[FM18] The Dynamics of telling you to shove your transfer request up y- a journeyman career

[noikeee]

3 hours ago, Hootieleece said:

4 pace on a CB and he wants to see the field........are you ready to play with a REALLY DEEP DEFENSIVE LINE!  

I usually do so to alleviate the Longball deficiencies in my defense. I currently have a CB Cover with a pace of 7.  He is also Highly Influential, but in my setup with the Deep Defensive Line he does a job and even wins MLS Team of the Week honors!

Hope you survive..........I am enjoying this.  You are much more tactically innovative than I ever try to be. 

I might attempt to be tactically innovative... but whether those innovations are successful is highly debatable. 

Thanks for the comment, appreciate it.

[noikeee]

April 2020

Woah. The comeback is well and truly on! When I began Promotion Stage, I didn't imagine we'd be able to turn around the 9 points defficit at all, nevermind to turn it into a 4 points advantage with 7 matches to still be played. This is madness! The key moment was the 3-1 win away at Avarta, with Dhaflaoui ending a very long goal drought with a superb performance - we overtook Avarta for 2nd place right there.

In the cup, it's the end of the fairytale as we crashed hard against the best team in Denmark. Still, I'm proud of my players for having gone this far.

[kidthekid]

Nice return to form

[JMA]

What a turn around.

The title could be on 

 

[noikeee]

13 hours ago, kidthekid said:

Nice return to form

 

7 hours ago, JMA said:

What a turn around.

The title could be on 

 

The title would be great, but I don't want to be too greedy. 

I'm crossing my fingers hard for holding on to this. We always do better when we're underdogs, but now that we're on good form, the AI might adapt and play more defensively. Did we peak too soon?

[noikeee]

May 2020

It's the highest point of my career so far. Blessed with what's now two distinct tactical systems that exploit different things in our opponent's defences; a minor arsenal of tweaks to those systems; a highly capable, motivated squad; and a tiny wee bit of luck, we've been racking up win after win after win, and are now in a sequence of 9 wins in a row - whilst also undefeated in the Promotion Stage.

The two wins over the teams from Kolding got us up to 1st place, and then two big wins sealed the deal - it was with the 4-0 over Aarhus that we sealed promotion to the 1.Division with 2 games in hand.

I am delighted as we succeed in achieving this season's goal, which is somewhat remarkable given how far on the back foot we started Promotion Stage after a poor performance in the 1st half of the season. It's all forgotten now, and we're very close to the title, too.
 

[Mikado911]

Congrats !

How do you think you will fare next year? The gap might be wide.

[Rikulec]

Fantastic form there, hopefully you can build on it once you go up.

[noikeee]

7 hours ago, Mikado911 said:

Congrats !

How do you think you will fare next year? The gap might be wide.

I think we have the quality to do more than be stuck in a relegation battle, but we'll see.

1 hour ago, Rikulec said:

Fantastic form there, hopefully you can build on it once you go up.

Thank you.

[tajj7]

Nice, good comeback after getting sacked, some interesting tactics there! 

[noikeee]

25 minutes ago, tajj7 said:

Nice, good comeback after getting sacked, some interesting tactics there! 

I haven't shown our latest tactic, which is a diamond with a winger. I think the reason we're so good now is that we're alternating the new one with the previous 4-3-3. The old tactic exploits the center, the new tactic exploits the right flank and half-space, and depending on how the AI lines up, either one or the other breaks them down.

Will show it later. 

[Bitner]

Great ressurgence!

Hope there's more to come!

Cheers,
Bitner 

[deltablue]

Woooo!

[noikeee]

On 28/11/2017 at 12:20, Bitner said:

Great ressurgence!

Hope there's more to come!

Cheers,
Bitner 

 

On 28/11/2017 at 14:47, deltablue said:

Woooo!

Before you guys get too excited, I've now got some defeats to show, too. 

