FM22 | Notes from Poznan - season 2023/2024

February 28, 2022

The third season of my FM22 save with Warta Poznan offered me a lot of matches thanks to our surprising European journey. We were also able to fight about the league title until the last round despite the squad lacking the same quality as our opponents. And the 2023/2024 season also showed my biggest FM weakness. If you are interested in reading how the season went, feel free to continue…

THE SUMMER, part 1

We were in a great position before the 2023/2024 season in terms of the expectations from the save (by me) and of the expectations by the club board within the game. Mainly thanks to the final second place in the league table in the previous campaign. The second place gave us an opportunity to try our luck in the demanding qualifying phase of the Europa Conference League - the third European competition in the UEFA hierarchy.

I said demanding the qualifying phase mainly because we started our European journey in the second qualifying round. And we were an unseeded team of course. The draw decided that our first opponent was Spartak Moscow. The big club in comparison with us. If nothing more, one of their player has the same monthly wage as we have the wage budget in total.

If you are not following Polish football in real life, maybe you are surprised by the fact we started in the 2nd qualifying round despite we finished 2nd in the league.
But the coefficient is a big issue for all the Polish clubs. Legia made it to the Europa League group stage in the 2021/2022 real-life season and it was their first group stage appearance since the 2016/2017 season (maybe you will remember the match against BVB with a 4-8 result in Dortmund). But they were also able to lose to Dudelange in the Europa League 3rd qualifying round or to lost with Omonia and Qarabag within one summer of 2020.
In the combination with other clubs struggling to gain some important points to the national/club coefficient, it’s a big problem. Especially also when you, for example, are not able to have the best possible squad available straight from the opening qualifying round.
I didn’t have some specific aims for this save before it started. But I decided that I will try to improve the coefficient as much as possible to give a better starting position not only to myself but also to other clubs.
Before the 2023/2024 season in my save: One place in the Champions League 1st qualifying round and three places (also depending on the domestic cup winner) in the Europa Conference League in the 2nd qualifying round. That’s awful for such a great football nation as Poland is.
And 28th place in the national club coefficients ranking.

TRANSFERS, part 1

I will be 100% clear - I wasn’t well prepared for the third season when I look back. I build the squad for two domestic competitions. I knew I want to improve the CM(A) position/role and I found one of the best possible players. I used mainly my CM(A) filter/method with some adjustments before I signed him. And the best thing was that I signed Michal Nalepa for free from Jagiellonia Bialystok. That meant I didn’t have a problem giving him €7.75k per month to make him one of the best-paid players of the club (before the contract renewals during the season took place).

Another aim was to strengthen the WBL position. I signed Marcel Blachewicz from relegated Wisla Plock for €350k to give some squad competition to our main player for this position. But it ended with a fiasco. Every time he played, he made some big mistake, his training morale was so tragic that I would give him a punch if it would be real life. It resulted in the fact that I rather let play 17 years old not good enough newgen and I sent Blachewicz to our affiliate club SK Lisen in winter.

Another prepared signing was the transfer of the young Belarusian midfielder Sergey Lyakh. I signed him for just €200k from Ruch Brest without some transfer release clause in his contract and he signed until 2027 which is promising. He is in the Belarusian U21s national team already. His 5 goals and 5 assists in 19(7) appearances during his first season with us just in the league is a promising statistic.

THIS was one of his goals and I really liked it.

THE SUMMER, part 2

As I mentioned at the beginning, our first opponent in the Europa Conference League was Sparta Moscow. When I said “first”, yes, it means we beat them. The newly signed Michael Nalepa scored two goals in the home leg in his competitive debut as our new CM(A) and we beat them at 2:0 in the second leg too.

That was the moment when setting up the several line-ups took the place. The Starting XI was based on all key/important players. The Backup XI was a group of youngsters together with some experienced players. The Mixed XI was a mix of both together. At least one key player in every line together with the best youngsters. As you probably guess, the first XI played mainly the qualifying matches, the backup XI played in the domestic league. The mixed XI was used more during the later stage of the season.

We got Bodo/Glimt in the third round and we won 5:2 on aggregate and made it to the last qualifying phase. Sadly, we faced another Russian team. Krasnodar this time.

We played the first leg away from home for the first time but both matches were intense and crazy. We were 2:0 up in Krasnodar in the 72nd minute but the home side levelled the score within ten minutes before we scored the winning goal in 90+6 from the last set piece of the game.

Home tie. Our captain and the main halfback Michal Kopczynski was sent off in the 14th minute. Krasnodar was 2:0 up after the first half and one goal ahead on aggregate. Szymon Czyz made it 1:2 five minutes after a break, three minutes later it was 3:1 for Krasnodar. But we scored our second in the 74th minute and the match went to the extra-time as it was 5:5 on aggregate.

We also lost Filip Dymerski who was sent off after the second yellow in the 90th minute. With diminishing energy and two men down, we played with four defenders, a flat midfield trio and Chelmecki as a lone striker. We conceded in the 105+2 and Krasnodar was one goal ahead again. But Sergey Lyakh, our young Belarusian uncut diamond scored two minutes prior to the final whistle after a counter-attack. And the match went to penalties.

Jesper Grobelny, our keeper, saved two penalties (Claesson and Wanderson) and we scored all four. It was very a very satisfying win - 6:6 on aggregate and a 4:3 after penalties.

The opening months of the season including matches in the league and qualifying phase

TRANSFERS, part 2

The same as our progress to the Europa Conference League was surprising for others, it was surprising for me. And I realised I am very surprised by this achievement almost immediately after the home second leg with Krasnodar when I did the ordinary press conference and I went to the squad screen to give key players some rest days. It was the moment when I realised I need some fresh legs to be competitive in all three competitions. Some panic buys? Maybe.

I had around 48 hours to make the whole signing process. I decided to sign two players from my shortlist who I know about they are free agents. The Czech striker Tomas Cvancara is a panic signing 100% because he is not good enough in comparison with our own players but it was also some kind of nostalgic signing as I know Tomas from his childhood and his first football steps. And in combination with his real-life transfer from Jablonec to Sparta Prague. The worst thing about him in the game is that he has “Comes Deep To Get Ball” somehow developed. It’s not too good in combination that he should play as Poacher or Advanced Forward. I tried to unlearn him this trait but it was unsuccessful so far.

The second free signing was Kamil Dankowski. The wing-back who is able to play on both sides of the pitch - versatile, that can be useful. I signed him just for one year. He didn’t last that long. He played four matches and he was injured in all of them. Our partnership ended in winter when I released him.

Finally, the third signing within the deadline day - Rafal Wolski from Cracovia for €700k. He was one of the best-rated players in the Ekstraklasa at the end of the previous but also at the beginning of the current season after its first month. I knew he will be able to play as a midfielder but also as a striker. I liked the options he offered and signed him with a clear mind because I already earned a lot of money thanks to the Europa Conference League.

He made 36(5) appearances, scored 13 goals and made 11 assists. I would say that this transfer was worth it. His contract is up to 2026 and I’m sure I have still a great player in him despite him being 31 years old.

Rafal played mostly as CM(A) or CM(S) depending on the squad rotation.

THE REST OF THE SEASON

Ekstraklasa:

We were around the second and third places during this campaign. It was very tight until the end as Legia won the league for the third time in a row in this save with 72 points just one point ahead of Lechia Gdansk and Warta. Legia was changing the first and second place in the late stage of the season every round but Legia won it in the end. We were top of the league for 6 minutes in the last decisive round before Legia scored four goals at home against Radomiak who was relegated thanks to this defeat. It means we earned the Europa Conference League spot again.

The idea of tabbed menu with the Season Overview, Past Positions or other bookmarks courtesy of @Wozzie.

Totolek Puchar Polski:

We made it to the Semifinal this season. We needed penalties or at least the extra time in all first, second and third rounds as we beat Pogon Szczecin, Gornik Zabrze and Olimpia Elblag. The Quarterfinal 3:1 win over Legia at home thanks to a hattrick by Sebastian Musiolik was really sweet. But our biggest rival and also the cup winner, in the end, Lech Poznan, beat us in the Semifinal after penalties as the match ended 3:3 after an extra time. I would really like to win the domestic cup at least once during this save…

UEFA Europa Conference League:

We went to the Group F during the draw with FC Viktoria Plzen, Apollon Limassol and Sutjeska Niksic. I was sure we will make it through this group after beating teams like Spartak Moscow, Bodo and Krasnodar in the qualifying rounds. We lost only once in the group, it was with the Czech side away from home. But we won the other five matches and won the group F with 15 points, 16 goals scored and only 4 conceded.
We went straight to the 2nd knockout round thanks to winning the group and we got AC Sparta Prague. What a coincidence! But we beat them 4:3 on aggregate and went to the Quarterfinal against Wolverhampton. After an incredible home 3:0 win, we parked the bus at the Molineux stadium and drew 0:0. Semifinal here we go. We met Stade Rennais FC, our senior affiliate club here. We lost 1:3 away from home in the 1st leg but we beat them 2:1 at home and we said goodbye to Europe this season with our heads held high.
It was symbolic somehow. Michal Nalepa scored two goals against Spartak Moscow in the first match in this competition back in July 2023 and he scored two last goals in the Semifinal in May 2024. A great journey.

CONCLUSION OF THE 2023/2024 SEASON

The European journey gave us a couple of things. Firstly, we earned €10,239,779 via prize money. I know it’s not even the same as when you reach the Champions League group stage but as we like to say in our country it never rains, but it pours. This sum of money is incredible for our club and I was already able to convince the club board to upgrade the youth facilities from adequate to good. Even if it was after giving them an ultimatum.

Secondly, it also showed me (again) one of my biggest weaknesses within playing the Football Manager - buying and strengthening the squad instead of playing with my own players or youngsters only.

Is there any lesson? Yes, there is. I will have almost all new players in the club-ready before the pre-season or during the first week of the pre-season.

As I said, the European journey gave us a lot of money. We have almost 10x more than at the beginning of this season. The club board was generous and they gave us a €512,993 p/m wage budget and a €7,9M transfer budget. I will use some money for transfers but the wage budget will be under the limit a lot as always.

This third season was also the last while using the so-called 2-3-3-2 formation with two central defenders and a “false” central defender in terms of using the Half Back. It’s not because I would not like it anymore but I’m not able to find the good enough replacement or cover for the Half Back role and I want to try a different role in the DM slot while using the two or three central defenders.

The Polish coefficient received a very much needed boost this season as we reached the Semifinal and Legia won their group and made it to the 2nd Knockout Round.

Thanks for reading, take care.

💙💛✊🏻

Follow @FMRensie

FM22 | Far Post Corner Kick Routine

February 22, 2022

It’s around two years since I created this corner kick routine and I wrote about it. It’s a Far Post routine despite most of my players being aimed to attack the near post. The reason is simple - take opponent’s players from the far post area and give enough time and space to the best possible header from our team at the far post to find the cross.

I didn’t use it too much during the previous edition (FM21) but I decided to use it within my current FM22 save with Warta Poznan. What does the setup look like? Is it successful? Let’s take a look…

THE SETUP

As I said already, the main aim is to concentrate most of my players (and so defenders too) around the near post. The set-up is almost like for the near post in the end including the one player who comes short to take another defender with him.

And the rest is up to the player who is set to attack the far post. The same as in the past, I’m not too far into the save and the players (newgens mainly) are not some world-class players or wonderkids. That means I have to rotate two or three players here depending on their important attributes like decisions or off the ball.

Two players are set to lurk outside the area as they (FINALLY! after five or six years) don’t stay hand-in-hand at the same place. They are important mainly when the ball is cleared from the penalty area. Again, the decisions attribute is one of the most important parts of this role as these players have to be able to think quickly to earn the cleared ball back. And start a new attack.

IN OR OUT-SWINGING DELIVERY?

I’m sure one of the most frustrating things within set pieces for all coaches and fans (mainly them) is when the set-piece taker sends the ball straight to the first defender or straight to the goalkeeper’s gloves. The set-piece buzz is over within a second. And the only thing you can hope for is your opponent won’t take it as their advantage for a counter-attack.

I hate it too. And that’s the main reason why I’m using out-swinging delivery right now because my corner takers are not as good as I would like and their crosses can be long/high/slow… simply, not good enough. And my idea was to avoid in-swinging crosses over the 6-Yard box where the keeper will catch the ball easily. The ball has to make a bigger curve to reach the far post. But it’s the better way in my eyes until the corner taker(s) will be better.

EXAMPLE 1 - goal straight from the far post

This first example is from the Europa Conference League 2023/2024 as we beat AC Sparta Prague away from home thanks to this goal in the 88th minute of the match. It’s the most simple way how to score from this routine as Sebastian Musiolik who was set to attack the far post beat his defender this time and sent the ball straight to the net.

The moment when my (or your) player decide how and where he will go thanks to his off the ball movement and his decisions attribute is the key factor for every set-piece routine. You can have the best possible set-piece taker (I don’t have) but if the main target of the delivery has the wrong movement, he won’t find the right space or place to find the cross.

I think there is also a nice example of what I meant when I mentioned the out-swinging delivery and not allowing the keeper to catch the ball easily.

EXAMPLE 2 - goal from the near post

The second example shows one of my all-time favourite types of goals from a corner kick. I have been a big fan of some kind of back pass in the penalty area or the kind of pass that is made because the “assister” knew the scorer is in the better position and he has a better chance to score. It’s not only within set pieces of course.

This goal was scored against Legia Warszawa and their strong defenders (at least in-game) so it’s even more worthy for me. I think the ideal combination for this would be if the player who is set to attack the far post would also have a vision attribute of 20, the same as flair, jumping reach and strength. That would mean you would have a strong creative visionary who would be able to find other players. But that’s just a dream.

You can expect that this routine example can lead to the moment when a lot of goals or opportunities will end with the offside check by VAR/referees. The same as it happened when we scored this goal in the example. But Musiolik was on-side.

Is it successful? If I will compare it with the FM20 save in Mexico with Celaya FC when I created this routine, the simple answer is NO. But I like to take a look around the corner literally. I think we have to consider the fact that I had much better players when I started using it two years ago in comparison with my current save. Not only players who are set to attack the far post but also the corner taker(s) who are responsible for the delivery.

I will try to find a better set-piece taker in the future
I will try to develop my current set-piece taker and his attributes for set pieces in the future of the save. My attributes threshold is set to 13 as the starting point for excellent so if my takers will reach at least this value, I will be happy.
My main two players for the attack far post role within this routine are both players who are already experienced enough, I just need to find the way how to develop their attributes like off the ball. Or at least keep the values at the same level.

I started using it in the middle of the third season and tried several things. The team scored three goals in the opening nine competitive matches. It’s not too many, you say? Maybe not but it’s great and rewarding when it happens. For example when it’s a winning goal in the last minute of the match…

Thanks for reading. And don’t forget, it’s only a game, so let’s play it and test what the game can offer to you.

Take care.

Follow @FMRensie

FM22 | Should I stay or should I run wide with ball

February 17, 2022

Sorry for the title of the post but I think I listened to this classic song about fifty times while writing this post. If something is 100% clear description in terms of me & my tactical thinking within the Football Manager and a real-life football, it’s the fact that I’m quite conservative when it comes to the moment when I select the player roles.

This is just a short post with examples of how I’m using the simple individual instruction for the Central Midfielder role with the support duty within my FM22 save with Warta Poznan.

The individual player instructions screen for my MCR position with the CM(S) role.

“Run Wide With Ball encourages players to move into wider areas of the pitch when in possession in a bid to stretch the opposition and disrupt their shape. ”

— Run Wide With Ball instruction description

🤝 WB(D)

My starting formation was with two wing-backs and both had the support duty. But that was before I decided to use the run wide with ball instruction for my right CM(S) player. Before you will ask, yes, I tried it both together but I decided to turn my right wing-back’s duty to defend.

Some of you will think that it’s a shame to sacrifice one wide/wing option, especially as the FM22 can be nicknamed Crossing Manager 2022 but it works very well together for several reasons.

When the wing-back has the support duty with the gets further forward instruction, they are together in the same area very often.
If the wing-back has the defend duty, he is instructed to hold position and that allows my CM(S) to run wide with ball.
+ the CM(S) has the option to cross but he also has the option to pause his run(s) and pass the ball back to the WB who is almost every time available to receive the ball due to his deeper position.
Importantly, the fact I’m using a wing-back with the defend duty doesn’t mean he 1) can’t cross or 2) he can’t move forward. It can be very effective against high pressing teams as my defensive-minded wing-back has more space ahead of him.

