the pitch, his great vision and is labelled as one of the best footballing brains of his day. His passing was a vital part of Milan's success.

He was also known due to his likeness of fitness. Instead of drinking and smoking, what were the famous hobbies of footballers these days, he rather went to the gym and he tried other sports (mainly athletics disciplines) to boost his fitness.

Gren was also the creator. But he was also that "small, unpleasant and intrusive" striker you don't want to play against because he is almost everywhere.

If these two are more creators/playmaker types, Gunnar Nordahl was a typical finisher. The 185cm tall striker made 257 appearances for AC Milan and scored 210 goals. Nordahl is labelled as "a great goalscorer everywhere he played".

Gre-No-Li. Gunnar Gren, Gunnar Nordahl and Nils Liedholm. Source: Twitter.

FM replication

I decided to try to use what I know about these three players in the game and in my FM21 save. I will use two strikers and one playmaker. The playmaker will operate in a CM role (probably). It will be a DLP(S) at the beginning and it will be changed to RPM when I will be able to find or develop the best-suited player for this role.

It's because I like to use three central midfielders within my formations and it doesn't matter if it was the 4-3-3 or 3-5-2. I've used 3-4-1-2 during my save in Mexico but the AM player was not as prolific as you would expect. The changes were made in FM21 to the AM role but I prefer the midfield trio.

Let's start with the easiest role. Gunnar Nordahl was a typical goalscorer. The striker who benefits from the creativity of other players.

Fast, strong and clinical forward.

That means this player will play as an Advanced Forward as the one in the striker's partnership.

AF.gif

AF/Nordahl search filter & view

I have to find the right players for this and that means I created the search filter for these three roles. Some of them were customised.

As I really want to find the scorer, not the creator, I removed the Passing attribute from the ticked key attributes for this role. And I also lowered the Technique attribute by two points down in comparison with other attributes.

I'm using the "-/+" buttons to lower the attribute's value to find some players. The more important thing for me is also "Interested in" transfer ticked as 1) I want only players who are interested to join and 2) I know I have some chance to sign them.

I thought about the second striker's role and I thought about to use DLF(S) but as I said above, the second striker should be also aggressive and very intrusive. And the more I thought about it, the more I was sure it has to be Pressing Forward role.

And as I fell in love with the Pressing Forward with the defend & attack duty during the end of the FM20 cycle, I will start with this role. I will use the PF(S) role with Move Into Channels individual instruction as this instruction vital for a DLF player.

PF(S)/Gren search filter & view

Same as with the role above I made the search filter & custom view for this role within the player search screen.

I kept the key attributes for the Pressing Forward role in the filter and added also Finishing, Technique and Flair attributes but they are lowered as they are more important for the DLF role. In the end, it almost made the filter for the Complete Forward role…

This role will be really demanding in terms of the time I will spend searching the right player I think. Mainly because I will have to make some compromise on what I will want from this player. More Pressing Forward or more Deep Lying Forward? Who knows...

The last role is the role regarding the most playmaking skills. It will be very hard to find the right new Nils Liedholm.

There will be a great emphasis on mental attributes like Decisions, Flair and Vision. Passing and Technique of course too. I'm not sure if I will be able to find/develop playmaker with very strong physical attributes to reflect the Lieodholm's hobby with fitness.

It will be more CM player at the beginning rather than a typical AM (number 10). The one thing is sure, the new Il Barone will play as DLP(S) at the beginning. Mainly because of the lack of midfielders overall, not only lack of players suited for the RPM role.

DLP(S)/Liedholm search filter & view

This search filter is a simple one. I just picked the required attributes for the DLP(S) role and added the Dribbling and Flair attributes with lowered value.

This filter will be edited when we will be some time into the save and I will change the DLP(S) role to RPM as I already mentioned.

Key & Preferable attributes

There is also one more thing I like to do and how I adjusted the searching filter. I divided the required attributes for the position/role by Key & Preferable - green and blue lines highlights of the game (or your own colours, it depends what you like to use as you can change it).

