Enjoy Burton Away(& at home I suppose)

[Nlittle1892]

ENJOY BURTON AWAY(& AT HOME I SUPPOSE)

Firstly let me Introduce myself to you all, I have played FM for as long as most of you, as well as various other management sims around at the time. I had a brief spell without playing whilst we were building a family etc but the last few years I've found myself back in the game! The last couple of editions (FM17 & FM18) I've found myself reading a lot more FM based blogs etc and watching videos and my love of the game has grown through this. This however will be my first attempt at chronicling my career. I'm not the greatest getting around a laptop but writing a few words and attaching a few screenshots shouldn't be that hard....even for a thick Geordie!!

 

At the end of the 2015/16 season Newcastle had just suffered relegation from the Premier League and our nearest and dearest rivals were quick to kick a man when we were down, literally.  They took great pleasure in the fact we had to head to grounds we hadn't visited for some time, and in Burton's case not at all.  ENJOY BURTON AWAY was all that could be seen on social media and forums. Well we did just that, we enjoyed Burton away(won 2-1) and came back to the top flight as champions under the master tactician Rafa Benitez. Fast forward another 12 months and karma was a beautiful dish of humble pie for our nearest and dearest who mocked us as Burton relegated Sunderland from the championship and will again entertain the wearsiders in League 1. This made me want to honour our fine men from Burton by doing a career with them and this will be my attempt to take the club where no man has before...anything above 20th in the championship and I will surely be offered the freedom of Burton!! 

 

So there we have it, Burton announce Norman Little as replacement for Nigel Clough, after relegation to League one the club decided it needed a change of direction and looked towards the young dynamic Geordie who was looking for a way in to management. The club have state of the art Youth and Training facilities which they kindly allow England to share at St Georges Park. That's as good as it gets in terms of facilities though as the Pirelli stadium holds less than 7000 with just 2034 seats. In future that will be a target of mine to have a bigger/better stadium hopefully in the bigger/better leagues. Basic Youth recruitment and fairly basic junior coaching will also need to be invested in. With this in mind, Frees/loans and the odd bargain here and there will be the transfer strategy under me, focused on youth but not afraid to take on the odd old timer when needs must(more on that soon).

Tactically I will be using my adapted tactic from FM18, a weird Asymmetric 3-3-3-1 according to FM, i believe it to be a slightly more lob sided 433. In 18 I had a couple of good seasons with Newcastle using this and it's going to be my starting point here. Keeping the ball is key to this system, if the opposition don't have it then they can't be hurting me. Obviously the standard of players I had in 18 will be vastly different to the Burton I'll be inheriting but the fundamentals will be the same. 

                                            

As you can see I have the same tactic but flip flopped so i can interchange left or right side focus depending on how games are going or the strength of the opposition. Pre-Season went well using these bad boys and we were unbeaten in all 8 friendlies, the highlights were the 3 games at home to higher division opposition, 1-1 v Stoke, 1-0 v Derby and a entertaining 4-2 win against Birmingham. Tactic worked well I believe, we had more of the ball in all games against better opposition and decent pass completion in those games, like I said keeping the ball is how I want us to start with, later in the season I see adjustments to get the finer things sorted out but as we can see Pre-Season was satisfactory. 

 

Transfer wise the club had already brought in 6 players prior to my arrival, One of the first tasks I had was the future of Liam Boyce. West Brom were in for him straight away and I got them up to £5.25m rising to £6.5m with add ons for him. He wasn't someone I wanted to lose but that kind of money will be ploughed back in to the club, I was giving 60% of the fee to spend and went shopping. 2 players were signed for fees, including the club record £750k signing of Tyias Browning from Everton. He will slot in at CB. The other player arriving at a cost was Neil Farrugia who arrived from Irish outfit U.C.D for £350k. These will be the only money buys I plan on this season unless I find I need to seriously strengthen in Jan. Loans of Callum Slattery and Freddie Woodman give us some youthful promise whilst for one season only we have brought in the legend that is Shola Ameobi! He has decent enough stats to be an option off the bench for us when chasing games and will hopefully also use his history against Sunderland to good use this season. Ionut Rus also joins our u21's on a free. 

 

Our Season started at home to home to Rochdale and it was a complete performance from us. A solid 2-0 win with a brace from Ben Turner who got both goals in the 2nd half following 2 Marvin Sordell knock downs from corners.

As you can see it was a complete performance, 58% possession, 82% pass completion, 91% tackle success and 33 attempts at goal. Only real complaint was both goals come from set-pieces and not from open play. 8 players all scored over 7.10 match rating so they look to have taken to the tactic really well early doors. 

We then travelled to Gillingham for our first away game, the bookies had us slight favourites and again we were in control. By half time we had raced in to a 2-0 lead with goals from Neil Farrugia, a close range header, and Jamie Allen scoring with a fine drive from 15 yards out after a great move on the left side featuring  Quinn, McCrory and Hesketh. Gillingham got one back in the second half after a swift counter caught us cold. We kept up the pressure on the home goal but couldn't get the clinching 3rd goal. We were almost made to pay but Hanlan missed a glorious chance in the 94th minute. It would of been a robbery if they had stole a point. 

For the 2nd successive game we had over 30 shots at goal, disappointingly only 7 on target though. Analysis showing our Mezzala Jamie Allen loving a long range strike, that is something I will be trying to reign in. 5 shots off target from at least 25 yards is just a waste for me, he also had 4 blocked from outside the box. He's lucky he scored otherwise he would of been in for some harsh words. 63 % possession again boding well for the season ahead, 80 % pass completion and a fantastic 100% of tackles won. Only 3 players were above 7.00 match rating which means there is still work to be done. 

Well I think I've bored you all enough for my first post ha, joking aside I hope you enjoyed my first ever fore-ray into writing about my FM career and I'll be back soon to see how we take our 100% record deep in to the season. Next post will have a bit more detail about our squad and our key players and prospects. 

Till next time...

Up The Brewers!! 

 

[Nobby_McDonald]

Good luck with Burton. They've certainly been punching above their weight in real life and all credit to them.