One of my favourite examples of the cooperation between CM(S) and WB(D) while using the Run Wide With Ball instruction

“If I go there will be trouble... 🎶 ”

— The Clash - Should I Stay Or Should I Go

Stay Wider instruction ❌ and Why not Mezzala?

At the beginning of using the run wide with ball instruction, I thought it will be useful to combine it with stay wider instruction too. But it was not a good idea. The stay wider instruction tells the player “to stretch the game over the full width of the playing surface rather than staying central”.

I realised quite fast that it’s illogical to use both of these. It’s simple. If you are already wide, you can’t run wide with the ball. You would end up on the bench every time if I will take it to the extreme example.

And yes, that’s also one of the main reasons why I’m not using the Mezzala role as it has the stay wider instruction set by default and I can’t remove it. The other reason why I’m not using Mezzala (or Carrilero) role is that I will probably always rather customise the CM(S) role with the individual instructions and develop my player(s) with the specific play traits.

My main player for this role is Szymon Czyz. He developed three traits during the two and a half-season of this save: Moves Into Channels, Comes Deep To Get Ball and Looks For Pass Rather Than Attempting To Score. His Dribbling attribute value is 12 while I’m writing this post. I’m sure this instruction can be even more effective if I would have (or try) some player with an even higher Dribbling attribute value.

But my main player is Szymon and I will use him there until he will be in the club. I saved some screens from the analysis and his dribbles from various matches.

On the other side of the pitch, we have also CM(S) but this player is used with the Hold Position instruction and the wing-back is with the support duty. It’s a nice mix of both sides and not be so stereotypic at both wings. The left wing-back has more assists (usually the double amount of what the right wing-back has) but that’s probably somehow expected. The left wing-back and both CM(S) has the highest amount of assists during the third season and that’s a perfect combination.

But it’s not only about assists straight from the specific player who is playing in this role with this instruction. Many goals were scored after a cross deflection or this player would have the second assist if it would be an ice-hockey.

The testing and playing the game can continue…

Thanks for reading.

Follow @FMRensie

FM22 | The opening two seasons with Warta

February 2, 2022

The first two opening seasons leading Warta Poznan in Poland were funny. And if I will ignore the fact that I finished both seasons among top clubs instead of being relegated in the opening season, it also met my expectations.

There are many talented players but I am far from being able to sign them because of my own personal financial strictness. My favourite part of the save so far 100% was clearing the squad from players who were not good enough and overpaid. I like the club is now more stable after two seasons despite no big outgoing transfers in comparison with other clubs.

Another thing is that I like the fact my pre-save tactical plans are working almost exactly as I wanted. My plan, no matter where the FM22 save will be held, was to play with two central defenders, half back and two wing backs. The idea also included using the option to distribute the ball to a specific teammate aimed to half back. I think the fact we finished 4th and 2nd in the Ekstraklasa speaks for itself. But this is not a tactical post. Maybe later in the future if I will have enough time to put something together.

Until that moment, feel free to read about the first two seasons in Poland…

The main aim - make it stable

When I opened the squad screen for the first time, I found out the senior squad contained 46 players. Twenty four of these 46 mentioned players were 19 years old or younger. Our U18s team contained other 19 players with 7 of them were already loaned out. Thank God for it. If I remember it right I narrowed it down to 30 players in the senior squad before the end of August 2021 when the opening season was already underway. At the end of the second season 27 active players in the senior squad before changes. It’s still a lot but it won’t be less if I will want to give 16 years old newgens some playing time and the first team development.

If the headline above stands “make it stable”, the main point of this was also to narrow down the wage budget in terms of how much we spend. The three highest-paid players at the beginning of the save were three foreign players (France, Belgium and Spain) with all of them having more than €10k per month. But the most important thing was that either of these players would even play in the starting XI.

I was able to send them on-loan for the first season to cover their wages partially. And they left the club permanently before the 2nd season and I saved a lot of money. When the save started, the wage budget was €168,080 p/m and we were spending €159,638 p/m. So, only €8.5K p/m was available. Both for new players and renewing contracts. I have to say that the €6.5k p/m available was painful sometimes during the first season and I had to be very patient to wait for improving the budget to be able to offer more money. But it didn’t mean I would change how I like to work within the FM in terms of wages and I would be wasting money. All players with a wage higher than €10k per month left the club during the two opening seasons and their squad status/importance didn’t matter.

I think the very basic Finances & Salary comparison is a perfect example of how I like to work. The wage budget was increased by around €18k in total to make it €186,068 per month at the end of the second season. But the main difference is that we spend €127,308 p/m and the available budget is €62k. And that’s even after the fact that key players like Musiolik, Czyz, Sopocko or Chelmecki signed new improved deals. Plus, that’s another thing to consider, our coaching & recruitment teams were improved and their wages went up in comparison with the start of the save. But we still are able to be down under the wage budget with a big reserve.

Most of the outgoing transfers were loans or free transfers to mainly save money within wages. Only a couple of players moved away for some money. No wonder the transfer of Adam Zrelak to Legia Warszawa for €240k is a new in-game record fee received.

The average of the senior squad is different too. We started with the average age of 24 and at the end of the second season, it was 22 while the Ekstraklasa average age remained the same at 26. And I’m sure it will be under 22 for the third season as one 34-year-old player will retire and the most experienced Lukasz Tralka will move elsewhere in his 39 years old or he will retire too.

Finances in August 2021 vs. Finances in June 2023

Gerard Williams development

I mentioned staff improvement in the previous part in combination with wages. I would like to mention one new staff member. His name is Gerard Williams and I signed him before the second season as my new assistant manager. You can see his profile just before he signed for us in May 2022 and what his attributes looked like.

It was also in a similar time when @Fuller_FM wrote his post about how to improve your own coaches. The way it’s very simple as he followed how his coaches improved thanks to gaining coaching badges. I know I always tried to do it but the truth is that I probably never paid too much attention to it and I didn’t follow the development too closely. But I decided Gerard will be some kind of my own experiment.

He came to our club with the National A Licence. He gained two badges during the season - Continental C and Continental B Licenses. His attributes, mainly coaching, were improved rapidly in my eyes. When the information about him completing the Continental B Licence appeared in the inbox at the end of the second season, I was really impressed. In combination with a limited number of coaches allowed in the club, his coaching attributes will be really helpful. And yes, I sent him immediately to another course.

May 2022 before he joined Warta

December 2022 after he gained Continental C Licence

June 2023 after he gained Continental B Licence

It’s easy to just find someone new and replace the current staff member. But this way is also very interesting. I’m doing the same with other coaches, also with these in the U18s team so will take a look when their courses will be over to check if they also improved and how much.

I, for example, hired Marek Matejovsky as our new U18s team manager in summer 2022. He also had just the National A Licence. The same as Williams, Matejovsky earned the Continental C and Continental B Licenses and his attributes got a really big boost. For example defending went from 4 to 8, mental from 6 to 10, motivating from 11 to 13 or people management from 10 to 14. All in a year. Perfect. Just take a look if you want.

August 2022

June 2023

2021/2022 Summary

Predicted media finish: 17th (from 18)
How does it end? 4th position.

The beauty of the first season was that I just wanted to see if the formation with two central defenders & half back & WBR/WBL will work. And how it will work. We were between 2nd and 5th place during the first ten rounds before we spent eleven rounds at third place in the table. The last part of the league was affected by several injuries and I also gave quite a lot of playing time to some young players. That meant we dropped down to fifth but finished 4th after two wins in the last two rounds.

We overachieved a lot. We beat Górnik Zabrze 4:1 away from home in the last league round. It was some kind of revenge to Górnik as they won the domestic cup and they earned the Europa Conference League spot despite they finished 10th in the league table. Btw. we lost to GKS Belchatow in the semi final - they finished 17th in the 3rd tier and were relegated (insert rolling eyes emoji).

While Adam Zrelak ended the season with 14 league goals in 29(1) appearances, that meant tied 3rd place in the goalscorers table, the best-rated player of our team and also the league was our central defender Aleks Lawniczak with 7.42.

2022/2023 Summary

Predicted media finish: 11th
How does it end? 2nd position.

The second season was even better in terms of the final league position as we finished 2nd behind Legia Warszawa. We were first in the league between the 23rd and 31st round but we lost the top spot in the finish of the league campaign. It was mainly between us and our biggest rival Lech Poznan as we were swapping first place between each other. In the end, we finished 2nd and they finished 3rd. Legia won the title despite they made it to the top spot in the 32nd round for the first time in the season. A great comeback by them.

If I didn’t like something during the second season, it has to be the number of goals we conceded. Our goal difference was just +20 as we scored 67 goals and conceded 47. It’s stupid we conceded 6 goals in two matches from Arka Gdynia as they were fighting about survival in the league for most of the campaign or three goals from the bottom Odra Opole. It’s something that I would like to improve in the third season.

The second season was also affected by great performances by Sebastian Musiolik, the striker we signed for free from Rakow Czestochowa as he scored 33 league goals in 34 matches. I wrote more about him here.

Important thing is that we earned the Europa Conference League spot thanks to the 2nd place in the table - we will start in the 2nd qualifying round and we got Sparta Moscow. That means I think I won’t please the club board with the early end in this competition as they want to reach the third qualifying round.

Twin cities update

The main point of setting the affiliate clubs was to have the option to send players on loan or take some players on loan. And also to have some newgens from these countries/clubs thanks to affiliations.

We had 2 incoming loans so far. Young Bosnian striker from Hannover for the second part of the first season (8 league appearances - 2 goals) and Togolese right defender as a backup for the WBR position as he came from Rennes. He made 15 league appearances without scoring or assisting. Disappointing
In the first season, 4 players went on loan to SK Lisen to play in the Czech 2nd tier including Finnish central defender Robert Ivanov. I didn’t send him to Lisen by myself as it would mean no wage saving but they were interested in him and they paid 100% of his €6k p/m for the whole season.
1. The important thing also is that SK Lisen won the Czech 2nd tier in the 2021/2022 season and they moved to the top tier. And they finished 12th in the 2022/2023 season, which means they will remain in the top tier. Two players went here for this season but they played mainly for their B team in the 3rd tier.
Three players went on loan to JJK Jyväskylä for 2022 but I’m not sure if this Finnish club will ever enter the playable league. That means these players made only non-competitive appearances.
The young keeper Kacper Geier also spent the year 2022 with Torpedo Kutaisi and got some league chances here.
Polonia Poznan, our only domestic affiliate club is starting to produce some decent newgens. I already decided to sign one of them - Bartlomiej Falinski - just to try to develop him as possible. It’s under a youth contract so there is no risk.
Our own youth intakes didn’t produce some foreign player connected to our affiliates so far.

Youth Intakes

As I already mentioned, our two youth intakes didn’t include some foreign player so far with the connection to one of our affiliate clubs. I already promoted a couple of newgens to the first team squad and they also got some playing time already. It’s not an exception doing this and I think it would be much more strange if I wouldn’t do it. The board is not willing to upgrade the training/youth facilities (both average) or junior coaching budget (adequate) or youth recruitment (average). But I’m used to it and it’s probably realistic in some way.

(I can’t believe I’m using something related to the word realistic in a combination with the video game).

The club is overachieving in terms of results and final league positions. “We believe the club’s youth recruitment is already good enough for a club our size.” And yes, I agree this time. We have to (read = I have to) be more patient. Maybe we will win the league title in the future and our stature will be higher and our club board will decide to invest in the future. Maybe.

Two examples from our intakes. Kacper Grabowski appeared in the youth intake with the value of 1 for both Jumping Reach and Strength attributes. It was obvious to try to work on his physical attributes and in some limited way, it works well as he already gained something but he probably won’t have issues with his head later in his life due to heading the ball too much. The second one, Karol Leopold, will probably cause me some trauma because I want to continue using TF(S) role but he is probably going to be a great DLF player. I’m currently torn if using him as a striker or as CM(A) or to use some playmaker role within the flat midfield trio. The time will tell.

Follow @FMRensie

FM22 | When you find THAT player

January 28, 2022

Alfredo (we are still waiting for the post about him, Ed!), Gonzalo Higuain (feel free to select your favourite GIF here), Tomas Chory in 99% of the saves by FMStag since he discovered him, all the Norwegians (Hi, Samo) with longer names than the width of the regular laptop screens, Adam Armstrong (Hi, Samo II), Serbian or Croatian XY newgen for €37k because AI forgot to give him a professional contract…

We all have or had some player we can talk about as THAT player. The one who is ideal for us. It doesn’t matter if it’s a global star, someone unknown or some virtual variation. The Football Manager is still only a video game and we all play it differently. But I think I can say that we all love when you have your favourite player or you discover someone who becomes your favourite player.

I’m not an exception. There were many players I would be able to add to this group. Some of them were real ones, some were newgens. Loader, Aga…

And now Sebastian Musiolik in the Football Manager 2022. I played only two seasons with Warta Poznan but I know that this 25 year old (in a real-life) player will be my best incoming transfer through the whole save.

“I wouldn’t swap him for anyone, not even Erling Haaland.”

— Various press conferences' answers during the 2022/2023 season.

Spring 2022

It was during the first season of the save when I was searching for some new potential players for the next season(s). Mainly with the expiring contract due to limited finances available. I’m not sure if you remember it but the first-team squad had almost 50 players when the save started. The main aim was to cut the number of players and also the wage bill.

Sebastian Musiolik was a regular starter within the Raków Czestochowa squad and he also spent the 2020/2021 season with Pordenone in Italy. His contract would expire in June 2022 and I decided to try to sign him during spring 2022 for free.

My main idea was very simple. My main DLF(A) or TF(S) option was Adam Zrelák during the first season. The Slovak striker or offensive midfielder was not bad. He was our main striker and influential player in the squad. But he was also our highest earner and his contract was until June 2023. He didn’t want to renew his contract. The only option would be to give him even more money. He had €9k per month and I didn’t want to go over €10k so early in the save.

I also thought he doesn’t deserve it. I was happy when I saw someone like Legia was interested in him because they have enough money to offer and he will go here. And that’s something that happened in the end. Zrelák moved to Legia for €240k, he got €13.75k per month until 2025 and everyone was happy.

Especially with the combination of signing Sebastian Musiolik for free with the wage of €5.75k per month.

The initial comparison

There are two comparison screens. The first one (on the left if you read this on PC/laptop) is the general comparison. It’s the screen from the end of August 2022 after the first part of the league. Musiolik had already 9 goals and 4 assists in 8 league matches. Zrelák was happy for just three appearances and one assist. The second picture is the comparison of their attributes for the Target Forward role with the support duty.

Without sharing how both players ended the 2022/2023 season in terms of statistics, even this initial comparison already suggests that I did a good thing. I signed a new player for free who is not worse than the previous key player, he earns less so we spend less and he is doing much better statistically. At least he did at the beginning. But if you are expecting Sebastian did well in comparison with Zrelák, you are right.

End of 2022/2023 season comparison and a new contract

Sebastian played in all 34 Ekstraklasa appearances. He scored 33 goals in these matches and he also added 10 assists. On the other hand, Adam Zrelák made only 7(7) appearances in the Legia shirt within the Ekstraklasa, scored three goals and made two assists. Yes, there is a thing about the squad competition and Zrelák is considered only as a squad player instead of a star player so his playing time was limited before the season started.

Sebastian came with a simple request about improving his current contract during spring 2023 when it was clear he is a big star now. Not only of our team but also of the Ekstraklasa. I think we can agree that €5.75k per month was not enough. He received a new offer with €11.25K per month until 2026. I will take more than three years with him with all my fingers. It’s still less monthly than Zrelák has in Legia in the original contract when he moved to Warszawa.

He became our highest earner thanks to a new contract. The second highest one has €7k p/m. I was interested in the wage comparison and I went to check some other teams. Legia is the strongest team financially so they were the obvious option. They have 24 players in the senior squad at the end of the 2022/2023 season. Musiolik would be the 21st highest earner with €11,25k p/m.

In Raków Czestochowa, his previous club, he would be at the end of the top 10 best-paid players. Jagiellonia Bialystok, the 12th team of the 2022/2023 season - 13th highest-paid player. The last comparison is with Lech Poznan, our biggest rival and the 3rd team of the second season - very similar to Legia, he would be the 21st highest earner of the squad.

It can be a coincidence but I’m glad I found the perfect combination of free & better options & successful & cheaper signing. And I hope he will continue with it.