The Key ones have the highest value, the preferable attributes have lowered value, usually by two points. In the example of DLP(S) when I added also Flair and Dribbling role, both these are lowered more.

I usually revisit all the attributes and their values, some of them are higher or lower just because of my thinking. It allowed me to find, for example, Sebastian Remme Berge. The Norwegian midfielder who can be a great DLP(S).

Or Albanian midfielder Astrit Ajdarevic who is a free agent... or Ingvald Halgunset. Or this and this and this and this player(s)...

What have I available now?

I'm still at the beginning of the save. The first transfer window is closed too and with the limited young players in the squad, it's more or less about the improvisation.

The more I'm playing the Football Manager, the less I trust the assistant manager opinion and star rating in the game. I rather judge and select all the players on my own.

That was also the main reason why I selected Julius Lindberg as my main Advanced Forward despite his main position/role is on the left side of the pitch and he is not the best-rated striker in the squad by my assistant. But 7 goals in 8(1) appearances is a fantastic outcome. And I would say it proves I was right.

There are two players for each of these roles I have/had available during the first months of the save.

I'm really looking forward to using filters and views I wrote about above to find the best available players. But also develop my own players to these roles within the 3-5-2 formation.

Maybe I will make some changes in the future but this is my current plan. And I'm enjoying it.

*Sources:

Gre-No-Li. Gunnar Gren, Gunnar Nordahl and Nils Liedholm.

Gre-No-Li. Gunnar Gren, Gunnar Nordahl and Nils Liedholm.

FM21 | Göteborgs Atlet- & Idrottssällskap

There were a lot of possibilities where I would spend the main part of the Football Manager 2021 cycle. I considered almost all continents and a lot of nations, leagues, and clubs during recent weeks. The final decision was made shortly after I wrote the post about Searching the right club in Football Manager. I decided to go back to Scandinavia and I chose Sweden. The time with Göteborgs Atlet- & Idrottssällskap in FM21 can start now.

I won't use the full name of the club as it's quite long and, to be honest, it would take me a lot of time to write every time.

GAIS. Or Gais. It depends if you want to be correct within the Swedish writing standards or not.

In the media, the name of the club is normally abbreviated "Gais", in accordance with Swedish writing standards that state that acronyms that are pronounced as a word, as opposed to letter by letter, should be spelt with the first letter in upper case and the remaining in lower case, thus "Gais". However, some fans of the club, as well as the club itself, prefer to use only uppercase, "GAIS", even though they also pronounce it as a word.

Source: Wiki/Footnotes

Why Sweden?

One of the reasons why I decided to go to Sweden was my short spell with FM16 back in October this year during the FM lull.

I installed the game again, I found the old save with AB Copenhagen and played several matches and roam around the save.

The FM16 itself was a very good edition and I remember I really enjoyed the save in Denmark. On the other hand, I played the game differently in some ways.

Mainly in terms of tactics. I don't think someone remembers it but I wrote about this save already on this website including the tactical post about the wide playmaker role and the 4-1-4-1 formation I used at that time. When I'm looking back at it, I can't imagine using this midfield combination.

WP(A) - RPM - BBM - WP(A)

DLP(D)

Insert :face with rolling eyes + :man facepalming

Four playmakers within the midfield + False 9 most of the time upfront. I'm not sure how it would work in the current edition, it worked in FM16, maybe it was because of the fact that 4-1-4-1 is usually a very solid defensively and I had a lot of very good players. At least for the domestic competitions.

But no, I can't imagine setting my team in the same way now. I'm not tactically as good as some other FM players (read FMPressure for example who is a master of the 4-1-4-1 formation) but I'm sure I learned a lot of things since FM16. And this midfield setup is not something I would put together now.

Sweden can offer the ideal conditions for the save I like:

The possibility to build the club as I like + the possibility to develop young players + the possibility to compete about trophies in the future + the possibility to create own scouting network within the sub-continent (read Scandinavia) + the possibility to fill the national team with some players.

