Why the Medical Centre Isn't Needed on FM

The addition of the medical centre for FM18 was called out as one of SI's crowning new features. It's a feature that I hadn't seen many people requesting, it's one we've managed to live without so far up to this point and personally, it's one I think can still be lived without. Have a read of how I'm managing injury prevention on FM18 without clicking into the medical centre.

Manual rest

I became a big advocate of this on FM17, and I've continued it on to FM18 too. At different periods of the season, when midweek matches come thick and fast for example, I've even prioritised rest and having match fit players over them actually training.

Think about it in FM terms on the training screen. The preset option seems to be to have a day of rest/no training the day after you've played a match. Initially you might think that seems fine, they've just played a match, they don't need to train today. But it was just your first 11 that played the match, including maybe giving three subs some gametime too. By all means they should be given a rest, but what about the other subs that didn't get on the pitch and the rest of your squad that didn't make the matchday squad? What are they getting a rest for? I untick that "rest day after match" button on the team training screen, and then once I've just finished a match I head to my squad view and sort my players by the positions I selected them to play in.

From there, I select my first 11 (minus the keeper, unless I really think he needs a rest (which isn't often), and any subs I think need a rest too), right click and follow the breadcrumb you can see on the screenshot above. Depending on the situation, I'll alter exactly how much rest I'll give my players. In the example above, I might actually deselect my AMR and give him an extra day off to fully recover, seeing as his condition is down at 64% (he gives his all in every match with 15 for work rate but also his 17 for natural fitness helps here). I'll take into account our schedule too. I'm still in the first half of the season, we'd just beaten Raith 1-0 here and it just so happens that we don't have another match until next weekend, so I can afford to perhaps not give as much rest as I maybe would if we did have one in midweek. I'd probably go for one day of rest in this scenario.

Minutes played and rotation

When adding information to my squad views, one of my most important columns is minutes played.

Looking at the far right of the above screenshot, you'll see so far in my 17 matches this season I've got a core set of players that I've chosen on a regular basis. I believe that core are my best players in those positions, the ones I can count on, but I'm more than happy to rotate and give the players in the next tier down a shot in the first team too. Rotation in football shouldn't be an alien concept to you by now. I like to have at least two options per position in my squad, and they're players I'd be happy with stepping in at any time.

When it gets to matchday, I generally don't like to start a player who are below 90% physical condition. Even if that player is bang on form, if they aren't fit enough they'll not start a match for me. Ross Kavanagh has three goals and two assists in his last five matches, at an average rating of 7.68, if he's not worked his way back up to a good level of physical condition prior to my next match, I'm more than happy to give Ryan Tierney a first team run out.

Substitutions

If I don't make three subs a match, I get annoyed with myself. They can be the perfect way to manage injury prevention. The ability to see players condition is literally right there in front of you. Some prioritise subs to change the game and make a breakthrough, and I do do that on occasion but my priority with subs is taking off tiring players or ensuring that players returning from injury get minutes under their belt (as seen in the next section). As soon as it gets to the 60th minute, I'm starting to think about who's coming off and who from my bench maybe needs to come on for some minutes. Very rarely will I get to the 80th minute without making a sub, there's no room here for subs to wind down the clock. They serve a purpose.

Injury problems

Injuries can occur at any time. It doesn't matter if you've just played four matches in less than a fortnight or if you've just come off the back of preseason with your players as fit as they can be. You can see in my previous couple of squad view screenshots that I've got quite a few players not at peak match sharpness. These are players that are either just returning from injury, or players that I've not really needed at all to step in yet for first team action.

Calum Gallagher was signed in the summer to come in and provide an upgrade in our right winger position. Before the season started, he tore his calf and was out for three months. Predict that, medical centre. Once he's back to peak physical condition it makes absolutely no sense to just fire him straight into the first 11. He's got to be nursed back to match fitness through a combination of u21 friendlies, sub appearances and maybe a start in a cup match against a lower tier side, if you're lucky to get one. Since returning from injury, he's only got on the pitch for 48 minutes so far. I'll look to ramp this up in the next few weeks. Otherwise it's highly likely, as he's expecting to be a first team squad member, that he'll come to me moaning. Plz give us an option to explain injury management to players, SI ??.

Medical team

It's an obvious one, but one of those things related to FM that I don't fully know has an effect or not. Maxing out the options available to you in terms of the number of medical staff you can hire, I believe, puts you in a good position to deal with those injuries when they do occur and prevent them occurring at all.

Right now I'm allowed a head physio, a physio, and from this season, a head sports scientist and a sports scientist. We're ranking first in the league for quality of physiotherapy and have the second best sports scientists in the league. We are still in the second tier, so it'll be important to monitor and maintain our medical team if and when we get promoted to the top tier. The physiotherapy attribute is how good they are at issuing high quality treatment to prevent players getting injured and also how good they are at treating players to work them back from injury. FM18's new sports science attribute is how competent that staff member is at managing player's fitness levels and injury risk to keep them as fit as possible. Basically, get staff in with high attributes in both of these categories!

So there's what I do to monitor my players fitness and prevent injuries. Lots are finding the medical centre useful, and that's fine for them. It does seem like much more of a hand-holdy feature, alongside dynamics too. Surfacing things that previously were there and you could control, but weren't exactly right in your face when managing a club. If you aren't busy smashing the space bar, there's plenty to do and pay attention to in order to monitor and manage injury prevention. In my personal opinion, SI could have spent the time taken to develop that on other things. Maybe working on training a bit more? That'd be nice.

People are bound to disagree, maybe I'll be won around by some of the arguments for the medical centre!

Samo's Stirling

I've introduced you to the new structure of Scottish football, briefly touched on who I'll be taking over and even more briefly touched on why I would be. Now it's time to dig a bit deeper into the why and what exactly I'll be aiming for whilst in charge of Stirling Albion on FM18.

Let me just quickly summarise for you what I mentioned in my introductory post about why I wanted to take on Stirling as my FM18 challenge:

• Sporting excellence is in the city's DNA.

• They don't have much history of note at the top of Scottish football.

• I believe there's real potential there to grow the club, plus there's no major competitors for fans in the immediate surrounding area.

These three why's give me an almost blank canvas as to how I want to shape the club and move it forward.

Most of the things I love to play this game for are intangible. They're things that aren't really in the game, that you can't see in front of you. Building up a club in a city or town. Those positive feelings and that success you bring in turn improving the perception of the club within it's local area, and as such, more fans start coming to matches. I imagine the club reaching out across the local community to promote itself. Players going in to local primary and secondary schools to attract the next generation of fans to the club. Yes, we might have a city rival with the name Stirling University, but that doesn't mean the club can't work alongside the university to use it's resources. Top class training facilities, player and coaching education and hiring talented graduates (of which I'm one ?) to improve the club's business, commercial and sponsorship activities too. I imagine the club getting coverage in the press for it's unique approach to the game, being at the forefront of the latest innovations in football. Once you've reached a certain stature domestically, you start to look abroad and grow the club by those means too. Developing the club into a brand, more than just a football club.

This narrative I make up in my head around my save can relate to things in-game in some ways though. Firstly, the club has to become professional, up from it's current semi-professional status. Winning matches, gaining promotions and winning silverware all surround the club in a positive light, and usually the attendance grows as a result. Forthbank is currently a hub of community activity, that will continue once we fully own the stadium and look to increase it's capacity to suit demand. Once we're in different divisions, I want to develop an affiliate link with Stirling University to send my loan players there. The club's junior, youth, training, sports scientist and data analysis facilities are all in need of an upgrade, with the eventual aim for them to be best in class.

We'll have scouts scouring for talented players we can bring in, give a platform to develop as players and people with the eventual aim being to sell them on for more than we bought them for. If I'm lucky enough to get the club to a position where it's challenging at the upper echelons of Scottish football, this will give the board and it's executives the ability to then look further afield to grow the club, by signing up new sponsors, foreign affiliates and creating a network the club can tap in to for players, scouting knowledge and marketing benefits.

I'm mentioning all this, but the immediate aim is survival. I don't mean survival in the sense that the club is in dire straits and might go to the wall. I mean that right now, we're by no means in the position as a club to start splashing cash on stadium upgrades, improving facilities and signing up global affiliates. The financial side of the Scottish football in the top couple of tiers has been improved, success in our first few seasons will certainly bring us more money than it would have done before the restructure. However, I don't predict us doing anything of note on this side of things until we've maintained our place in the newly resurrected SPL, at least.

On the staff side of things, continual improvement will be the aim. Our players are currently on part time contracts, living year to year. The same for our backroom staff too. It's the way of clubs in the lower leagues of Scottish football. Success isn't guaranteed. Positive relationships are put to one side. Forward planning is a dirty phrase and handing out three or four year contracts down in the depths is unheard of. Limiting our talent pool by only looking for players with certain qualities? We need all the help we can get. It's dog eat dog, ruthless. Once we go professional, we can take things from there. In the immediate term, we just need to be smarter at recruiting than our league rivals, which, of course, is something we'll be continually aiming for.

The journey starts in Scottish Division Two (S2). Due to the previous season's final league positions before league reconstruction, we're one of the better teams in the division and are 6-1 favourites to win it. The minimum board expectation is that we get promoted via winning the league. Not exactly the fly under the radar, under-promise/over-deliver start I usually prefer when I take over a club. Once the first season is out of the way, and we hopefully achieve promotion, that's when the fun starts.

Thanks for reading, all thoughts welcome and I hope you'll join me as I look to build and grow the club!

My FM18 Plans

If you know me, you'll know I'm Scottish and that I love Scottish football. I'm also a big believer in focusing on your strengths, and that's why I'm heading back to Scotland on FM18. I want to establish myself as the go-to when it comes to anything Football Manager and Scotland. If you've got a burning question about anything to do with Scottish football on Football Manager, you come to me. Alright pal?

I think the reason you're all reading this though is to see what I'll actually be doing on FM18, so let's get into it then.

I might be very passionate about Scottish football and portraying the leagues in a positive light, but there is something I hate about it. That something is the league set up. The 12-team top flight, followed by three divisions of 10 alongside the Scottish Cup, the League (Betfred) Cup and the Challenge (Irn-Bru) Cup for lower league teams makes it hugely repetitive. Greenock Morton, my club, and Dundee United played against each other seven times last season! Madness.

Heading back to Scotland was the first reveal. So the second big FM18 reveal from me is that I'll be editing the structure of the Scottish leagues. I'm planning to stay in the country for the entirety of FM18, so it has to be done. My FM16 experience, ten seasons with my beloved Morton, only backed that up. What will the structure look like? Glad you asked.

New Scottish Structure

It's a humongous 16 tier setup! 288 clubs of pure madness but it all starts with the return of the Scottish Premier League (SPL). For those that don't pay much attention to Scottish football, you might be surprised to hear that the SPL hasn't actually been a thing since the 2012/13 season. The top flight has been called the Scottish Premiership (or Ladbrokes Premiership) since the merger of the SPL and the SFL (Scottish Football League, the lower leagues). Through the incompetence of those whose job it is to promote our game, it's failed to be adopted as the norm, and most fans, pundits, players and managers in and out of Scottish football have continued to call it the SPL. So I thought, why not bring it back.