End of the 2022/2023 Ekstraklasa season statistical comparison of Sebastian Musiolik and Adam Zrelák.

Close to a historical record

Sebastian Musiolik had 26 league goals after a win over Lech Poznan in the 27th league round. The league record is 37 by Henryk Reyman from 1927/1928... 11 goals in 7 matches? That was too much.

But 26 goals were already the best effort since 2016 (Nemanja Nikolić scored 28). Marek Koniarek scored 29 in 1996 and that's all back to 1948 when Józef Kohut scored 31 goals according to the list of the top goalscorers.

FM BlackCrow boss suggested letting him take all free kicks and penalties. Sebastian was already set as our penalty taker, the same as he was the main target of most of set piece routines due to his perfect attributes for it. I don’t have detailed stats and FM doesn’t offer the option of how many goals a specific player scored from corners, throws, free kicks or through balls etc. It’s only within the whole squad, unfortunately. But I would say he scored at least one-third of his goals from set pieces. Five of them were from penalties.

As I wrote already, Sebastian ended the league campaign with 33 goals. The second best was Tomas Zajic from Lechia Gdansk with 26 goals and third one was Kacper Chelmecki, our main Advanced Forward, with 16 goals.

Can he improve it?

Scoring 33 league goals in 34 matches are fantastic. Do you think he can do it better in the upcoming season? I’m thinking about it while writing this post and I’m not 100% sure. What can help him to score four more goals to at least equal the goalscoring record of the league?

Better players around? Maybe. Better set piece takers? 100% yes. That could be one way how to give him even better service and create better chances.

Maybe he can make it outside of the scatter graph…

Some playmaker role? Maybe. I played without a playmaker role during the first two seasons. My flat midfield trio was CM(S) - CM(A) - CM(S) while one CM(S) was more holding position and the second one has take more risks instruction. But it’s still a central midfielder role and players are coded to act in the particular role. One of the most possible options is to change one CM(S) player to the Roaming Playmaker role. There already is enough static players in our formation so I’m sure it won’t affect it too much.

Overall tactic change? 100% no. I like my weird version of 2-3-3-2 formation with two central defenders and halfback despite it’s not perfect. But what’s perfect these days?

Sebastian Musiolik’s stats from the 2022/2023 season.

One of my most favourite part of this story is that when Sebastian scored his first competitive goal for Warta Poznan in July 2022 in the opening Ekstraklasa round, it was his first competitive goal after 22 matches.

And the rest is history as it’s modern to say…

BONUS POLL

Thanks for reading, take care.

Follow @FMRensie

FM22 | Long Throw-In Routine. Yes or no?

January 21, 2022

This post is not a typical piece of “hey, let’s a look at how I scored a lot of goals thanks to this routine”. The truth is that I didn’t score a lot of goals with this long throw-in routine during my second season in Poland with Warta Poznan. I made a short video with four examples but I think I scored three or four more.

Personally, I enjoyed thinking about what’s wrong with the routine and the set-piece creator (in my eyes of course) much more rather than sharing “THE BEST THROW-IN LONG ROUTINE OF ALL!!!”. Or insert corner/free-kick routine. I know the reason why all the videos have this type of title and headline (hitz everywhere) but I’m sure we are far away from the moment when there will be someone who will create something “the best”.

The biggest issue of the long throw-in routine

It’s nothing new and it’s one of the most common things that put me off using the long throw-in routine, even in the previous editions. It’s nice you can have up to three different set-piece routines created/loaded, but the fact you can’t affect which routine will be used and mainly where it will be used. That leads to the situations when your throw-in taker decides to use the long routine on his own half of the pitch and the rest of the players from the original set-up are in absolutely different positions/places.

Most of these routines end with the misplaced throw or the taker sends the ball with the long throw to the lone striker who is defended by two or more players and he can do nothing against them.

I’m not a statistical expert and I’m not playing the game to study every stat in the game but for me, the throw-in example in the short clip above is a misplaced pass. Or lost possession. And as you can see, the game recognises too when you add the “Lost Possession” column to the view in the Analytical Data/Players/Passes of a specific match. Mateusz Bakowicz, my main WBR in the match against Legia, took has 11x misplaced passes and three of them were long throws to nowhere (3 from 8 throws in total during the match!). Two of these bad throws were in 87th and 93rd minutes.

We didn’t concede straight after that throw in the 93rd minute but yes, we conceded the fourth goal in the fourth minute of the stoppage time, just tens seconds later. So it all can lead to it.

POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENT?

I don’t know if it’s even possible but the more I think about it, the more I’m sure it would be great for throw-in routines if we would be able to create routines for defensive and attacking half of the pitch. Why? Because of what I mentioned slightly above. We are creating the routine with the view of attacking the opponent’s goal. That’s why we place our players to attacking roles like Attack Near/Far Post, Lurk At Near Post etc.

But when the same routine is used on your own half of the pitch (= in a different positioning and shape because you don’t attack, you just want to keep the ball, you can’t cross to the near post from around your own corner kick flag), it’s absolute chaos and most of these situations are useless. Mostly in comparison with the short throw-in routine as that’s a routine during which you have a more compact shape on both halves of the pitch.

“This will instruct throw-in takers to generally seek to launch the ball long into the opposition’s defensive third of the pitch in a bid to trasition into attack as quickly as possible.”

I think I understand the above official description of the long throw-in correctly. But I don’t understand how my players can put the ball to the opposition’s defensive third of the pitch from their defensive corner flag…

DECISION ATTRIBUTE

If I will be so romantic and a little bit naive, I will trust the fact that the decision attribute can affect the thinking of my own players and they are so clever/stupid that they will decide what they and their teammates need the most in a specific situation.

Example of how I would like to see it works: my wing-back is set as a throw-in taker. For all created/loaded routines. He will use his decisions attribute and he will be able to decide where and when to use long, short or quick routines.

How it worked: both wing-backs are set as throw-in takers and their decisions attribute values are 11 (WBR) and 12 (WBL). In the first match, I tried, my WBR took 7 throw-ins - 5x long routine, 2x short routine. We scored one goal after a long throw-in routine, the rest of these long routines were lost balls as 1) the positioning of other players were wrong and 2) he just sent the ball to nowhere. Our WBL players took 5 throws in the same match and all of them were short routines [I should also note that both our WBL players have Long Throws attribute value of 9 and 10 respectively in comparison with the WBR who has 10].

Experiment? I decided to try one simple thing in the upcoming match - I took a player with the highest value of decisions to attribute and I set him as our throw-in taker despite his long throws attribute being very low.

Result?

1st match: We had 14 Throw-Ins during the match. Lukasz Tralka, our CM(D) player with the best decisions attribute was set as the only one throw-in taker for both left and right side. He took 6 from these 14 throw-ins - one long routine, five short routines. The rest throws were taken by wing-backs.
2nd match: We had 13 Throw-Ins. Tralka took 4 of them - 3x long, 1x short.

So, what’s the point? As it stands, even if Tralka would have both decisions and long throws attributes values of 20, he would not take all throws despite he is set as the one and only taker. Because the game does what she wants.

No. 16, Lukasz Tralka: 6 from 14 throws

No. 16, Lukasz Tralka: 4 from 13 throws

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS GAME AND PLAYERS’ POSITIONING?

Another thing I don’t like about FM and set pieces is that the game ignores what you’ve set in the set-piece creator. You don’t have to scroll up to check the base set-up of the routine again, I will leave the comparison here.

There are four attacking roles: Attack Near Post, Lurk At Near Post, Mark Keeper and Lurk At Far Post. Three of them are right. The same as both players set to Lurk Outside Area. But where is the MCL - number 16 - set to Lurk At Far Post? He is in the middle of the opponent’s half. WHY? I didn’t set him to Stay back if needed. There are already three players set to Stay Back.

That means we are one player short in the penalty area despite that I counted with four and I wanted one player will attack the far post or lurk around the far post to make possible flick-ons.

Another thing is that my STCR is set to Mark Keeper. Why he is the first player and why does he acts as the one who is set to Attack Near Post? I really don’t know and the fact this situation ended with a goal means nothing.

The issue in the picture above didn’t change even when I set some different players to Lurk At Far Post. And it doesn’t matter if it was a defensive or offensive player. This player always stayed in a different position and the area around the far post was not occupied.

I’m absolutely not against this routine, it can look very nice (and my version works decently considering two scored goals in the first five matches since setting the routine) and it can be very useful when it works. But it’s not everything just perfect and “Rory Delap-esque'“.

If nothing more, it’s important to check how your players act and how they take this routine in combination with other tactical things considering their strong and weak attributes and behaviour.

Sometimes, we can do nothing about some things, for example, the positioning I shared above. But we have to find something positive about it and try to take advantage of it.

Thanks for reading, take care.

Follow @FMRensie

FM22 | Searching for my ideal CM(A) player

January 10, 2022

The central midfielder with the attacking duty is usually the natural part of my formations within the Football Manager saves. The FM22 edition is not an exception and this role has its place in my 2-3-3-2 formation (as I named it). I remember I always had one of the biggest expectations from this role but I’m not sure if any player filled them when I’m looking back on a couple of my last saves.

This post is some kind of summary of my own thoughts about this role mainly in terms of what I want from it, how I feel about this role and how I’m continuously trying to find my most ideal player for this role.

Preferable attributes for CM(A) highlighted by the game:

· Long Shots, Tackling, Technique, Anticipation, Composure, Teamwork, Vision, Work Rate, Acceleration, Stamina.

Key attributes for CM(A) highlighted by the game:

· First Touch, Passing, Decisions, Off The Ball.

My key attributes & the searching filter

I always liked the way how James talked about the player positions/roles/key attributes and it’s always great to follow or read when he talks about it. I can safely say that he was the one who influenced my thinking the most in terms of the fact that a certain player doesn’t have to have a specific role 100% natural to play. For example, using the natural winger as a wing-back and retraining him and many more.

This also applies to my thinking behind the CM(A) role. The fact I have one player with 100% ability to play as CM(A) doesn’t mean he will be the best possible choice for this role. My FM21 save with GAIS was a perfect example of this. I had Nuha Jatta for the entire duration of the save and he was natural in the CM(A) role and he was a best-rated role for 8 from 10 seasons I spent in Sweden. But was he the best? I don’t think so. It could be based on the formation overall but I think it was very similar even in previous editions.

If there would be an option to edit the key/preferable attributes for the roles, I would do it to reflect it straight in the game but this is something that I can see even when I just check a profile of a specific player. I’m sure many of you who play the game regularly have the same. One short look and you know the specific attributes for a specific role. I have them mainly within central defenders as I have them connected with the key attributes for set pieces. But also with other roles.

The combination of box-to-box and free role

Maybe my idea of the CM(A) role is a little bit different than yours but I usually have some different thoughts. The player in this role should not be a playmaker but it’s great when he knows how and where to pass the ball. In my eyes, this ‘XY’ player should be some kind of unstoppable-moving and free-minded player. Something between box-to-box midfielder and number 10 free role. Not the main engine of the team, not the main brain of the squad. Something between this. Maybe that’s the main reason why I always considered using the striker here (more below).

The off the ball movement and decisions are in line with the stamina to ensure he will be able to do all the stuff. Especially if the FM22 includes that factor of fatigue vs. impact to the decisions or quality of passing. I’m at the beginning of the save and I’m not in a position to be able to choose from the best possible players. That means I have to make compromises and I have to think about every player twice or three times.

MY secondary attributes for CM(A):

First Touch, Technique, Teamwork, Work Rate, Vision.

MY key attributes for CM(A):

Off The Ball, Decisions, Stamina, Anticipation, Composure, Passing.

That means the key attributes were added to the new search filter, all of them with the starting value of 13. The reason why 13 is very simple - I decreased the excellent attribute threshold to 13 in preferences to reflect the quality of the league I play in and players I have available.

The secondary attributes were added to the search filter as well but I don’t have them ticked/active at the beginning and I only tick them to just find out who has this and this. And also the starting value is set to 10.

In my current save with Warta Poznan, I was sure at the beginning that I will have to lower my demands because there will be no players interested in transfer/loan (or you can always hit the settings icon near the Transfer/Loan interested in and adjust how much/less interested players will be shown). But I didn’t have to adjust so much when I made the first try. I found three very decent players after decreasing the starting value just by one.

Bartosz Nowak went straight to the shortlist and all scouts went in…

My own options

I always like to check my own options in the first place before I will turn my head to the player search screen. It looks we are in a very similar position as with Nuha Jatta in FM21 as I mentioned earlier. My most natural CM(A) player is/was Mateusz Czyzycki. The 23 years old Polish midfielder looks solid in many areas but the overall result is that he is an average player and his key attributes for this role are not as good as I would like. But three goals and 1 assist in 7 friendly matches don’t sound too bad.

Mateusz was sent off in the 2nd league round and he got a ban for the next two matches. I let 20 years old Szymon Czyz plays in CM(A) role in these two matches despite his attributes are not too good. But something told me just to try it. And no, the fact their surnames has the same base was not the reason.

The fact I have the first transfer window closed gave me enough time to 1) try to develop/improve my current players a little bit during the first season and decide if I will stick with them or 2) search for better players.

In the end, I edited the search filter and added my own players to it. It resulted in the fact that I had to adjust the values down to 10 to meet my own criteria. I think that three from five players are defenders speaks for themselves.

But one of them was also a forward. I created a custom view within the tactics selection popup window (when you click on the name of the player within the tactics screen) so I can see the key attributes of all possible central midfielders here. *it’s only a small shame that I can’t see all players here instead of only central midfielders or players who are natural/partly natural in the CM role.

Forward? Why not

But instead of just moaning about something, I created the custom view for my squad and added all my key and my secondary attributes to this screen in combination with some more basic things including the overall stats of the season. I didn’t add forward to the headline by a coincidence. The FM22 version is the third or fourth version when I thought about playing some forward in the CM(A) role. The first idea was to use there some good finishers as this player offers big support around and in the penalty area so good composure will be useful same as for forwards.

The same as the composure is very important, the first attribute I look at is the Off the Ball movement. This attribute is crucial for most of the field players and I pay a big attention to it. Not only when I look on my strikers but also for this CM(A) role. I’m enjoying the combination of CM(A) and DLF(A) at the beginning of the save as the Deep Lying Forward (mostly Adam Zrelak) moves deeper to receive the ball and the CM(A) player is able to move up to the space to receive the ball and shoot.

This goal against Lech Poznan in the home derby match is absolutely perfect example and I can imagine this can work perfectly with the striker who would have even better combination of the Off The Ball and Composure attributes.

I highlighted some players on the screen below. Two of them are strikers. Adam Zrelak is my main Deep Lying Forward or Pressing Forward. Mateusz Kuzimski is a completely neutral forward who is not too good Advanced Forward but he is not too good as DLF too. Simply, that kind of player you don’t know what to do with. But his attributes for CM(A) role are not that bad if you compare it with others. I gave him twenty minutes in this role in the Ekstraklasa 4th round and he scored our second goal from a penalty kick in a win against Gornik Leczna.

The more I think about it, the more I’m sure I will try more and more players in this role to just test what works, what doesn’t work and what can be improved. I think it’s also important to mention that I’m using the CM(A) role in the middle of flat midfield trio and I’m not using any additional individual instructions for this role except the Get Further Forward (default for the role).

The funny thing is that when I decided to write about this topic and I made that custom view, one player appeared surprisingly. It’s the club captain - 37 years old Lukasz Tralka. I wanted to use him as a backup of our Half Back or one of the static CM(S) players with Hold Position instruction. But I think I will try him in this role if it will be needed. The only downside is the off the ball attribute below the value of 10.

If I would turn back to the search filter I shared above and untick the interest in transfer/loan, the best possible players within the game database will appear. And if I will increase the value of key attributes, the great players including forwards (Kane, Salah) will appear here.

Half Back & CM(A) combination

I’m also using the Half Back role within my tactics and despite I didn’t play for too long, I found the combination with the CM(A) is really nice. Mainly if 1) the HB is able to make the pass at the right time and 2) if the CM(A) player has a good off the ball attribute and he can take it as his advantage. For example like this goal in the friendly against Rennes.

Simple description - the Half Back always offers support to other midfielders and he is always available to receive the ball from other midfielders or strikers and distribute the ball further.

In this example, we won the second ball and CM(S) player passed it to the DLF(A) who didn’t have a different option than to pass it to the HB - Kopczynski made a great pass to Czyzycki and he scored.

Hopefully, more to come with these two roles. I think there is a potential to make it very successful with some useful players with good off the ball movement and decisions mainly.