Green-black/The Mackerels

I don't want to copy the history of the club from Wikipedia as everyone who is not lazy is able to find it by his own. One fact from the club history pleased me as it's not some newly established club or some merged club.

GAIS is a very old club as it was founded in March 1894. The club will celebrate 130 years anniversary during my save what can be a good occurrence to be already in the top division. At least in my eyes as we start in the second division named Superettan.

According to polls, GAIS are the second most supported club in Gothenburg. With 12% of the people in the city who follow a football claiming to have GAIS as their favourite side. Their supporters have traditionally been perceived as coming from the working-class districts of Gothenburg and having left-wing sympathies. Even though research on the subject couldn't conclude that this was more true than for other clubs. Their supporters are also perceived as being loyal, despite whatever hardships the club may face. The oldest and primary GAIS supporter group is called Makrillarna (The Mackerels) and was founded in 1961.

Göteborgs Atlet- & Idrottssällskap home/away/third kits

I decided to not make my own kits after some time. At least for the beginning of the save. I will use kits made by FMSlovakia as they cover many leagues around the world including the Swedish leagues. Visit their website to find more kits - FM Slovakia.

I think I will some of my own kits in the future when I will have more time. Some more clean kits without all the sponsors and logos. But it has time...

Superettan and the calendar year

As I mentioned, the club is currently in the second Swedish tier named Superettan. The 12th place in the final table of the 2019 season is nothing spectacular.

The aim should be to move higher in the table the next seasons after the squad will be overhauled. Superettan is played by 16 clubs from April to October usually if there are no postponements due to COVID-19...

The last two clubs are going down to the third tier, the top two clubs are promoted to the top tier. And the third-placed club is able to play the promotion play-off. Perfect for possible interesting moments in the save. Three from the last five promotion play-offs were won by the third club in the second tier.

League rules.png

League rules contain some changes between the first and next season in terms of subs available to use. The clubs on 13th and 14th places will also fight in the relegation play-off in the first season.

League rules contain some changes between the first and next season in terms of subs available to use. The clubs in 13th and 14th places will also fight in the relegation play-off in the first season.

I like the fact the season is not in a typical way from August to May (for example) but it's based on the calendar year. It can add another challenge if we will qualify for the European cup(s) in the future part of the save in terms of preparing for the matches in Europe while not playing domestically.

There is also a rule of "The match squad has at least 9 players trained by a club in Sweden". The ideal rule for my save.

I like the small connection with one Czech player who spent a significant part of his career in Sweden. The experienced midfielder Pavel Zavadil played for Mjällby, Östers, and Örgryte between 2005 to 2012. And he was the top assists of the 2008 season with 17 assists when he was in Örgryte IS. He is now 42 years old and he still plays the Czech top tier for SFC Opava...

He is a playmaker with great set pieces skills but also a hard-working midfielder who hates defeats. I would like to have these types of midfielders in my save.

Pavel Zavadil during his time with Örgryte IS

Pavel Zavadil during his time with Örgryte IS

Aims of the save

  • Develop & sell within Sweden or to other European countries

It sounds natural to do this, especially with starting with the club from the second tier. I'm not naive and I don't expect too much money here despite the big stadium. This always has two parts - I would be happy to keep the best players but I would be also happy to see them doing well in some bigger clubs (domestic or abroad).

  • Create the scouting network around Scandinavia nations

I like to build a domestic squad but I also like to find players in the nearest countries. Scandinavia is an absolutely perfect place to do this. I already have some idea of how to do this. It all depends on the possibilities straight in the game in terms of the number of scouts available.

And it also depends on the area I will be able to send our scouts. I would like to make it even to England in the future of the save if it will be possible but that's something for the separate post maybe...

  • Be tight financially as always

It's connected to the first point of this list about the developing & selling players. But it's a thing of the whole club, not only a thing of the transfers. I like to be very strict in terms of finances and I usually use only a small part of the wage budget. Sometimes, I use nothing from the transfer budget. Maybe it can help with the stadium, who knows...