Where possible, all of the teams in each new league created are based on their positions in their current leagues over the 2016/17 season. Believe me, football leagues in Scotland are a very complicated and not-so-joined up system. There's tiers all over the place, some that don't lead to any others in any way at all. Which leads us nicely onto the 15 tiers below the SPL, Scottish Division One all the way down to Scottish Division Fifteen. These tiers, alongside the SPL, will all be 18-team leagues and each team will play each other home and away. There's three automatic relegation spots in each league, and in all the tiers aside from the top, two automatic promotion spots plus a playoff to determine the third team going up.

One major thing about the Scottish game that you need to know is that there's no money growing on trees here in comparison to our English counterparts down south. In creating your own league structure, the temptation to go mad and boost the financial side of the game is always prevalent. When it comes to this league structure, finances have actually been a pretty difficult decision. I've decided on the winners of the SPL getting £4.8m. This is in comparison to the £2.7m that the winners of the Scottish Premiership will receive on FM18 usually in season one. Prize money per position will then decrease the lower down we go. In my tests of the database, this has resulted in quite a bit of money entering the Scottish game, but if you compare it to other leagues, I still think it's quite fair. The top two tiers will have a TV deal, which will be significantly less than the prize money total for winning the leagues, but still a decent amount. I think both of these things make sense, with the (imaginary) fanfare and excitement around the leagues being expanded and restructured.

The lower down the leagues we go, the more difficult it gets. If you think there's no money at the top of Scottish football, some of these teams being added into the league structure are dealing in packets of crisps and chewing gum. Is it realistic to be asking Dalbeattie Star or Gretna to travel to John O'Groats or FMPressure's Thurso? Do some of the clubs even want to do it? No, is the short answer. Some lower league and non-league Scottish clubs have the fanbases and resources to be competing in the current league structure, but they don't want to. Another thing to learn about Scottish football is that it's very self-preserving. These clubs don't see why they should join in the league structure and spend money they don't need to on long, and often difficult to get to, away trips. That stops now with this new structure. All clubs are in it together, under one league system. Aiming big will be rewarded, and if you don't want to progress, you'll find yourself hurtling down the tiers.

The final bit of information around the new league structure is the squad rules. Clubs in the top three tiers have to submit 25-man squads, but players under the age of 21 that have been trained in Scotland do not have to be registered and can play at any time. There also needs to be a minimum of six Scottish homegrown players in each matchday squad. The tiers below that aren't restricted in these ways. Big thanks to FMPressure, and also Acidphire21, for being there for any help or questions on the database so far.

Who Will I Be Managing?

The third and final reveal, is the club I'll be taking over on FM18 in this new structure for Scottish football. I'll be hanging my CS emblazoned tracksuit top on the back of the managers office door at Stirling Albion's Forthbank.

Welcome to Samo’s Stirling.

Why Stirling?

Firstly, sporting excellence is in Stirling's DNA. I attended the University of Stirling, while other names associated with Stirling and sport include Sir Andy and Jamie Murray, Duncan Ferguson, Billy Bremner, Gary and Steven Caldwell, Scottish rugby international Kenny Logan, plus Olympic swimmer Robbie Renwick trained at the university. A relatively illustrious few I'm sure you'll agree. I'll go through a few aims related to this in a future update.

Secondly, Stirling Albion have never been close to achieving anything meaningful in Scottish football. They've been a perennial yo-yo club and, as far as I can see, haven't played in the top flight of Scottish football since the 1960's. I'm hoping to change that when I take over. With 16 tiers created, is it a bit of a cop out to start at the third tier? It might look like that to some and maybe if I had all the time in the world to play FM, I'd start right at the bottom and work my way up. I don't though, so I'm not. Simples.

Thirdly, they're not a sleeping giant as such, but I believe there's real potential there to grow the club and get more fans through the turnstile. The city of Stirling has around 30-40,000 inhabitants, which rises to just under 100,000 when you include the surrounding local area too. It's by no means one of the biggest cities or towns in Scotland, just inside the top twenty overall and is actually the least populated city in the country. Looking at the surrounding area though, there aren't too many other clubs competing for the same fans. Of course, the edited database has activated some of the other clubs that play in the area, but there aren't any major competitors for fans. The affluent surrounding areas of Bridge of Allan and Dunblane mixed in with some of the more working class areas within the city itself will be our targets as we look to attract a diverse fanbase to the 3,800 or so capacity Forthbank.

Growth is a must. Objective one, however, will be to not get sacked. FM18's sackings are scaring me so far.

"No One Likes Us..." End of Season 8

So we've come, to the end of the road.

Welcome the finale of "No one likes us...". What a Football Manager save this has been.

No time for emotion right now though. There's business to tend to. At the halfway point of season eight we were flying domestically. 14 points clear at the top of the Bundesliga, and a fifth consecutive title was all but wrapped up. The main reason for me continuing on this save into it's eighth season though was the Champions League. I craved a third win of the jug-eared trophy. The theme whirred in my brain as PSG defeated us in last season's semi final. I have to be celebrating come the end of the season.

Bundesliga

An almost perfect second half of the season led us to our fifth consecutive Bundesliga title. Colidigol started his RBL career on fire, with three goals in his first three games, and ended the season with seven overall from 14 matches. Not bad at all for the Argentine wonderkid. Lemar was ridiculous, as ever. A shoutout to Diallo, the young German wonderkid, who bagged three goals in four of the last league games. And a big shout to Oliver Burke. A hattrick for my fellow countryman in my last league match in charge of the club. He's scored some massive goals for us, and for him to do that, and score my last league goal too, tears.

Great to have such a dominant domestic season in my final season at the club. Another undefeated season, my second at the club. A record number of wins, a record Bundesliga points total, the highest number of goals scored so far in all eight seasons, and only Bayern in 2018/19 conceded less goals than us. Poor Bayern, they'll be no European football next season for the previous giants. Thomas Tuchel took over towards the end of the season as Paulo Fonseca, who came in at the beginning of the season, was sacked.

DFB-Pokal

About as comprehensive as you can get. We've won 36 DFB-Pokal matches in a row now. What a run. We played brilliantly in the final against a very good Hamburg side. My sixth consecutive win of this competition. It's been very kind to me. Just realised this section reads like a small child wrote it, but I'm trying to get on to the epic stuff here!

Champions League

Down to the main reason why I chose to continue the save into season eight. The holy grail.

Timo hitting a double in the Bernabeu had me confident going into the home leg, where we professionally saw off Real Madrid in the first knockout round. A 0-0 stalemate at home to Arsenal had me slightly worried. We've got previous against LvG's Gunners, but thankfully goals from Timo and Lemar at the Emirates took us into the semi final.

The final four read RBL, Barcelona, PSG and Man Utd, and truth be told, I was happy to be drawn against Barca. The first leg at the Camp Nou was quite frankly one of the most ridiculous matches I've had in the save so far! We were 2-0 down, got it back to 2-2, went 3-2 down, back to 3-3, 4-3 down then scored 2 in the last 15 minutes to make it 5-4. The five away goals meant we had to just stay solid at home, and more goals from Timo and Lemar secured our avenue to the final. Where, as fate would have it, we'd meet our foes. Jose's PSG. The team that beat us in last year's CL semi final and drove me on to doing an eighth season. Oh, how Football Manager throws up natural narratives like this.

But it had me nervous. It was to be the last ever match in my entire save. Could I end it by beating PSG and winning a third Champions League trophy?

Jaaaaaaaaa! And in our home nation (albeit in Dortmund). I was "shitting a brick" so to speak going into the match, and when the calls started for me to live-Slack it, I started to feel worse. But I had to, and I'm glad I did. Brilliant to have so many behind me on a huge occasion, and I was delighted we managed to bring home the trophy for a third time in this save. PSG were quite dangerous, but we were ruthless with our chances. A first half Timo double, including a brilliant counter-corner goal, gave us one of those tricky half time leads. 2-0 but it most certainly wasn't over. It wasn't, until Burkey stepped up to score another Champions League final goal, his third in three successive RBL final appearances. We'd managed to avenge last season's defeat and win a third Champions League for the club, in four seasons nonetheless.

The final goal of my time in charge of RBLeipzig, in all it's glory, scored by who else but Oliver Burke.

Players

Or what we should have really renamed to the Lemar, Timo and Burkey section.

Lemar

He only went and won the Balon d'Or! The first time one of my players has ever won it (on any FM I think!). He also won the Bundesliga Player of the Year and Player's Player of the Year. He finished as top scorer in the league and came second in the assists charts too. He won Champions League Best Goal, Best Player in Europe and was in both the CL and BuLi Team's of the Year. Oh, and he ended the season with 34 goals, 20 assists and an average rating of 8.14 from 37 starts and 6 sub appearances. Not so bad for a free transfer a few seasons back...

Werner

Timo's 35 goal season last season was always going to be hard for him to match, he was literally in flames at certain points. It's a measure of the man when you look at him scoring 25 goals and assisting 14 and thinking he's had a bit of an off season. I don't think I've quite come to terms with the fact that I won't be managing Timo anymore...

Burke

And if that's how sad I am about leaving Timo behind, then bloody hell. Hold me while I break down thinking about Burkey. Similarly to Timo, he's had better seasons. A 10 goal and 10 assist return was okay, but not great. But for him to step up and score a hattrick in my final Bundesliga match and score his third goal in three Champions League finals, I couldn't not single him out. Now worth a whopping £50m, I wonder if he'll lead Scotland to glory in the 2024 European Championships...unlikely. Cheerio, Oliver. Until we meet again.

The Red Bull Revolution

The only word to sum up both RBSalzburg and RBLondon's seasons is "wow".

Starting with RBLDN, we won the Premier League!! A remarkable achievement in RB's second season at the club, and an improvement on last season's fourth place finish. Pione Sisto, Jonathan Calleri and Bart Ramselaar led the way in terms of performances again this season, with young Italian newgen signing from Schalke, Ricardo Mazzarella, doing very well too. It was always quite close and I was never confident it'd actually happen, but it did!

Nothing to note in any cup competitions in London though. PSG put us out of the Champions League 1st knockout on their way to the final to, of course, be beaten by us. Great to round off my FM17 gametime by securing a Premier League win though.

If you thought RBLDN winning the Premier League was mad, what about RBS winning the Europa League? Yes, the Europa League! Red Bull have revolutionised European football and two of the clubs sit atop the tree as champions of the continental competitions.

Juventus, Valencia, Inter and PSV were defeated en route to the final, where a Caparroz goal was enough to overcome Europa League specialists, Sevilla, and win the trophy. Massive shoutout to FMFutbolManager's contain/very fluid tip, which was the catalyst for this incredible run. It's served us very well with RBS in European competition.

Alongside that huge trophy win, RBS secured another domestic double (fifth in a row), meaning they won the treble this season!

The image below sums up the 2023/24 season for the Red Bull clubs. Just amazing.

Wrap Up

I've managed to lead RBLeipzig from being a newly promoted Bundesliga club to one of the best teams in world football. Albeit with a little help from our fizzy drink owners. It'd be virtually impossible for me to go through every single thing that's happened in the save. From what I saw as overachieving in the first few seasons, tasting defeat in the Europa League final in season two, to our first piece of silverware, winning the DFB-Pokal in season three. Five consecutive Bundesliga wins followed, with a couple of Champions League wins thrown in for good measure too, of course, as you've just read, rounded off by gaining revenge on PSG in the final game of the save.