When one swap changes everything…

I wanted to end this post originally after the previous part about the cooperation with the half back. But the game/save decided to write one more part. The reason is very simple. As the first season continued, I decided to swap two players in the flat midfield. I moved already mentioned Mateusz Czyzycki from CM(A) role to CM(S). He wasn’t bad in the CM(A) role but I think his Dictates Tempo trait slowed him down. And I moved Mateusz Sopocko to the CM(A).

I knew I won’t be able to sign some better player, at least during the first season, so I told myself it’s probably the last option before I will move the main striker Adam Zrelak here.

If you consider the highlighted key attributes in the picture above, you can say “he is not good enough” or “nothing special in comparison with Czyz or Czyzycki”. And you would be right. For example, his Decisions attribute is worse in comparison with the other two players. *You can easily compare it in the picture with the team selection I shared slightly above*

But.

I decided to make this change in the league match against Raków in the second part of November 2021. This match was just a test of how it will work. I was satisfied with his movement and I let him play here. He made one assist in the next match when we won 1:0 against Piast Gliwice and he scored Górnik so I decided to continue with it and test it even more.

The winter pre-season started in the middle of January. We played some quality matches, we tested the tactic more and more. And Sopocko scored 5 goals in 6 friendlies and he scored also one goal in each of the first three league matches against Zaglebie, Górnik Leczna and Stal Mielec at the beginning of the spring part of the season. If he would score goals just in friendlies, I would say, alright, it was maybe a coincidence. But when he continued scoring also in the league, I activated the automatic extension clause in his contract and will try to play him here more. At least until I will find a better player for CM(A) role.

The goal below is a fantastic example of the cooperation between the half back, CM(A) and DLF(A). The simple passes and the perfect movement. Perfect.

Btw. Mateusz Czyzycki left the club in winter and moved to Sparta Prague for just €200k because he wanted over €10k per month wage when I tried to extend his deal. Sopocko is better statisticaly and he earns only €2.4k p/m until 2024. Win win? Maybe…

Thanks for reading, take care.

Follow @FMRensie

FM22 | My Short Throw-In routine

January 4, 2022

Wouldn’t it be strange to not have some set-piece post within the Football Manager save? Yes, it would be weird even considering the fact this area of the game is almost untouched for the new edition and we didn’t see some major changes. The routines from previous editions work in the same way as I tried them during the beta version. Some of them are more successful, some a little bit less successful.

Trying, tweaking and improving set-piece routines was always one of my favourite things. That’s why I decided to try to create some new routines or at least some different modifications with different roles.

Let’s start with the short throw-in routine, my favourite one.

The set-up

I wrote about the short throw-in routine back in FM20 when I played in Mexico and I was able to produce some great goals thanks to it. Unfortunately, one weird thing still remains in the game. It’s the situation when your striker is the main player who offers the short option despite he is set to attack the far post, or lurk outside the area or stay back… It’s strange in the same way as when you’re playing with three at the back and your wide central defenders take throw-ins at your own half despite you having different players set as the throw-in takers.

Never mind, I have to be used to it. Nothing is perfect.

My usual set-up was to limit the number of players who offer the short option to just one player. The best one in terms of decisions and off the ball movement. Strikers were usually set to attack near or far posts or lurk outside area based on their various attributes.

As I said already, I tried to create something different and shuffle some roles. The most visible change is that I’m now using two players who offer the short option (Come short). The WBL (or WBR if it’s from the opposite side of the pitch) is set to Go Forward, the same as one of my two strikers. Adam Zrelak, my main DLF(A) and probably the best player on the current squad in terms of being a set-piece target is set to Attack Far Post.

Two players are set to Lurk Outside Area and both central defenders Stay Back. My main half back, Michal Kopczynski, has perfect Passing, Anticipation and Decisions attributes for the come short role (13, 16 and 14) so he is really useful for this role.

If I would not use the so-called 2-3-3-2 formation and I would use something more common, for example, 4-3-3 DM Wide, the set-up would be probably very similar. I would only probably use AMR as one of the Come short option if it would be a throw-in from the right side in combination with the best possible midfielder. And the striker with AML would be in the box.

I’m not writing this to show you something that will give you 20+ goals per season. If I counted it right, I scored 5 goals in the opening 24 league matches before I started writing this post. My U18s team scored probably the same amount of goals in 22 matches in their youth league. It’s mainly about joy when it works how I wanted.

There are some things I would like to sort or try in the future of the save:

Many crosses go to the WBL player at the far post where I would expect the striker with the attack far post role. The WBL is not good enough to finish the cross or pass it back to another player
- The solution? 1) swap players or 2) don’t use this role, 3) try to move this player to Mark Keeper role
Players who come short can’t cross/pass the ball or they pass it back to the offside position
- The solution? Again, 1) swap players and use the ones who have better decisions/anticipation attributes and 2) give these players more options where to pass the ball
What I would like to try? Move one player from lurk outside area to Attack Ball from Edge of Area.
And combine this with players who will be set to Lurk at Far Post & Mark Keeper to allow back pass after a cross to the far post.

The simplicity in two examples. The video below shows three goals, one of them is from the U18s team when one of two players who offer a short option received the ball to the edge of the penalty area and decided to shoot instead of passing/crossing.

I think it’s the ideal solution and it also shows how the decisions attribute is important because these two players are the main ones who will decide how the routine will end. They are the ones who decide if it will succeed or not.

What next? Maybe… 👀

Thanks for reading, take care.

Follow @FMRensie

When making custom skins steals the joy from playing the game

December 27, 2021

The same as I remember some bits from my Football Manager 2016 save in Denmark with AB Copenhagen, I still remember the moment when I told to myself it would be nice to create my own custom skin while playing the game. I was using mainly the ‘g2’ skin during the FM16 but despite it being perfect skin, there were things I didn’t like. Or better - I wanted to improve them to my liking.

And the learning process started. I decided to use the simple panels and widgets made for the DF11 website to have bigger player & staff faces and I added them to the base skin. I like this moment when you’re trying something new, especially in the combination with FM as it’s my favourite game of all. I remember the moment when I realised how to resize the kits’ widget in the club overview for the first time to make the kits bigger. It was like scoring the last-minute winning goal.

You would maybe be surprised how can three pixels’ adjustment makes a big difference (don’t tell it to your partner with centimetres). When I learned how to edit the league table and to be able to insert more data than only wins and points, it was so good feeling that I added all the data available just to have it here despite I know it looked stupid. And confusing as well with twenty-one columns...

It was simple skin with four or five screens edits. But it was my first try and I was happy. A year later, when the FM17 was released, the expectations were already higher. But it was the same as with my first try. Some small steps, some small edits here and there, some adjustments to DF11 panels to my own liking. And a lot of learning. Also thanks to some great people around the skinning hideout on the SI Forum or some feedback from other FM players around me.

The main idea of the skin was always the same – just make simple adjustments to make the game better. This remained the same despite I started making more and more my own panels, my own widgets and my own graphic papers. Because appetite comes with eating and the skin is much more complex and more detailed after all the years.

One of the nicest things of it all surely is when you realised how simple adjustments you made after three hours of saving the .xml file and reloading the skin again and again. The fact I spent many hours trying to move one line two centimetres higher but forgot to change the alignment or I deleted one symbol and was surprised why the whole panel doesn’t work. But it’s always fun to find something by yourself and not only copy/paste the work of others.

But the same as the game has changed in recent years, the way how people act has also changed. It doesn’t matter if it’s about making the FM skin or trying to deliver the best possible sports marketing content or some manual work. The more you create, the more you can lose.

As I mentioned in the post about the FM22 skin. I’m not a skinning expert and I’m doing mainly basic things because I like it in this way. There are more detailed and better skins around. Skins made by Wozzie, FMwkdsoul, Michael Murray, ‘bluestillidie00’ and others like Andromeda, for example. They all spend many hours making it perfect as they have great ideas and they know how to reproduce them in the game. I will always be grateful mainly for the fact that I found most of the things on my own. I didn’t steal it.

I know I said the same during FM21 but I’m sure the FM22 custom skin was the last one I shared publicly. As I said, the behaviour of the people is worse every year. And I had enough. When someone told me during FM20 that I’m a useless idiot because I refused to make his own background to the custom skin, I just moved on.

When someone downloaded my corner kick routines, forgot to rename them but also placed them on his own website behind the paywall with the same name as I saved it, I just moved on. Only my friend who sent them over to me was a little bit angry that he paid for something he downloaded a month ago for free from my website. I moved on after most of these things.

Until this year. The beginning of the FM22 cycle hit the peak of all. There were three custom skins released publicly two days after the beta version of the game was released. All these three skins were 90% of my work from FM20 and FM21. One of them was named “FM20 Rensie skin Dark” as the author was not even able to change the name of the skin in the config file. “It’s just for personal use.” This sentence is one of the biggest lies within the FM “community”.

I released the FM22 Rensie custom skins on Wednesday, November 19, 2021, in the morning. Two hours later, I saw that two different authors released the updated version of their skins. With several extracted files from my skin without any mention. I spent almost two-thirds of November creating this skin. In my eyes, it’s the best skin I created since 2016 when I started learning how to edit the size of the font. I already improved it again. But only for myself and a couple of friends. And that’s how it will remain.

The time before every new FM edition should be the best one. I always loved the nation/club selection process. I always loved creating everything around the new game. But not this year. The joy from making small edits developed into a big frustration that every time I will create something, there is a queue of idiots who will steal it. And when someone steals your work, he presents it as his own with stupid mistakes and someone other labels that as the best skin of all, the motivation goes down even more.

It’s the beginning of December 2021 when I was writing this and I didn’t start my main save during that time for the entire time of FM22. But the main issue was that I had no intention to even think about the save or plan something.

The creating the custom skin changed from “YES, it’s the fucking new game time” to some kind of onus. It’s the same when you think you have to create some content because it’s popular or someone expects it from you. Or any other reason.

No, you don’t have to. The same as I don’t have to. I would just like to find joy from playing the game again.

The combination of people who steal your work & the continuous number of bugs/issues in the default panels I have to fix before the developers decide to fix it by rewriting the original code = all my /our/ work can start again, it all just leads to more depression than joy from making it.

I’m happy there are or there were some people who sent me some donations during the last three years. Not because of myself or because I would be earning money for making a custom skin for the Football Manager. I’m happy because I was able to send the money to others who need them more than me. I did it in 2019, 2020 and I did the same in 2021 before Christmas. It was probably the last donation but better than nothing.

Cheers for reading, take care.

Today's weather in the 🇨🇿 capital. Not everyone is able to have his/her own home, hot water or access to a shower.

But there is a "Nocleženka" thing and it can help thanks to your #FM22 Rensie custom skin donations.

It's not enough to help everyone but better than nothing. pic.twitter.com/yciucgvHwJ
— FM Rensie (@FMRensie) December 7, 2021

FM22 | Notes from Poznan and Twin Cities idea

December 14, 2021

It wasn’t easy to decide where I will spend my main time with the Football Manager 2022. But, in the end, I decided to play in one of the nearby nations of my own nation. I will play in Poland. It’s a nation where I was not as many times as I would expect but I was there and it can be counted as another one where I was in real life and I will play here within my FM save.

If I will go back in time a little bit, my first choice for FM22 was Spain. But I decided against it due to a couple of reasons in the end. Another option was to go home and play with one very good custom database down to the Czech 7th tier, just one tier above the competition where I play in real life. The main reason why I turned this option down was that I would probably spend a couple of weeks of real-time just building the squad for the first season.

There were some other options like PEC Zwolle, FK Sarajevo, CF Vaslui, FC Thun… there was always some reason because I told myself that’s a no, think more about it. But I always (except the Czech 7th tier, that would not be possible) had one thing in my mind. The one thing I wanted to try and apply within my save. The Twin towns - Sister cities.

I had two teams/towns in my mind when I decided it will be Poland. The first one was LKS Lodz from the 2nd tier. It was mainly because I spent some time in Lodz when I was around 14 years old and I thought it would be good. But the fact that the board except for the immediate promotion to the Ekstraklasa put me off. I like to start my saves in the 2nd tier or lower but I decided it will be better to select my second choice - Warta Poznan from the top tier/Ekstraklasa. It’s the smaller club (right now) from Poznan as you probably know Lech Poznan more.

Warta Poznan - three promotions in the last five years after two relegations within three years.

Warta is two times Polish top tier champions but these league titles are from 1929 and 1947 = really old. Warta Poznan as a club has worse facilities in comparison with Lech, less money available, worse players in both senior and youth teams and problems with the stadium. Same as last year with GAIS in Sweden (they share the big stadium in Göteborg with other teams), I decided to edit the stadium before the save with Warta started.

Warta is unable to play Ekstraklasa matches at their ground (Stadion Warty Poznań (Warta Poznań Stadium),[2] also known as Stadion przy Drodze Dębińskiej (Dębińska Road Stadium) and nicknamed Ogródek (Little Garden) - thanks Wiki) because of licensing issues.

The stadium and the complex of training pitches and facilities overall are under reconstruction in real life and I didn’t find the info when it should be finished and when the club should play either top or 2nd tier at their own stadium.

That was the reason why I renamed the stadium “Nowy Ogródek”, set the capacity to 4,000 with the possibility to expand up to 16,000 and that’s it. Nothing groundbreaking. And I really like the stadium I created, small and comfy.

Warta is in the relegation battle in real life and we are expected to finish in 17th from 18 teams in Ekstraklasa. For me, it’s another nice challenge because of a couple of things including the club culture:

Make the most of set pieces - it’s always nice to challenge me to create something new
Sign Polish players - it’s nothing weird if I play mainly with domestic players, I’m sure it will work out
Develop players using the club’s youth system - always a pleasure to do it

Twin towns - Sister cities idea

I don’t know when I got this idea but it’s not so long time ago. It’s probably connected to one of my travel “shows” on Czech TV as I think it was mentioned here briefly when there was something about one town and as it’s connected in multiple ways with a different town. The connection between towns is various. Some are based only on one thing like culture. Some are based on many more things like sports, travelling, culture, study programs, exchanges.

London is connected with New York, Bogotá or Tokyo. Glasgow is connected with Turin, Rostov-on-Don or Havana. Madrid is connected to Lisbon, Seoul, Sarajevo or Abu Dhabí. And I would be able to continue like this forever.

And Poznan has some interesting towns connected too from around the world. For example Hannover, Rennes or Kharkiv. An ideal combination for this side project.

How it will work in my FM save? It’s easy. I selected 13 towns from the list of sister cities and I selected and added one football club from this city as an affiliated club of Warta Poznan in the pre-game editor. The system is easy - clubs with a higher reputation (based on the default FM database) are the senior affiliate clubs of Warta. The clubs with less reputation are under Warta.

There are not only European cities but also teams from China, the United States and Brazil. A nice touch is that I found Brno (the 2nd largest Czech city) is among the twin cities of Poznan. There are currently two clubs playing in the 2nd Czech tier - Zbrojovka Brno and SK Lisen. The first one is more reputable and more famous but I decided on Lisen.

I set some rules in my head and in the pre-game editor:

Senior Affiliate clubs - Hannover, Metalist Kharkiv and Rennes are able to send players on loan to Warta.
Warta players can go for a loan to affiliate clubs in other countries (I will aim to send players on loan to Gyirmot and Lisen probably).
Players can’t go on loan to China, the USA and Brazil. And vice-versa.
The connection/affiliation with non-European clubs was set to help both parties in marketing relations
All clubs share scouting knowledge with each other.
The European clubs can play friendlies against each other - one of the aims/dreams should be to arrange a friendly tournament between these clubs (note * FM2039 on of the 1000+1 new features requests: the possibility to arrange a friendly tournament for more than only 4 teams).

The idea behind this is not to break the game or exploit the game in some way. If it would be a couple of years ago I know I would be able to play the save for 25 or 30 years. That would mean I would be able to fill the screen with affiliated clubs on my own. But these times are over and I just want to play a couple of seasons within FM22.

As I already mentioned above, I usually play mainly with domestic players. It won’t be too different this time. But if nothing has changed for FM22, the sharing scouting knowledge and the affiliate clubs in foreign countries can cause the fact some of your newgens will be from countries where your affiliate clubs are. Or where your scouts/coaches are from etc.

