[FM24] Valencia CF - Lifting The Mates

[AlfieLucas]

Congrats on winning La Liga, hopefully you'll continue to do so and add a few CL's in the mix as well.

[g1nh0]

15 hours ago, Alejandro_FM said:

Season 6 - Final Stretch (May 2029)
The final stretch of the season was intense, nervy at times, but we’ve performed as well as I could’ve hoped. Dropped points on only two occasions in the league. 

Real Madrid gave us a proper run though. We had to be so perfect, in fact, that we ended up breaking La Liga’s point record (was 100 over 38 matches) en route to Valencia's first La Liga title since 2004 (and first of this save). It’s refreshing to me that we had to be this good and get these many points for our first league win, and that it took 6 seasons of progress, all in the top flight. Typically in my saves, I’ve been winning initially despite some struggles because the “AI teams” tended to flop, but not this time. Real were close to perfect themselves. They scored a whopping 127 goals this season. It’s mental. So many 4-0 and 5-0 results in their campaign. 

Eventually, we did prevail... 

Separately, we won the Copa Del Rey for the 2nd time in a row, which made this season even more of a success. I do wish we did better in Europe to boost our reputation a little. 

Below are a few more screenshots and highlights from the campaign: 

Team performance: 

100 goals scored (2nd best to Real's 127 goals, as mentioned above) scored and 25 conceded (best). Exactly the same as last year. Overall underlying numbers suggest that our adjustments did yield those coveted marginal gains. We won the title fair and square. 

 

Player performance: 
Mamadou Dosso didn’t repeat his incredible goalscoring performance from last season. His NPxG/90 (0.55 compared to 0.71 last season) and xG underperformance of -0.78 were both disappointing. Overall he contributed 17 goals in all comp (only 12 in the league). Not the kind of numbers you’d expect from someone demanding a super star contract. 

Player of the season (primarily true in the first half) was Roony Bardghji with 14 goals and 8 assists in just 34 apps (due to injuries). I was also very happy with Lazar Samardzic - he had 8 goals and 13 assists, highest on the team in xA/90 (0.42), 2nd highest Op-KP/90 (2.09). 

Neither of the two made the league’s team of the season, given the performances of Lamine Yamal (15 goals, 13 assists in the league), Vinicius Junior (18 goals and 9 assists), Fede Valverde (19 goals, 14 assists) and Jude Bellingham (23 goals, 13 assists). Dosso, as well as Carnessecchi, Valentin Barco and Paulo Berra represented Valencia in La Liga’s top 11. 

The versatility of our attacking display did manifest in 7 players (4 starters, 3 2nd choices) achieving double figures in goals scored, and 3 players achieving double digits in assists - Barco from the full back position, Samardzic, and our most prominent academy grad to date, Salvador Rostoll (Prestianni's backup at AML). 

I was also particularly impressed with Oger Meendering, Dosso’s backup at striker, who scored 14 goals in 27 appearances, but only 14 starts. His NPxG/90 was 0.74, higher than Dosso’s number last year. He seems to get into chances even when he plays limited minutes. It will be interesting to see if he can sustain these high numbers if he were a starter more frequently. 

OVERALL – 

We’re in a very good spot in terms of competing in La Liga for years to come, and I am delighted to have gotten to this point with only realistic, frugal transfers, and a young squad, on a wage budget that’s about ¼ of those of Real’s and Barca’s. 

Going forward -

I am asking myself where I’d like to take this journey, with 3 possible options on the table: 

1. Achievement focus - we’ll turn our attention to Europe. We’ll continue to gradually raise our wage bill, enhance our squad depth in a few key spots, and try to take the club to the next level. We still want to challenge for the league every year, but the clear goal would be to win the UCL in the next 3-4 seasons. To be clear, In this scenario, I will still maintain transfer market sensibility. Not looking to “break the bank”. So far, our highest transfer fee was ~€18m, and I would intend to remain in that ballpark (maybe up to €30-35m), and have the wage budget peak at about ~€120m/year (about £2m/week). How fast can we become the best team in Europe?  

2. Academy focus - we’ll pivot harder to focus on youth development, and make the Valencia first team an academy-first squad. We’ll aim to field as many of our academy players as we can - at least 50% of our La Liga (and UCL) registered squad of 25.  So far, I've considered players who arrived at the club at 16-17 years-old as academy players. If I pursue this option, I could further refine the definition and say only our own intake players are academy players. We shall see. How long will it take us to get there? We’ll still want to win as much as possible along the way, but we’ll slow (or halt) transfers to ensure that our academy players have a priority each summer when the first team squad is decided. 