Marcel Sabitzer and Emil Forsberg played their parts in the early seasons. Willi Orban captained the club to so many of the early successes. Yussuf Poulsen performed admirably as our targetman and I thought I'd uncovered the next star when Renat Dadachov broke into the team initially. Players who've joined, none more so than Thomas Lemar, who I managed to a Balon d'Or victory. Walid Harbaoui, the best newgen I'll ever find and I'll ever have. If you've played FM17, you'll know that Bayern are in good hands when Neuer retires, because Christian Fruchtl is ready to step into his gloves. Robert and Jesus Figueroa have been rocks in central defence, a partnership made in heaven. To the players that've been with me since the start. Lukas Klostermann, the colossus at right back. Naby Keita, who kept us going most of the time. Finally, what else can I say about Oliver Burke and Timo Werner?

It's the players I'll miss the most. What a save. What a game FM17 has been. I'm looking forward to having you join me for more on FM18.

"No One Likes Us..." Introducing Red Bull London

Wait, what?

Yes! The Red Bull Revolution has rolled it's way over to England. There were a few clubs in consideration, and if truth be told, this was a bit of a last minute decision to go down this route again in the save. Just this summer I'd decided to get rid of the Championship and only have the Premier League active in England, otherwise it probably would have been a second tier side we take over.

Alas, the Premier League is our destination. The bright lights of the TV deal was too attractive for the fizzy drink brand to avoid for too long. It's the bright lights of the capital as you can see, too. You might even recognise the stadium. That's right, West Ham United are no more. Say hello to Red Bull London.

David Gold is no longer around, so it's David Sullivan and Karren Brady who make the decision to allow Red Bull to come in and completely change everything about the club. Gone are the Hammers. Fans will be blowing their bubbles through a straw into their cans of Red Bull in the concourses of the now Red Bull Stadium. The badge and kits have been changed to the similar ones you see in Leipzig and Salzburg, with the appropriate links between the network of clubs set up too. My purchase of the in-game editor (£4 right into your bloody back pocket SI) doesn't allow me to wipe out West Ham's previous debt (silly SI, and me), which currently stands at over £500k a month until 2026. With some sound financial management, I don't think we should need to make any major investments to improve the club's current financial situation, which currently sits at £40m in the bank, and £40m to spend (makes sense...). A decent Premier League finish this season will go a long way to improve that.

The image above shows you who's been chosen to take over. Scott Parker retired in-game in 2018 after finishing his career in the US with Minnesota. He's been patiently biding his time, doing his coaching badges, and finally gets the opportunity to move into management with the club he made over 100 appearances for.

The club has performed averagely so far over the last six seasons, with only a 6th place finish to really shout about in 2017/18. All the infrastructure is in place to get the club kicking on though, with a really good level of facilities across both our training and youth categories. While the costs of Red Bull investing and taking over in East London was high, with the club already having a continental reputation and being just outside the top 10 of Europe's richest clubs, the opportunity to push the club on and challenge in the higher reaches of English and European football was too big to turn down. Especially with the financial rewards on offer, plus the completely made up, non-existent branding opportunities in-game!

The squad doesn't actually appear to be in as horrific shape as expected when a number of non-human managers have been managing them for six seasons. There's a few players that are over my usual squad age profile I've been looking for during the save that I'll be moving on early doors. Lanzini, Obiang, Feghouli, Ogbonna and their classic AI signing for £27m of Patrick Bamford will be out the door in the first few weeks. The club has a core of relatively decent looking young Englishman that will be making the step up to be in and around the first team squad which includes Will Hughes, Steven Bergwijn, Jonathan Callieri and current captain, goalkeeper Alex Meret.

The main focus of the save will continue to be RBLeipzig. With consecutive Champions League wins under the belt there now, the squad is in a brilliant position to completely cement their place as the best in Europe. Philipp Lahm's RBSalzburg may take a dip in my priorities as we look to cement RBLondon's status within the revolution and in the Premier League.

Big thanks to FMPressure for helping out again with the RBLondon header and the new logo, plus acidphire21 for the RBLondon kits.

No one likes us in Germany or Austria, you can add England to that list now too. We certainly don't care though!

"No One Likes Us..." The Red Bull Revolution

I've been meaning to write about the new potential player development pathway that'll hopefully be revolutionising Red Bull as a whole. So here it is!

It all centres around Salzburg, and their role in it. It's threefold, and I'll go through each point individually.

• Buy Cheap, Sell On

• Development Signings and Youth

• Development Loans

Leipzig are the main club in the save, just as they are in the non-FM world. Two of the three points involves them, but my approach to signing players there is slightly different at times. We're challenging in the upper echelons of football now, two-time Bundesliga winners and the reigning Champions League champions. A higher calibre of player arrives at Leipzig to come straight into the first team, rather than going through the any of the processes I'm about to outline that involves Salzburg.

Buy Cheap, Sell On

A classic tactic that so many FMers adopt in their saves. You see it time and time again. You might spot a bit of potential in a player that's been undervalued by the AI, he's been transfer listed or released on a free. He's snapped up by you, you give him minutes on the pitch, he impresses and starts attracting AI managers again.

As I've mentioned before too, Salzburg were in a pretty bad state when I took them over after three seasons of AI mismanagement. The club had to be built up again from the ground. The bank balance wasn't looking pretty and high wages were being handed out to players that weren't deserving of it. The Buy Cheap, Sell On mantra has got the club back on sound footing again, alongside selling off those undeserving players too. The totals so far stand at selling players for £36.5m, and spending £14.75m on players coming in to the club. £13m of that £36.5m has been from players who I'd brought into the club for a total of £1.2m, in just three summer transfer windows. Still relatively small scale, but not too bad at all. And there's players still on the books that I'm looking to continue the process with.

Adou is one of the perfect examples of the process so far. He was discovered on a scouting trip of the Ivory Coast, arrived on a free transfer from ASEC, played 49 matches across one and a half seasons and was sold on to Hoffenheim for a potential fee of £4.5m.

Some might link this into some sort of Moneyball, but I'm happy enough deeming it Buy Cheap, Sell On. The money made from sales like this can then go into improving the structure of the club; improving our facilities thus enabling us to keep being an attractive option for young talent, keeping the wheel turning on this process.

Development Signings and Youth

As I've said, RBLeipzig are the main club in the save. What I do in the save, for the most part, is geared towards them. If a Salzburg signing develops well enough, then it's likely they'll move on to Leipzig. This also applies to Salzburg youth products too. If someone talented arrives in the intake, we'll hone their talents in Austria with the aim of moving them on to Germany when they're ready.

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El Ashry arrived for £200k (seriously recommended that you go on a scouting trip to Egypt on FM17) and is our current main striker at Salzburg. Now he might well turn into a Buy Cheap, Sell On option, but right now, he's on the right track to earn a move to Leipzig. He was out injured for a few months last season, but still ended up with 18 goals in all competitions.

Kalkan came through the initial 2016 Salzburg youth intake, but was thrust into first team action when I took over the club. After just 30 appearances, in the summer of 2020, he made the move to Leipzig for £6m, his release clause. He hasn't exactly been able to assert himself into the first team yet at RBL, but his value has shot up at least.

Gerber is my next hot prospect that I'm pinning my hopes on to develop and be the next one to jump onto the conveyor belt. He was in and around the first team squad at Salzburg as a 16-year-old, and he looks like he should develop into a really promising attacking midfielder.

Development Loans

This has been one of the key benefits so far of taking over at RBSalzburg. I've been able to take some of my best young prospects that arrive in Leipzig, loan them out to Salzburg and be in complete control of their game time and development whilst out on loan. Loaning young players out to enable them to get first team football and push on development-wise isn't anything new, of course, but the aspect that I'm able to remain in control of them is something a bit more unique in my save.

A group of loanees has arrived in each season so far and there's a few more plus points to it too. They continue to play and train alongside each other; increasing their camaraderie. Plus because I'm playing the same way with Salzburg as I am at Leipzig, they're getting used to the system and will hopefully be able to slot right in when they're ready to in Leipzig.

Piotr Orlowski will hopefully be the shining example of this.

He had a great season on loan at Salzburg in 2020/21, hitting 11 goals and laying on 17 assists, which was a new record for the club. He was named in the team of the season, won the player of the season award too and made his international debut for Poland. He's arrived back in Leipzig ahead of the 2021/22 season and will be competing for a first team spot in one of the three roles behind our striker.

It's not all positive though.

Franco Sosa spent my first season in charge of Salzburg, 2019/20, on loan at the club and had a brilliant season leading the line, scoring 23 goals and providing 13 assists. He returned to the club, but went out on loan again in 2020/21, this time to Bundesliga side Augsburg. He wasn't a regular starter, but did manage to score 9 goals over the course of the season. He's still only 21, but I don't think he'll ever kick on and be good enough to be considered for a first team role at RBLeipzig.

One of the major things to note too is the obvious difference in quality of the leagues between the two clubs. The German Bundesliga is sitting third in the competition table, while the Austrian Bundesliga has improved it's standing since my arrival in Salzburg, but is still sitting in 12th position overall. This can impact things, especially in the Sosa example above, where a player can do well but not necessarily be equipped to do well on their return to Leipzig. Not only that, but across the five transfer windows since I've been at Salzburg so far, so many Leipzig players have flat out rejected the opportunity to head to the club on loan.

I've taken great strides so far, but building the club up to a required level will continue to take time.

My FM17 Tactic: 4-2-3-1

This tactic was initially adopted by RBL during season 3, but I've also been using it to great effect with RBS since I took over there too. Of course, both teams playing the same way will only help us to develop players who can easily slot into both of the clubs.

Let me introduce you to "Between Two Shadows".

Formation, Roles and Player Instructions

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The formation is a variation of a 4-2-3-1. Where the majority of this kind of set up has wide men as part of the attacking midfield trio, I've gone for a central trio. Why? Read on and find out!

The previous tactical attempt played on the brilliantness of the targetman/shadow striker combo, seeing that work so well led me to this. Why not add another one into the mix?! The striker role did originally start out as a targetman too, but with the big man, Yussef Poulsen, leaving the club, I decided on a move away from the role that has served me so well in my FM17 life so far.

In that previous tactic, we ceded possession quite a lot. I set us up as the underdogs. Sitting back, soaking up pressure and then making it count when we did go forward. The switch to packing the middle of the pitch is with the aim to control our matches a bit more. It's crowded, but there's a lot of movement, especially from the two shadows. They're who we look upon to create and get things going.

Going through the player instructions I have set then. Starting from the back, we want to control matches, meaning keeping the ball, meaning my keeper is set to play it out from the back to my full backs. No changes to the base roles of either central defender, although you'll notice that the LCB is on cover, with the RCB on the standard defend. My thinking here is being a bit cautious. The left back is our more attacking of the full backs, so a little bit of cover on that side for him when he does decide to advance.

Thinking back to the my tactical set up again, the full back roles were very conservative, so any shift here would have been ground-breaking! Our left back is now a wing back on support! With the right back being a full back on support. They're who we rely on to provide width, and they're a key part of the entire set up, both offensively and defensively. The only tweak to their roles is that they're encouraged to cross the ball more. I'm also in the process of testing out whether instructing them to stay wider gives us some more width and options going forward.