[noikeee]

June 2020

The run is over. Perhaps the lads partied too hard, but against Vanlose, we were a bit **** - conceded a goal just before the break and that was it as we looked useless. I was walking into the dressing room, hairdryer in hand, shouting "YOU FU*KING PIECES OF SH*T THERE'S A CHAMPIONSHIP TO WIN YET" when we were suddenly teleported back to the middle of the pitch to do a choreographed dance, whilst a bunch of rubbish rained in Vanlose's pitch.

Yeah we were mathematical champions right there, didn't matter that we lost - Avarta did the job for us by beating Holbaek.

Speaking of Avarta, we played them on the final day. And that was another defeat to make it a ****** end to the season. We did miss a penalty kick... on minute 93. Well, better do it when it doesn't matter. Except I don't trust Ferdinand Bangsgaard and he has missed quite a few penalties when it did matter, too!

[noikeee]

Naestved - 2019/2020 - Season review

It's a good year for Naestved - we climb the Danish ladder from step 3 to step 2, and get closer to the glory era of the past. We also claimed some serious scalps of Danish football throughout our surprising cup run to the quarter-finals.

Statistics, best 11, and top 5 players of the season

 

 

5. Jakob Johansson (AMR, ST) - His midseason signing might've been the tiny wee bit of extra push that made the difference compared to last season when we missed promotion. Although he seemed frustratingly injury prone, this loanee forward who played either on the right-wing or as striker, still managed to get 5 goals and 4 assists in 14(2) appearances, and get one of the team's highest ratings.

4. Mikkel Jakobsen (ST) - Top scorer again and with the same 13 goals, but I feel last season had been slightly superior, even if he added 6 assists to his name now too.

3. Anton Hendriksen (DC) - Not as good as last year, as his crazy 8 goals scored dropped to just 1 this time around. But defensively he was the standout of a team that kept clean sheets and conceded very few goals - we finished with just 15 goals conceded in the Promotion Stage, the next best defence had let in 25!!

2. Mathias Hebo (MC, DM) - A superb signing, and now I feel like an absolute moron for having taken my eyes off the ball and letting him go on a free for next year. Playing mostly as the Carrilero, he scored 4 key goals, got 4 assists, 4 player of the match awards, and got the team's 2nd best ratings.

1. Mads Kaalund (MC) - This season's pleasant surprise. You'd think either of the more talented Mads Olsen or Markus Bay could make a better case for being our best attacking-minded midfielder, but Mads shone both as AP/A on our plan A tactics or Mezzala on our plan B tactics, keeping the team's highest level of performance all year, and finishing off with 4 goals and 6 assists - not bad for someone who exclusively played as MC.

 

Career progress table

Season   League                  Cups                              Continental                    Other
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Panserraikos (Greece)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17/18    League - 15th           Kupello Hellas - 1st round                                       Relegated, sacked 1 match to go
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Naestved (Denmark)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
18/19    2.Div - 3rd G2, 3rd PS  DBU Pokalen - 1st round                                          Lost promotion on goals scored
19/20    2.Div - 4th G2, 1st PS  DBU Pokalen - Quarter-finals                                     Champions, promoted

 

[noikeee]

Tactics review

 

You guys already know about my 4-3-3-with-a-Raumdeuter which has remained largely the same:

 

But now I've got this new setup too:

 

Essentially this started out as a reaction to us underperforming as favourites under our 4-3-3 which I think typically suited games where the opposition was very aggressive and open and giving us lots of space to counter, directly to the forwards. That's all fine but I needed something more nuanced and less direct for all the other matches, so I started building out something based on a diamond, and eventually settled on this which is a very similar variant to the plan A, except with one of the forwards pulled back. A diamond plus a winger.

 

The big deal here which should be obvious is just how focused it is on the right-wing. With the winger and wing-back widening the pitch out on the wing, and the Carrilero and specially the AP/S also drawing players out to the middle, the Mezzala can find space and shine rushing into the half-space. But that's far from the whole story or our only path to goal, as I've found we score a lot of goals from crosses from the winger to the striker; direct through balls from the AP/S into the lone striker (or even from deeper players); and even wing-to-wing crosses from either the LB to the AMR, or the RB to the LB.