3. Tactical innovation focus - we'll pivot away from my mainstream 4-3-3, possession system, and try something I've not done in years (I've been playing 4-3-3 fairly religiously since FM17 at least). Maybe a 3 at the back? Or maybe a 4-4-2. The key would be to introduce new tactical principles, and be more rigid about them. We'll still try to win, develop players and so on, but mastering the new shape will be my focus. 

These options are not mutually exclusive, and we’re not going to set hard and fast rules. It’s more about the theme of the save going forward. Trying to decide what will be more interesting and enjoyable for me. I’ll figure this out after a little bit of a breather… as I tend to do …

I realize that this is completely subjective, but I am curious to hear what others might have done if you were in this stage of the save ... Any thoughts or ideas from any of you reading this are most welcome. 

Cheers and vamos los ches!

 

Gratz! Very nice points total as well there, every season is tough with Real Madrid in the mix  At least in my experiences!

I've definitely tried to go on the achievement side with mine going into my 7th season now. But in my save Real Madrid have Klopp and they have just done a quadruple smashing everyone in their way in Season 6, and I really don't want them to achieve that again. That also resulted me in changing my tactical style slightly too, in order to be able to compete with his gegenpress.

It seriously feels like Klopp and Real Madrid is an AI cheat code at the moment

[Alejandro_FM]

8 hours ago, AlfieLucas said:

Congrats on winning La Liga, hopefully you'll continue to do so and add a few CL's in the mix as well.

Thank you!  A satisfying season for sure. 

 

4 hours ago, g1nh0 said:

But in my save Real Madrid have Klopp and they have just done a quadruple smashing everyone in their way in Season 6

Thank you! .. Haha -- it's actually Klopp managing Real here too. I agree, it's a bit of an AI cheat code. They've been absolutely running over teams, won everything including the UCL in season 5. This season they lost to Barca on the UCL QF. Last two league seasons they had 98 and 97 points respectively. 

[g1nh0]

58 minutes ago, Alejandro_FM said:

Thank you!  A satisfying season for sure. 

 

Thank you! .. Haha -- it's actually Klopp managing Real here too. I agree, it's a bit of an AI cheat code. They've been absolutely running over teams, won everything including the UCL in season 5. This season they lost to Barca on the UCL QF. Last two league seasons they had 98 and 97 points respectively. 

Lol. Nice, or not so nice  But I'm glad someone else can resonate this with me then  At least it does make Spain a tough challenge and longer term too. You know they will rarely slip up going to need at least 95 points plus to stand a chance but as above, not even that may be enough with him at the helm.

The season they got 103 points and quad in mine both Vini Junior and Bellingham had long term injuries too for them...demoralising!

[TheMartello]

On 26/04/2024 at 20:21, Alejandro_FM said:

Season 6 - Final Stretch (May 2029)
The final stretch of the season was intense, nervy at times, but we’ve performed as well as I could’ve hoped. Dropped points on only two occasions in the league. 

Real Madrid gave us a proper run though. We had to be so perfect, in fact, that we ended up breaking La Liga’s point record (was 100 over 38 matches) en route to Valencia's first La Liga title since 2004 (and first of this save). It’s refreshing to me that we had to be this good and get these many points for our first league win, and that it took 6 seasons of progress, all in the top flight. Typically in my saves, I’ve been winning initially despite some struggles because the “AI teams” tended to flop, but not this time. Real were close to perfect themselves. They scored a whopping 127 goals this season. It’s mental. So many 4-0 and 5-0 results in their campaign. 

Eventually, we did prevail... 

Separately, we won the Copa Del Rey for the 2nd time in a row, which made this season even more of a success. I do wish we did better in Europe to boost our reputation a little. 

Below are a few more screenshots and highlights from the campaign: 

Team performance: 

100 goals scored (2nd best to Real's 127 goals, as mentioned above) scored and 25 conceded (best). Exactly the same as last year. Overall underlying numbers suggest that our adjustments did yield those coveted marginal gains. We won the title fair and square. 

 

Player performance: 
Mamadou Dosso didn’t repeat his incredible goalscoring performance from last season. His NPxG/90 (0.55 compared to 0.71 last season) and xG underperformance of -0.78 were both disappointing. Overall he contributed 17 goals in all comp (only 12 in the league). Not the kind of numbers you’d expect from someone demanding a super star contract. 