The two central midfielders are just that, central midfielders. One on support on the right hand side, with the left sided one being on defend. He's our defensive cover in the middle, winning tackles, recycling possession and providing the base for which the remaining 4 midfielders have the freedom to go forward and create. He's instructed to shoot less often and pass it shorter. While his midfield partner is instructed to be more direct and shoot less often. He's more direct, to get the ball moving forward more quickly and take some risks when doing so. Shoot less often is a recurring theme for my 6 midfield and attacking players, I want them to be more patient and seek out the right opportunities rather than shooting from god knows where (although that still happens anyway!).

The central attacking midfielder was originally an advanced playmaker on support when I first put this tactic together, but he's recently been shifted to just a standard attacking midfielder on support. The reason behind this? I felt by having a playmaker in the side it wasn't actually helping us, we were trying to find him too often. I know that sounds silly, because that's the whole idea behind a playmaker, but it makes sense in my head! Teams often play with one or even two defensive midfielders, and when they were, our playmaker wouldn't get to create. The attacking midfielder role also gives you more freedom over player instructions, I've gone for shoot less often as I mentioned already, and also telling him to roam from position. Giving him all the potential to act like a playmaker, without the requirement for my players to constantly look for him with the ball.

On to the two shadows then! I've already mentioned that they're who we rely on. For their movement, creativity and their goals too. The shadow striker role in-game already has a few instructions pre-set like moving into channels, making more risky passes, dribbling more and getting further forward. They certainly do all of these things, and of course, I've got them set to shoot less often. I've never written this term out before, but it's quite apt to use in this situation, but they definitely adopt the half spaces. They're movement between the lines is a joy to watch at times. They'll go wide, they'll come inside, they'll string passes together, they'll be on the end of those passes and of crosses. I can't recommend this role highly enough on FM17. I've loved it so far.

As I mentioned, the striker role initially started life as a targetman, but a shift away from Yussef Poulsen saw me adopt a complete forward role on attack, with of course, the only extra instruction being to shoot less often. Shoot less often, for a striker? Yes, I want him to make better decisions when it comes to taking his shots. Roles for my strikers is something I constantly battle with, and it was the same for me on FM16 too. I can never quite nail down one I think is doing well for us, and I'm having this same dilemma right now.

Team Instructions

Again, following on from my previous set up, there's very minimal team instructions set. The mentality is standard and the shape is flexible. The roles I've set and the couple of player instructions I've chosen really set the tone for how we play. The only instruction given to the team is to play it out from the back. Again, this is to really maximise us trying to control matches. If we've got the ball, the opposition don't!

So How Does It Play?

Here's some examples of in-game situations from our domestic cup final victories in season 4. RBL impressively beat Dortmund 3-1 to secure the DFB-Pokal.

Going Forward

Here's our opening goal against Dortmund.

You can roughly see our defensive shape following a long kick from Dortmund's keeper. Aside from our RCB coming over to challenge both our RB and Vietto for the ball, we look good. Our CM(D) has dropped in to provide some extra cover, and our CM(S) and AM(S) are occupying more advanced slots to link the defence, midfield and attack. Both shadows are in promising positions should the ball break, especially our number 10, Timo Werner. Dadachov, the CF(A) looks slightly isolated in this scenario. Dortmund win the second ball, but a poor attempted pass is cut out by one of our hard working shadows.

The break is on and we pounce. Dadachov picks up the ball from Timo's great interception and releases Oli Burke down the right, our other shadow striker. He makes the right decision to move into a wide area, hits the byline and fires a brilliant ball into the danger zone for Mihalcea, our AM(S) to finish. At the end of the move, we've got four players streaming into the box to get on the end of it. Great movement, great goal.

Defensively

At times, we can be caught out when facing opposition playing with out and out wingers or inside forwards cutting in. Especially so from advancing full backs bombing on.

Here's a Dortmund attack above illustrating that. Dembele's received the ball and has moved inside. You can see Passlack behind him with acres of space to run into, but Dembele chooses to hit a cross field ball to Guerreiro, who's also wide open on the left. Dembele is occupying out left back, Jannes Horn, while Schurrle has Klostermann tracking him as he advances. Guerreiro eventually finds Schurrle in the box, but he can't in turn find a man, and the move comes to nothing. The shadows do work hard to close down and win the ball back, but with them being set up as AMCR and AMCL in the line up, and with no width in midfield to support the defence, we do struggle defensively out wide at times. Quite a few of our goals conceded are from wide.

At other times, there's also an issue when facing teams playing their own traditional versions of 4-2-3-1, complete with wingers (as above) but with the added issue of an opposition player in the AMC slot. Because of our lack of defensive midfielder in the DM slots, they often find quite a fair bit of space to operate. It's always a tricky match when we face Hoffenheim and Nadeem Amiri. I knew I should have signed him...

Dortmund's consolation in the match comes from their player in the AMC slot, Mario Gotze.

Dortmund have a thrown in on the left. For some reason, Oli Burke (#19) is marking Gotze, and is in a deeper defensive position that Klostermann (#2) from the throw. Anyway, Gotze receives the ball, and runs inside. Naby Keita (#8), our CM(D) on the day is already occupied by facing up to one of Dortmund's CMs, Kagawa. This means it's left to Oli Burke, one of our shadows, to track Gotze. Not ideal. Keita stays in no mans land as Gotze makes space and fires a long range effort into the top corner, albeit it looked like Vanja in goals should have saved it. A consolation on the day, but a warning shot that AMCs can find space against us.

Issues

Width. Despite throwing a tad more caution to the wind with my choice of role for my full backs, I still think it's stifling us going forward. Yes, it's worked fine so far, but there's still some improvements that can be made with this. It's by no means perfect. I'm still choosing a bit of defensively solidity as opposed to increased options going forward. This leads very nicely onto the next issue.

Long shots. If you've stumbled across a way of playing that means you don't take loads of long shots, then fair play to you! They are particularly an issue for me right now in Austria, where Salzburg are one of the more reputable teams in the league, and teams just sit back when they play against us. It really harms our creativity and I haven't been able to come up with a proper solution that works for it yet.

On the surface while long shots may look to be an issue, are they really though? You could be looking at the stats for one of your matches and have completely dominated shots-wise, but look down and see that a huge percentage of them are classed as long. You might also be only watching the matches on key highlights. I watch mine on comprehensive, and the number of the long shots that are counted that end up to just be those free kicks you see being casually floated over the bar is quite outrageous. Keep this in mind, it's something I don't always do. Are these set pieces hiding an issue with your ability to create chances from open play?

Of course, if you're trying out this tactic, I'm 100% not guaranteeing success. Yes I might have played 92 times with it over the course of two seasons and only lost 11 times, plus secured my first Bundesliga title win, but it's not perfect. If you do try it out though, I'd love to see and hear how you get on.

"No One Likes Us..." Introducing Red Bull Salzburg

This save is about to grow arms and legs because alongside RBLeipzig, I've taken over at Red Bull Salzburg too!

I say I...Red Bull Salzburg's (who'll be RBS from now on) new manager is recently retired (on my save, and also in the non-FM world) German legend, Philipp Lahm. He's been persuaded to join the Red Bull Revolution and takes over from Stefano Colantuono, who was quite frankly doing a terrible job at the club.

I mentioned at the end of season 3 that they've been performing terribly in the Austrian Bundesliga so far. 5th, 3rd and 4th. That's only 1 European qualification in 3 seasons, in a league in which they should be absolutely dominating. Not good enough. Will Philipp Lahm turn around the clubs fortunes in his first ever season in management? Rapid Vienna have dominated the league for the last 3 seasons, will their dominance come to an end?

So I thought I'd put together some thoughts that'll hopefully show how the Red Bull Revolution is going to work from now on with taking charge of both teams. RBL will still very much be the primary focus, the German Bundesliga is where the money is and success there means success across the board. However, some of that success can definitely filter down to RBS, to ensure that we're continually successful there. Not just in league performance, but in qualifying for Europe and in developing players/scouring hot prospects.

Will RBS be a development club? Yes, you could say that. Will they be mistreated? No, certainly not. They'll receive the full backing and support they need to win the Austrian Bundesliga, and if there's a player able to make the step up to RBL, they'll receive fair compensation. In short, think of Naby Keita or Dayot Upamecano's careers so far, and that's how the system will work.

To summarise, here's the aims for RBS:

• Win the Austrian Bundesliga

• Qualify for the group stages of European competition

• Scout and buy promising talent

• Develop the talent, give them gametime

• If good enough, move player to RBL

There's much work ahead before all of that though. As the club has been AI managed for the last three seasons, I'm sure you can imagine the state of things. Those years of mis-management and no European football means that the club are actually £2m in the red when I take over. Time to get rid of any deadwood or sellable assests, and restructuring the playing staff. Alongside that, the backroom staff need an upgrade to if we're going to get round to finding and developing players. More on both of those in the next update.

This is just a quick update to document the latest goings on, and how things will be going forward. I'll leave you with the latest player to make the step up to RBL from RBS, and another who looks like he could be on the way very soon...

Following Valentino Lazaro in season 1 and Dayot Upamecano in season 2, Dimitri Oberlin joins RBL in a £5.25m move. This move wasn't one of those well thought out, in the pipeline for a while ones though. I was more than comfortable keeping Oberlin at RBS to watch him tear up the Austian Bundesliga and lead us to the title, but West Brom came in with a bid that matched his release clause. I think he looks decent, so I wanted to keep him in the Red Bull family. Planning to see how he does in a rotational role at RBL this season, more than likely in one of the three slots behind our targetman role.

One player that will be staying at RBS and hopefully leading them to the title is 19 year old hot prospect, Lukas Kalkan. He's the pick of the bunch right now at RBS, and has room to develop further too. An injury has ruled him out of the early part of the season, but when he returns to full fitness and gets a prolonged period of gametime, his attributes will hopefully soar.

This save just got bigger and more time consuming!

Finding the next Naby

He hasn't quite reached Timo Werner levels in terms of getting all my love and affection, but when Bayern started touting for Naby's signature I knew we had to start succession planning. Today's post is all about that. Finding our replacement for Naby Keita.

The Man Himself

Now worth £17m, it’ll take much more than that from Bayern to make me part with him.

Naby is our roaming playmaker in the DM slots, which sees him pretty much pop up all over the pitch. Tackling and intercepting at the back, winning the ball back in midfield, creating chances and very occasionally, scoring goals.

What I’m Looking For

Stating the obvious here, but ideally I'd like a player with a very similar skillset to Naby. He is what he's described as, a tireless midfielder with great stamina, work rate and teamwork. He's got decent passing, dribbling and vision. He's aggressive, can tackle well and is fairly pacy. He's got technique and he's excellent off the ball, too. Always available for a pass, and has the ability to play good ones when he gets it.

So you're basically looking for a midfielder that can pretty much do everything?

Yes, yes I am. Well pointed out.

The Candidates

Internal

There are a few candidates internally at the club that could potentially succeed Naby. Let's have a look at them.

Abouchabaka

Abouchabaka has now made the step up to the RBL 1st team, making 7 sub appearances across season 2. I called him out then as a potential successor to Naby, and I think over time, he still could be. He's developing relatively well, and should continue that with some more game time in season 3. He's naturally fit, has got pace, he can pass, tackle. Will he be the eventual successor to Naby? That I'm not entirely sure of yet.

Aziz

A new arrival at the club. Our scouts liked him, our coaches like him. Me? I don't think I'm quite there yet. He's got potential, for sure. He's naturally fit, and can pass a ball. He's got a lot of work to do in order to play his way into contention for a 1st team spot. Let's see how he progresses.

