Where the Westfjords flow - A Youth-Only Region Locked Adventure

[FiftyBeforeThirty]

Pre-amble

Hello once more folks.  I'm here, after a lot of thought as to where I want to take my main thread and Football Manager save this year and after a lot of deliberation I've finally come up with a plan.

See, this year saw me take on my first managerial/coaching position, with a local town club's Under 11 side.  Not exactly leading out a team at Old Trafford or the Bernabeu but, alas, it was a start in a goal I've had for countless years, since dedicating too-many-hours-not-to into Football Manager.  It was awesome, I enjoyed it, but it was tough.

See, I live in a very rural area of New South Wales, Australia (originally from the U.K. - moved here around 18 months ago.  You know that map where it goes "Oh hey, 95% of people live in this red zone in Australia"?  The region I live in is probably just about visible.  My wife and I live in a town of about 700, with the next town over (where the team I manage is located) having a population of roughly 6,000.  Hailing from a "small" town in South-East England with around a 100k population...it's been different for sure!

Anyways, what I'm hoping to get at is the pool of players was small, but it was made even smaller when compared to every other team in our division.   

See this is "footy" country.  No - not this "footie" - Rugby League.  So there aren't a lot of football teams for people to join.  Hence why every other team in our division is just over an hour away...in the nearest "city" (that has roughly half of the population of the English town I once strode the streets of).  So, not only was every other game game a 2-and-a-half hour round trip, but they had a pool of roughly 8-10 times as many players as we had to choose from.

To make things "worse", or simply more difficult, every team in the city has various stages of trials and recruitment and some even have 3rd teams for their youth.  My team?  Well they just let the first 15 sign-ups play.  No replacements when a kid dropped out in Week 3 of 15, no back-ups for when I get a message halfway to the city saying poor little Timmy has a snotty nose and won't make the game.  We just had to make do.

As you can probably imagine, we didn't win a game, and scored just 2 goals all season long...

However, it was a fantastic experience for myself.  We had two quite fantastic girls, one of whom I genuinely believe could make a few of the city-based teams and just needs some more intensive training (and sessions where more than half the kids show up...).  I also got to feel the pride as we scored our goals, pulled off great saves and managed to string more than 5 passes together (the latter was only in the last couple of games).

And so, through all the trials and tribulations, I am happy to say that I'm confident of continuing in a role at the club again next season, and hopefully I'll get to see a team I manage and coach take to the field for a win, but that's enough biographical detailing for now.  It's time to get into the Football Manager part.

 

The Concept

My idea isn't particularly "unique" or unheard of before, but I've tried to make this FM save feel as much of a challenge as my coaching was, just without the parents driving me to the brink of insanity.

I want to build up a team with minimal infrastructure and that is isolated from other clubs in the region and divisions, and attempt a Youth-Only region-locked challenge.  That means, only players from that State/County/whatever-your-country-calls-it, can be used and only from our own Youth Facilities.

Obviously, at the start of the game this won't be possible but I'm hoping we will be able to slowly fill our team up with more and more players from the chosen region over time.

I will note, if this doesn't end up being possible I may have to move away from one point of this, either signing players from the region from other teams, or to make it a youth-only in general, but we will see how we can do.

 

The Team

It started by me looking through leagues with "isolated" teams.  Teams that are far from any other, be it on other islands like OFI of Greece or Kuressaare in Estonia, teams that are almost half a country away from their closest divisional rivals like Tromso and Ross County.  And then I found KA in Iceland.  

They are in the north-western territory of Iceland, and to show this I looked, trying to find the map I had discovered on my phone, only to be alerted to an even greater challenge.

This is the map I found.  KA are north of "Iceland" on the map, and I had a good look and thought it through.  And then I saw them.  That club, right up in the north-west corner, sat all on it's own.  Vestri.

Vestri, or Knattspyrnudeild Vestra (definitely not a copy-paste job I'll have you know!) sit all alone in the administrive district of Westfjords with a dwindling population of just 7,000 people, making up just under 2% of the entire country's population.  Just 100 years ago, almost 15% of the population lived here, though the harsh conditions and lack of flat land upon which to build and to expand has meant that the population in that time has shrunk by almost half, and while other areas of the country have developed, this small peninsula has changed very little.

It must be said though, the small town in which Vestri are located, Ísafjarðarbær, is an absolutely stunning location.

Everything just looks so naturally maintained, the roads are perfectly fitted around the Danish Strait's coastline, the short airstrip right on the precipice of the water's edge while hardly maintaining clearance from the mountains...it's idyllic - at least to me.

And this is where our save will be starting - in the second tier of Icelandic football in an area nearly 6 times as large as London, with a population not even a quarter of Gibraltar's.  

 

The Manager

Kjárr Vignisson is a former semi-professional footballer who plied his trade in the lower leagues of Iceland during his career.  Now, at 35 years of age, he is taking his first steps into management having just attained his Continental C License.  His time between attaining his license and the end of his playing career was spent working in a local educational facility and coaching younger sides around the area in the Westfjords town.  His youth management has led to him seeing some rising talents and helping them to achieve some forms of success, and he hopes that one day he will be able to hand a debut to a former youth-player for his new club, Vestri.

