NilsFreedhom

Against two-strikers formation I often switch to the 3-4-2-1, in this case we'll have a 3v2 or a 5v4 if you want to include WBs and Wingers! Against a back three most of the time is like this: We press 2 of the 3 CBs, leaving the less-technical one free to build up On the flanks we go man to man so, my Wingers man mark their Wing-Backs and my Wing-Backs man mark their Wingers. In the middle of the pitch is where we trap, so we show the wide players onto the opposite foot (Left if they play on the right and viceversa) in order to conquer the ball high up the pitch with the DMs. I hope it is clear

@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

thank you guys! @Yiszthe OI regarding the man-marking system change in relation to the opponent. Usually I tight-mark only the creators and less quick players!

You and tour threads are a truly inspiration! The ability you have to achieve what you have in mind is unmatched!

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!

@sugarbear0511 I've no problems of condition at all. The training plan is studied to guarantee a nice fitness form throughout the whole season. When I play twice a week I rest the starting eleven for a day after each match. According to the physios the expected injuries should have been 124. We had only 56 which is surprisingly good. The secret is to find a balance between match intensity and training intensity without stop the development of the youngsters. As I said few messages before the tactical form is the next problem I'll fix because I want to have more possession, but it's a sort of risk-reward thing. I don't want to have possession against everybody and lose all the big matches against top 6 teams...

This team is insane! We did it again! Again, that's the plan: - In Blue all the players who have been man-marked - In green the weak spot - In Yellow the 3v4 created We played a wonderful, wonderful game. We've absolutely blown them away. 2.83 xG vs. 1.36xG (They had a penalty also, saved by Robert Sanchez) I also had a look at the team stats and I noticed the numbers of interception made by us. Significant! Just to update the stats against L'pool this year: 4 pts in two games. 0 goals conceded. Their total count is 80 goals for and 17 against. I start to believe that a Champions' League spot is possible...

@sugarbear0511 Both. But the most important one is definitely the player's personal instruction.

@Dereka The more difficult is the match, the more man marking is involved. When I face a weaker team I often try to limit the two or three best player or to exploit their weak spot. When a team doesn't seem to have weak spots I extend the marking system to the entire 11

I tried to ask them if they need an assistant manager. I'm Italian so I can communicate without problems with Roberto De Zerbi

Small off-topic update: I was sharing my results on Twitter and this happened: That made my day 💙🤍

that's surely the main problem. Right know I'm not too worried about this. I'm in my first year, the team is a good one but we're far from being competitive for a champions league spot or even for the title, even If I'm about 15 points clear of a "non-european" place. I'm playing all games on comprehensive highlights and writing post here is helping me to review matches and have a clearer idea of the tweaks I have to make. Right now I think that the main problem is also the simplest one: I have to improve the quality of the players. We're kinda slow in transition (CBs are not properly adapt to this playing-style except for Webster who, last year also in my Brighton Save was a top-performer). In the middle of the pitch I have Caicedo who is the only one already on that level, but the others are too young and not ready to go (Gilmour, Enciso, Sarmiento) or too old and probably not fast enough to play such a heavy football. I'm well aware that I cannot ask to Lallana who is playing AM to press the opponent CB and sprint back to build up the play. I'm gonna work on this in the January transfer window, but I'm kinda afraid to revolutionize the team. Thank you for the answer anyway @cmonreds

Brighton vs. Tottenham Let's try the marking system against Antonio Conte's back 3. That's how they lineup. What do I expect? Eric Dier according to my analysts will be their BPD, so, the first source of their build-up that we want to shut down. By sticking my CF (Kouamé) on him, we assure to apply pressure and force them to play through the wide men. AMC (Gross) will press the more technical CB of the two remaining, leaving the weight of the build-up to one wide CB. We go man-to-man to the flanks also, so it's Szobo&Estupinan on their right side and Tsyganov&Lamptey on their left. In the same way, we go man-to-man against Bissouma&Hojbjerg. That's what happened.. Davinson Sanchez is pressed by Szobo and showed onto the weak foot. He plays a slow pass to Eric Dier but Kouame comes right to him for the steal and the 1v1 agains Lloris that he won't miss. It's the 10th minute and our plan has already worked. Another match in the book for us. We stopped Tottenham at 0.74 xG. Next step will be, trying to improve our possession stats. I assume that we cannot retain the ball due to the lack of positioning of my players that are always out of position in order to follow the men marking instruction. I'll let you know..

Thank You

@w_x Yes! After 20 minutes Arteta swapped Tierney and Tomiyasu and played them as IWB. So, as a result, I shifted the man marking side leaving Tomiyasu open on the other Flank. This year the AI manager adapt a lot quicker to the tactical situation they face. Nice! @Dereka I played Liverpool right after Arsenal but I didn't want to write another post because the result was quite the same. They were unbeaten with 14 consecutive wins in PL. Tons of goals scored and only 4 conceded. There were all the ingredients for us to be blown away. Jurgen Klopp went for the classic 4-3-3 and, if compared to Arsenal and Man City formations, they clearly didn't have a weak spot on one flank. Anyway, fortunately, neither Trent or Robinson started the match: here's their starting 11. I focused my marking on the left side, trying to exploit the weaknesses of Matip and Gomez, and prevent Virgil Van Djik from the build-up phase. So as always, man marking everyone except for the right back, leaving their front 3 against my back 4. I cannot say to be satisfied with the performance but we didn't conceded against the best attacking side of the league. We were too passive and surely lucky. We didn't create enough so, I think that if I play this game 10 times probably I'd lose 8 Because of the lack of aggression I decided to create an alternative version of the tactic moving the intensity a little bit higher, as follows: As you can see, after the L'pool win, we managed to blow away Brentford which, for me is always a tough opponent and we came back after the World Cup (won by France in a 3-1 final against Brazil) with a Huge win against Aston Villa who were just few points behind us. We're currently in race for a Champions League spot, but I'm expecting a fall. I would love to qualify for the Europa League and start from there before face the best opponents. Let's see, the journey continues...