External

The internal candidates don't look like they'll be ready made to step into Naby's shoes. Armed with £70m in my fizzy energy drink funded warchest, I've got my eye on a few transfer targets that could replace him.

Remember this? Probably not, but it appeared in the introductory post to the RBL save. I've written about the approaches I'm taking to scouting and training/development, but other than that I've outlined I'll only be signing players that are 24 years old or younger and telling you who I've signed in both seasons, I haven't gone any more into the approach I'm taking to recruiting players. In all honesty, I don't think anyone I've bought over the two seasons so far has been good enough to step straight into my thinking for the 1st XI. They've all been projects. To replace Naby, I think it's going to have to be someone ready-made for 1st team football. Going through the external candidates below should give you an insight into how I'm approaching the scenario of replacing one of our star players.

Sensi

Stefano Sensi of Sassuolo is a similar age to Naby and available for £17m according to my scout report. His physical attributes are slightly worse, with an average of 11 compared to Naby's 13. Agility being the attribute with the most difference there, Sensi has 13 compared to Naby's 18, which I feel is personally one of his best qualities.

Sensi is more of a playmaker compared to Naby's dynamic all-rounder in my opinion. Sensi's attributes of 16 for passing, 16 for flair and 16 for vision are all better than Naby's, plus he's got the great dictates tempo trait, something that Naby doesn't have but I feel he does anyway. He runs with ball rarely, would he play like Naby? I don't think he would. Would that put me off buying him? I don't think it would.

Donsah

The thing that instantly stands out about Godfred Donsah is the physical aspect of his player profile. His average of 15 is superior to Naby's 13, and he's much stronger than Naby. The scouts say he's available for anywhere in the region of £14-19m, and he's a year younger than Naby. The average of his technical and mental attributes is exactly the same as Naby's, 11 and 13, respectively. However, where Naby excels in technique, off the ball, teamwork and work rate, Donsah is more of a solid 12-14 across the board kind of guy.

He's Ghanaian, so he'd be off to the African Cup of Nations when the time comes around too. He doesn't have any traits but does have a professional personality which would be favourable.

I like Donsah, he's a physical specimen. He won't be my first choice though when it comes to replacing Naby.

Diawara

Another player currently plying their trade in Italy, Amadou Diawara is at Napoli and our scouts reckon they're currently unwilling to sell him. Diawara is similar to Donsah in that his physical profile is superior to Naby's. He's taller than Naby, at 6'0", with better jumping reach and heading attributes, 14 and 11, compared to Naby's 7s.

He's best suited to a role as a ball winning midfielder, but I think his passing attribute of 15 and vision of 14 mean he could work as a playmaker too. His technique of 12 isn't great, especially comparing against Naby's 16.

He's ambitious which fits quite well with the players we've currently got at the club, and he's actually Naby's midfield partner in the Guinean national team. He's still just 21, so I think he could still improve on a few individual attributes. I really like the look of him.

Goretzka

Still only 23 in-game, it feels as though Leon Goretzka has been around for ages. We'll have to fork out I think £40m at least if we want to sign him, but is he worth it to replace Naby? I think so.

Goretzka is superior or equal to Naby in 26 of the 36 attributes outlined across technical, mental and physical. He's 6'2", so he's got a physical presence Naby doesn't. He can pass, he's hard working (a tireless midfielder, same as Naby), his technique is great, he's determined, composed and aggressive. Plus, he's resolute and dictates the tempo. Two big plus points.

Also, he's German. So far, I've only brought two German players to the club. Yes, the vast majority, if not all, of my regens are German so we'll be fine in future. But it'd be good to have a German at the heart of our team.

A bit more gameplay, and further investigation has spotted that Goretzka is injury prone, and has in fact, just been ruled out for 3 months!

Tielemans

Another name you'll recognise and ask yourself, how is he still only that young? Youri Tielemans is a player that I'm fairly positive a lot of us have managed in the game over the last couple of years. Arriving at his profile screen, I don't actually get too overwhelmed. He isn't/hasn't progressed as well as I always thought he did. The time is right for him to move on from Anderlecht, but will his destination be Leipzig? I don't think it will be.

Brilliant technique, good first touch, passing and flair. He's got agility in abundance too. If I did sign him, I don't think he'd be a bad option at all. He's suit a playmaking role very well, but is he the kind of player I'm looking for to replace Naby? He isn't near good enough in terms of teamwork and work rate. At £22m, it's a lot too. I'd much rather spend upwards of £40m on Goretzka to be honest.

Summary

As I write this, Naby is still at the club and isn't currently interesting any other clubs, so the need to replace him isn't as great. This doesn't mean to say that I'm not going to go out and secure the signature of one of the players I've outlined though. I really like Diawara, but with him not looking likely to be easily purchased, I'd love to bring Goretzka to Leipzig.

However, following on from the reveal that Goretzka is injury prone, and is out for 3 months, and also that Napoli don't look like budging at all for Diawara, it's down to the other 3. Will it be Sensi, Tielemans or Donsah?

Who would you sign out of the players I've outlined?

My FM17 Training Approach

As I pointed out in my intro post, alongside scouting, development is to be one of the key pillars of my time at RBL. Translating this onto FM, this means training.

My under 24 years of age signing policy means that the vast majority of players I have on the RBL books will be promising ones that can still be developed and nurtured. Here's my thoughts on how I'll be interpreting things in-game.

Team Training

For the first half of the season, I had our team training set to team cohesion. It's defined in-game as 'focusing on improving overall team cohesion and understanding.' It's generally recommended to focus on team cohesion at the start of the season, as new signings can drop the level of cohesion or it's just dropped naturally from the summer (or winter) break. Focusing on team cohesion will give new players the chance to bond with the rest of the squad, and also just generally ensure that morale is high amongst the squad.

My main reason behind focusing on team cohesion was to get the squad gelling. I wanted our players to be at one with another on the pitch, and have complete understanding. I think judging by some of the results in the first half of the season, and in particular, some of our general play, it's really paid off. It was a joy to behold at times!

Moving into the second half of the season, I've kept team cohesion active for a couple of weeks after the winter break, just to give the team a chance to blow away some of the cobwebs. Spoiler alert, but there wasn't much January transfer window activity, so there wasn't a necessity to bed any new signings in. For the remainder of the season, I've switched to balanced team training. While the other options for team training upweight the focus onto certain attributes, balanced doesn't. It's more of a general focus, a little bit of everything.

With no European football in my first season in charge, I currently have the below set up in terms of general versus match training. As far as I'm aware, match training gives you a bit of a boost in the upcoming match depending on what you select. For the most part of the first half of the season, my match training has been on match tactics or teamwork. My default is always to give the players a rest after the match. If there's a period where we've got a tough run of fixtures in a short space of time, or if we're in Europe in the future, having more rest days becomes more prevalent for me.

Individual Training

Now on to my choices for individual training. I'm a big fan of putting players on what I'm calling more 'generic' role routines. The roles I class under this are the ones that train a wide variety of attributes, such as complete forward, roaming playmaker, wide midfielder or complete wing back.

This isn't to say all players get put onto these generic role routines, it's my preference to pick and choose who does. It's more likely to be players that I believe have a lot more potential to improve further than others, i.e. Oliver Burke, Timo Werner or Naby Keita definitely fall into this category.

I assessed each individual player at the beginning of the season to determine whether I'd be putting them onto a generic role routine. Once we returned from the winter break, every player on a generic role routine was then assessed again to determine whether they'd remain on that routine, whether they'd combine their routine with working closely on an individual attribute, or whether they'd solely work on improving an individual attribute.

Players who weren't put onto a generic role routine at the beginning of the season were assessed on whether they needed extra work on an individual attribute, or whether I'd choose to not to have them focus on any additional training at that point. This was also reassessed after the winter break. To summarise...

Game Time

For me, game time is the most important aspect in my plan. Something I've carried over from FM16 is the appearance of minutes played in my default team view.

This allows me to easily see how many minutes of action my players are getting at a glance. Who deserves more game time? Who needs more time on the pitch to develop? Is more rotation needed? Are we potentially lacking in a decent fringe option to come in and play a certain position? Gaining the balance between winning, finding my best starting 11, giving fringe players minutes to stop them becoming unhappy and finding the opportunity to give promising youngsters a chance is the constant battle we face in-game.

All of these choices and factors come down to this.

It's not major, but it's just a sneak peek at Oli Burke's improvement so far this season. He's been on the wide midfielder role routine, and has got a fair bit of game time under his belt. Any changes or shifts, no matter how small, will improve us as a team. Whether that's primarily due to improved individual performances on the pitch, or whether it's secondarily by us making a significant sum of money down the line from selling players on.

One thing I haven't mentioned is tutoring. I know quite a few other FMers swear by it, and fully recommend it. Due to my desire of only bringing in players 24 years old or younger, and my aim to develop them, give them game time, and most probably, sell them on, tutoring won't be coming into my thinking.

I'm hoping to give you an insight into players individual development a bit closer to the end of the season. Thanks for reading!

My Approach to Scouting - FM17

Scouting is one of the three main aspects that I’ll be focusing on in my RBLeipzig save that I called out in my initial plan for FM17. Since the appearance of Moneyball style saves on Football Manager, scouring the globe for talent has become even more important than before. My RBLeipzig save isn’t a traditional Moneyball one, however I will be imposing their non-FM world restriction on aiming to bring in players under 24 years of age and looking to develop, and sell on talent within reason. The final two points there are things I’ll address in another post, but for today, here’s my approach to scouting on FM17 with RBLeipzig.

Scouting and Transfers Team

Since the emergence of the director of football role within FM, we’ve been graced with a scouting and transfers team. This year, they’re of course joined by our data analysts.

If you’re aware of the RBL story to date or indeed his work from previous clubs, you’ll be aware of the man at top of the screenshot there. Our director of football.

I kind of wish he was part of my coaching team with those attributes, and I could get him to take charge of signing players for us, but I want complete control over incoming transfers. So what is he getting paid just over £40k a week to do? In reality, not a lot. I’m treating him like a glorified scout at the moment, except he isn’t actually capable of going on scouting assignments. His role is to perform the adhoc scouting reports I need, whether that’s players I’ve spotted myself, or whether I need a second opinion on anyone my scouting team has spotted. Pretty pricey to say the least, but it’s all part of the Rasenballsport experience.

Anyway, back to my scouting and transfers team. Alongside Rangnick in the almost useless stakes is my chief scout, Johannes Spors. He isn’t in charge of sending our scouts on assignments (I’m in control here) but he does have 17/15 for JP/JA, so I’m very much just treating him like a regular scout. Our board currently only allows us to have 1 chief scout and 6 scouts, so it’s actually quite handy to have a chief scout for that additional scout to get on the staff. Ayala (13/17), Schuiteman (19/19), Almqvist (15/14) and Rajkovic (16/16) were all brought in to bolster the scouting team to the rafters.

It should be no surprise that the scouts that were brought in during the summer were of differing nationalities. This gave us a huge boost in our worldwide knowledge, and enabled us to specialise in each of their respective nations. However, I’d like to note that I’ve got absolutely no issue at all with sending a German scout with no knowledge of a country, to that country. Of course, if you can get a scout from every country under the sun into your staff, then I recommend you do that.

Assignment Setup

The scouting team is place, now it’s time to think about who we actually want them to be watching.