I don’t want to have a golden generation from around Europe with top Chinese talents in every youth intake within the save. I think I’m too old for trying to exploit the game in some way like this just thanks to some edits in the editor. I just like the real-life idea of a connection between nations/cities and I think it’s an ideal combination for FM save. And if 1) I will be sacked by Warta, I can join some of these affilities, 2) if it won’t affect youth intakes, it doesn’t matter, we will have some interesting friendlies every six months at least.

Affiliate Clubs:

ACV, Assen, Netherlands; Gyirmot FC, Gyor, Hungary; Hapoel Ra’anana, Raman Gan, Israel; JJK Jyväskylän, Finland; SK Lisen, Brno, Czech Republic; Polonia Poznan, Poland (they share our training and youth facilities); Torpedo Kutaisi, Georgia.

Senior Affiliates:

Metalist Kharkiv, Ukraine; Stade Rennais, France; Hannover 96, Germany.

Non-European Affiliated Clubs:

Independente Futebol Sao-joseense, Brazil; Shenzhen FC, China; Toledo Villa FC, USA.

Notes from the save

The beginning:

The first day in the office was on Sunday, June 6, 2021. There were not too much to do except the fact I added two new friendly matches and I decided to mutually terminate contracts of six staff members. “Yes, you have it written on your forehead: Physio with the Physiotherapy attribute of 3 = not good enough.” Should I find the replacements by myself? Should I place the job advert? The second option was tempting but it usually takes too much time. I will try on my own.
I opened the staff search screen and wanted to find the new physio. The €925 per month available for physio was a great budget to start with. I had to completely rule out the possibility to sign some foreign physio and I decided to limit the search filter to just physios with Polish nationality.
It was a good decision to concentrate on domestic staff as I was able to hire former Szczecin patriot Stanislaw Mazuro (click to see his profile) and he wanted only €700 per month. The improvement from the Physiotherapy attribute of 3 to 15 is quite big. I went through all other vacant positions and tried to fill everything with better domestic staff than what was here when I started but I knew that if I want to sign some better staff members, I need to make space in our wage budget. And that meant to offload players…
But in the end, I’m really proud of what scouts, for example, I was able to hire…

The squad:

When I opened the squad screen for the first time, I also opened my mouth. “Forty-six players? Just in the senior squad? What will I do with all of them?” The eldest one was Lukasz Tralka with 37 years and a €7,5k per month wage. The youngest one was Mateusz Wojciechowski - 17 years old Polish defensive midfielder.
Of these 46 mentioned players were 19 years old or younger. I decided to check every single player and decided if 1) to keep him in the senior squad, 2) move him to the U18 squad, 3) send him on loan.
Our U18s team contained other 19 players with 7 of them were already loaned out. Thank God for it.
The two highest earners of the squad were foreign players. Jayson Papeau (France) with €17,250 per month and Milan Corryn (Belgium) with €10,750 per month. Both of them had contracts until summer 2023. The first one had a transfer value between €300k to €600k. That would be a lot of money - insert :thinking: emoji. I knew I had to sell them if I want to keep everything within the budget and if I want to improve coaching/recruitment/medical team. It was a no brainer in the end when I considered too many talented young players in the club.
The first transfer window is disabled so I have enough time to find them new home and save some money. How did it end? We will see in the next post…

The opening 2 weeks:

It was all mainly about setting the individual training for all the players. There are some really exciting young players I’m looking forward to following their development if they won’t be signed by some bigger club.
It was also mainly about setting and arranging the training schedules, set pieces, individual training, mentoring... all the typical FM admin and it was quite good.
The second week of the save ended with the first friendly match. We played against Hannover, our senior affiliate, at home. We won 2-1 after goals by our CM(S) and CM(A) players. You can see we used the formation with 2 central defenders, 1 defensive midfielder, two wing-backs, three central midfielders and two strikers. It’s the formation I want to use for most of the time of the FM22 save.

The journey to find the joy from the game can continue…

Follow @FMRensie

FM22 | How to view stadium footage while using Rensie custom skin

December 6, 2021

If you are using my Football Manager 2022 custom skin (both normal and low-resolution versions), this short post is for you. It was not meant as a purpose, it was just a coincidence 100%. But it works. I find a way how to you can see the stadiums in all their beauty. Again. Five years later.

Maybe you will remember the Football Manager 2016. I played with the Akademisk Boldklub in Denmark and I had the new stadium. When you played the match in FM16, there were always some very quick and short snippets at the start of the match.

The exact quote of the official Football Manager account If it’s possible to see more was: “That's a no. You generally only see snippets at the very beginning of the match.” Maybe you remember, they were wrong and I find the way how to do it. You can see the post about it here.

The work on the FM22 custom skin finally let me add some things back to the game as I wanted last year after the player’s widget bar was added to the match. Let’s talk about it as quick tactics buttons as they it gave me, or you who use it, the more useful way how to edit tactic including the team instructions, shouts, opposition instructions or sub players.

The last-mentioned button - Make Sub - is the key for this little game hack. It’s similar to how it worked in FM16 but it’s even easier now. The same thing is that it works during the half-time of the match you play actually.

The bottom player’s widget bar doesn’t disappear, the same as the quick buttons. The only thing you need to do is to click to Make Sub and then hit the Confirm button. And the footage of the stadium where the match is played will start. You don’t even have to make some substitutions. Just open the Make Sub popup window and hit confirm. That’s all.

You don’t have to be afraid you would lose some progress in the match. You can see the Dressing Room text is here in the top right corner where the Continue button normally is. So, the process of the half-time won’t be affected. You can hit the space bar as you are used to doing and you will enter the team talk or change tactics etc.

You don’t have to change camera settings or rewind something. As I said, just two buttons - Make Sub + Confirm.

I know it’s probably nothing too important for most FM players like I am. But if nothing more, if you will have a new stadium within your long-term saves, it can be a nice small bonus to see it.

*If you will have this Make Sub button in other skins, for example in the Tato22 as I know Wozzie added it recently, it will work too for sure.

Follow @FMRensie

The EURO dreams many years later | One season with A.C. Milan in FM22

November 30, 2021

Sunday, June 23, 1996. I was at the football training camp and I was ten years old. The ordinary day in the life of us, young average small kids from the post-soviet union block nation was affected by the Czech national team. Karel Poborský scored that goal against Portugal and our team progressed to the EURO ‘96 semi-final. I still remember the moments after the final whistle when our coach kicked all of us from the common room with one small television as we ran around the camp and chanted the Karel Poborský name. All of us did nothing the next day in training other than try to lob our goalkeeper.

Saturday, June 19, 2004. My youth career came to an end a month prior to this date after I was told Sparta Prague won’t offer me a professional contract because I had a dorsal bone in my left leg broken three times during one year. I was sitting in a pub with my left leg in plaster resting on a side chair and crutches were near the table. The Czech national team played against the Netherlands on this day in the EURO 2004 group. They were 0:2 down after the opening 19 minutes as Wilfried Bouma and Ruud van Nistelrooy scored. But our team won 3:2 after goals by Jan Koller, Milan Baroš a Vladimír Šmicer. This match, with all the energy from every player on the pitch, this match will always cause me goosebumps. It was not for the first time I was dancing with crutches and with my leg in plaster, but I hope it was for the last time.

Both these teams have something in common but they are both absolutely different. Poborský, Nedved, Smicer were in both teams. The ‘96 team was the outsider of the tournament. The same as many people still don’t understand how this team made it to the final, there are maybe even more people who don’t understand how the team from 2004 didn’t win the tournament and lost to Greece in the semi-final.

When Tony/FM_Grasshopper came to me with the idea to replicate some 4-4-2 formation, the variation of these Czech teams, but mainly 2004 one, came to my mind after some time including some memories from the past.

I wrote about my attempt in the latest Latte Quarterly issue together with From Eleven, One who’s post is superb. I mentioned these teams had something common. And we found something common also with FEO as my 2004 team and his 2007 Milan side included left defender Marek Jankulovski.

I played one year with AC Milan and I kept the 4-4-2 formation from the beginning to the end. The team around Kjaer-Tonali-Giroud/Leão produced so good results that I was unable to end it. And I decided to write about it something also outside of the Latte Quarterly.

My dream team

“The main thing I always liked about this team was the simple way of football the players produced. The simple triangle between the central defenders and both central midfielders worked perfectly. There was always someone available to receive the ball. It was all about the player’s abilities rather than complicated team instructions and heavy tactical style. That’s why I used only three team instructions - Distribute To Full-Backs, Counter and Counter-Press. Just make it simple.

The combination of good (BPD - Kjaer in Milan side) and ugly (CD-D with tackle harder instruction - Ujfaluši /find his tackle on Messi on YouTube/ in the Czech team, Romanogli in Milan side) central defenders. The young Daniel Maldini (would it even be FM save with Milan but without some Maldini?!?) took the MR slot as W(A) to replicate Karel Poborský and his crosses and clever finishes. Sandro Tonali as RPM to play as Tomáš Rosický - to be available to receive the ball in every situation and to be able to move forward. The CM(D) role of Tomáš Galásek (one of the most underappreciated players from this team) to just cover everything in the middle.”

— LQ, issue 9

The most accurate description of this team would probably be something like this: The simple football with freedom but with a lot of discipline, teamwork, fighting for each other and having fun from football because these players were 100% sure they know they are really good in what they are doing. And to entertain fans.

No wonder there were more fans during the exhibition match when EURO 2004 head coach Karel Brückner celebrated his 80th birthday two years ago than during a normal match at Andruv Stadion in Olomouc.

That’s what I took from these players and from this team. And I really envy all of them because I think I have never seen any other team with this confidence since 2004 at any level. Maybe I’m wrong but it’s just my feelings.

Wide roaming ball-winning box-to-box midfielder

Pavel Nedved = impossible to replicate

The shortcut of this role would be perfect in the game I would say - WRBWBBM(A). That’s how I describe the position and role of Pavel Nedved during these years. The Ballon d'Or winner from 2003 was everywhere around the pitch and he was able to play as a winger but he operated in the middle as well.

This role was 100% the hardest one to replicate and I think I was not able to do it exactly as I would like. There was one certain thing after a short time within the tactics screen. The ML position, no matter what player will play in, can’t be Inverted Winger because this role has “Dribble More” as one of the default instructions.

And Pavel Nedved didn’t dribble more. He liked to play cut inside and shoot with his stronger right foot. He liked to run everywhere around the pitch to let the left side of the pitch free for the wing-back behind him (Marek Jankulovski in the national team). And he liked to tackle harder in combination with his unstoppable and endless desire to get the ball back.

So, I decided to use WM(A) role and customise it to my own with these thoughts in my mind. I tried several players in this position/role. As I wrote in the LQ9 issue, the customised role was as demanding for these players, that none of them was able to meet all the expectations. Theo Hernández was probably the best one but he was limited by his injuries too much. I hope his physical attributes will help him to be able to meet all demanding high-intensity instructions but even he had to sub almost every time during the second half despite his physical attributes being great (click here to open his profile).

Kingsley Coman (I bought him from Bayern for €25.5M) made the most appearances in this role - 33(9), scored 5 goals and made 13 assists. Ante Rebic was quite decent here too with 9 goals and 8 assists in 16(25) appearances.

Twenty-years old Daniel Maldini, who I played mainly as a winger in the MR slot, would be maybe good in this role if he would be about two or three years younger and he would work very intensively on his physical attributes. But overall, if I will ever use such a demanding role again, I will look to play here the physically strongest player of the squad. Or try to find the best possible player in terms of physical attributes.

Sandro Tonali

I know this midfielder is a thing for a long time in the Football Manager as an honorary member of all the wonderkids lists but I’ve never managed him. Sandro Tonali can play almost every role within DM or CM thanks to his attributes in the game. First Touch, Passing, Technique, Vision or Decisions. Everything is perfect for a playmaker. But he’s not bad even if you would need him in the CM(S) role as his Marking, Tackling and Teamwork attributes are also very solid. It’s just a pleasure to have a player like him in the squad.

He was the first one I thought about when I decided to use the Roaming Playmaker role within this 4-4-2 to replicate (if it’s possible) the role of Tomas Rosicky. The former Sparta, BVB or Arsenal midfielder, and one of the best clients of Europe’s elite physios, was able to play everywhere around the pitch. Maybe it would be best to play him as Box To Box Midfielder but Rosicky always liked to be the director of the match. He liked to decide where the ball will be, where to pass & when to dribble & when to play faster & when to shoot…

The Roaming Playmaker should have freedom on the pitch. And I think Sandro Tonali who played most of the matches in this role within one season had a lot of freedom thanks to a combination with the CM(D) role next to him in the centre of the flat midfield. Frank Kessié or Tiémoué Bakayoko were always here to cover everything exactly as I wanted. Players in the CM(D) role created nothing. That was the aim. They are not on the pitch because of thinking and creating. They have to just be here to cover/defend/help others.

Sandro Tonali has Dictates Tempo trait = bingo! I’m sure it was one of the main factors that helped to make his Position/Role so good and effective during this save.

Sandro Tonali made 31(3) appearances in Serie A, scored 4 goals and made 23 assists (the second-best in Serie A was Paulo Dybala with 14 assists). He played 12 matches in the Champions League and made 10 assists. In total, 46(4) club competitive appearances with 4 goals scored and 34 assists made and an average rating of 7.61.

This was his last Serie A assist of this save in the Milan derby against Inter in the last match of the Serie A 2021/2022 season.

Jan Koller & Milan Baros vs. Olivier Giroud & Rafael Leão

Jan Koller - 91 appearances & 55 goals = the best goalscorer in the Czech/Czechoslovak national team. Milan Baroš - 93 appearances & 41 goals = the 2nd best goalscorer in the Czech/Czechoslovak national team. These two players created the most deadly forward duo and I wanted to create something similar within this save. Jan Koller was the target man/forward who was able to hold the ball, pass the ball, help with the build-up play, win the headers and also score a lot of goals. Milan Baros was that fast forward who benefited from the work of other players and who was able to find the right space and right place to score.

The equalising goal against the Netherlands after Koller’s assist is one of the best examples (click to see it in this video). And the goal against Denmark in the EURO 2004 quarter-final is also another great example (click to see it in this video). The quarter-final match against Denmark is a great combination of set-piece goal scored by Koller after corner and two goals by Baros after a great off the ball movement and perfect passes by Poborsky and Nedved.

Fuck, goosebumps everywhere.

Most of you would probably use Zlatan Ibrahimovic instead of Olivier Giroud. And you are right, it was my first thought as well. But Zlatan was injured for the opening two months of the save. Rafael Leão was the first choice Advanced Forward for the entire first season. There was a short time when I thought about using CF(A) role but I saw Leão was able to work in a big area as the advanced forward too so I decided to use this role.

Olivier Giroud became my first choice TF(A). He benefited from the near post routine a lot as he was able to score a lot of goals from it but he really was perfect for this role and it was not only about the corner/free-kick goals. His numbers at the end of the season speak for themselves. He made 28(4) appearances in Serie A, scored 31 goals and made 6 assists. He scored 6 goals in three Coppa Italia appearances and 5 goals in 12 Champions League matches. In total - 42(5) appearances, 42 goals and 6 assists.

Rafael Leão made more Serie A appearances - 33(2) and scored 27 goals and made 7 assists. He had better stats in the Champions League in comparison with Giroud - 12(1) appearances, 9 goals and 4 assists.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic was able to contribute a lot as well, mainly in the TF(A) role as he scored 16 goals and made 5 assists during 1,715 minutes he spent on the pitch. Including two goals in the Champions League final against Bayern. He would contribute more for sure but I preferred playing Giroud.

Koller and Baros are the best goalscorers in the Czech/Czechoslovak national team history. Giroud and Leão were the best Serie A goalscorers of the 2021/2022 season with 31 and 27 goals. The third-best Ciro Immobile scored 26 goals. I would say this attempt to replicate this deadly offensive duo was successful.

I love the simplicity of the football this shape/roles produced and these two pictures are one of the best examples. The central defender won the ball, both central midfielders are available to receive the ball, same as the TF(A) moved deeper to help with the build-up and to pass the ball to the right space behind the defender as the Advanced Forward made the right move in the right time. And scored.

Set Pieces

Set pieces always played a big role in the tactical thinking of Karel Brückner, the head coach of the Czech national team between 2001 to 2007. It was always a pleasure to follow and watch how he reacted when some routine worked as he wanted. Even if it didn’t end with a goal. The older I am, the more I can recognise it, but also appreciated it. He was also lucky because he had a team full of clever footballers who were able to create something by themselves and more importantly, they were able to react to specific situations on the pitch.

