Bonjour! Do not fear, I won’t be butchering the wonderful French language too much this year. Probably. Welcome to the beginning of FEO & Ted’s excellent adventure in the South of France.

Following on from last month’s introduction, today’s post will include a bit of squad analysis, some tactics talk, and how the season has progressed up to the end of December. I’m also going to attempt to provide a little context for my own in-house stats, with the help of some guest #GifGoals…

Note: Bad news folks, today’s post will be almost entirely Ted-less. Originally, we were going to start with the transfer window open, for Ted to have a quick crack at moulding the squad in his image, but with the 2020 changes meaning the window remains open until after the ninth league game, we decided to abandon that plan as impractical.

So it’ll just be me today, playing through until the end of December. Ted will open the next post, with his approach to January…

“Stats” Talk:

I was looking for some goals to illustrate what I’m talking about in regards to “Key contributions” and/or goals people were interested in how I would score them. I put the word out to some FM legends. Unfortunately, they were all far too busy, so I asked in FM Slack instead…

FMSamo got back to me first, with a full-on #MovieGoal, which I’ve cut down to a gif here…

The pass! Key contribution? I think so. There’s still plenty to do, but it’s a situation transforming ball. The finish (and run)! Key contribution, nailed on. Impudent that finish, he’s totally Dønnum. The pass qualifies as an assist for sure, but I’m not giving out a secondary assist for this one. You don’t see it, as I had to cut it out, but Bjørdal, H’s simple pass back to Bjørdal, J, is not worthy in my eyes.

Two of my fellow #EssexFM boyz sent me gifs of goals that are similar, and scored by me in the same way. First up, this lovely Ce(n)tré from FMGrasshopper:

And then this wonderful flowing move sent in from ***checks notes*** Toulouse Director of Football, TedRedwoodGamingInc:

Both goals feature a quality secondary assist that I award a key contribution for. I love a pass that spreads the play, and putting the wide players clear is integral to the goals.

Crosses and headers are areas I’ve found most difficult to make decisions on scoring so far. In these examples, I rate both assists as key contributions, as the crosses are near perfect (plus the movement of the wide players for that matter), but I don’t always give crosses that credit, say if I judge the movement and/or header more important to the goal. Whilst both these headers are good finishes, I don’t rate them as a KC, as the crosses have put them on a silver platter in my opinion.

Hopefully this makes a bit of sense. The last thing I’m trying to work out, is how to go about weighting these things to get an overall score (probably one for assists, one for goals), although I’m not totally convinced that it’s worthwhile. I’ll revisit once I have a season’s worth of numbers.

Want a goal scored by this system? Got a really good goal? Confused by what the hell I’m talking about and need more examples? Send me a #GifGoal. Find me on Slack or Twitter, I’ll happily take a look. Don’t want those things? Then, errr…don’t.

Day One Analysis:

Toulouse are considered strong favourites for an immediate return to Ligue 1, and the board expect promotion.

Imagine my surprise then, when the Team Report showed me that we’re not all that. The good news, we’re the finest Off The Ball outfit in the division.

I don’t tend to spend a lot of time worrying about the comparisons, however, the midfield screens in particular gave me pause.

Some concerns there for sure. There’s also a dearth of leadership in the team, the squad contains zero Team Leaders.

Still, there are two players I’ll pick out to start with, and contrary to the above, they’re both midfielders.

There’s only one man for a more defensive midfield role at the start:

Khalidou Sidibé will be playing as a Central Midfielder on Defensive mentality. That’s not necessarily how I see him in the long term (assuming we keep him that long), but as of now, there’s no-one else I trust to anchor the midfield.

Next to him in midfield will be new vice captain, VDB (not that one):

He’ll be playing as a CM on support, a role I enjoyed with Boca in the beta, and will have the PI “Take More Risks”, to hopefully encourage some more through balls from deep.

You may have noticed, they’re not the most dynamic pair. Both lack pace and dribbling ability, and that’s fairly typical of the options available to us in central areas.

Note the Seconde: I’m watching the entire game, every game, until I’m confident enough in our tactical set-up. Even after that, if we have big fixtures (derbies, top of the table clashes), or games where I’m worried about how our opponent is likely to line-up, #90MinuteFM will be my go to. It’s what I’m enjoying at the moment, and bearing in mind my current attitude to stats, I won’t be dropping below comprehensive highlights at any point. It really helps that FM21 is super fast.