I’ve mentioned this already but I’ll only be signing players aged 24 and under for RBLeipzig. That makes that section of the assignment options easy.

I’m currently not putting any required attributes into the mix, and I don’t plan to either.

I normally do gravitate towards signing players on the younger end of that spectrum anyway, so I’m leaving the current ability star rating as is, and setting the potential star rating at 3 stars. This means that my scouts will only report back on players with that star rating or higher.

Like I said, if you manage to hire a scout from every nation you want to send them to, then who you send on the assignment is important. However, I’m pretty comfortable with sending any of my scouts to any nation. There are some obvious choices though, Ayala, Schuiteman, Almqvist and Rajkovic are all new arrivals to the team and will be sent to scout their respective nations, regions or area. This leaves my German nationals to battle it out for where they’ll be sent.

Again, it’s obvious but the depth of report you get back, in terms of number of players scouted, will be better the longer you send your scout on the assignment for. The duration of assignments I’ll be sending my scouts on will all depend on where they’re being sent to. For example, if I want a quick report on Germany, or an updated report on the country where one of our scouts is from, I may only send them for a month or two, at the most. If I’m sending them off to a region, it’ll be a minimum of 6 months. It’ll be 6 months minimum as well for ‘high potential’ nations too.

Once the scouts have started to send some reports my way, I like to have either Rangnick or my head of youth development, Thomas Albeck, to go and watch players who I really like the look of, but perhaps want a second opinion on. However, I’m in control here so the final decision on making a bid and offering players contracts comes down to me. How does that decision get made? I’ll take into account if there’s any position we need some strengthening in, but in all honesty, it comes down to instinct. If I like the look of a player, my FM intuition kicks in and I’ll put a bid in.

Where Will I Be Scouting?

We’ve got the who, and what type of player they’ll be scouting, now it’s time to discuss where they’ll be heading to.

Schuiteman’s arrival was a necessity in my opinion. I always like to have a Dutchman on my scouting team, as there is an almost constant conveyor belt of talent being produced across the country. That reason, combined with the fact that the talent produced is often more than happy to leave to further their careers, makes it a no brainer to scout. When he’s not scouting the Netherlands, Schuiteman will be heading across the border to Belgium.

Almqvist is on the obligatory trip to the Scandinavian region. If the initial results aren’t great, due to time being spent in Iceland and Finland, I may decide to send him to solely focus on Denmark, Norway and Sweden individually.

Rajkovic is currently in his home nation of Serbia, but will be making his way to Croatia, Romania and probably Turkey as well. Think of him as our South-Eastern European scout. Croatia and Romania are two of my favourite countries to sign players from in-game, you can always find a quality young player or two. Turks have a long standing historical connection with Germany, so it’d be good if I could find one or two gems from there.

I wasn’t planning on venturing into scouting South America so early on in the save, but Mainz poached one of my scouts and I chose Ayala as his replacement. He’s currently scouring his home nation, and I’ll definitely be sending him over to Brazil as well. Once I’m allowed some more scouts, I’ll start expanding into other South American countries too. The same can be said for Africa too, I’d really like to spot talent in a couple of nations there too but just don’t have the staff numbers available yet to do so. I need to be finding the next Naby Keita before anyone else does!

That leaves us with my German scouts. Barth and Geiger will be tasked with scouting our nearby or neighbouring countries, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic and perhaps even Slovenia/Slovakia. It goes without saying that if they don’t find the next Lewandowski or Alaba, then I’ll not be happy! And finally, what will our head scout, Spors, be up to? Well his job will be to go to those bigger European nations and find us some cheap deals on young players. France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and even the UK at a push.

How do you set your scouting assignments? Do you think there’s any lucrative talent creating nations I’m missing out on? Let me know either in the comments or on Twitter @FM_Samo. Thanks for reading!

No One Likes Us, We Don't Care!

I’ve come to a decision on my FM17 save. It’s the most hated team in Germany, RasenBallsport Leipzig.

If you've been living under a rock for the past few years and don't know why they're hated I'll give you two words, Red Bull. As Chris D pointed out in the introductory post of his Bilbao boys save, I'm not a fan of giving you the Wikipedia history of a club to introduce them to you for an FM save series. I'd thoroughly recommend you do head to Wikipedia or do a search online and read all there is to read about them.

I will talk you through why I'm attracted to them though.

My educational and working background is in marketing, I love all things brands and branding (which is why I'm very interested in the Taste the Feeling save idea on the Higher Tempo Press. I swear this blog post isn't an ad for Chris D's site). I'm very at ease when it comes to brands getting involved in football. If Irn-Bru decided tomorrow that they were investing in Morton and were renaming the club to IB Greenock, playing at the IB Park, I genuinely wouldn't mind! I appreciate that the 50+1 rule is in place in Germany to prevent groups or individuals from running clubs into the ground, but Red Bull have come into Leipzig and made a genuine, positive difference. They've invested heavily in the infrastructure of the club, their youth setup, their training facilities, and getting 40,000+ fans through the gates of the RB Arena in the Bundesliga. They might not be winning round the hearts of German football fans, but an unbeaten start to their maiden season in the top tier of German football at the time of writing is certainly making fans and the media sit up and take real notice of the club they love to hate.

The Aims

It's going to be split into 5 different phases. These are:

Remain

The remain phase involves us doing just that, remaining and consolidating our place in the league. Now you might be weary about this, given the financial muscle behind the club, but in reality, we're a newly promoted Bundesliga side. Also, I've had a horrific time on the beta, so I'm nervy! I'm giving myself 2 seasons here.

Push

Once we've established ourselves as a Bundesliga side, it's time to push on for European qualification. Qualifying for Europe will give us a vital reputation boost enabling us to be able to attract the calibre of player we need to compete against Germany's elite. European qualification will be the aim in my 3rd season at the club.

Sustain

Sustaining here is in regards to consistently qualifying for Europe, with the stretch target of sneaking the last Champions League spot. Qualifying for Europe every season has to be the eventual target after a couple of seasons, it'll allow me to take the club to the next level in terms of making us self-sufficient. I'll be looking for at least 3 consecutive seasons of qualifying for Europe.

Challenge

By that 3rd season of sustaining European qualification, it's time for us to mount a challenge for the league title. Ideally, we'd be challenging for the league title while we're qualifying for Europe. While we're challenging for the title, I'd also like to achieve some Europa League glory. We've got to be challenging for the title by season 5/6 at the latest.

Champions

Pretty self-explanatory to be honest. Topple Bayern and Dortmund and become the Bundesliga champions. Simple right? Can we do it by season 7? Right now, I'm just thinking about surviving past season 1.

How are we going to achieve this?

I've divided it up into three main aspects, which upon looking into them a bit more, I'm fairly positive we'll all do these things subconsciously now, but I wanted to get it down in writing so that I adhere to it.

Scouting

To start us off, I'll only be signing players that are 24 or under. It's something that RBL do in the non-FM world, and it's something I'll be doing here. I want a young and hungry squad.

I've normally been quite conservative in the past with filling out my scouting team, relying on a couple of trusted staff members to do all the work. Not at RBL though. I'll be filling all available slots in my scouting team, and each scout will be assigned a different assignment for the entire season. These assignments could be a country, a region or a youth league.

Like I said, this will be something we all do automatically now, but my scouts will be scouring all the usual candidates to find me talent. Croatia, Serbia, Poland, Romania, and Scandinavia. I'll also be heading further afield, to try and secure the best talents from Africa. Brazil and Argentina are on the radar to see what I can pick up there too. Plus, of course, we've got to be looking local as well as global. German talent might not come cheap, but hopefully we'll be able to find a few gems. I'll go into this in much more detail once the save is fired up.

Recruitment

Scouting and recruitment go very much hand in hand, and as I said, I'll only be recruiting players that are 24 or under. They don't always have to be a rare, shiny wonderkid, but that'd certainly help. I want to build a team of exceptional talent, that can be given a platform to play and show off.

Of course, now there's that extra option for recruitment where you can speak to a player who's maybe not as keen to join your club compared to others. I'll always be promising that RBL can be a stepping stone in a player's development.

I won't be afraid to sell players, but I'm hoping that the AI has a bit more respect on FM17 in terms of transfer bids. We shall see.

Development

It's no use looking to bring in a raft of talented players if I don't have a plan to improve them. Development will take into account my endeavours to ensure players realise their potential. This will mainly take the form of Bundesliga game time, but of course, will take into account setting them up on schedules to improve their attributes too. Alongside scouting, I'll more than likely go into this in a follow up post too once the save has started proper.

As I've alluded to, I won't be starting the save proper until the full release of the game, but it's not far away now! If you've got any thoughts or feedback on what I'm setting out to do with RBL, please feel free to get in touch. I'd really love to hear from you if you've got any suggestions on specifics on any of the above. I'm planning on really slowing down my gameplay, and paying close attention to some of the finer details this year.

And of course, if you want to send me some abuse because you now hate me, as well as RBL...go ahead!

We Are The Ton - What Makes a Ton Player?

I’ve now reached the 2020/21 season in my Morton save, and if you missed my last post, here’s a little reminder.

I felt that going into my 6th season at the club, and having established ourselves at the top end of Scottish football, it was time to put together some aims and targets for the remainder of the save. If you haven’t had the opportunity to read that post yet, the fourth, and final, aim outlined was to answer the question, ‘What makes a Morton player?’ I also completely copped out by not answering it within the last post, but to be fair, who’s ever complained about an extra post to read!

Read on if you’re interested in my thought process for coming up with an answer for the question, ‘What makes a Morton player?’

Our Style of Play

Firstly, we need to consider my preferred style of play and tactics. When I think about it time and time again, all the roads keep coming back to this paragraph from my previous blog on the tactics I’m currently playing with at the Ton.

“I like my teams to control the play, have possession of the ball, but not for possessions sake. Just like FM keeps asking me, and just like I keep telling them, if we’ve got the ball, we’re not going to concede.”

We play a possession style of play, and I do aim, in league games at least, to have over 55% of the possession. It’s rather annoying that you can’t go back and look at team stats for previous seasons in-game, but I’ll be noting down our average possession stats going forward.

So with possession really at the heart of what I’m looking for in my team, there are a few attributes that I’m sure have instantly come to your mind, and hopefully they match what came to mine too. I’m going to go through them, one by one, alongside their explanation from the FM Online Manual (that’s a thing! I know, me neither) plus a little explanation of why I feel they’re important to what I’m trying to achieve. Then finally, I’ll be analysing a few members of my squad up against these attributes, and showing off my new framework to judge the internal development of players, and that enables me to judge potential new signings too.

The Attributes

Determination

Mental attributes are really vital when it comes to evaluating players, and determination is one of the major attributes I look for in a player. The explanation of determination from the FM Manual is ‘A commitment to succeed. A determined player will give everything in order to win.’ It’s hard to argue against that, why wouldn’t you want players that were committed to being the best and giving their all for the win.

Teamwork

There’s no I in teamwork is there. ‘How well the player follows tactical instructions and works for and alongside his team-mates. A team full of players with a high rating here will work better as a unit. Players with lower ratings will slack off and not ‘buy in’ to the team ethos.’ Of course I want the team to work as a unit and ‘buy in’ to the style of play I’m looking for, however for certain positions and players, I won’t value the teamwork attribute as much. Cristiano Ronaldo’s teamwork attribute? 8. Enough said.