The attacking routines was also a big factor in this short save thanks to Sandro Tonali delivery and Olivier Giroud key attributes for set pieces, mainly for corner kicks as he was our main player for the attack near post role.

Serie A: 38 matches: 22 corner kick goals & 9 indirect free kick goals | 1 corner kick & 1 indirect free-kick goal conceded
Coppa Italia Fanta: 5 matches: 4 corner kick goals | 0 goals conceded from set-pieces
UEFA Champions League: 13 matches: 10 corner kick goals | 3 corner kick goals conceded

I would like to include also goals scored after a short throw-in routine but these are not counted to the stats (unfortunately) within the game and I didn’t make my own notes this time.

How did the season go?

The easiest answer probably is that the season was ridiculous.

The save started with a narrow 1:0 win in the friendly over INTER 🔵⚫️. I couldn’t imagine what will happen during the season, I think I didn’t even expect the save will be as enjoyable as it was. Not because of the green circles and all the wins but because it was so good to see the players do what I wanted. Maybe that’s why I was almost unable to end this save and I thought about playing it for the whole FM22 edition.

Short story. We won all 38 Serie A matches with 113 goals scored and 15 goals conceded. I don’t know how many club and league records we created but probably all in terms of matches won or points earned. The league title win was confirmed after the 29th league round. That really was fast.

We won the Coppa Italia after beating INTER on penalties in the final. Olivier Giroud scored 6 goals in 2 cup appearances - 5 of them in the third round 5:2 win over Sampdoria.

What about the Champions League? It was the competition in which we suffered two defeats of this save. We lost to Real Madrid 1:2 in the group stage match in October. But we made it through to the final after beating Manchester City, Manchester United and Paris Saint-Germain (club names fix applied). The final match was played in Saint Petersburg. We played against Bayern München. We were 1:3 down after 40 minutes and 2:3 after the first half. We scored twice in 68’ and 70’ to make it 4:3 for us before Gnabry levelled the score in the 80th minute. Robert Lewandowski’s penalty kick in the 86th minute was denied by Mike Maignan. But Lewandowski scored from a corner kick just about 20 seconds later.

And Bayern won 5:4. As I wrote on Twitter, it was exactly that match I would like to watch as a neutral fan. But I think I smiled when the processing bar was filling up after the final whistle when the game was saving.

Feel free to let me know if it’s good or not. Or ignore it. It’s up to you. But it’s available on Steam Workshop.

Thank you Tony and Latte Quarterly for this. It was great and it helped me in some weird times.

Thanks for reading.

Follow @FMRensie

Rensie Custom skin for FM22

November 10, 2021

The Football Manager 2022 offers one default skin. That means it was easier to finish my custom skin because I didn’t have to make both dark and purple versions. The default purple colour is even lighter in FM22 and despite I have almost nothing against it, I was sure I will remove it. Or I will try to remove most of this colour.

I spent a lot of time in the settings file of this custom skin but also within many panels, widgets or graphic boxes and buttons to make it in the way I like it.

The result is available to download now. Both ‘normal’ and low-resolution versions have something in common. It’s a combination of dark and blue colours. The ‘blue 700’ shade replaced most of the bright purple colour in headlines, boxes, buttons, speeches or even in the intro box at the FM start screen when you load the game.

I was always a fan of this kind of blue colour and it was an easy choice for me to combine it together for the FM22 skin. It’s probably not a coincidence that all the clubs I played with between FM17 and FM21 have blue colour as primary or secondary. It’s a little thing but check the calendar screen for example where I added the blue colour as the main colour of the calendar cell. It’s like I went back to my childhood when I finally found what I wanted to edit. The popup calendar and the background of the today box is a great example.

I won’t share what everything is edited. I will be 100% clear to you - if I don’t count the main things like Player Overview or Club Overview, I don’t remember all the small tweaks and changes I made during last year. But I’m very glad I made or tweaked most of the things by myself and not only copied/paste them from different skin.

If I’m proud of something, it really is the Player Popup Profile including the player details in the upper part and the widgets selector in the bottom part where you can find the Form in the last 5, 10 or 20 matches of the specific player. Btw. these widgets are also in the normal player profile.

The FM21 skin included the selector within the player profile and I kept it for the FM22 as well because I like it and it works really well if you get used to it. There are many things and you can check the gallery or try the skin. You can always revert it back to the default or use someone else's work.

This skin version is the version I edited almost the whole calendar year through FM21 and the beta version of FM22 whenever I had some time. That means it’s also my own version and I would not share something that I would not use by myself.

Gallery

Q&A

What resolution is this skin created for?

I’m using the most common 1920x1080 resolution with 100% zoom. The skin works with the Full Mode and Windowed as well. If you play in Windowed mode, the screen will be a little bit lower in height logically but I tested the skin in both Full and Windowed mode to ensure widgets and panels don’t move wrongly.

Does the skin include the Instant Result button?

Yes, it’s easier to add this button than to answer all questions about why it’s not in the game.

I don’t see the stadium pictures on the club overview screen. Is it a bug?

No, it’s not a bug. You have to download the custom mini stadiums pack to make it work. I’m using THIS ONE. And you can always add your own picture and edit the config file to have 1) a different picture or 2) a picture of your new stadium.

Why there are no logos and faces as in your pictures?

The same as above, you have to download the graphic add-ons on sites like sortioutsi.net, fmscout.com, fmslovakia.com etc. The skin doesn’t contain graphic add-ons, it would be too big a file.

Why do the panels in the home screen or player overview reset?

Untick the “Automatically override custom panels” in the Preferences.

No last starting XI widget in the club overview?!?

Great spot. The widget stopped working properly on this screen, it works somewhere else respectively as Wozzie told me. But I added the club culture and facts widgets to the club overview and tweaked this screen a little bit and I liked it more in this way. The club culture and facts widget gives me more useful information than the pitch with the last starting XI.

The downloaded file is in ‘.fmf’ format. What to do with it?

Just place it to the skin folder, it works absolutely the same as the packed folder before.

Why you didn't release the beta version with 2352423 updates for two weeks?

Because I'm not a crazy madman...

I like one panel in the skin by Wozzie and two panels in the skin by FMEnhanced. Will you add everything to your skin for me?

I’m very grateful for every feedback and I will always try to repair if something in the skin doesn’t work properly. But no, I won’t update the skin just because someone likes something different. I’m not a skinning expert and I’m doing mainly basic things because I like it in this way. Skins created by Wozzie, FMEnhanced, FMwkdsoul or Wannachupbrew are more detailed and more sophisticated and they always are because these creators are the best. There is always a lot of options. And if you would like to learn something about skinning, just go to the SI Forum/Skinning Hideout, there are always people who are willing to help in the lead with Michael Murray or ‘bluestillidie00’.

UPDATE November 18, 2021:

Fixed buttons in the scouting card
Reduced the half-time match screen to two slots instead of three
Added quick tactics buttons including Formation, mentality, shouts, make a substitution, team instructions and opposition instructions
Added player faces to the player’s bar during the match and increase the size of the bar to the full width of the screen.
Added the 'back' arrow back to the match team talk bottom line to be able to return from the team talk to the mid-match summary
Team names aligned to the centre of the match score widget(s)
Edited the view in the List tab in the Scouting Centre to use the full width and added columns like contract expiry or transfer status

UPDATE December 20, 2021:

Player scout report panel fixed

Added properties.xml to allow adding more columns within custom views

Added the good old timeline to the ‘live’ match coverage.

Credits & thanks

michaeltmurrayuk for his Match Screens from FM21 as I edited small parts to adapt it. And his help within the SI Forum, not only for my issues.
Gaz / FMwkdsoul for his idea of the selector in the player overview screen as I saw it in screens from his skins on Twitter and decided to make it by myself before FM21.
Wozzie for the help with the player bottom bar and the “i” icon during the FM21, it’s still one of the best things of all.
bluestillidie00 as he is always able to help in the skinning hideout of the SI Forum.
FMTreq for his video about the skin.

How to install:

If you’re in the game just quit the game to eliminate crashes or issues with the game.
Download the skin.
Move the “FM22 Rensie Skin.fmf” file to your skins folder: Documents/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2022/skins.
Run Football Manager 2022, go to Preferences and select “FM22 Rensie Skin” on the Overview screen or in the Interface tab.

IMPORTANT: You’re not allowed to repost the skin to your own website or your forum. Thanks for understanding and respecting this.

download

Steam Workshop

If you think this work deserves some donation to my PayPal account, you are free to send some money via this link – paypal.me/fmrensie.

The money from FM20 and FM21 were used not for my own but I sent them to the food bank as I mentioned in this tweet.

Rensie Custom Low Res Skin for FM22

November 10, 2021

The Football Manager 2022 offers one default skin. That means it was easier to finish my custom skin because I didn’t have to make both dark and purple versions. The default purple colour is even brighter in FM22 and despite I have almost nothing against it, I was sure I will remove it. Or I will try to remove most of this colour.

I spent a lot of time in the settings file of this custom skin but also within many panels, widgets or graphic boxes and buttons to make it in the way I like it.

The result is available to download now. Both ‘normal’ and low-resolution versions have something in common. It’s a combination of dark and blue colours. The blue ‘700’ shade replaced most of the bright purple colour in headlines, boxes, buttons, speeches or even in the intro box at the FM start screen when you load the game.

The main point of the low-resolution skin is that I took my favourite parts of the normal FM22 skin version and I optimised most of them to a smaller size. Panels and widgets were resized and adapted. I kept, for example, the player personal details in the upper part of the player overview to keep the nation/club logos bigger than normal.

I write about the widgets’ selector within the player popup profile in the post about the ‘normal’ skin. It’s not possible to include it in the low-resolution skin because of the, yes, the resolution. But the details in the upper part are the same.

I am also happy I was able to adapt the club overview screen to the low resolution by resizing the widgets so it looks very similar. Same as a player comparison for example and more. There are many things and you can check the gallery or try the skin. You can always revert it back to the default or use someone else's work.

The skin is created for the 1366×768 resolution and 100% zoom option.

Gallery

Q&A

What resolution is this skin created for?

I’m using the most common 1366x768 resolution with 100% zoom. The skin works with the Full Mode and Windowed as well. If you play in Windowed mode, the screen will be a little bit lower in height logically but I tested the skin in both Full and Windowed mode to ensure widgets and panels don’t move wrongly.

Does the skin include the Instant Result button?

Yes, it’s easier to add this button than to answer all questions about why it’s not in the game.

I don’t see the stadium pictures on the club overview screen. Is it a bug?

Why there are no logos and faces as in your pictures?

The same as above, you have to download the graphic add-ons on sites like sortioutsi.net, fmscout.com, fmslovakia.com etc. The skin doesn’t contain graphic add-ons, it would be too big a file.

Why do the panels in the home screen or player overview reset?

Untick the “Automatically override custom panels” in the Preferences.

No last starting XI widget in the club overview?!?

The downloaded file is in ‘.fmf’ format. What to do with it?

Just place it to the skin folder, it works absolutely the same as the packed folder before.

Why you didn't release the beta version with 2352423 updates for two weeks?

Because I'm not a crazy madman...

I like one panel in the skin by Wozzie and two panels in the skin by FMEnhanced. Will you add everything to your skin for me?

UPDATE November 18, 2021:

Fixed buttons in the scouting card
Reduced the half-time match screen to two slots instead of three
Added quick tactics buttons including Formation, mentality, shouts, make a substitution, team instructions and opposition instructions
Added player faces to the player’s bar during the match and increase the size of the bar to the full width of the screen.
Added the 'back' arrow back to the match team talk bottom line to be able to return from the team talk to the mid-match summary
Team names aligned to the centre of the match score widget(s)
Edited the view in the List tab in the Scouting Centre to use the full width and added columns like contract expiry or transfer status

UPDATE December 20, 2021:

Player scout report panel fixed

Added properties.xml to allow adding more columns within custom views

Added the good old timeline to the ‘live’ match coverage.

Credits & thanks

michaeltmurrayuk for his Match Screens from FM21 as I edited small parts to adapt it. And his help within the SI Forum, not only for my issues.
Gaz / FMwkdsoul for his idea of the selector in the player overview screen as I saw it in screens from his skins on Twitter and decided to make it by myself before FM21.
Wozzie for the help with the player bottom bar and the “i” icon during the FM21, it’s still one of the best things of all.
bluestillidie00 as he is always able to help in the skinning hideout of the SI Forum.

How to install:

If you’re in the game just quit the game to eliminate crashes or issues with the game.
Download the skin.
Move the “FM22 Rensie Low Res.zip” file to your skins folder: Documents/Sports Interactive/Football Manager 2022/skins and extract it.
Run Football Manager 2022, go to Preferences and select “FM22 Rensie Low Res” on the Overview screen or in the Interface tab.

IMPORTANT: You’re not allowed to repost the skin to your own website or your forum. Thanks for understanding and respecting this.

download

If you think this work deserves some donation to my PayPal account, you are free to send some money via this link – paypal.me/fmrensie.

The money from FM20 and FM21 were used not for my own but I sent them to the food bank as I mentioned in this tweet.

What Football Manager Graphics Add-ons I use

October 27, 2021

The full version of the Football Manager 2021 will be released on Tuesday, November 9, 2021. It also means one thing – my custom FM Rensie skin for the new edition will be published. Straight after I will be able to check all the panels and widgets to see if it works well and without some issues.

I remember I had a post about the graphical additions to the game in the past. Probably during FM16 or FM17, I’m not sure right now.

The Football Manager 2022 edition will bring my 6th custom skin already. With every skin, I’m answering the same questions.

What logo pack are you using? What kits are you using? Why I don’t have the stadium pictures in the club overview? What face pack are you using? I think this page can help you. If you will check this of course.

Kits

Time from to time, I like to make my own kits, usually, just for the team I play with but the rest of the kits are the FC’12 kits.

You can find all the FC’12 kits that are made by the Allstar kitmakers team for the Football Manager 2022 official football season 2021/22 in the link below.

All the kits are absolutely perfect and they fit any skin you will use. All the credit goes to the Allstar kitmakers team in the lead with FM Slovakia. You should follow their social media channels to be up to date with new or updated packs.

FC'12 Kits download page

Face pack(s)

There will be two links. The reason is simple – I like to use both DF11 faces and Cut-Out faces. The custom skin I’ve been using for years is adapted for both versions and for both sizes. Both these packs are updated regularly. DF11 faces are updated monthly, Cut-Out pack is updated not at some exact date. But if you have an account on sortioutsi.net, you can for example see which updated pack you already downloaded (big thumbs up for this).

DF11 Faces

Cut-Out faces

Newgen Faces + newgen faces script

I’m sure many of us were at the point when we were not satisfied with how the newgen faces looked in the game when they started taking over the save. Some FM players pay for “better” newgen faces.

But you don’t have to pay for it.

I like to use the exported FIFA faces. You can use the faces manually and create your own face pack with the config file, the same as you would do with real pictures. That’s up to you. Or you can use the Newgen faces script (with ethnicity and hair colour) made by @Krysler. All instructions are in the link.

If you’ve followed my FM21 save in Sweden, you already saw these FIFA faces on the screens as I’ve used it for half of the save.

Edit in October 2023: If someone would be able to export newest FIFA faces, just let me know :-)

fifa faces

Logo pack

This is a very simple part of this page. I will be always the biggest fan of the Standard Logo Pack as this pack contains everything that you need. If you’re not a fan of some fancy logos or logos with some effects. That’s nothing for me. I like to check the sortioutsi.net page for updates to have the logo pack up to date.

Edit in October 2023: Unfortunately, this Standard logo pack has not been updated since 2022, so before FM24, I decided to download the TCM Logos Megapack.

standard logos

Mini Stadiums

The last addon I’m using regularly. I like to have the stadium panel in the club overview and I also added the stadium picture to the stadium overview screen. There is also a different pack with more pictures but I like to use the pack named FMT Stadium Superpack.

The main reason is that other packs contain pictures with a smaller resolution. Usually with a width of 400px. But the pack made by “geordie1981” includes pictures with a resolution of 800×480.

I could increase the size of the stadium widget in the club overview in the past thanks to this. And the pictures are not blurred. The best thing is that you can always make the picture on your own.

Just buy/download your favourite picture of the stadium you want and save it with the right unique ID. This ID belongs to the stadium, not to the club.

These pictures won’t work with the default skin when playing the full version of the game. You need some custom skin with the panels/widgets for the stadium overview. These pictures are also not meant to work as background pictures.