 

It's a nice balanced setup that for now seems more consistent than the 4-3-3, HOWEVER it's not following as closely as I expected, the guideline of the 4-3-3 doing better against aggressive sides and this 4-4-2ish doing better against defensive sides. It's more nuanced than that, it seems to depend not just on how defensive/offensive the opposition is, but really on how their roles are set up and where do they give us space. The 4-3-3 exploits the center and the space between defence and midfield, the plan B exploits the right wing and the right half-space from deeper. So I typically play the start of the match on Comprehensive highlights with one of the tactics to see how it's playing out, then decide to keep it or switch to the other, and move to Extended highlights when I'm happy enough.

 

I also have a little array of small tweaks that I usually do such as:

 

• In the 4-3-3 I still often switch between CF/A and CF/S, depending on where I feel the space is
• I try to refrain from using "look for overlap" but it can sometimes be effective in the plan B against narrow tactics (ex 3-5-2 variants, 4-4-2 diamond variants)
• I've had success using a IWB instead of a FB at right-back in the 4-3-3 in very specific circumstances against defensive sides such as a defensive 4-4-2 - the IWB functions as an extra midfielder whilst the Raumdeuter keeps the width
• You might notice plan B has "play wider" and I've dropped "push higher up", this is to try to increase the space on the pitch for us to play in, I sometimes do this in the plan A too against defensive sides
• Sometimes I go up a mentality to Control or down to Counter if I feel we're being taking too long to reach the area, or too rushed against a frustrating resilient opponent
• When the AI is losing in the final minutes and goes crazy offensive into a 4-2-4 or a 4-3-3, I like to switch to the 4-3-3 myself to exploit all that nice space in their backs, but I drop down the fullback roles and duties to more cautious settings so we don't get outnumbered ourselves in a counter-counter.
• Should go without saying that if I'm against a very card-happy ref I'll add "stay on feet", and substitute as many booked defensive players as possible.
   

[noikeee]

And in pointless self-congratulatory news, it's the first time I ever make it to the first page or remotely similar in these hall of fames:

   

(they're probably random)

[noikeee]

Little sneak-peek preview of the pre-season. He comes home, permanently. 

[noikeee]

Pre-season 2020/2021

 

 

We continue to hit primarily the loan market whilst the B team manager picks up lots of kids, however this time we also managed to sign a couple of players permanently, most notaby Mikkel Jakobsen who was our top scorer the last 2 years on loan! In terms of departures we lost our Carrilero Mathias Hebo quite regretably, whilst I also let go on a free a few iconic players such as our previous captain Jesper Christiansen. He wanted first team football and I could not give him. But beyond Hebo we managed to re-loan all the key players we had borrowed from other clubs, so it's all fine there.

As for our main new faces:

 

This is our main star signing, however he's only here on a 6 months loan as his contract with parent club AaB runs out midseason! I've tried offering him out a contract but he wants too much money, let's see what happens. He's a stellar attacker but I'm not quite sure where to fit him, too! Raumdeuter, F9, winger, mezzala, AP/A, maybe even as the highest up forward? He can do all of it and isn't perfect at any of it.

 

The closest thing we could get to replace Mathias Hebo as Carrilero. He's pretty good in some things, but I would've liked better mentals.

 

Another alternative to Carrilero or DM, he's a promising kid still developing, pretty handy no-brainer permanent transfer.

 

A key signing, he seems a much needed upgrade at LB. We've got 3 LBs now and I'm wondering whether I should cut off Danni Jepsen's loan (he's better than Rizvic but Rizvic's homegrown), maybe later in the season.

 

New keeper. My staff think he's better than Rosenorn, but I disagree, I'll retain Rosenorn as our starter for now.

 

Backup young right-back, unquestionably still with a bit to develop. I hate all the personalities I'm getting on all my youngsters, signed or developed in-house, though.

 

One of 2 kids I hired for the B team myself. Could do with better technicals but looks to be a proper DM in the making.