Work Rate

Quite a lengthy explanation here, ‘[work rate] reflects the player’s mental drive to work to his full capacities. A high rating will ensure a player wants to work his socks off from start to finish, but he will need the necessary physical attributes to actually be able to pull it off. Nonetheless, it is an admirable trait to have in your team. It does not merely represent a willingness to run – something that would be inappropriate in many positions – but rather the willingness to go above and beyond the regulation call of duty, as it were.’  Work rate is definitely an admirable trait for a player to have as the explanation says, players that ‘work their socks off’ are ones admired by coaches, fans and fellow players. That being said, it’s coupled in with teamwork here for me, in that I won’t hold it in as much of a high regard as determination.

First Touch

And now for the technical attributes. ‘How good a player’s first touch is when receiving possession. A higher rating will ensure that the player can corral the ball quicker and put it in a useful position to then act upon. Players with lower ratings here will struggle to control the ball as adeptly and may be prone to losing the ball if closed down quickly.’  This explanation even contains the word possession. If we’re going to have prolonged periods in a match with the ball at our feet, I want players who are able to control it with ease, and get themselves into a situation where it’s easy to move that ball on.

Passing

‘How good the player is at passing the ball. His Technique and passing ability will determine his success at passing over longer distances.’  Passing is pretty self-explanatory isn’t it. We play a possession-based style of football, so I want my players to be able to find their teammates with a pass. Not too happy about the second sentence there, obviously when the time is right however, passing over longer distances is appropriate.

Technique

And finally for the technical attributes, the one that underpins them all. ‘Technique is the aesthetic quality of a player’s technical game – how refined they appear to be with the ball. A player with high Technique will be more likely to pull off a tricky pass or a cross-field ball with greater ease than someone less technically able. This in turn affects a number of technical attributes – poorer Technique will let a player down.’  I want my players to be look refined when in possession and have the capability to make the right pass at the right time.

Pace

Last, but certainly not least, it’s the only physical attribute that I’ve chosen to look at. ‘Pace is a player’s top speed. Whereas Acceleration reflects how quickly a player can attain their top speed, Pace is that top speed and together with Stamina and Natural Fitness, is how long they are able to maintain that pace in both short bursts and over the course of a match. A player will naturally be a shade quicker without the ball than with it.’  As you just read, pace is closely aligned with other physical attributes as well, however I am just going to continue with pace as the only one I consider. I’ve always favoured speedy players above anything else, a tricky winger, a pacey centre back.

The Squad Members

With these core attributes now in mind that I’m going to be evaluating players against going forward, let’s have a look at how some of my current squad members fare up against them. These three squad members are all young prospects. One is completely homegrown at the club, one joined on a free and has just made the step up to the first team, and one just recently joined in a relatively big money move from Aberdeen. All three players also contribute to another of the aims I set out in the ‘2020 Vision’, establishing a Scottish core.

And here they are (the links to their attributes are hosted on FMShots, which you should definitely check out):

Jordan Henry – the homegrown prospect. He arrived at the club in our 2016/17 youth intake, and after loans at Nairn County in League 2 and our affiliate club, Ayr United in League 1, I’ve taken the opportunity to have him in and around the first team squad this season.

David Willis – the big money signing from Aberdeen, £2.2m. The Scottish player premium coming into play there, but the revised focus on domestic scouting (another part of my aims) will hopefully prevent this kind of money being spent in future on prospects like Willis. Aberdeen signed him from Hibs for £36k in 2017/18, a very good bit of business for them.

Ian Fleming – another prospect we missed out on originally, he started his career at Stenhousemuir, but moved to Bolton in 2016/17. After 3 seasons down south, he joined us on a free transfer last season. After the sale of last seasons 30 goal man, Daniel Sturridge, Fleming will have a much bigger role to play this season.

But how do their attributes compare up against my new core ethos?

It’s time to get a spreadsheet out! These three players are currently the best prospects at the club, so they’ll be used going forward as the benchmark. Plugging in their individual attributes for the core ethos, we can see that Willis is the stand out of the three. Does that vindicate me splashing over £2m on him? Hopefully. This spreadsheet will be updated in January, and then again at the end of the season, to hopefully reflect the progress they’ve made in improving the core attributes.

Prospective Signings

As well as using the spreadsheet for developing players, it can also easily be used to compare any prospective signings up against the benchmark, and ultimately, determine whether they’re worth any potential investment. Let’s take a look at two players I’ve got my eye on.

Both instantly jump out at me in terms of players I’d usually target to bring into the club, especially now as we’re really looking to establish that Scottish core I’ve been banging on about. However, with the new scouting system in place, and the benchmark of core attributes to compare them up against, the recruitment process is more thorough than previously.

Both players compare very well up against the benchmark average attribute figure of 12.05, meaning I’m more than happy to pursue bringing them to the club. Gempf’s teamwork and work rate figures stack up really well against the benchmark for those attributes. If you search for him on your save too, he’s probably there. I believe it’s what’s known as ‘faceinthegame’. If you didn’t already know, I think it’s when researchers and SI employees appear as newgens in the game. I’m not complaining if they’re as good as Gempf and are Scottish!

Anyway, I’m digressing, but I was successful in my pursuit of both players. Although there was a slight downside to both. We eventually had to stump up £3m for Gempf from Dundee United, and I was unable to bring in Docherty permanently at the current time, so he arrived on loan for the season from Burnley. Gempf, specifically, will be added to the benchmark and will be constantly evaluated up against the core attributes.

One caveat I haven’t yet made is that I’m well aware that there are other really key attributes that are desirable for specific positions on the pitch. I’ll obviously be taking these into account for both current players at the club, and any prospective signings, but the core attributes outlined have been chosen as that’s the overall profile of player I want to have at Greenock Morton.

So that’s my take on what it takes to be a Morton player. I’m always happy to hear any thoughts or opinions you’ve got, and especially so in this case. What are the key attributes you look out for in players, and how do you evaluate that within your saves? Let me know either in the comments below, or on Twitter! Finally, I just want thank my good friend FM Analysis for being the sound board for this, he was a massive help.

We Are The Ton - The 2020 Vision

Ever since winning the Scottish Premiership, I’ve strayed away from doing the straight save updates on each season. Unless there’s a real hook, something unique about your save, or you’re a brilliant writer, I find they can get a bit tedious! There hasn’t really been anything to properly draw you in as readers to the ‘Ton save as yet. Until now hopefully!

I’m a really big fan of bringing weirdly made-up, pretend aspects into the game. So with that in mind, let me introduce you to my new guiding ‘aims and philosophies’, The 2020 Vision for Greenock Morton.

The 2020 Vision

Since taking over at Morton at the beginning of the game we’ve had a meteoric rise in our standing in Scottish football. I’ve now reached the year 2020 in-game, and the club now sits alongside Celtic and Rangers as the top clubs in Scotland. Pretty remarkable really. After securing the Premiership title on our return to the top flight in 2017/18, we’ve secured back-to-back 2nd place finishes in 2018/19 and 2019/20. These achievements, alongside a Champions League group stage run in the 2018/19 season, and a run to the Europa League 2nd knockout round during 2019/20, have taken the club to the next level from a financial stand point too. At the end of Season 1, we broke even, relying on our previous underwriter chairman to keep the lights on. The windfall of money we received at the end of season 4 from the Champions League secured the club financially going forward, and enabled us to strengthen the squad in ways we could have only dreamed of previously.

After that summary, here’s the first aim we’ll be working towards as part of The 2020 Vision.

Finish, at least, in the top 3 of the Scottish Premiership each season.

Now, you’d maybe argue that I’m being unambitious here, but I want to keep things realistic and in perspective. Since gaining promotion to the Premiership, there hasn’t really been a whole lot of difference between Celtic, Rangers and ourselves, as you can see in the beautiful table below. In each season after our title win, we’ve bettered our points total from the season before, but it’s not been enough to win the league, as Rangers and then Celtic in the season just past have seriously upped their game.

Yes, over the three seasons we stand top in the total and average points totals. But taking everything into account between us and our Glasgow rivals, the playing field isn’t level at all. Which leads us on to aim number two.

Grow the Greenock Morton Fanbase

The reason I’m being realistic and a bit unambitious with the first aim, is that I don’t actually believe that, when you compare the three clubs, we’re on the same level at all. I’m sure you’ll agree too when you have a look at another beautiful table below.

I know I’m completely ignoring all the past and historical factors that have gone into this, but I feel that this table really underlines how ridiculous it is that we, firstly, managed to win the Premiership at the first time of asking, and secondly, while we haven’t managed to retain it yet, we have been able to continue to compete against our Glasgow neighbours and rivals.

Our figures in the table are all the more impressive when it’s factored in that a good chunk of our fans are still having to stand at matches. Of our 11,589 capacity, we’ve only got 5,741 seats. While standing on the terraces is something that’s considered almost romantic amongst Scottish fans these days, and of course it’s widely accepted across Germany, it’s something that irks me. It infuriates me even more because it doesn’t meet the minimum requirements to play home European group stage matches at Cappielow. We have to play at St Mirren Park, who, if you’ll remember, are our fiercest rivals.

Looking at the sizes of Celtic Park and Ibrox, and considering the number of season ticket holders they have plus the number of fans they get paying on top of that each week means the sums they’re bringing into the club on gate receipts, matchday income and most probably, corporate facilities as well, is more than likely enough to dwarf our entire current overall balance.

I unfortunately don’t have the average attendance or season ticket figures for each of the past three seasons, so the figures in the table above are from the season just past, 2019/20, and they’ll be used as the benchmark to work against. However, I can look back at some fixtures from the past two seasons to do a comparison on attendances. Because our average attendance figures are slightly skewed because of our home games against Celtic and Rangers, when attendances break the 9,000 mark, I decided to just take a look at home games against Aberdeen, Hearts and Dundee United and compare the 2017/18 season against the season just past. The average rise in attendance against these clubs in as comparative fixtures as I could get is 2,668.

All things being considered here, it’s also not bad at all when you look at the attendance of my first home league match at the club in the 2015/16 season, 2,196.

So with all that being said, they’ll be three parts to this aim, and they are:

1. Increase average attendances

2. Increase the number of season ticket holders

3. Increase the capacity of Cappielow

This aim is a tricky one, as I can almost control certain parts of it, like performances on the pitch, the purchasing of ‘big name’ players, whether our reputation as a club is increasing, etc. But there’s parts of it I can’t control, such as how big a town Greenock is, it’s attraction compared to other towns and cities in the country (in real life, it’s proximity to Glasgow and going through something all Scottish clubs have to go through, competing for fans with Rangers and Celtic), and the affluence of our fans.

This leads us onto aim number three, and something I’ve got a little bit more control over.

Establish a Scottish Core

I’ll be looking to, either by bringing through youth through our own system, or by purchasing young players from other clubs, establish a Scottish core to my first XI. What I mean by that is I’m aiming to have a Scottish goalkeeper, one Scottish centre back, one Scottish central midfielder and one Scottish striker.

This aim can be split into two parts; facilities and scouting.

As I mentioned before, our league success coupled with the Champions League group stage appearance all but secured our financial future for a couple of years, at least. It’s also enabled us to take that all important next step in an FM save, enhancing the facilities. I managed to successfully persuade the board to upgrade our youth facilities in the summer of 2019, meaning they’re now deemed ‘good’. Once I knew that a spot in Europe was secured for the upcoming 2020/21 season, I again asked the board to upgrade our youth facilities and again, the request was accepted. That upgrade is due to be completed in October 2020. We also have ‘good’ training facilities at the club, but right now, I’m choosing to prioritise our youth facilities.

