Building a squad, the Ceirdiff way

I read William's thread yesterday and that reminded me of a thread that I was intending on creating back when I was managing AFC Telford (knocked out of the play-off final ).

Anyways, here is Ceirdiff's guide to team-building:

Have you ever decided to takeover a newly promoted team, or just simply a team with a squad so bad it doesn't deserve to be in your division, instead belonging somewhere in the realms of Isthmian Amateurs? Maybe you decided that managing a team new to the BSP would be a fun idea: no squad to start with, save for one or two players.

You have a clean slate to work with. This is where getting promotion low down especially becomes child's play.

Reviewing your team

To start, you need to look at your team so far. If you just have a promoted team there isn't much, so just look at the one or two players you may have, otherwise skip to the next point.

Start working through your players systematically. There may be a lot of poor players in your team so we want to eradicate the poor ones efficiently.

1) Start with your goalkeeper. What's his age first of all. Unless he's stunning anything over 26 is really rather unsuitable. Obviously age comes with experience, but we want a youth to last us a generation.

Goalkeeper's over 26 but stunning can be considered placeholders. However these won't be totally common low down the pyramid.

Otherwise, you need to work out the quality of your younger keepers. The younger the better.

A lot of keepers are late developers, Canham was a highly touted 15 year old on my old Burton Albion save; but had just 7/8 in all goalkeeping stats. By the age of 21 he had 14+ in all goalkeeping stats save for creativity and he was still showing sign of improvement. These are the kind of people you want when you start building up your dynasty, but for now they are just a toll on resources.

Ideally, and young goalkeeper we have would have high agility/communication (I find this tobe accurate indicator stats, if these are good the rest of the stats will follow.) A reflexes of 14+ is generally highly ideal, but those are not the most common so if your struggling to find such a player then go for 12+ but no lower. You _must_ have a strength of 15 or above, physical beasts are necessities. At Burton Albion I bought two allegedly world-class goalkeepers; 17+ in all stats except handling (or kicking, can't remember). However they had strengths of 3 and 7. My 24 year old goalkeeper who had conceded 7 the year before who had vastly inferior stats on all but strength was replaced by these two who conceded an average of 1 or 2 a match. At their best they managed 7 concedes in 10 games. Not good enough at all. So any keepers without these stats should be binned. No looking back.

2) The midfield. First of all, how many are there in the midfield? What sort of tactic would have to be adopted in order to contain them properly. Hopefully it would not be something too uncommon, simple balanced tactics are always the easiest to work with (although even then I couldn't get a 4411 to work well with my world class Luton Town squad, even in the Championship.)

The wingers must be pacy, you should expect no less from them. Low crossing from either and they should be binned. Dribbling again needs to be high. Generally if more than half the stats are red then then should binned. Whittle it down so you have the bare minimum of midfielders. In reality unless a player is really, really good, we can find better on lower wage.

3) The attack. You want very, very strong players here. A physical beast is necessary for a target man. Did I mention? Unless you have a very talented technical player, in which case you want an advanced forward, preferably solo, you want a target man upfront. Especially in the lower leagues pace and strength tear teams apart. Bin anyone who doesn't make these standards.

4) Finally, the defense. A lot of people disagree with me on this, but I feel especially lower down an effective defense can be built by having an effective attack. Sure, this leads you open to people playing the counter attack on you, but when it's your first season in a new division, or even if you've not been a world beater before then they won't do that. If your already a world beater then this is the wrong guide! By the time teams realise you brute-force strength, and lack of defensive strength it'll be the Christmas transfer window or beyond. This is when the strengthening comes, but that's later.

As defense will be taking an initial backseat, basically anyone who plays defense, has decent stats and is not over-paid can stay at your team, try to limit yourself to 3 or 4 though.

Tactics time

Tactics are possibly the most critical thing down in these leagues. A team with inferior players can beat a superior team if the tactics are right...unless you just play your normal tactics against Chelsea like I did at AFC Telford, your destined for failure then: this can be useful should you want ejection from a divison in order to not overplay your players.

Generally I decide a tactic I want to explore with before I start a game and start to develop my team accordingly. I like to have 4 men guarding the back, too many and your men upfront start to struggle, any fewer and not even our quantity can hide the lack of quality there. Playing with limited defenders means that they are just clearing the ball, not much room for mistake. I like to play with wingbacks as this aids the attack of the team and helps me score more goals. They can also help guard the wing from further up the pitch. With the attacking force of the team, then I recommend against having more than 1 defensive midfielder should you want any. Of course, this means that if you're left in the unideal situation of having too many defensive midfielders (3 or 4), just offload some so you only have two there, plus a third versatile player who can cover elsewhere. If you sell them you can earn some small amount of money, but try your hardest to not release them in the interest of money more than anything else. If the spares are on £50/w and are young players then it may be worth just loaning them out and keeping them in your reserves depending on the state of the rest of your squad.

The DM should aim to help out slightly in the defense but mostly pick the ball up and deliver it to the upfront players. A player with great pace, passing and tackling would be a great person to place there.