Tactics: How It Started:

I’m not going for a long-term ideology or anything to start with. Hopefully that will come after I see what Ted brings to the table in the transfer market. For now, it’s more pragmatism from me:

I’ll explain my reasoning from back to front (clickable names klaxon). Maxime Dupé doesn’t look like a sweeper keeper. With his acceleration, first touch, and rushing out all in single digits, he’ll be a bog standard goalkeeper, and we’ll keep our defensive line at standard too.

I’m fairly happy with our centre back pairing, but the full backs are not the most exciting attacking talents. Still, I’m confident enough in their defensive abilities that a full blown defensive midfielder seems like something we can do without.

Stijn Spierings is another that lacks in the pace department, so I’m giving the Enganche role a bash to start with. Hopefully, Wesley Saïd can provide some magic from the left flank. He’s got the most flair and technique of our starting eleven (and by far the highest wage), so here’s hoping he can impress.

Brecht Dejaegere isn’t a natural (or even accomplished) right winger, but he offers decent pace and crossing ability, and is a hard worker. There are some promising young players for the wing roles, and we’ll be watching them keenly when they emerge off of the bench.

Up top, it’s Efthymis Koulouris, not the most thrilling of strikers, but I’m hoping that having a pressing forward (and preventing short distribution from the goalie), can lead to us winning the ball back quickly in midfield, as the spine of the team is tall, and should dominate in the air.

The First Seven Games:

Results wise, a pleasing start:

Defensively we looked sound. The Châteauroux game was a bit of an aberration, as they did nowt but score two blinders.

It’s going forward where I had concerns. If you remove the two corner goals, the three direct free-kicks and the penalty, we only scored seven goals from open play. Not great.

Why seven games? It was during the seventh that I started to make changes to the line-up. Spierings was the first casualty, as he’d been largely anonymous (one spectacular free kick aside). The Enganche role didn’t really seem to be doing what it said on the tin, dropping really deep and occupying the same space as the CMS a lot of the time.

Janis Antiste was the first of the youngsters to impress from the bench, and moved into the first team on the right wing. Dejaegere had been good, but moved to the AMC position as an Advanced Playmaker.

Eleven More Games:

Have the gradual tactical changes made a difference?

A very tentative yes, although it may not look it, and with an additional caveat. These games did not contain a single set piece goal for us (a separate problem), but we were better from open play at least.

We were very impressive against Auxerre and Caen (both in the top four when we faced them). We were actually very good at Amiens too, but the ref gave them two penalties for two perfectly good tackles, to completely screw us. I was beginning to think we were making some progress…

…but then, the caveat. The last three league games have been turgid. At least Le Havre are challenging at the top, the last two are one goal victories over relegation candidates, and were not enjoyable games to watch.

Tactics: How It’s Going:

After all the tweaks (90 minute FM continues…), this is the current set-up:

Big changes out wide. The wide attackers needed more support. The full backs may not be the biggest attacking threats in the galaxy, but they’re alright. And the defence has been solid enough.

Antiste made a couple of appearances on the left as an inverted winger, and looked dangerous. Changing the role for Saïd too, has made him more impactful. He’s only bagged three goals, but two were blinders (and game winners), and he’s been more involved in general.

Koulouris got a more attacking role, and low crosses are out, as he’s been a danger in the air.

Outside of the first eleven, Manu Koné has put some disappointing early season performances behind him, and has played well of late. I expect he’ll feature more in the new year.

Given the caveat outlined above, and the potential of transfers in and/or out in January, there may be some more changes when I return. We shall see.

Most goals: Koulouris (8), Bayo (4), Antiste (4)

Most key contributions: Dejaegere (4), Koné (3), Saïd (3), Spierings (3), Van den Boomen (3)

Most assists: Dejaegere (6)

Most secondary assists: Van den Boomen (4)

The almighty table:

I feel bad handing over to Ted at this point. On paper, we’re looking good, but current form leaves me worried. He’s also got to face Ligue 1 opposition in the 9th round of the Coupe de France first out of the gate, with the board expecting us to get to the 11th. Sorry Ted!

Still, there are many reasons to be cheerful. We’re in the driving seat for promotion, some of the young players are developing nicely, and we’ve had a lovely intake preview:

Next time out, you’ll actually get some Ted time, as he deals with the January transfer window, and six games too. He can lead off writing the next post, and maybe a fresh eye is what’s needed with this squad. As I write, he has no transfer budget to play with, but hopefully a cheeky ask of the board will give him something to play with, seeing as we’re top…

Thanks for reading, stay safe x