 

The other kid I hired. 15 years old and already worth 2 stars... I don't quite like the balance of his skills but there could be something interesting in here.

 

Squad

So here's how the squad is looking now:

 

I'm pretty happy with our ability and depth, there's a lack of team leaders or highly influential players though, I'm not entirely sure what's the consequences but let's see if we lose something as a result of it.

Fixtures

 

 

A strong pre-season, with a single defeat at the hands of a team from the Superligaen, and plenty of goals.

We look all set, the only thing I'm not so keen on is my board's ambition. They're asking me for a midtable finish in the 1.Division. That's actually what I was aiming at more or less, but I could do without the pressure, we've just gone up.

It seems the 1.Division is a lot simpler than the 2.Division, there's 3 rounds robin and then 1st gets promoted, 2nd and 3rd go to a promotion playoff, 11th and 12th go down. That's simple and fine. The only thing I don't understand is that it's also divided in 3 periods, from what I could understand, I think each period has its own league table, but it's only used to decide the prize money (which is divided per period) and nothing else?

[noikeee]

What is this, we no longer have that ****** rule of having to keep 3 under 21s on the bench????

 

Freedom!

 

(it was a ****ing annoying and dumb rule in the 2.Div - I was often tempted to keep a kid on the bench instead of picking him as a starter, to facilitate choosing my subs)

[noikeee]

Welcome to the 1.Division:

**** you, FM.

[noikeee]

August 2020

I couldn't have wished for a better start!! After the initial shock of the first match away at Skive in which we dominated yet had terrible accuracy and conceded a 93rd minute winner, we would clean out the rest of the month with only wins. We even had a bit of a revenge over the AI, turning the match around vs Hvidovre with goals in minutes 90 and 95; and then again against Avarta, 94th minute winner. This puts us all the way up to 1st!!! And we're through in the cup, too. The only thing I don't like is that we're yet to keep a single clean sheet, which shows the higher level we're up against now, but that's nitpicking.

[Hootieleece]

Good Job except for that FM Game!

[tajj7]

Great start, making good progress.  How long do you plan spending in Denmark? 

[noikeee]

23 hours ago, Hootieleece said:

Good Job except for that FM Game!

That match, the Benny Hill Theme played everytime the ball got near my forwards.

14 hours ago, tajj7 said:

Great start, making good progress.  How long do you plan spending in Denmark? 

Eh, dunno, haven't really thought about it yet. I guess it depends on how soon do I get bored with Denmark and what kind of offers I get. Getting this club up to the Superligaen seems like a good end goal, but I'll add/remove some more leagues this season then let's see what happens.

[deltablue]

Very bright start. 

[Darius1998]

The squad in general looks very decent for the second tier. Great start so far, hopefully you can keep it up.

[noikeee]

5 hours ago, deltablue said:

Very bright start. 

 

5 hours ago, DB08 said:

The squad in general looks very decent for the second tier. Great start so far, hopefully you can keep it up.

Thanks. I'm very optimistic - we do have a bunch of good players, notice that last year already we knocked out of the cup 2 teams from the first tier, and we're only better now. But I expect us to tail off a bit when we stop being underdogs and the AI stops giving us as much stupid space to counter.

[noikeee]

September 2020

September sees us concede a couple of draws, but if you consider these were 2 away matches against some of the strongest teams in the division, that's more than fine. The highlight was a 95th minute winner against Thisted - early season promotion rivals - with 10 men, which was decisive to still keep us top of the league. This is obviously quite a bit surprising and the great thing is that there's only 1 match to go to the end of the 1st period, which means we'll bag the big 342K€ of prize money for coming 1st in it. Currently our finances stack up at -123K€ so it'll move us to positive balance territory and hopefully I'll be able to ask the board for a couple of things, such as a coaching course for myself.

In the cup we were a bit **** as we struggled to beat minnows Herlev, but we keep going. Loanee Rasmus Thellufsen scored a brace there, and we'd better take the best out of him while we can, because he has agreed a move to Esbjerg in January.