FMT Mini stadium pack

If I wrote about the fact you can make the mini-stadium picture on your own, it applies to logos too. If you find some wrong logo (club/competition/nation), just tell about that the author. He can update the pack and you will help others to have it updated.

Competition Colour Fix

Most of the competitions in the Football Manager don’t have the right colour combination due to natural things like licensing or just poor research or work within the database.

This fix is very useful if you want to have colours of the English Premier League with the right colours exactly as you like to use the real name fix.

Competition Colour fix

All sites with the add-ons I shared above offer all the important instructions on how to install everything and where to place it.

But the most typical things you have to do are:

Place the extracted add-ons in the following directory of your computer system:
- WINDOWS: Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2022\graphics
- MAC: Users\Username\Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2022\graphics
Run Football Manager 2022 and go to: Preferences > Advanced > Interface
Make sure that you tick the check box on the page called “Reload skin when confirming changes in Preferences” and un-tick the box saying “Use caching to decrease page loading times”. Hit Confirm.

PS: If you want to have default national flags in club/nation/players screens, just delete the national flags folder from the Standard Logos pack (or a different pack) and reload or restart the game.

You can use these add-ons already during the beta version of FM22.

And thanks to everyone for their contribution to these add-ons!

FM21 | Ten years with GAIS in Sweden

October 8, 2021

Ten years. Ten seasons. Is it a lot or a little? Firstly, it’s the same number of seasons as in FM20 I played with Celaya in Mexico. Secondly, the last tenth season was already the longest of all (mentally) because everything I wanted was to end the save. That means ten seasons is enough. Third, if I consider there were more than thirty days of intensive work during the EURO final tournament in real life and my second son was born at the beginning of May, playing ten seasons in a combination with writing and trying to keep the enjoyment from playing/writing, is something like a miracle in my eyes.

The club development

One of the most visible improvements of the club were facilities 100%. I edited the stadium before the save started and I created my own with a capacity of 8,000 with both stands behind the goals for standing. The stadium was improved during the save and the capacity increased to its maximum - 12,000. The matches in the Champions League or Europa League were unable to play with the maximum capacity as the stands without seats are not allowed for the European competitions. But it didn’t matter, we just had a lot of matches with 10K.

The interesting was that the home matches against IFK Göteborg (our biggest local rival) were played at the Gamla Ulevi stadium because of the big interest from fans of both teams.

The training facilities were improved during the save to the State of the art and youth facilities to Superb, just one step before the top level too. The estimated value of the squad went from €360k to #871M.

Probably as usual in your saves (*longer saves than two-three seasons), the coaching and recruitment team was improved a lot. We started with two coaches and one scout in 2020 and I was unable to hire someone. Or maybe better said, it was hard to convince someone with a real quality to sign for us. But the save ends when the club has 15 coaches and 8 scouts + HoYD/DoF etc.

The promotion from the Superretan was the most important for the club and for the save too. We moved to the top tier in 2021 (in our second season) and we won 7 league titles from our 8 seasons in the top tier. It was very straightforward after that first season and when I settled down with all players, the system and everything around, it was competitive domestically despite not using only the best Swedish or Scandinavian players.

Two Europa League trophies are an unexpected bonus.

The unofficial Bayern affiliate

If you were a regular reader, you will remember what big European club was very active in terms of buying our young players. It was Bayern with Zinedine Zidane as their manager. The game informed me about the fact Zidane was at our every second or third match as he is interested in some of our players. It wasn’t a thing from the beginning of the save logically.

Our outgoing transfers during the first part of the save were mainly locally-based and mainly loans. Or transfers for small fees. The first wave of big transfers happened in 2025 when we sold players for €9.5M (mainly to China) including the first one to Bayern. It was Gabriel Rehnberg for €2M. It was over €30M next year and €37 in 2027.

But back to Bayern. Rehnberg was followed by Valdemar Harder for €2.5M in 2027. One transfer per year would be probably a normal thing. But they came for the other six players just during the 2028 calendar year. And they bought two more players in 2029, in the last season of the save.

That means Bayern signed 10 players from GAIS between 2025 to 2029 for a total fee of €19,3M. I’m not sure what was the strategy by Bayern, or their transfer policy, but any of these ten players made at least one appearance for the first team. They all played for the Bayern II team in the third Bundesliga. But they all wanted to go here…

My Mohicans

“No way he’d be signing a non-newgen at this stage of a save!”

— From Eleve, One

I know many people don’t like to play a single save for too long because of newgens take over the game. Ted_Redwood really is not one of them and the quote above from the recent FEO’s blog post is a great example. TedRedwood belongs to the group of people who like to sign a lot of newgens. A LOT.

And what about me? The FM20 and FM21 saves were both similar in terms of the squad core as I had real players for the whole or most of the time of the save. I’m probably too big romantic or something similar but I like “one-club men”.

That’s probably the main reason why I like to keep some players in the squad for the whole time of the save. Or until they retire. Or until they really struggle to stay in the club, mostly due to no motivation to continue in the club but this reason is not too often now as my saves are not too long as before.

I have 11 real players at the end of the save in the squad of 25 players. Five of them are 30+ including 36 years old keeper Andreas Linde or 33 years old striker Flamarion. All these players had some part in the FM21 story and my save. Defender Felix Beijmo has probably the smallest one as he is the shortest time in the club of all but that’s not important.

I will start with the keeper Andreas Linde, the eldest player in the squad. I signed him in 2025 for €575k from Molde where he was almost 11 years. His 64 clean sheets in 171 appearances are good.

I like having Icelandic central defender Axel Óskar Andrésson in the squad for five seasons too, same as Tom Strannegard for six years as he was able to play as LWB, CM or DLF(S). Maybe that was his biggest weakness - the versatility - as he didn’t have a stable position.

It’s obvious that my standout real players were Anton Snibb, Victor Blixt, Matt O’Riley, Nuha Jatta and Oscar Aga. Sorted by the positions, not by the popularity despite I wrote a separate post about striker Oscar Aga who became my favourite player (probably).

The best thing about these five players is also the fact that I paid almost nothing for them. Snibb & Jatta were already in the club, Blixt was bought for free, Aga for €17.25K and Matt O’Riley was signed for a free twice during the save while we got €1.8M for him after two seasons as Burnley bought him before they released him after four seasons.

Anton Snibb in 2029

Anton Snibb - Career Stats

Victor Blixt in 2029

Victor Blixt - Career Stats

Matt O'Riley in 2029

Matt O'Riley - Career Stats

Nuha Jatta in 2029

Nuha Jatta - Career Stats

Oscar Aga in 2029

Oscar Aga - Career Stats

Each of these five players will somehow stay in my memory when I will talk about the Football Manager 2021 in the future.

⚽️ Oscar Aga because of his goals and clinical finishing.

🦸🏻‍♂️ Nuha Jatta mainly because he never wanted to leave the club even when Chinese money was flying around Göteborg and he became the true one-club man.

🔎 Matt O’Riley was that kind of player I didn’t think about before the save but he became that player I wanted to sign when I thought about the combination of Sweden and English players, despite the fact he decided to take Norwegian nationality during the save.

🌟 And Victor Blixt was that wonderkid I found randomly in the Swedish third tier and he moved to Helsingborgs in August 2021 in real life and he already made his Superretan (Swedish 2nd tier) debut already. (Helsingborgs still had the chance to win the promotion to the top tier when I wrote this post with 7 games to go.)

Hearts in the chat for all of them ♥️

3-5-2

The 3-5-2 formation was the only one I used during this save and during the ten seasons/years with GAIS. There was only a short spell when I moved from the version with the wing-backs to a flat midfield with 5 players. It was because we had all full-backs (natural and retrained) injured for a couple of weeks or months and I didn’t have any other option. I didn’t even have enough youngsters in our reserve team or U19 team to promote them to the first team.

I experimented with the central defender with stopper and cover duties against different opponents - mainly when they played with one, two or more strikers to stop their attacks. I enjoyed searching central defenders to make them our set-piece threats via my set-piece search filters. I enjoyed swapping Cross From Deep instruction between the left and the right WB players depending on the opponent’s formation and if they played Mezzala or not.

I liked using two Advanced Forwards during one season before I realised I will always rather used the Deep Lying Forward because it’s easy to just turn around the slow defender and pass the ball to Oscar Aga…

But when you look at the pictures of the formation in the slideshow below, the main basics of the formation always remained the same. The last season of the save was played almost instructionless as I felt it worked the best with just a couple of simple tweaks.

I’m not sure what will bring the new edition of the game and how it will work but the less is more rule will always be the best for me.

*The pictures with formations go from 2020 as the first one to 2029 as the last one.

Stats

Nine years and 215 days. That’s how long this save lasted since I hit the create the new game. I already mentioned the promotion from the second to the top tier. In the end, the league titles or cup wins are the most important. We won 8 league titles and 10 cup competitions.

The Svenska Cupen was our 7th time in a row between 2022/2023 to 2028/2029. And we were also runner-up in 2021/2022. I think it’s clear to say that my obsession with winning the domestic cups is still alive.

We scored 917 goals in 461 matches during this save and conceded 373 goals.

Overall stats: 65% win percentage

Aims of the save

I had a couple of aims of the save and I mentioned in the opening post a months ago when I started the save. It was nothing complicated and most of them are based on what most of the people do no matter if they write about their saves or not. I just like to review how these aims went for me in the last months. It’s some kind of therapy and some kind of self-report if I enjoyed the save or not.

Develop & sell within Sweden or to other European countries ✔️
- The manager records screen tells me that I sold 62 players for €110M during this save. I won’t count all of them how many of them went to other Swedish clubs and how many went abroad. But I would say it was around 60% Swedish (or Scandinavia) and 40% abroad.
Create the scouting network around Scandinavia nations ✔️
- I signed 93 players during this save (for €37,5M). A lot of them were young prospects who I wanted to develop and sell. I experimented with worse players in terms of their attributes but with a positive personality, or vice versa. Some of them were released, some of them sold for small fees and many young Danish newgens I bought during the save went abroad for big fees. It’s also important to mention that I tried to sign most of the young players for the lowest possible fee.
Be tight financially as always ✔️
- We had -€663,048 bank balance in December 2020 when the first testing season of the save ended. We had just €23K per month available in the wage budget and we had no money in the transfer budget. It’s funny that despite we ended the first season in red numbers, we still had almost €100K profit that season.
- How the bank balance looks in December 2029 when the save ended? €133M with a €17,7M profit at the end of the 2029 calendar year. The transfer budget is over €67M while 2029 was the fourth consecutive year when Spend the original transfer budget aim in the club vision was rated by Very Disappointed.
- If something can prove my financial strictness and boredom in one it’s the final state of the wage budget and how much we spent at the end of the save. The wage budget was €4,693,588 per month. At the end of the last season, we were spending €490k per month. That means there was still around €4.2M per month available. If only I would be able to buy some car or house within the game for all that money…

Develop solid 3-5-2 formation ✔️
- I wrote about it more above in this post and I’m sure that if you consider all the results and goals we scored/conceded and trophies we won, we can say it was a successful try.

And that’s it for FM21 and about the save with Göteborgs Atlet- och Idrottssällskap aka GAIS. It was a nice save. The Football Manager 2021 had a lot of PROS & CONS.

I will rather not talk bout everything. Some previous versions were more enjoyable in my eyes, something was better in FM21 in comparison with past. I hope some things I like, and they didn’t work in FM21 properly, will be fixed and I will enjoy the new edition even more. Hopefully.

Thanks for reading and take care.

Follow @FMRensie

Oscar Aga - my FM21 phenomenon

September 21, 2021

If you change three letters in the word God, you will get Aga. Oscar Aga. My FM21 phenomenon and God in one. There are too many Norwegian players/wonderkids/talented players in real life and in the game too. The FM21 save with Valerenga and Norway national team by FM “underscore” Samo is absolutely the best example.

Tjaland, Ødegaard, Berge, Strand Larsen, Hauge, Normann-Williamsen, Haaland... I don’t think I have to name them all. But I had any of these great players in my FM21 save despite I spent it in Sweden and I had a lot of opportunities to sign a couple of them.

Instead of that, I spent nine from my ten seasons with GAIS by watching Oscar Aga.

Chris had him not only within his Valerenga side in FM21 but also with Vitória in FM19. In FM21, Aga spent some time on loan and I think he didn’t make it through to Samo’s regular team. It only shows how every save can be different.

I’m sure that if I would sign, for example, Tjaland (that guy who almost everyone had or wanted to have), he would be successful within Sweden. I’m sure other Norwegian players would be great within Allsvenskan too. But Aga? I’m not sure he would be good enough for someone else as he didn’t make it for Samo’s Valerenga and I didn’t see him across FM21 saves.

The wrong role at the beginning

I used a couple of 3-5-2 variations during this save. But one thing remained always the same. The biggest issue was to find the right player for the PF(S) role. Oscar Aga was one searched/scouted/analysed and considered players during the first season of the save.

I'm not biased only about the key/preferable attributes so I always do some exception(s). I used the PF(S) role mainly during the first five seasons. I tried to switch the role duty to attack, I tried using two Advanced Forwards together, I tried Regista. But it ended with DLF(S), as always while playing the 3-5-2.

But back to the main point. I signed Aga because I thought he will be a good pressing forward in comparison with 1) what I already have in the squad and 2) what I was able to afford within the transfer market.

Some of his key attributes for the PF(S) role like Anticipation or Bravery was 14/15 already so I was 100% sure he will be able to improve other attributes like Passing or some physical attributes.

Oscar Aga in December 2020 before joining GIAS from Grorud with selected attributes for PF(S) role.

The best invested €17.25K

I signed him from Grorud IL. He was wanted by several Norwegian clubs at the end of 2020 but he signed for us and he became the best-paid player of the squad before Wayne Rooney signed later in the 2021 season.

He started great and scored several goals during the pre-season and the Svenska Cupen group stage. But the more the season continued, the more it was clear that the PF(S) role won't be the right one. Or better said, he would surely not become a legend of the club.

He made 12(11) appearances in Superettan 2021 when won the promotion to the top tier. He scored 8 goals and made 2 assists. Both these numbers were not good enough in my eyes. I expected much more.

Advanced Forward - that's it!

The decision was made during the pre-season 2022 when I signed a winger Vladimir Rodic and I decided to play him as our main PF(S) because his Aggression, Bravery and other mental attributes were good enough for it. And that was the reason when I moved Oscar Aga to the Advanced Forward role.

Oscar scored 16 goals in 11(1) appearances during the pre-season. Five goals in 6 cup games and he scored 23 league goals in 30 matches. And we won the league title in our first season in the top tier.

He showed me that I should not play him in some complicated role. That was the main reason why I ruled him out of all other roles until the end of the save.

Oscar Aga in December 2022 after his first season in the Swedish top tier with the selected attributes for AF.

Likes To Try To Beat Offside Trap

Oscar already has the trait likes to try to beat offside trap when he arrived at GAIS. It was great to follow how it worked together mainly with the Deep Lying Playmaker but also with the CM(S) player who usually has the take more risks instruction or tries killer balls often trait. It led to simple passes through the centre or to the long passes from our half and Oscar started his run at the right time.

There were very nice assists from the right side of the pitch where Victor Blixt beat his opponent and made a simple pass behind the opponent's defensive line and Oscar Aga was faster and in the right position to beat the possible offside trap. It happened also quite often after a short throw-in at our half.

Likes to lob keeper

He learned also the knocks ball past opponent and likes to lob keeper traits during the save. The first one was very useful mainly against the worse opponents and also during the counters - mainly after corners.

The likes to lob keeper trait turned in some deviation during the second part of the save. Almost every second/third goal he scored was after a lob when he was alone ahead of the goalkeeper. He was able to do it almost every time.

Both traits together.

SEASON 2024 - THE BEST ONE

Oscar was very close to scoring 50 goals during one season but he missed two goals and he scored "only" 48 goals in 47(4) appearances. It was during the 2024 calendar year when he scored 25 league goals but he also added 19 goals in 20 games in the Europa Conference League and Europa League.

It almost felt like I'm using some exploit because I was sure he will score in every match.

The season 2025 was almost the same but he scored "only" 44 goals in 46 matches including 9 goals in the Europa League.

SEASON 2028 - THE WORST ONE

When I say the worst one, you should not expect some disaster, but when he scored over 20 goals only in the league four seasons in a row, you expect he will continue. But the season 2028 was influenced by some factors that resulted in only 15 league goals by Aga.

