Welcome back to France! Last time, our start to life in Ligue 1 began remarkably comfortably, which has us more dreaming of Europe than fearing the drop…

Today’s post will cover three months from the middle of the season, with Ted attacking another January with vigour, and a little bit of youth development (or lack of it) chat at the end. First, a very quick bit of club stuff, before cracking on…

Behind The Scenes:

Just a few tidbits. I’ve added a new, Bosnian affiliate club (Željezničar Sarajevo) to perhaps one day secure the next Edin Džeko. I’ve signed a new contract to theoretically get me through to the end of the 23/24 season. Talking about 23/24, the board have decided we have achieved the goal for that season of “becoming an established Ligue 1 team”. Great news all round.

November & December:

Plenty of luck to talk about:

We’re not playing all that well. So that points haul is somewhat fortunate, although ironically, we didn’t deserve to lose the one we got spanked in. It feels like we’ve been found out a bit. I don’t know if that’s the way it works, but we’re being stifled in the attack whilst playing our usual tactic. Our most impressive win came about when going to a 424 formation after going 1-0 down.

For the first time, we went with a different formation from the start at home to Monaco, and though it didn’t work as I’d hoped, it didn’t not work, and a draw is a decent result from that one.

The pre-match presser for the Auxerre game revealed to me that our home form is inferior to our away form (by quite a bit it turned out), and though some of that can be put down to the teams we’ve played in those games, I tried a more positive 433 against Auxerre, and despite the final score, we battered them, in our best performance for more than a dozen games.

We remain, miraculously, in second.

In horrible news, Mike Maignan has signed a new long term deal for Lille, so our hopes of bringing him in on a free at the season’s end have been dashed.

So once again, with January approaching, and Ted’s imminent arrival with it, I leave him a) in a great situation on paper, whilst b) starting to see the tactic unRavel. Sorry Ted.

Ted Redwood:

Expectations can be a funny thing in Football Manager, and the prospect of them being quite high often diverts me from choosing sides who are expected to compete from the off. I thought I had changed that myself by choosing Sporting Cristal in my own save, however, it’s here in Toulouse that I feel the most pressure.

Under From’s management, the purple demons have defied their own expectations, and sit in 2nd place in Ligue Un upon my arrival. Another January, another set of fixtures for me to navigate, as well as trying to ensure that FEO has enough depth and quality for the remainder of the season.

We are overachieving, but it’s my job to ensure that this continues. My attempts to build on FEO’s success have been somewhat hampered by myself prior to my own arrival. Four of the five future transfers arrived on January 1st 2022, and only attacking midfielder Mateja Bacanin is vaguely ready for the first team squad. I had presumed the club would be working its way up the league over a few seasons, but now we are short of cash for wages and transfers, and are battling for European football next season. The solution? Fob on around €3.1m of expiring/useless talent (including top earner Wesley Said), and make room for the permanent transfer of Mike Maignan. Wait, what? He signed a new deal at LOSC?

Best scour the loan market for some other scoundrel that needs some love, and give F the boost he needs to continue smashing the league, then:

Overall the deal is costing in the region of €850k for the wages and loan fee, which I feel is well on its way to being repaid so far…

Extensive DMs from the manager revealed that he’d left me with a potential tactic to use for forthcoming league and cup games, however I decided to completely ignore him. I ported my tactic over from Season Three of my own FM21 save as I felt it was trying to do something similar anyway:

Against strong opposition I’d simply go to More Direct Passing, and drop Work Ball Into Box. Easy. Against teams of a similar quality, I felt that the strength of our boys on the ball would be enough to hold, probe, and provide that moment of spark when needs be. Nothing revolutionary, but how did it go?

It went pretty well, to be honest! Last season I presided over a dreadful run in January that FEO had to recover from, whereas this time it was 7 points taken from 9, and advancing through three stages of the cup and into the quarter final.

A huge element of our fortune was down to Moise Kean – returning 7 goals in 4 games, and generally looking an absolute menace in the ME. Nelson, Quina, and Sarmiento also stepped up offensively, and I was overall really happy with how the team looked going forwards during my six-game spell in charge. Over to FEO to review my month in charge, and to hopefully carry on my undoubtedly excellent work…

FEO:

Amazing. Ted’s gotten the goals flowing again, and created a real four-headed monster up top. Something Ted forgot to mention (leave him alone, he’s busy), is that all this happened with the African Cup of Nations going on, meaning he was largely without first choice options; Sylla at left back, and the big lad Sidibé in central midfield.

There’s been a lovely variety of goals scored, even, by some miracle, a goal from a corner, but I couldn’t help but highlight this one, featuring every member of that front four:

Ted’s had another great looking transfer window, and whilst Moise Kean is the headline deal, the vast majority of the business is looking to the future.

My selection of player to highlight is the young lad who’s “Labelled the next László Bölöni“, Ted’s €325k pick up of József Szilágyi:

I like him a lot. Since joining, the coaches “only” have him as a 2-3 star potential player, but seeing as Kean is a three star player, that could still be very good indeed. We shall watch his career with great interest.

I think Wesley Saïd deserves just a little goodbye. 39(7) apps, 11 goals, 6 key contributions, 7 assists and 4 secondary assists in his 18 months with #EssexFM at the helm. Was he massively overpaid? Oh yes. But he made invaluable contributions to our promotion campaign, especially in the second half of last season. A €2.5m transfer fee and his wage gone…I’m happy with that.

The table has us in the Champions League qualifying battle:

Which is a bit mad really.

Most goals: Koulouris (11), Kean (7), Sarmiento (6), Nelson (5)

Most key contributions: Koulouris (5), Kean (4), Nelson (4), Quina (3)

Most assists: Quina (6), VDBNTO (5), Amian (4), Kean (4), Koulouris (4), Sylla (4)

Most secondary assists: Amian (4), Quina (3), Sarmiento (3)

Youth Development:

It’s not been such plain sailing on the development front. For whatever reason, I’m not seeing the overall gainz that I’m used to from training.

We have good facilities, coaches that compare favourably in the division (top 4 in almost every category, and we’re giving our younger players ample chances to play first team football. Yet something’s not quite clicking.

My two biggest concerns are Kelvin Amian (soon to turn 24), and Bafodé Diakité (recently turned 21). Both have featured heavily in the first team, with 51 and 41 starts respectively, but both players have an abundance of orangey coloured arrows in their “all time” progress screen. Disgusting.

More positively, our diminutive Argentinian winger, Darío Sarmiento has barrelled his way in to first team contention at the tender age of 18. Fingers crossed this will help to develop him even more (I’m really struggling to find players who have significantly improved).

Probably the best example of growth comes from prodigy of last season’s intake, Mohamed Dieng:

He made five appearances for our first team before his loan move, but it should be noted, the majority of his attribute development has come since moving to play in Liga NOS.

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that I’m doing something less than optimally with training. My training strategy for FM20 was to go double intensity on a suitable additional focus (choosing two or three for each player during a season, depending on their needs, incorporating player traits where appropriate), while not focussing on a positional role (except for training new positions). Coupled with additional team training modules, this seemed to work a treat. Not so much with Toulouse so far. It’s time to give positional role training more of a go, and see if we can’t turn some of those orange arrows green…

Finally, I am a little ahead of the blog, and have gotten beyond this season’s youth intake, which was a disappointing one. Only Gökhan Soyudoğru looks like he has much potential, though after last year’s crop, I can’t complain too much.

Next time we’ll be concluding season two, and our unlikely charge towards European football. I’ll maybe have an initial look at how the changes I’ve made to training are working out, but just four months may not be enough time to see a definitive difference.

Thanks for reading, stay safe x