Coupled with upgrading our facilities, I want to create an environment where it’s not just the players that are flourishing and progressing, but our coaches are too. Attracting and developing the best possible coaches to the club, will give our players the best possible opportunity to reach their potential. This all starts with the youth coaches, and I’ve been able to attract the popular choice for Head of Youth Development, Phil Cannon, to the club. I’ll be looking to send any coaches not up to a Continental A or Pro licence standard on coaching courses at the earliest opportunity.

In line with the aim of establishing a Scottish core to the team, scouting will shift from finding cheap targets abroad, to identifying the best home grown talent there is. To do this, I’ll be putting together a Scottish scouting network.

To begin with, I’ll have one scout assigned to the entire nation from the summer until the end of the year. This is to pick up on any talent I may not be completely familiar with, or that plays in the lower leagues. Another scout will be assigned to keep an eye on any young talents plying their trade regularly in the Under 20 league. One final scout out on a regular assignment will be tasked with looking at specific teams. The first batch of teams I’ve called out will be Hibs, Hamilton, Hearts (who all have great youth facilities at their clubs) and Livingston. All four of these clubs are fairly well renowned for producing prospects. Scott Brown, James McArthur and McCarthy, Craig Gordon and Robert Snodgrass are just a selection of talents to come from these clubs. Once a prospect has been flagged, our chief scout, ex-Morton player, Joe McLaughlin, will be sent to do a final assessment, with the final signing decision coming down to me.

The fourth and final aim is hugely intertwined with our scouting.

Answer the question, “What does a Morton player look like?”

This is a bit of an anti-climax, because I can’t answer this question yet. I’ll be digging in and coming up with a list of attributes I feel are required for Greenock Morton players. I’ll go through this in a separate blog post.

So to summarise all of that, here’s the 2020 Vision again.

1. Finish, at least, in the top 3 of the Scottish Premiership each season.

2. Grow the Greenock Morton fan base.

   1. Increase average attendances

   2. Increase season ticket holders

   3. Increase the capacity of Cappielow

3. Establish a Scottish core.

   1. Youth facilities investment

   2. Youth coaching development

   3. The Scottish scouting network

4. Answer the question, ‘What does a Morton player look like?’

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, and get your input on the final aim. What attributes do you usually specifically look for in players you bring in to your clubs?

My FM16 Tactic: 4-1-2-2-1

I’m feeling inspired by #wearethecommunity kicking off and seeing some of the brilliant, positive reactions to something that I believe is going to be massively beneficial to everyone in the FM Community. But also, unusually for me, I wanted to talk tactics.

Now, I set out right at the beginning of writing this blog, that I consider myself useless tactically on Football Manager. I decided I’d much rather leave the in-depth tactical posts to the experts, Cleon or FMAnalysis. However, if you’ve been following the Morton save updates since the beginning, you will know that I made a confession that I was, rather shockingly for some, using a downloaded 4-3-3. The proof is there, I consistently overachieved playing with it:

• Season 1, fight relegation, Championship playoffs.

• Season 2, mid-table mediocrity, Championship winners.

• Season 3, fight relegation, Premiership winners.

• Season 4, consolidate, CL group stages and 2nd place finish in the league.

My strikers and wingers have scored 20+ goals in seasons. My playmakers consistently hit huge average rating numbers. My full backs both laid on 10+ assists a season.

Despite making a few tweaks here and there, it’s not my tactic.

So from season 5 in the save, that’s 2019/20, I’ve made an effort to become my own man tactically.

I want my defence to be solid, stay firm, but the full backs can join in with the play further forward if they want to. I always want a player in the defensive midfield position, giving that extra cover when needed. Someone in the centre of the park, with the ability to get up and down the pitch. Players on each flank, getting and staying wide, providing chances. A maverick, playing in front of the main midfield and behind the striker, with the ability to unlock defences at his own free will. And a focal point, the main man, the lone striker.

This is the output of those thoughts.

Asymmetry at it’s finest. These are my lop-sided 4-1-2-2-1 formations. I always know how I want my teams to play in my head, but getting that across in FM terms has always been Achilles heel.

I like my teams to control the play, have possession of the ball, but not for possessions sake. Just like FM keeps asking me, and just like I keep telling them, if we’ve got the ball, we’re not going to concede.

Like I said, I like wide players. I appreciate a narrow formation, but ultimately, I’m not a fan. I love it when a winger gets the ball and just runs at the opposition defence, but there’s got to be an end product. I’m very much a manager that chooses his players based on form, I believe I’ve got the players at my disposal so that one week I can play the formation on the left with the left sided wide man being further forward, and if that doesn’t come off, the next week I can switch to the right side playing further forward. One thing I don’t like is that the ‘cross from byline’ instruction is pre-set for a winger. I said I want my wide men to run the defence and have an end product, yes this sounds like running to their hearts content and then crossing it, but if the cross is on from deep, then I want them to play that ball and get it in the box.

Whichever variation I play, the side in which the winger is pushed forward also includes a slightly more advanced role for the full back on that side too. Now I’m sure I’ve seen somewhere before, but this isn’t really the done thing to do. Normally you’d have on one side, an attacking role for a winger coupled with a more defensive role for the full back, and on the opposite side, you would have a more attacking role for a full back coupled with a more defensive role for a winger. I might be completely making that up, but that’s how I’ve always set my teams up. The change here is that I want my full back to move into that vast space vacated by the winger playing further forward as default. He can get up to support the attacking play, and provide an extra outlet for crosses.

One of the issues I had was with the centre forward. I often found because of the role selected, complete forward on a support duty, that he could be isolated at times. I’ve tried to remedy that here with an amended role for the front man, advanced forward, and by advancing a midfielder into a role behind the lone striker. I’m looking for them to work closely together to be our main outlets for goals.

Here’s the stats from the game and the key thing I notice here is, what I’ve been banging on about. Possession but not for possessions sake. 56% of the ball, but a higher number of shots, a good shots on target ratio and a good number of chances created, whether they’re clear cut or half as the game distinguishes them.

Like I mentioned previously, I’m not the most tactically minded person there is. I don’t think this is the perfect system, but I just wanted to introduce it to you today, as I’m actually really pleased with it. When you create your own tactic, and you gain results like the one I detailed, it’s the reason why we all play Football Manager.

We Are The Ton

But first, I’m sure you’re asking, who are the ‘Ton?

Greenock Morton Football Club were founded in 1874 and are based in the Scottish west coast town of Greenock, just along the River Clyde from Glasgow. There won’t be many people still alive that witnessed the clubs greatest success, winning the Scottish Cup back in 1922 against Rangers. That being the clubs greatest success probably tells you all you need to know about them already, and the club last competed in the top tier of Scottish football back in 1988. Some notable former players that you might have heard of include current Aberdeen manager Derek McInnes, David Hopkin and Derek Lilley both played in England after starting their careers at Morton, and Robert Earnshaw had a very short, but memorable loan spell at the club. The clubs most famous son is Andy Ritchie though, who played with Morton for 7 years between the 70s and 80s, scored over 100 goals and is regarded as one of the finest players never to win a Scotland cap.

The club holds the record for the most number of promotions and relegations into the top flight of Scottish football, and if you were to look back at their history from the 90s onwards, they can definitely be given the ‘yo-yo club’ tag.

The club actually went into administration in the early 2000s and suffered back to back relegations, starting the 2002-03 season in the Scottish Third Division (now League 2). Douglas Rae saved the club and is chairman to this day. Rae is a lifelong Morton fan, and his company, Golden Casket (the makers of Million’s sweets, Morton’s main sponsor) is based in the area. Promotion was secured at the first time of asking, and an unheard of crowd of over 8,000 watched the 1-0 win over Peterhead to confirm it. The following season, a second successive promotion looked on the cards with the club 12 points clear after the first half of the season. Form plummeted however, with rumours that some of the players had placed bets on their rivals, Airdrie, gaining promotion. They eventually did, and Morton finished outside of the promotion places.

Fast forward quite a few years to the 2012-13 season and Morton and Partick Thistle were head to head in the second tier of Scottish football, vying for promotion to the then SPL. It all came down to a crunch match, again over 8,000 fans attended, this time at Thistle’s Firhill ground, on a Wednesday night. It wasn’t to be however, Morton fell to a 1-0 defeat. Thistle have been in the top tier of Scottish football ever since, and Morton slid from the second tier into League 1 the season after.

Morton on Football Manager

Former player, Jim Duffy, was hired to oversee the League 1 campaign and rebuild the club after relegation. He did just that, securing Morton’s 10th league title overall which puts them third behind Rangers and Celtic as the club with the most league wins in Scottish football!

Despite winning the league, the fans weren’t happy with the football on show. Duffy has been replaced by a promising, young manager (me) and this is where you join the journey, just ahead of the 2015-16 season, and the clubs return to the Scottish Championship.

The Stadium

Morton play at Cappielow Park, in Greenock. The stadium has a capacity just over 11,500, of which just under 6,000 is seated. It’s widely thought of as one of the classic grounds in Scottish football, away fans seem to love visiting it, probably because it sits right between the argument of whether it needs updating to become more modern, or whether it should be kept as it is. The stands might be pretty historic, but one thing that is of quality at Cappielow is the pitch and that’s in no part down to groundsman Mark Farrell. He’s won groundsman of the year on three occasions since his arrival and both the Celtic youth teams and Scotland have used Cappielow to play and train on in recent seasons.

Off The Pitch

Off the pitch the club is like any other Scottish football club, funds are tight. Attendances are low, and until the club starts winning matches, and fans start coming back, expectations will be low too. The Scottish Championship is a competitive league. Rangers and Hibs start out as the favourites to win the league and gain automatic promotion. One of them will have to negotiate the playoffs however, alongside 2 other teams. Our fierce rivals, St Mirren are also in the league after being relegated from the Scottish Premiership the season prior. We start the season as predicted to finish 8th, and expected to battle bravely against relegation.

The primary aim for the season is to do just that, stay in the league. Aside from that, fingers crossed that both Rangers and Hibs get promoted, and we can kick on from season 2. A secondary aim would be to draw one of either Rangers or Celtic away from home in a cup. The cash windfall from a tie like that would give the club a huge boost finance-wise.

The club benefits from the chairman being an underwriter. What that means is that if the club is in the red at the end of the season, he’ll pump funds in to keep it going. There’s also debt to contend with, but that’s only applicable if, and when, Rae leaves the club.

On The Pitch

If we’re going to stand any chance of having a successful season, Denny Johnstone and Alex Samuel will be integral to it. Both players are on loan from Birmingham and Swansea, respectively.

Loan moves, I believe, are absolutely vital in Scottish football. Clubs don’t have the finances to attract these types of players to the club permanently, and bringing in the right player, across any position on the pitch, can make a huge difference as to what kind of season a club has, and where you finish in the league table. At the other end of the pitch, shoring up the back line, we have Rangers centre back, Luca Gasparotto.

Relying on three loan players to make the difference might not be a long term strategy, but long term strategies aren’t for Scottish football. It’s impossible to look 2, 3, 4 seasons down the line and try and predict where the club will be. All you can do is look to next Saturday, and go after the 3 points.

And that’s what I’ll be doing.