I think he was fatigued because we made it to the Europa League final again and he didn't play too much in the league during the autumn part of the season when I wanted to earn some points in the Champions League. There were also two months during which he didn't score in the league.

He still ended the season with 24 goals and he was our best goalscorer. The last season, 2029, was a top one again. We were knocked out of the Europa League in the 2nd knockout round already by Tottenham and he was enough time to concentrate on the domestic league.

The result? 28 league goals in 29 appearances and 8 goals in 6 Champions League appearances in autumn = 35 matches and 36 goals in the last season.

Oscar Aga - FM21 goals

THE BEST CLUB GOALSCORER

As the save progressed and Aga was the goalscoring machine, I decided to play at least until he will beat the club record in terms of goals scored in the league. The record-holder was Karl-Alfred Jacobson, the only club legend at the beginning of the save. He scored 145 goals for GAIS in the league.

Oscar Aga scored his 145th league goal for the club in the last match of the 2027 season against Hammarby. It means we had to play more despite I didn't have too much time to continue and I had to create reasons why to continue. If Aga wouldn't be here, I would not play until 2029.

It happened straight at the beginning of the next season when he scored against GIF Sundsvall in the opening Allsvenskan round. It was his 146th league goal and he became the club best goalscorer.

As I said already, he scored 28 goals in Allsvenskan in the 2029 season. That means he scored 188 goals in 236 league appearances within 9 seasons.

CAPSLOCK(ED)

There is probably some new favourite thing within FM by the AI. When you have some very good player, he is ignored by his national team. Oscar Aga made one appearance for the Norwegian U21 team and scored one goal. He played against Slovenia U21 in September 2022 when he made it to the pitch in the 83rd minute and scored in the 90th minute.

And that's it in terms of his national team involvement within this save. He never was called up to the senior national team.

When I check the Norwegian national team at the end of 2029, there are players like Erling Haaland (Manchester City), Noah Jean Holm (Al-Gharafa) or Emil Ceide (Fulham) who are around the same or similar age as Aga. And yes, some young newgens with all these green attributes (check THIS ONE).

Norwegian best

I would say this is connected to the previous point about not being selected for the national team. There is a Norwegian Players’ Dream Team of the Year award. I checked it backwards through the whole save and Oscar aga is in this team in every season between 2023 to 2029, both included.

He is here together with Haaland, Ronningen Jorgensen, Odegaard, Kristoffer Ajer and more. And he had the most goals scored from all players in this team in all seasons.

Conclusion

I think I can say that I found another player thanks to the Football Manager that I will try to follow in real life because it was really great save also thanks to this unknown player.

It’s not too common that I would follow someone on social media just because of Football Manager. It’s usually about the moment when I check how he is doing in real life (Matt O’Riley for example from this save) and that’s it. Maybe I will take a look in the next edition. Probably only Danny Loader was the main exception and most of you who read my blogs will remember him and you also like to mention him quite often. But Oscar Aga probably has a very interesting future ahead of him.

I followed him on Instagram and watched some goals he scored with his former club already. It’s not so long when I see a tweet where someone was surprised he is still with Grorud IF. Two weeks later he signed for IF Elfsborg for €500k (via Transfermarkt) so he will play in the Allsvenskan from 2022. He also made his Norwegian U20 national team debut and he scored against Germany during a 1:1 draw.

Good bye, Oscar!

Follow @FMRensie

FM21 & GAIS | The final season

September 17, 2021

My FM21 save with GAIS came to the end. The calendar year 2029 brought the domestic league dominance again as we didn’t progress in the Europa League to the late stage as in previous seasons. That means all key players were available to play in the league and we were much stronger in comparison with the previous years when we used the younger side for the domestic competitions.

Transfers 2029

If I’m boring in terms of incoming transfers, it was even more boring before the last season. I wanted to play with my current squad and I wanted to give a chance to some young players rather than signing new players as I knew it’s my last season of the save.

The example of Kristofer Armenteros’ development is one of the best ones.

I signed only one player - Axel Jonasson from AIK for €2.5M. I wanted to sign him already last season when AIK was relegated but they wanted too much money. But I needed a new wing-back for the right side as Victor Blixt was injured again and I need a cover. It didn’t go well, he played only 10 matches for us and he became frustrated not playing in the starting XI. That means I sold him to AS Roma in the summer for the same amount we bought him.

Other outgoing transfers were mostly loans. But there is always Bayern München and their strategy to buy our best young players and place them to their reserve squad. That means our key central defender Ludwig Lindén and central midfielder prospect Mattias Nilsson joined München’s giant because they were immediately decided they want to join them. Nilsson didn’t make a single Allsvenskan appearance in the starting XI. Only seven appearances as a sub and once in the domestic cup in the starting XI. Never mind, it opened doors for other players.

Experienced striker Astrit Selmani joined our Norwegian affiliate Sogndal as he was useless in every match I let him play. He scored one league goal in 19 appearances for us. He scored once in 9 league matches for Sogndal before the season ended. It wasn’t a coincidence probably. A huge disappointment.

Transfers within the 2029 calendar year.

Svenska Cupen 2029

Same as in the previous seasons within this save I divided the first team to two squads. The main one for the Europa League, the younger for domestic cup. How they did? It went very well and we won the group stage with 7 points after a win, draw and win.

Flamarion sent us through to the semi final with the only goal against Malmö and we beat IK Sirius after penalties in the semi final. The final was played almost at the end of May and that meant most of key players were available. I mixed the starting XI and Oscar Aga scored the winning goal against Hammarby seven minutes before the end of the match.

It was our seventh Svenska Cupen win in a row in our eighth final appearance in a row.

Europa League

We won the Europa League in 2026/2027 & 2027/2028 after we beat Fiorentina and Valencia respectively. It really was not my aim or goal to be so successful in this European competition but it was tempting to win it for the third time in a row. The same as Sevilla FC did between 2014 and 2016 when they beat Benfica, Dnipro and Liverpool.

But we were unable to imitate their success. We got Rangers in the 1st knockout round, we won 2:1 at home and drew 3:3 in Glasgow so we were through to the 2nd round.

We got Tottenham with, still with Harry Kane who retired in summer 2029 at the age of 35. We scored straight after the 2nd half kick-off but they scored twice within five minutes thanks to some Czech newgen who is something between Croatian Spiderman and Serbian Superman and we were able only equalised.

The second leg in London started great as we took the lead through Oscar Aga after three minutes, they equalised but Tom Strannegard gave us the lead back. It lasted until the 81st minute when Ugur Kilic equalised and Franco Tongya scored the winning goal in the extra time second half. And we were knocked out.

Allsvenskan 2029

Each negative has some positive. The last Allsvenskan campaign of this save is the right example. As I already said, thanks/due to the early end in the Europa League, we have the complete squad available for the domestic league and I didn’t have to rest Aga, O’Riley, Snibb and more for the matches in the Europa League.

The league started on the first April day and we won the local derby against BK Häcken 2:0 thanks to a brace by Oscar Aga. “Oh, yes, the last season will be great for Oscar,” I said to myself. And as always, Oscar didn’t score in the next two matches.

#MythMike 🔮

The first three months were filled only by green circles 🟢 and we were comfortably top of the league. The difference between playing with the youngsters + backup players in comparison with the best possible squad was really big.

And I enjoyed it because the winning feeling is so nice. We lost first points in July after draws with Hammarby and Djurgardens. But we were still unbeaten. The league title was secured six matches before the end of the campaign and it looked like we will be able to finish unbeaten. But we lost 1:2 to Malmö in the penultimate round before we beat Djurgardens 4:2 at home while Oscar Aga scored his last two goals of this save 🎯.

It was our third season within this save we lost only once in the league. We managed the same also in 2024 and 2026. One thing took my eye at the end of the season when I was looking through the stats and I found that my wing-backs Anton Snibb and Victor Blixt were both most fouled players from all in the league with 77 and 67 fouls. (But should I trust the stats in FM21?)

This season was the best one in terms of the winning matches - 26 wins is the new league record. Same as 81 points in a season. We also scored 70 goals. That’s not a new league record but it’s most goals we scored within this save in a season.

We still hold the record of matches lost in a row as GAIS lost 18 matches between 19th May 1959 and 4th October 1959. But we won’t beat it, at least not in this save…

Champions League 2029 & others

It was our last Champions League group stage within the save and we got Anderlecht, Hertha and Manchester City. We earned only one point for a home 3:3 draw with Anderlecht as we lost both away matches against Hertha and City.

But we drew with the English side at home, we beat Anderlecht away 5:1 including two goals by young Kristofer Armenteros from a free-kick and corner kick. And we also beat Hertha 3:1 at home thanks to the hat-trick by Oscar Aga who scored 8 goals in his 6 Champions League appearances in this group.

If I mentioned the development of Kristofer Armenteros in the previous post, I thought I would mention also this another newgen. It’s striker Christer Börjesson. It was his first season with the first team and he was also the reason why I had no problem offloading experienced Slimani. Börjesson scored 30 goals for U19 and Reserve squad combined and I decided to use him as a cover for DLF(S) role.

He turned 18 years old in November 2029. His two goals in the Champions League group stage is perfect and his performance was very well whenever he got his chance to play. He is also part of the Swedish U21 team already. If the save would continue, he would be my first choice for sure.

His development within two years speaks for itself and his progress within physical attributes is massive. The training was focused mainly on Strenght but his technical and mental attributes improved too. And it would be even better in the future. We can only dream…

As always, thanks for reading. Two more posts are planned to end this FM21 save.

Follow @FMRensie

One last FM21 player development project

September 14, 2021

It’s not the same as in the past when I had enough time to play the save for 15, 20 or even more in-game years. But it doesn’t mean I resigned on the player development. I only have to slightly tweak and change the approach to be able to see some progress faster than in 4-5 years.

I had/have some very good newgens within the FM21 save in Sweden but probably none of them “forced” me to write about them. Until Kristofer Armenteros appeared in the 2028 Youth Intake.

He was labelled as the attacking midfielder as an advanced playmaker with very good attributes of passing or technique, but also teamwork. I remember I shared him in my FMSlack channel and several suggestions where to play him were mentioned. I’m somehow and sometimes a little bit weird and one thing can be enough to go against the flow.

I decided he will be developed as the Central Defender. Mainly because of his Aggression, Bravery and height. And also because of the simple thing that he is able to with both left and right foot. As the game suggests he left foot is fairly strong and his right foot is very strong.

This is Kristofer Armenteros at the beginning of December 2028, just three months after the Youth Intake in September.

He stayed in the U19s team and I set his training to the Central Defender role.

The additional training focus for the first months was set to Strength and the training intensity to Double.

Low natural fitness is probably the biggest weakness.

The forced move to the senior squad

I’m not sure how is it affected by age but I always try to give young players the most possible playing time no matter their age. Someone says the playing time only matters when the player became 18 years old. But it’s my save(s) so I don’t care if this is rule, fact or something different. I’m sure I mentioned it several times in the past, maybe the development of my players would be even better if I would follow some guides, I don’t know.

The issue with Armenteros during his first months in the youth team was that my U19s manager always put him in the central midfielder role. Even if I adjusted the tactic before the U19s team match manually, he changed it during the match. Obedience = 0!

It meant a couple of things. Firstly, the position/role/duty training always changed from the central defender role to AM(C) playing position. Despite we are not playing with the AM(C).

And why not? If the Football Manager is famous for something (recently), it has to be the option to reset everything without telling you.

Secondly, if he would play in the central midfield, his possible development in the central defender role would decrease. That led me to the decision to move him to the senior squad for the last season of 2029 season.

I arranged friendlies for our Reserve squad (not playing in some competition) for the whole spring of 2029 and I managed them to ensure Armenteros will be played in the central defender role (same as some more young players in the particular positions/roles). It gave him 15 appearances and he also made his U19s national team debut scoring once.

Gym Pass holder

As I already mentioned, the additional focus after Arementeros signed the youth contract with the club was set to strength. Even the coach reports told me “Lack of strength and fitness means he should be in the gym working on his overall athleticism.” To be honest, he would be set to strength no matter what position/role/duty I would decide to train him.

The first months were like Gym - Rehab - Gym - Rehab - Match - Rehab. And repeat. But I would say it was worth it when I check the development/progress screen. You can see his development between October 2028 and October 2029.

His physical attributes improved a lot. Stamina by 3, Strength, Acceleration, Agility, Balance and Pace by 2 and Jumping Reach with Natural Fitness by 1. Don’t forget he is still only 17 years old. And I’m sure this positive trend would continue.

Physical attributes development within one calendar year

More additional focus, playing time and training addiction

Armenteros spent the whole spring of 2029 in the senior squad while playing for reserves. He was with the U19s national team when we played the Svenska Cupen so he missed this competition, unfortunately.

I decided it’s time to give him a proper chance in the first team in the middle of May 2029. We played Elfsborg at home and we won 3:1. He missed just two matches since this moment in terms of not being selected for the match.

He played also again bigger clubs in the Champions League group stage (Anderlecht, Hertha and Manchester City).

I also decided that his physical attributes are good enough already considering his age, he was already accomplished in the central defender role so I decided it’s time to concentrate on different additional focus. The main aim was really simple - just concentrate on attributes he needs for the Central Defender role. My aim was to improve these attributes at least by 1 at the end of the 2029 season because the improvement by 1 is always better than nothing.

That’s why I rotated between Aerial (Heading, Bravery), Final Third (Composure, Decisions), Attacking Movement (Off The Ball, Anticipation, Decisions) and Defensive Positioning (Marking, Positioning, Decisions) additional focuses.

Development between 10/2028 and 12/2029.

As you can see, the key/preferable attributes for the CD(D) role are highlighted, some went by one, some went up by two.

Since he was promoted to the senior squad and I started following his progress almost day by day including continuous praising for the training performances, his training rating never was below 9.8.

He made his U21s national team debut during the international break in October 2021. He scored twice against San Marino while playing as AP(S) in AM(C) position. I’m probably doing something wrong… 😆

He made 18(1) appearances in Allsvenskan with an average rating of 6.98. He also made 5 appearances in the Champions League group stage.

He also scored his first competitive goals for the first team as he scored once in the Allsvenskan in November against IFK Värnamo. And also in the Champions League as he scored twice away against Anderlecht when we won 5:1.

This save ends after the 2029 calendar year/season so I won’t see his further development because I really don’t want to spend time simulating the save.

I’m happy with how his development within 14 in-game months went. I made him a proper part of the starting XI and his attributes improved rapidly while combining several additional focuses.

He was lucky he had only two injuries during these 14 months and both last about 10 days together.

It’s not something groundbreaking. It’s something that I do with many young players. Some of them develop better, some worse. Is Armenteros central defender star? No! Will he be a central defender star? Yes! If the save would continue and he would continue his development in the same way, I’m sure the key/preferable attributes for the central defender role would be improved at least by 2 points at the end of another season.

And Bayern would come for sure…

Follow @FMRensie

FM21 | Indirect Free Kick with the Far Post delivery

August 25, 2021

My version of the Indirect Free Kick routine with the Far Post delivery withing Football Manager 2021 including the experienced king of assists.

🤝 WB(D)

Stay Wider instruction ❌ and Why not Mezzala?

Spring 2022

The initial comparison

End of 2022/2023 season comparison and a new contract

Close to a historical record

Can he improve it?

BONUS POLL

The biggest issue of the long throw-in routine

My key attributes & the searching filter

The combination of box-to-box and free role

My own options

Forward? Why not

Half Back & CM(A) combination

When one swap changes everything…

The set-up

There are some things I would like to sort or try in the future of the save:

Twin towns - Sister cities idea

Notes from the save

My dream team

Wide roaming ball-winning box-to-box midfielder

Pavel Nedved = impossible to replicate

Sandro Tonali

Jan Koller & Milan Baros vs. Olivier Giroud & Rafael Leão

Set Pieces

How did the season go?

Gallery

Q&A

UPDATE November 18, 2021:

UPDATE December 20, 2021:

Credits & thanks

How to install:

IMPORTANT: You’re not allowed to repost the skin to your own website or your forum. Thanks for understanding and respecting this.

The skin is created for the 1366×768 resolution and 100% zoom option.

Gallery

Q&A

UPDATE November 18, 2021:

UPDATE December 20, 2021:

Credits & thanks

How to install:

IMPORTANT: You’re not allowed to repost the skin to your own website or your forum. Thanks for understanding and respecting this.

Overall stats: 65% win percentage

Likes To Try To Beat Offside Trap

Likes to lob keeper

Oscar Aga - FM21 goals