Your midfield should, if you choose wingers have very pacey ones, make sure that they are wingers and not any other kinds of nonsense you can choose them as. To be honest though the wingbacks if they strong enough stats should make ample support for your attack. In the center you need to have good creative players who are physical beasts. This is one area that you really want to rule; rule the midfield and your defense don't need to do so much work.

Upfront, unless you have a very talented technical player (like my Christoph Fanchone), then as I have said previously you want a target man. Advanced forwards can help you get balls for your target man to bash in, but ideally you want both of them to be scoring goals.

I personally am not a massive fan of playing counter attack, I'll occassionally do it but I expect a certain level of fitness from my players and insist on having pressing on full. This will all but kill some of the younger players, which is why early ejection from the FA Trophy, JP, FA Cup, LC, etc. can often be a blessing. Offside trap is useful should you have defenders who all have strong teamwork, but otherwise it'll start hurting you (I found a lot of conceded goals like that). If your struggling for possession then men behind ball is a good choice. Remember, you should spend the game pouring over all the available stats and making tactical changes accordingly.

You may be tempted to play defensive football, but really that's not a good idea. If your playing a strong side then you're going to concede regardless and your just going to struggle to score more goals in that sort of mode. Depending on the circumstances and how the stats are playing out I'll normally either go for Attacking or Balanced mentalities.

With passing I personally stick to short, I'll play direct or long occassionally depending on my opposition, however.

Remember, occassionally mix up your tactics to throw off your opponents, the philosophy, passing, counter attack, etc. should be dealt with on a match by match basis.

Building the team

Finally, the interesting part. Until now it's mostly been my theories and you reviewing your team. None of the interesting stuff.

For squad building now, you should have very little players in your team, giving you plenty of money and a clean sheet to work off. I like to give myself somewhere in the realms of 20-50k transfer budget, but place all of the rest on wages. As my paid transfer targets are snatched by other teams, or I purchase them I'll slowly put this back into wage budget. You'll find that the board gives you a much higher wage cap than is appropriate, sometimes as much as 5-10% of your budget. Give yourself a self-imposed wage budget which is well below your wage budget. Whilst building our team we're going to pick up *a lot* of dead wood. These can subsequently be offloaded in a later transfer window, but for now we're stuck with them; don't go over budget with them.

Remember, very few players are irreplacable, so unless there is an absolutely star player demanding the absolute highest you can offer him and no negotation, and he has experience playing at the highest level with still decent physical stats then just say no to someone asking you for high wages. The higher up the fewer irreplacable players you'll find.

The whole transfer window you should spend looking for players who are better than what you have already, even if your replacing someone signed that same transfer window. We want a world class squad before we hit the EPL so we can take it by storm by the time we get there, I reckon my Luton Town side will hold there own next season the the Champions League despite being there in their first season in the EPL after back to back promotions from the BSP.

So, starting from the back:

1) Goalkeepers. I outlined above what I expect from a goalkeeper. Unless he's stunning I won't buy over 24 yo goalkeepers, preferring under 18's (although occassionally I get older). Experience definitely count for a goalkeeper, so buying a few young keepers and loaning a lot of them out works well (Generally a young keeper costs 2-8k). Agility and Communication are good indicaters for potential, and reflexes are highly desirable. Strength is a *must*. I was told that creativity is important but I've never been affected by that stat.

2) Defense. As you know, I don't place much weighting on these for the first half season. This gets tightened after I've been at a team for a while. Having competition back here is often a bad idea, they *really* need to gel together. High heading from one center back is a *must*, physical beasts are good, and teamwork is desirable. For the full/wingbacks you really, really want pace and decent tackling with OK crossing.

3) Midfield, for wingers, crossing is deadly important. On Luton Town, one of my key players is a winger: 70 passes a game. He has set up 40 goals last season. My striker scored 60 most from his his help. In addition, speed is critical to allow them to constantly break off from the opponents in order to give the explosive goals. For the centre, you want to have physical beasts with strong passing and tackling stats. (I expect most of my team to aid with the defense, in the computer terms, Very Fluid)

4) Attack. Strong players with good pace. High positioning is highly sort after, 12+ a minimum. I also desire strong shooting. You know a good striker when you see one.

How to find players

I'm going to assume you don't use attribute masking, with that it's slightly harder but I'll write up another guide for it maybe.

This is how I find players for my team once I've done all the beaurocracy nonsense. I at first at AFC Telford attempted to just send one scout for youth players and another to UK & Northern Ireland. What a waste of time and missed opportunities. The key to this part is to use the stats filter so you have an idea of what the players stats are like before you look at them. Make your assistant filter out those who aren't interested.

With not many players your youth system will likely be going crazy, at least some of the players will be genuine quality. In any case keep *every* player that goes out of the youth system.

When searching for players first go 0-18, 0-21, 0-24 etc. until you find a decent one. Youth players are always more desirable especially as you want to build for the future. Furthermore the younger ones will want lower wages than older players.

Occasionally you might want to see if there are any Serie A/La Liga footballers in the free transfer list. If you can tempt them one or two of those will greatly help your team but that is mostly for season 2/3 onwards.

Thanks for reading my guide and I hope it helps!