 

The Philosophy

We will be attempting to use a solid defensive formation off the start, which looks to press and counter to create chances.  The exact systems that we will incorporate with the team will mainly be based on the players themselves, especially those who come through the youth facilities in the first couple of seasons.  Our main financial aid at the start will have to be slowly selling off the players who were not raised in Iceland, and eventually in the Westfjords area, and hopefully our youth candidates will be of a reasonable quality, even if not from Westfjords, so that we may be able to sell them in the future.  I'm mainly keeping my fingers crossed that we don't end up with a generational talent who is from outside of our region and will have to be sold off at some stage, but the less we say about that, the less likely it is to happen, right?

 

 

Now, let us see how this works out!

[phnompenhandy]

What a fascinating opening post! Your personal backstory is interesting enough (and very best of luck with that), but your choice of FM career is right up my street.  You've chosen a wonderful location and a great challenge. I myself do (extremely) lower league Youth-Only saves; my current one (narrated in this forum) is with a Level 20 English side, but my last one was in Level 13 Scotland. It requires downloading fan-created lower-league databases, which I then tweak in the pre-game editor to customise it to my requirements. If I followed your ethos, I'd modify a Level 13 side to be in the remotest corner of Shetland. At the moment these are FM23 mods - now I can load a file up in FM23 then port it over to FM24.

Anyway, in your case, it will be interesting to see how long it takes you to dominate Iceland, and where you go from there. I'm a follower 

[FiftyBeforeThirty]

6 hours ago, phnompenhandy said:

What a fascinating opening post! Your personal backstory is interesting enough (and very best of luck with that), but your choice of FM career is right up my street.  You've chosen a wonderful location and a great challenge. I myself do (extremely) lower league Youth-Only saves; my current one (narrated in this forum) is with a Level 20 English side, but my last one was in Level 13 Scotland. It requires downloading fan-created lower-league databases, which I then tweak in the pre-game editor to customise it to my requirements. If I followed your ethos, I'd modify a Level 13 side to be in the remotest corner of Shetland. At the moment these are FM23 mods - now I can load a file up in FM23 then port it over to FM24.

Anyway, in your case, it will be interesting to see how long it takes you to dominate Iceland, and where you go from there. I'm a follower 

Thank you kindly - I really appreciate the comment and the efforts of sitting through my ramblings!  It does indeed sound like we have a similar calling for FM craziness - it's certainly going to be tough.

 

Hoping that the next update will be one of the next two nights but life is pretty hectic at this point in time!

[phnompenhandy]

2 minutes ago, FiftyBeforeThirty said:

Thank you kindly - I really appreciate the comment and the efforts of sitting through my ramblings!  It does indeed sound like we have a similar calling for FM craziness - it's certainly going to be tough.

 

Hoping that the next update will be one of the next two nights but life is pretty hectic at this point in time!

Take your time - my story is unfolding very slowly, nothing like one of our forum colleagues who bombs though seasons in an hour!

[FiftyBeforeThirty]

Squad Overview

It's been a little while, having not purchased or played any of FM23, so I figured it was time to break out a new set of spreadsheets for the upcoming save and try to develop somewhat of a system of measuring the team throughout our tenure.  Not only this, but I'm actually adapting and using different views for my squad which I can't say is something I have ever touched before.

Now for the not-so-fun news; well, we kind of don't even have a youth team...We have a senior squad and that is all, potentially since we are only Semi-Professional, but then again so are all Icelandic teams (something I've only just found out).  It may be an option in the second year where I'm able to say I'd like one, but there could just be nothing for them in our division.

Besides that, we've inherited a small and, if nothing else, unspectacular side.  Only 4 of the players are eligible for the challenge, and so it is my goal to play these few as often as possible in order to develop them to the best player that they can be.  3 are Under-21s and the other is 25, so they have a decent amount of time to develop in their careers and I'm hoping that they will continue their development here, especially as we look towards a youth-only future.

 

 

Goalkeepers

We have but two 'keepers, Steinarsson who is young with a fair amount of potential, and Broetto who is more experienced and has a lot better character to work with.  I am hoping to form somewhat of a bond between these two through a mentoring group where I'll also be incorporating one of our younger players who relatively well-suited to the group in my opinion.

Steinarsson will be starting, since I'd like to use as many Icelandic players as I can, though I'm also not stuck in a position where I'm forcing myself not to use Broetto at all, and he'll definitely be used throughout the season here-and-there.

 

 

Defenders

Here's where we start moving into...I guess, interesting territory.  5 defenders is all that we have, yes, but that's probably not the worst part of this - that'd be the fact I'm dealing with 5 defenders who only play center-back to a high standard.  In a way, I'm amused and kind of excited as I wanted to build a tactic around the players that we have at the start and what I've come up with is something that I never thought I'd fashion, or ever need to.  I've assigned 3 of our players to work on being wide center backs, a role I don't recall ever using previously and one that I'm fairly excited to see the influence of.

