How does this keyboard work again?

I had zero plans to write about FM23. For the first time since I started writing about FM way back in 2014, I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d barely touched FM22 since March, it’s the least played of all the FM games I’ve had activated on Steam, and with FM23 not actually looking like much of an upgrade to me I wasn’t sure I’d dive in.

Then something hits you. It’s always a Tweet, or a YouTube video, or a bit of analysis on the TV. Mine was an article.

I’d been well acquainted with FC Nordsjælland’s story since Tom Vernon took over the club in 2015 and integrated it as the star in his Right to Dream system, but sometimes you want that thing, that one piece, that just summarises everything for you and backs up everything you already know about it all. Daniel Storey’s brilliant piece for the i did that for me. Fast forward a few weeks to the FM23 Beta being released and here we are.

The Club

Hopefully you’ve read Daniel’s piece I linked but if you haven’t one of the main things to takeaway is that FC Nordsjælland has one of the youngest documented average ages of their first team squad in world football. This is youth development to the next level, it’s not just one or two young players mixed in with an experienced squad. It’s an entire squad of talented youngsters, putting trust in them with minutes on the pitch and an expectation to perform.

I’ll of course be continuing this tradition on Football Manager, and the board and fans are expecting me to. 15 of my current 26-man first team squad are homegrown from the club and there’s a culture of signing players under the age of 23 for the first team, music to my ears. The average age of the first team squad right now is just 21.3.

The other thing to note is how multi-cultural the club is. Of that first team squad of 26, there’s 14 different nationalities. 9 of the 26 are from Africa, a key continent for FC Nordsjælland’s recruitment. That link with the Right to Dream Academy will continue to prosper and players will have opportunities to grow and develop.

The club does things in a way that it believes to be the right way. A key example being they were the first club to sign up to Juan Mata’s Common Goal, pledging 1% of their salaries towards the charitable movement.

The Story So Far…

The League

This isn’t actually an introductory blog post in the traditional sense. I’m already one season into the save which is unheard of at the speed I usually play the game. Season one was definitely helped by the club’s 9th place finish in the 2021/22 Danish Superliga, meaning I only had domestic football to deal with across my first season in charge.

I’ve already strongly alluded to it so far, but this squad is packed with talent. Some of it is raw, which is probably why they finished 9th the season prior, but harnessing that ability was key to what I was able to achieve across the 2022/23 season. It went better than expected.

For a moment it looked as though I’d be completing an unbeaten season before the full game had even been released. We went the entirety of the Preliminary Phase of the Superliga unbeaten (the league splits in two after 22 matches), but suffered defeats on matchday 26 against OB (0-1) and matchday 30 against Viborg (2-3). Two matches we definitely should be winning going forward, but to go the league season with a record of three wins and five draws in eight matches against FC Midtjylland and FC København is something I’m delighted with. The title race went down to the final day but an emphatic 6-0 trouncing of OB secured the title by quite a margin on goal difference.

The cup run was pretty comprehensive in the end, culminating in a tight affair against FC Midtjylland in the final that was settled by an Andreas Schjelderup penalty. Talking of Schjelderup…

The Players

He is, quite frankly, a ridiculous footballer on FM23.

Hardcore FMSamo fans will remember I signed him on FM21 in my Vålerenga save (he was nowhere near this good) and on last year’s game for Saints as well (he was getting there…) so what I’m saying is I discovered him.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that he plays for Manchester United. The trouble with having one of the foremost wonderkids on the game at your tiny club in Denmark is he won’t be around for long. He scored 19 times and laid on 13 assists last season and I had to squeeze United for every last penny of the bargain £8m they paid me for him. We managed to get him on loan again for the 23/24 season to get one more season of hopeful magic out of him.

If you aren’t playing as FC Nordsjælland then you should definitely raid them. Adamo Nagalo is a wonderkid CB who again I’ve already lost but managed to get back for one final season.

Chelsea paid £8.5m for him and we’ll get 20% of whatever his next fee will be. Yet another wonderkid moves on. I’m sure they won’t be the last that the club will sell for decent money, though in the future the club’s, and Denmark’s, reputation will have hopefully increased enough to get the fees I believe we deserve for players that talented. There’s a pipeline of promising players that I’m sure I’ll be talking about at some point in the future.

The Tactic

I’m hearing Gegenpressing is dead? I don’t think it is.

There are a couple of positive changes to the game I’m finding though around tactics and in-game play. The first one is that I’m having to adapt and change during a match much more than I ever have before. I’ll switch up the roles and instructions if I need something else from my side. I’ll move the playmaker forward to the central two, the deep midfielder will become more of a destroyer, one of the wide men will become an out and out winger, the forward will push up much more and sit on the last man. The main changes to instructions usually centre around the in possession ones. I’ll try and have us keep the ball much more and not rush things, rather than encouraging the players to rush on and get the ball forward quickly into space.

The other change is that my young team get absolutely knackered with our all out gung-ho style of play. That means that rotation, rest and five subs during a match are all absolutely key in keeping things ticking over. It’s a great challenge, and a realistic one at that. I’m not looking forward to having European football to contend with as well alongside the domestic season.

Looking Ahead

They’ll be Champions League nights at the Right to Dream Park next season and FC Nordsjælland have a target on their back. The title race might have been a close run affair in the end but I think we were by far the best team in the league over the course of the season. Can my young guns replicate that for another season?

So that’s that for now. Cheers for reading. You won’t find any promises of any scheduled regular releases of writing here from me this year. It’ll be as ad hoc as ad hoc gets and I’m probably more likely to be Tweeting or updating things on FMSlack, so if you don’t already follow me on Twitter or you aren’t joining in with all 12 of us over on FMSlack then rectify both of those things right now.