It also fits with the Work within wage budget philosophy in the Club Culture/Vision. Another thing in the club culture is to Strive to make progress on and off the pitch.

  • Don't try to find new Zlatan

To find a new Zlatan Ibrahimović really is not the aim of the save. I will be happy if I will find or develop some of our own players without any connection to Zlatan just because he is from Sweden. This save has nothing with him despite him is a great footballer and a special person for sure.

  • Develop solid 3-5-2 formation

  • Enjoy the save :)

The GAIS Stadium

The club is currently playing matches at Gamla Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg. Same as IFK Göteborg, Örgryte IS, or Sweden women's national team. It has a capacity of 18,416.

One of the aims I wanted to share above within the list was to "move to own stadium". But as time went by, I decided to make my own stadium in the pre-game editor.

The average attendance during matches is below 4k. GAIS had the best average attendance at home matches in the 2019 season with just only 2,854 spectators. Almost about 500 less than in 2016.

Why did I do that?

  1. I don't think the club needs such a big stadium/capacity

  2. I'm not a fan of the fact other three teams use the same stadium and it can affect the pitch quality

  3. I like smaller stadiums

  4. As I shared, the average capacity is/was below 4k. If I will be able to increase the average attendance to 7k-8k, it will be a great success in the club development.

  5. There is always a chance the board will build the new/bigger stadium

I created The Gais Stadium with the capacity of 8,000 seats with the option to increase the capacity up to 12,000 seats. After a discussion with Chris/FM_BlackCrow, I decided to make 6,000 seats and the rest of the 8k capacity is for standing. The pitch type is grass despite as I don't like the synthetic.

Six from 16 Superettan clubs have grass as the surface, two clubs have the mix of grass and synthetic and eight clubs have synthetic (new type - soft). It's around the same in the top tier.

The Fanager

I'm not sure how much you know about me but one thing I like to follow is the marketing of football clubs in real life. Mainly because I worked in the past in marketing/PR/communication.

GAIS is the club that made famous themselves thanks to the campaign named "The Fanager" back in 2017/2018. It was during the time when the results and the mood around the club were not good and it resulted in the all-time low in season ticket sales.

The idea behind the campaign was to strengthen the relationship with the fans. And sell more season tickets of course.

The fans needed just to buy a season ticket and apply for the newly invented position of "Fanager" who got to coach the team, pick the team and be in charge of the squad for a league game against Halmstad.

At the heart of this is an idea based on the simple truth that every fan think they can do better than the coach and that football is a team sport where fans and players win or lose as one. The Fanager also became a link between fans and the team during the whole season when he posted thoughts and insights on the team and asking for advice on what to do during his few days as a coach on the GAIS' social media.

A truly bold move by a football club that was a success in terms of proving that the club is nothing without their fans and that football is a team sport where the team and fans win and lose as one.

The season ticket sales increased by 21,9 %...

It's nothing that we can replicate in FM but it's a nice bonus to me personally. And it gives me one more aim for the save to bring back the most possible fans to the stadium.

The Göteborgs Atlet- & Idrottssällskap save settings

I decided to start the save in May 2020 so I will play the whole 2020 season between 17/6/2020 to 5/12/2020. Yes, there is six months long break between seasons. There will be a lot of time to write.

But there is also Svenska Cupen. The first and second round during the autumn, group stage, quarter/semi-finals, and the final during the spring when there is no league football.

I loaded all the Scandinavian nations available in FM (no Faroe Islands) with all leagues. The database is the default except for the fact I created the stadium. And I loaded all the Scandinavian players within the custom database setup.

As the Iceland league will start in May 2021, which is more than 12 months after Sweden's start date, the Iceland leagues won't be playable for the first 12 months of the save according to FM. But that's not too important as I don't plan to move here...

Thanks for reading and, as always, enjoy your saves.