Building a Champions League Team - #BHAFC

[NilsFreedhom]

So.. Many of you read about my other thread which was mainly focused on the man-marking system that I developed in my first year as Brighton & Hove Albion manager. First season is now over, and I thought to open another thread (the last, I promise) to share with you the process that I hope will lead us to become a Champions League Team.

Summary of a Record-Breaking Season

As the title says: Record-Breaking! 
3rd in the league behind two of the best team in the world. 86 points that obviously are a Record for such a "small" team. We took advantage of a poor campaign by Arsenal, Chelsea & Tottenham and realized something really unpredictable.
49pts. of the 86 came at the Amex Community Stadium where we managed to remain unbeaten with 15 wins and 4 draws.

Wonderful season for Szobo & Tsyganov, who came earlier in the 1st transfer window to take the place of Trossard (Didn't want to renew and went to Spurs, god bless him! And Marsch). Kouamè closes with 22 goals but Alexis Mac Allister scored one for the ages.

 

Developing a Club DNA

- Tactics & Board Vision -

According to Tony Bloom, who probably drank too much wine after we secured a CL spot, we should be a defensively solid team who plays possession and entertaining football while pressing and maintaining high-tempo. Obviously we should also make the most of set-pieces.

I think it's too much Tony, but we'll try our best.

We'll just continue what we began and what brought us amongst the best team in England that is nothing more than continuing to do what Graham Potter did & Roberto De Zerbi is actually doing with his team. 
 

I like to call it just modern football. Fluid and adaptable, able to change according to either the opponents or the players at disposal.
Basically we rotate three different set-ups with two different set of instructions. 
 

     

Those are the main setups, as you can see they share lots of roles and duties and have the exact same TIs. The focal points are:

• Two BPDs who create a triangle with the DM to build-up. Only one of the two, changing from match to match, is allowed to dribble more, carrying the ball throughout the first line of pressure and opening up spaces for the front 4. (Thank you @Rashidi!)
• One creator and one aggressor to complete the midfield trio
• One creator and one aggressor on the flanks

A more cautious version with 3ATB often used against high press teams

- Training and Youth Development -
Following the board instruction, we'll heavily rely on scouting department in order to find affordable youngsters to continue this sort of tradition that the team is building in recent years (Caicedo, Estupinan, Sarmiento, Enciso..)

In the first two transfer windows we managed to sign Szoboszlai, Musah & Schjelderup but we've also put our hands on Giacomo Faticanti and Marco Carnesecchi, who will join us at the start of this year.

 

We'll probably have to start to think about substitutes for Lallana (expiring contract), Groß and the Captain Lewis Dunk. Fortunately Brighton has loaned out Haydon Roberts who already is a wonderful CB and Kacper Kozlowski who'll fulfill the AM spot together with Musah.

 

In terms of development I'm a bit disappointed with what we achieved this year so, we'll totally the focus of the training putting more effort on the collective rather than the individual.
Our playing style obviously requires lots of technical&mental skills and I came out with just few training session to rotate throughout the year in order to develop the attributes needed. Individual-wise, as I said, I haven't noticed the positional development to be quite useless this year (if not to learn new roles) so I'll stick to the generic one, and I'll work only on specific focus (where needed) and traits.

Main traits will be:
- Bring the ball out of defence (CB)
- Dive into tackles (DM&CM)
- Go Forward whenever possible (WB)
- Ball played into feet (Creators) and dictate tempo (Regista)
- Killer Balls & One Twos (Almost everybody)

Main change would be using as often as possible the "Match Practice" that I think is quite underrated. Ideally I want my players to play with the ball as much as possible.

 

I think that's it for today. Sorry for the bad English, as I said before, I'm Italian but I try to do my best 
You can find day by day updates on my Twitter page, I'll post here when I have something to highlight!  
 

 

[JoOSTAR]

When do you use the 4231 and when the 4-3-3?

And do you use any specific player instructions in these tactics?

 

Great results and great thread!

[Marinho]

Cool team, been interested in them as well, good writeup  

As for your development/training: If that's your normal schedule, there are way too many recovery sessions in there. Some argue you need none but even trying for a more real life approach that's way too many. Personally i use 1-2 depending on density of schedule. Managing Santos in Brasil (so lots of games as well) my base schedules for 1 and 2 game weeks look like this:

 

 

 

For the 1 week schedule i always manually add a match review on Monday (you can't do it in the schedule creator menu but can do it in the calendar ...), the 2 game schedules i roughly alternate as there's a lot of 2 game weeks in brasil and this way i won't have certain elements i want in there not be trained for weeks at a time.

I also adjust it a bit for the month ahead based on feedback from players but also situation. For example i might scrap the physical session every other week when there's a lot of 2 game weeks in a row or replace one with one of the Saturday sessions if they get cut due to traveling. Ot just put in a Rest session or two.

Not a light schedule obviously and i definitely rotate my squad maybe more than others would (in brasil you just need to anyway) and am fine with a couple injuries here and there.

Edited November 21, 2022 by Marinho

[NilsFreedhom]

Quote

As for your development/training: If that's your normal schedule, there are way too many recovery sessions in there. Some argue you need none but even trying for a more real life approach that's way too many.

@Marinho I know there are too many recovery session. I recognize I have a problem with the injury risk bar. I want it to be always as low as possible. 

I'm gonna try to stick with this approach that last year gave brilliant result in terms of injuries. Only 54 in a whole season.

This year we are playing LOTS of matches if compared to last years' schedule so I don't expect the same result but I don't want the injuries suddenly become a problem.
During the season, I'm implement also the old fashioned way of resting the starting eleven after a match and try to swap some of the recovery with either Attacking or Defensive session that I found thanks to a famous YouTube channel based on stats and empirical experiments on FM being the most useful in terms of developing attributes.

 

Thank you for the reply anyway 

[axehan1]

What is your red card count for the season if you have all Mids to "Dive into tackles"?