Another interesting fact is we're top after 10 matches, yet have not managed a single clean sheet so far!

 

[Rikulec]

Looking very strong there.

[noikeee]

45 minutes ago, Rikulec said:

Looking very strong there.

Thanks.

 

 

We lost 1st place in the final day of the 1st period.... and that's 100K€ less of prize money:

Would've been 340K   Still nice I guess, puts us with positive balance.

[Bitner]

Just now, noikeee said:

Thanks.

 

 

We lost 1st place in the final day of the 1st period.... and that's 100K€ less of prize money:

 

Sad moments. :/

Cheers,
Bitner 

[noikeee]

The prize money was still good enough to let me do this:

Not fantastic, but should let me get slightly less useless youngsters.

For now no coaching badges for me, I can't find the option, I think it's because I asked for it just a couple of months ago.

[noikeee]

I think this is easily the best goal I've scored so far in FM18. Long range volley by Markus Bay to the top corner:

 

 

[noikeee]

October 2020

It's a financially costly blip as two 1-0 defeats cost us 1st place in the 1st period and the associated 100K€ of prize money. We have however quickly bounced back with two big home wins - including our first clean sheet of the season, finally! - that keeps us firmly up there fighting for the promotion places, same points as Helsingor who are now top. An amusing feature is the sheer amount of penalty kicks we've had this season, our DM Ferdinand Bangsgaard takes them and he is now our top scorer with 8 goals in 14 matches!

In the cup we struggled with Aarhus Fremad (from the 2.Div) and had to wait for minute 92 to score the winner, but we're through to the quarter-finals again, where we'll face Viborg - bit funny that we made it this far, haven't faced a single Superligaen side and still won't in the quarters.

 

[kidthekid]

Great tactical break down. Looks like it could be a double promotion.

[noikeee]

10 hours ago, kidthekid said:

Great tactical break down. Looks like it could be a double promotion.

I'm amazed, but it really looks like it could.

Though lately we seem to rely more on set piece goals than anything else. Not sure how sustainable that is.

[Ropo]

Just caught up with this thread, very enjoyable. Nice to see that you have banked an early sacking to make up for any success further down the line. Will keep reading!

[noikeee]

6 hours ago, Ropo said:

Just caught up with this thread, very enjoyable. Nice to see that you have banked an early sacking to make up for any success further down the line. Will keep reading!

Thanks!

[noikeee]

November 2020

It's a sign of how standards have dramatically risen in the face of our genuine shot at promotion, that I look at a month like this and think "inconsistent" instead of "pretty good". We keep on rocking those late goals to seal wins over Avarta and Fremad Amager, and equalize late on against Horsens. But for once the late goals went against us vs Thisted - Daniel Agger's cousin Mikkel sealed an hat-trick on minutes 87 and 91 to give us our first defeat in a while.

Despite losing points 3 times this month, our opponents are doing worse - somehow we have gone back up to lone 1st and opened a 2 points gap over Helsingor. We now enter the winter break  and I'm happy with it, as we had a few important injuries that could cost us, namely to our surprise top scorer Ferdinand Bangsgaard and to goalkeeper Mathias Rosenorn.

[noikeee]

World of football update - end of 2020

A little feature that I used to write in my earlier careers and that has been meanwhile lost, was a look around the globe to see what's going on at the top of world football, to give us some context. This could be fun, so let me try to recover this without going into too extensive territory.

 

FIFA World Cup 2018

 

 

The Russian World Cup saw Jorge Sampaoli become the hero that finally won Argentina their 3rd trophy, and saw Lionel Messi finally get crowned on the international stage. A somewhat atypical tournament in which most major favourites fell through the road, knocked out by other lesser favourites such as Belgium and Italy, also saw some surprises, most shockingly Senegal beating Germany in the round of 16. The Colombians would be this tournament's most lasting surprise however, being within a penalty shootout of the final. The final would see Argentina slice past a tidy but not remarkably talented Italy, with goals from Mauro Icardi and Franco Vázquez.