Obviously, Garðasson and Helgason are going to be two of our starting three at the back, the former looking like a bright prospect with very little in the way of development skills, though Helgason looks to be better-versed at reaching his, albeit lower, potential.

Gustav Kjeldsen will join the two challenge-eligible players at the back in what I think is a very solid back line.  Ondo will be leading the mentoring group between the set of defenders, though it's a role that Kjeldsen will probably take over next year, I'm doing it more so that the Gabonese defender's personality may have a positive impact on the side.

 

 

Midfielders

In midfield we have far more depth than at the back, and I'd say that for that reason it'll be our strongest area of the pitch.  That's part of the reason for my formation of choice.  Ibrahimagic (a fantastic name might I add) looks to be a very solid midfielder on the whole and has already thoroughly impressed me in the intra-squad friendly.  He is, by a fair way, our highest earner, and I'm hoping that this doesn't push him to be too far out of our league when it comes to renewing his contract.  Elsewhere, we have good options on the wings and Svavarsson looks to be a solid challenge-eligible player for us on the left-hand-side of midfield, though his atrocious determination leaves me incredible pessimistic. I will be putting him into a group with Nacho Gil who can hopefully spur some form of life into his mentals, and maybe have a positive impact upon his development somewhere along the line.

 

 

Attackers

Aaaand we're back to the challenging part of the challenge.  One out-and-out striker who's not getting any younger and a couple of wingers, Jakobsen is another Danish player who has some pretty impressive stats that I hope can see him work some magic with younger members of the side.  We are definitely praying for a decent striker to come through, especially if they are eligible for the challenge, though that's still 3/4 of a season away yet, if not more.

 

 

The Tactic

Ah yes, the good old...3-6-1? 3-3-3-1? 3-2-1-3-1? 

Defensively we are looking to pressure, win the ball, and counter.  With an overload in the middle of the park and attempt to force players inside, we will hopefully create an overload both defensively and offensively meaning that teams lose possession in the chaos.  The wide centre backs - while out of possession - will look to create a 4-back by allowing Gbadamosi to join Helgason in the middle, while Gil looks to sweep in and snuff out anything in the middle of the park.  Jakobsen and Svavarsson will be given the instruction to track back with the opposition midfielders and Kjeldsen and Garðarsson will be asked to mark the wider attackers, in a hope that we can also stay relatively strong in the face of wider formations and playstyles.

Attackingly we are simply trying to feed the ball to any of our 5 in attack.  After watching a tactical video recently on the usage by modern teams of a 3-1-6 going forwards, and how using wingers in order to draw a defender wide to create space for another attacker works, I've opted to attempt my own iteration of this.  The idea being, in short, that if a team lined up with a 4-back, we can push Einarsson up and have the three central players push into the box, while the wide man on the other side will go toward the back post, in order to stretch the defence and force a midfielder to track back, leaving some kind of space for Gil, on occasions that he pushes forwards, to dictate play as required.  It will be less of a 3-1-6 as it stands, and more of a 3-2-5, but as the season goes on I am certainly not going to be a stickler for a single style of play, just as the video talks about how Girona managed to pick apart a 5-man defence with the extra player, and how Guardiola speaks of having used upwards of 40 singular systems in a game.

It's an odd one, and we may well get picked apart leading to a forced change, but I'm definitely looking forwards, among other things, to developing the tactic and the team to play the style of game I'm envisaging with this.

 

That's all for now, it may be a few days before I can progress too far forward but I can feel things slowly but surely coming together.  I've got a philosophy and an idea of what I want from the players, it's just time to see if this works and if we are able to but the plan into action.

We have played our intra-squad friendly and now have 5 games in the "League Cup A Group C" where we're matched with 8-time Premier Division winners FH, perennial top half side, and current holders of the Premier Division title Breiðablik, Valur - the holders of 23 top tier titles, including 3 of the last 6, and two teams from our own division.  It's going to be an incredible ask to get something from a few of these games, as we are facing off against perhaps three of the best teams in Icelandic football over the last two decades, but we'll give it our all and try to develop a more defensive approach than the one we will use against other sides.

[phnompenhandy]

Great stuff. You have to be creative with your tactics and chosen players - let's see how they cope.

Regarding the players who aren't starters - just schedule weekly friendlies to keep them match fit.

What does the CA and PA mean in your table, compared to FM?

[FiftyBeforeThirty]

21 hours ago, phnompenhandy said:

Great stuff. You have to be creative with your tactics and chosen players - let's see how they cope.

Regarding the players who aren't starters - just schedule weekly friendlies to keep them match fit.

What does the CA and PA mean in your table, compared to FM?

Thanks, I'm certainly hoping the creative juices will flow as opposed to the, of course metaphorical, tears.  The CA & PA are simply the star rating my assistant has given the players.