Player of the season (primarily true in the first half) was Roony Bardghji with 14 goals and 8 assists in just 34 apps (due to injuries). I was also very happy with Lazar Samardzic - he had 8 goals and 13 assists, highest on the team in xA/90 (0.42), 2nd highest Op-KP/90 (2.09). 

Neither of the two made the league’s team of the season, given the performances of Lamine Yamal (15 goals, 13 assists in the league), Vinicius Junior (18 goals and 9 assists), Fede Valverde (19 goals, 14 assists) and Jude Bellingham (23 goals, 13 assists). Dosso, as well as Carnessecchi, Valentin Barco and Paulo Berra represented Valencia in La Liga’s top 11. 

The versatility of our attacking display did manifest in 7 players (4 starters, 3 2nd choices) achieving double figures in goals scored, and 3 players achieving double digits in assists - Barco from the full back position, Samardzic, and our most prominent academy grad to date, Salvador Rostoll (Prestianni's backup at AML). 

I was also particularly impressed with Oger Meendering, Dosso’s backup at striker, who scored 14 goals in 27 appearances, but only 14 starts. His NPxG/90 was 0.74, higher than Dosso’s number last year. He seems to get into chances even when he plays limited minutes. It will be interesting to see if he can sustain these high numbers if he were a starter more frequently. 

OVERALL – 

We’re in a very good spot in terms of competing in La Liga for years to come, and I am delighted to have gotten to this point with only realistic, frugal transfers, and a young squad, on a wage budget that’s about ¼ of those of Real’s and Barca’s. 

Going forward -

I am asking myself where I’d like to take this journey, with 3 possible options on the table: 

1. Achievement focus - we’ll turn our attention to Europe. We’ll continue to gradually raise our wage bill, enhance our squad depth in a few key spots, and try to take the club to the next level. We still want to challenge for the league every year, but the clear goal would be to win the UCL in the next 3-4 seasons. To be clear, In this scenario, I will still maintain transfer market sensibility. Not looking to “break the bank”. So far, our highest transfer fee was ~€18m, and I would intend to remain in that ballpark (maybe up to €30-35m), and have the wage budget peak at about ~€120m/year (about £2m/week). How fast can we become the best team in Europe?  

2. Academy focus - we’ll pivot harder to focus on youth development, and make the Valencia first team an academy-first squad. We’ll aim to field as many of our academy players as we can - at least 50% of our La Liga (and UCL) registered squad of 25.  So far, I've considered players who arrived at the club at 16-17 years-old as academy players. If I pursue this option, I could further refine the definition and say only our own intake players are academy players. We shall see. How long will it take us to get there? We’ll still want to win as much as possible along the way, but we’ll slow (or halt) transfers to ensure that our academy players have a priority each summer when the first team squad is decided. 

3. Tactical innovation focus - we'll pivot away from my mainstream 4-3-3, possession system, and try something I've not done in years (I've been playing 4-3-3 fairly religiously since FM17 at least). Maybe a 3 at the back? Or maybe a 4-4-2. The key would be to introduce new tactical principles, and be more rigid about them. We'll still try to win, develop players and so on, but mastering the new shape will be my focus. 

These options are not mutually exclusive, and we’re not going to set hard and fast rules. It’s more about the theme of the save going forward. Trying to decide what will be more interesting and enjoyable for me. I’ll figure this out after a little bit of a breather… as I tend to do …

I realize that this is completely subjective, but I am curious to hear what others might have done if you were in this stage of the save ... Any thoughts or ideas from any of you reading this are most welcome. 

Cheers and vamos los ches!

 

Congrats on the much deserved titel!

Did you achieve it with the exact same tactic in your previous update?

Do you actually use player instructions as well?

Looking forward to the rest of your story and how you´re going to adapt tactically as well!

 

Keep up the good work!!

[Alejandro_FM]

3 hours ago, TheMartello said:

Did you achieve it with the exact same tactic in your previous update?

Do you actually use player instructions as well?

Thank you! And yes - I did use the tactic from the last update - the 4-3-3 with the AP(S) on the left. I do make the occasional in-match adjustment, like dropping the "work ball into box" if we're too passive, or mentality to "balanced" (if I'd like to spend more time in build-up to draw the opposition out) or "attacking" (if we're behind late in the match and we need to take more risks). 

There are some PIs:

• The Winger on the right is told to "cut inside with the ball". It helps that Roony B is left footed. 
• Everyone from the CM strata and up is told to "mark tighter" and "press more". 
• BBM is told to "take more risks" and "dribble more" when it's a player I'd like to empower, like Samardzic or Guerra. 

Edited April 28 by Alejandro_FM