 

Player of the tournament might come to you as a slight surprise:

Simone Zaza's 5 World Cup goals capped what had been a wonderful season for him at Valencia, which eventually gained him a 33,5M€ move to Liverpool and later a 55M€ move to Inter. My shock here is that despite the goals, just how on earth did he end up winning this award ahead of Messi (who wasn't even in the final top 3), who clearly also dazzled through the tournament, as seen on the Dream Team stats:

The Colombian back line had a wonderful tournament.

 

 

UEFA Euro 2020

 

 

Fast forward to 2 years later, the first European-wide Euros of the modern era, held all over the continent. A more stereotypical tournament saw most of the favourites emerge and culminate in a familiar Spain-Germany final, in which Diego Costa and Gerard Moreno's extra time goals gave Spain yet another title, to add to their 1964, 2008 and 2012 triumphs. My favourite fixture here is the all-explosive Albania vs Kosovo in Amsterdam in the round of 16, in which the Kosovars sneaked through on penalties to a magnificent quarter-final appearance. Poland would, however, be the most lasting underdogs, reaching the semi-finals after stunning both Portugal and Italy.

 

Spanish bomber Álvaro Morata would emerge as the star of the tournament, with a superb 8 goals in 5 matches, a momentary performance high that will surely be recorded as the peak of his career. Unsurprisingly, Spain would dominate the tournament's dream team:

 

 

Ballon d'Or

 

And the first man to break the Messi/Ronaldo hegemony, is.......

 

 

Probably not what you were expecting. French winger Thomas Lemar has been on stellar form, recording assist after assist, but without a major trophy won this season, and still playing for Monaco, you wouldn't nail him as the main favourite. This universe has taken a slight turn towards the surprising.

 

UEFA Champions League

 

The last thing I'm showing you guys is what the European club scene looks like in recent years, in its highest level of competition. Freakishly, the Champions League has been recently dominated by just 3 clubs, only them have featured in the last 3 finals, with all 3 possible combinations of them meeting each other. It might also not be the 3 clubs that you're necessarily expecting.

 

 

17/18 saw Atlético finally win their first trophy, slaying Guardiola's Man City in the final in Ukraine. They'd reach the final the next year, and emerged as favourites as they played in their own stadium, but Mourinho had other ideas and on stereotypical fashion beat them in penalties after a dull goalless draw.

And then last year's edition was pure fire as the Manchester Derby played out in the Champions League final... at Wembley. Mourinho came out on top again, now with a fabulous 4-1 win over his archrival. Anthony Martial and André Silva both scored 2 goals for Utd.

 

This is what the Champions League dream team looks like in 2020. The cream of European club football, the highest level of competition in the game these days. Utd dominate, but you might see here a few faces that have moved to the club only in the most recent years:

 

[noikeee]

Meanwhile in Denmark, this is what the winter break feels like:

[noikeee]

Also, I've been playing FM18 for a while and hadn't yet noticed the radioactive body map:

[Deisler26]

Good career so far!

[john1]

Surprised to see Kosovo made it to second round!  

[tyler16]

Really enjoying this, keep it up.

[andychar]

7 hours ago, noikeee said:

Also, I've been playing FM18 for a while and hadn't yet noticed the radioactive body map:

Oh wow that's amazing! I'd be careful though it looks like the World worst sniper is going to take out your striker. 

Great season so far. I can't believe Denmark has a winter break...losers.

[noikeee]

9 hours ago, Deisler26 said:

Good career so far!

 

6 hours ago, tyler16 said:

Really enjoying this, keep it up.

Muchas gracias, hombres.

 

8 hours ago, john1 said:

Surprised to see Kosovo made it to second round!  

Not just the 2nd round... the quarter-finals!! Mental.

1 hour ago, andychar said:

Oh wow that's amazing! I'd be careful though it looks like the World worst sniper is going to take out your striker. 

Great season so far. I can't believe Denmark has a winter break...losers.

The sniper's accuracy is proportional to that striker's in front of goal.

[deltablue]

Wow, go Kosovo!