Football Manager 2017

[Baddar]

Tough upbringing... 

[MDK]

34 minutes ago, Baddar said:

Tough upbringing... 

He has a cul-de-sac of hair. 

[Naitch]

I think I've secured automatic promotion at the first time of asking.

With my final game of the season at home against Birmingham I'm currently top of the Championship and 4 points ahead of Blackpool in 3rd. Millwall and Burnley (4th and 5th) still have two games left and would be able to match me on points if they win both of their remaining games AND I lose to Birmingham, but I also have a +39 goal difference compared to their +19 and +18 respectively.

Now to duke it out against West Ham for 1st place where I just need to equal their result to claim the title on goal difference.

EDIT - Millwall drew while Burnley won in their 45th games and their final game is against each other so I'm hoping for a draw or Millwall victory. Then again, so long as Burnley don't win by 20 goals I should be alright

Edited August 22, 2017 by Naitch

[Naitch]

Something tells me that my really strict board will prevent the challenge from being successful. I managed to get a training facility upgrade in preparation for my 2nd season ok-ed at the very start but I've been shot down on every single board request since then, and to top it all off said upgrade just got cancelled. Didn't even know that was a feature...

[Hobo]

Things that have happened in this, the 4th transfer window of this game:

Papiss Cisse and Angel Rangel to Waterford Utd

Eunan O'Kane to Dundalk

Liam Ridgewell to Cork City

I've signed Kevin Doyle to stop Cork getting him.
 

It's getting a bit Chinese Super League. The early version. The Marlon Harewood years.

[Hobo]

Papiss Cisse has me a bit worried. The opening day of the season and he scores 4 in a 7-1 win for Waterford against Galway.

Meanwhile we beat Bohemian's 6-2 and Michael Keane is out injured for 2 weeks.

And Shamrock Rovers have added Wayne Routledge to their team.

It's all kicking off.

[Naitch]

My first season in the top flight exceeded all expectations with a 6-1 drubbing of Wolves to win the League Cup despite literally putting no effort into either of the cups. 4 of those 6 goals were scored by my otherwise underwhelming £10m signing from Man Utd, Federico Macheda.

The main focus of the league ended in an impressive run towards the end of the season, though we did lose the last 2 games regardless, saw Leicester finish 6th thanks to the striking efforts of £2.2m signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang with the support of Macheda and Gylfi Sigurdsson on loan from Hoffenheim. My entire outfield had been massively improved upon with these signings, as well as Yossi Benayoun and Paul Pogba on loan for the season, Jose Bosingwa, Vedran Corluka, Ritchie de Laet, and Keiran Gibbs bolstering my defence, and a few other signings here and there to strengthen my squad depth.

Things are already looking good for the next season after I signed Sigurdsson and Pogba permanently for ~£20m total thanks to a £6.5m future fee having already been agreed for Pogba. This pretty much just leaves me needing to make sure my squad depth is still up to task after a few departures from players who weren't quite good enough to stay in the first team after the jump up from the Championship, and possibly to replace Kasper Schmichael in goal if I can find a better keeper or Liverpool follow up on their interest in him with a decent offer.

[MDK]

I'm playing a revolutionary new system: A diamond in defence. 

[hugobomb]

Is that a sweeper and a defensive midfielder instead of the centre backs?

[The Lusophone]

As well as, I imagine.

[MDK]

Libero, BPD, BPD, Anchor Man, CWB, CWB, then two centre mids, an attacking mid and a striker is whatever combination I fancy.

[The Lusophone]

Have you actually got someone to play Lib or are you retraining an existing defender? One of the Belgian boys from Spurs is a good choice I usually find.

[MDK]

6 minutes ago, MadJack said:

Have you actually got someone to play Lib or are you retraining an existing defender? One of the Belgian boys from Spurs is a good choice I usually find.

I'm in the 25/26 season, those lads have since retired. Actually my 4th signing as manager. Jairo Reidewald, from Ajax now at Palace IRL, been the rock of my defence for a good few years but I cant remember if I retrained him. Does a decent job of it though. 

[The Lusophone]

Throwing up a quick Libero tactic in a new Spurs save, I figure this could also work with teams like Arsenal and Chelsea with more targeted defensive recruitment and training to the role rather than to PPMs. With Arsenal I'd be looking to retrain Bellerin to be the Libero. For a 21 year old he's got really mentals for the role (Anticipation, Concentration, Decisions and Positioning all 12 or higher and will get better with age) and his insane physicals (Pace 20, Acceleration 20, Agility 15) combine for someone who would be amazing at the role if he could be retrained successfully. If you were going to do it, you'd need to keep Debuchy around but as the right back is an altogether more defensive player than in most formation (I'm experimenting with a man marking approach to defence here as well), Debuchy actually fits the role really well. Monreal works fine on the left as well (and FM17 makes me think either the game overrates Arsenal or something is very very wrong at the club in real life).

With Chelsea you'd think someone like David Luiz would fit the role but his mentals are so weak that he'd only ever be a stop gap whilst you retrained someone like Kurt Zouma (who has better mentals at 21 than Luiz has at 29). Zouma is a more difficult sell than Bellerin as technically he's definitely not a ball playing defender, but he's young and could do a good job. Thankfully, Chelsea's loan army comes in handy here as you can go with Nathan Ake (worse physically but better technically than Zouma) or at a push Christensen or Nathaniel Chalobah.

With Spurs I've gone with Jan Vertonghen because 1. He can already play Libero and 2. He's basically a worse Bonucci. The Juve player is the ideal for this role in this years game, but Jan works for what I'm going with. Tobes could play the role even better than Vertonghen, so I'm retraining him to play Libero, but that might take a bit longer - he has a fairly low adaptability. Longer term Kevin Wimmer has the mentals and technical skills to fit the role but lacks the agility or acceleration to complement his impressive pace. Kieran Trippier could be retrained to play the role but he'd need to lose that 'run with ball down right' PPM. Cameron Carter-Vickers lacks the agility to make a great Libero and Kyle Walker-Peters has a different future at fullback so I'll need to scout around or hope for a decent regen.

Rambling over, on to the tactic:

Spoiler

Not sure if this is going to work, but I'm looking forward to try. Lloris big weakness is his poor distribution comparative to other keepers (8 kicking 11 throwing) in the league means he's on roll it out and distribute to the Libero. In both formations the defensive line (lib excluded) and the BWM are on mark tighter and each have a specific player to man mark. Player counter and very fluid.

[MDK]

Prepare to get an offer from China for Wanyama for something like £33m...

[The Lusophone]

They can piss off for that price. Gonna treat it is as if the market is like it is at present, in which case he's worth 45-50 million.

[MDK]

Oh, buy Kristoffer Ajar. He is the heart of my midfield. 

[MDK]

This is my formation

[The Lusophone]

It's definitely more balanced than mine. I'm finding balls over the top and into the space behind are a massive weakness of this formation. I might change Lloris to an SK as he's got excellent rushing. I'm developing another couple of tactics over the ones already posted, and will probably end up in a 3-2-2-2-1 or some variation. Added Asensio for 37 million and selling off a few players I'm not going to use, like Vorm.

[MDK]

Three of the players in that team I bought in the first season as long term prospects and they have worked out splendidly.