(FM 18) Ajax - serial producers of talent.

[mcarson419]

Having been a long time browser of the forum, I thought it was time I uploaded my current FM save. Ajax. A club renowned for producing young talent and competing (sometimes winning) on the European Stage. I have always enjoyed saves with Ajax on FM as they were an opportunity to start a game with a club that focused on playing good football and recognised the importance of youth development.

I am currently in my 4th season of this save and the screenshots have been taken looking back.

I hope you enjoy it and all comments are welcome!

 

Season 1 2017/2018

In my first season, my aim was to only sign Dutch players, or promote players from within and play a possession based style of football.

This is how I set my team up;

 

From looking at the prospects at the club, I decided not to buy any players - Schurrs was previously purchased by the club and arrived in January, Chong was loaned on deadline day to help with the Jong team and their push to win the league.

As always with Ajax, there is a battle to keep the best players. I was happy to survive the first transfer window and kept the players I wanted. Unfortunately January was another matter - Ziyech openly wanted a move and in the end he was sold to Arsenal.

In this save, I have not kept players at the club against their will. I have spoken to them to try and get them to stay, but if the offer is too good or the the player becomes unhappy, then I will and have allowed them to go.

Domestically, my first season was a success - across all teams.

I won the Dutch Double, beating PSV in the cup final.

De Jong and U19s won their leagues too. I found this particularly pleasing as I had promoted players to the senior team, and by the other teams winning, it showed there was great depth at the club.

I was happy to have won the Domestic Double without having bought any players, however the team did struggle in Europe. I was lucky to qualify for the group stage (which was the boards minimum requirement) with scares away to Basaksehir and Club Brugge. The reward for scraping through was a group with Barcelona and Manchester United. As soon as the draw was made, and in light of my unconvincing results in the qualifiers, I was happy with finishing in third place which would have allowed me to compete in the Europa League.

By playing in the Europa League I thought it would give me a better insight into where the team, players and tactics where, in relation to moving forward.

Despite a good start against Hoffenheim, the remaining results were not spectacular. Ultimately, conceding two goals at home to Napoli was not good enough and resulted in us being put out of the Europa League.

The positive that I took from the first season was that, despite not buying any players, I was more than able to compete domestically.

Going into my second season, I felt that to compete in Europe, I would need to alter my tactics, or possibly improve the squad. 

[mcarson419]

Season 2 2018/ 2019

In a bid to be more competitive in Europe, I delved into the transfer market. Venema seemed to be a good, young Dutch prospect and considering I had spent no money the year before, I didn't mind spending 10mil on him. Reis and Pierie were purchased using the same logic - improve squad depth but only buying Dutch.

M'Pinda, Toure, Vogliacco and Manny were recommended by scouts and the fee was only the compensation for signing them from youth contracts.

From previous FM games, Kempf was usually touted as a solid youth prospect, so when the option to sign him for free came, I thought he was more than worth the risk. This decision was also based on how poor Veltman's performances were in Europe, and the fact I was unable to source a reasonably priced dutch equivalent, or had any viable prospects. 

In January, I felt the young players brought in did not improve the squad as much as I had hoped. Sessegnon was bought as competition for Kluivert. Kluivert was outstanding in the league and cup, but when it came to Europe, he was quite inconsistent. The same could be said for Dolberg. Both great young prospects, but I wanted consistency and other options. Martinez was heavily touted by my scouting team, and although he was not Dutch, he was a young talent. I had been scouting Sallai for a while and when Spurs made their intentions known, I moved quickly and paid the 5 million APOEL wanted.

Looking back, 82millions is a huge amount of money. But my aim was to at least qualify from the Champions League group and see how far I could go, so at the time, I felt it was justifiable.

Neres is an incredible talent, but again he wanted out and Leverkusen were competing well in Bundesliga and in Europe so when he made his feelings clear about leaving, I did not stand in his way.

As I said before, some of the summer signings did not impress as much as I would have hoped, so Venema was loaned out in January after the arrival of Martinez. He was not performing well and with Martinez now signed, his chance of game time would be reduced, so he was loaned out with the hope he could progress with more regular gametime.

The season started well, winning the Dutch Super Cup against PSV.

We started the league slowly and did not win too many of the initial league games. I put this down to the number of new signings that were made and the bedding in time they needed. I was also trying to rotate the squad as much as I could, trying to keep players fresh for the Champions League. This probably did not help our form, as players were not playing as often with each other and there was a possible lack of cohesion. As things began to click, the form improved. We won the Eredivisie again. I was surprised how far Feyenoord and PSV dropped behind and the teams, such as Vitesse replaced them as contenders.

As previously stated, I tried to rotate the squad in a bid to keep the players fresh for the Champions League. This backfired for me greatly in the Dutch Cup. I tried to play a mixture of fringe and youth players and as a result, we lost on penalties to FC Voldenham in the Second Round.

We entered the Champions League Qualifiers a stage later this year as a result of being Champions of Holland. Venema's early season form inspired us to a 2-0 win away to Legia and we finished the job at home, going through 6-0 on aggregate. 

The draw for the group stages was not overly kind to us. Spurs were competing very well in the Premier League and actually won the League at the end of the year. This would turn out to be a bit of a grudge match between ourselves and Spurs in relation to press conferences, transfers and styles of play. The results in the group stages were encouraging. There was no shame in losing away games to Inter and Tottenham. We were very good at home and this gave me confidence in progressing in the competition. We through away the first leg away to Valencia, surrendering a 2 goal lead, but I was confident we would beat them in Amsterdam. The games against Monaco were not easy but thankfully we were able to get through, thanks to our 3 away goals. An early lead away to Arsenal gave me hope but they came out in the second half and destroyed us in the Emirates. In the second leg, it 1 -1 mid way through the first half and it looked like we were heading out. I switched our mentality to overload. This is not something I would usually do in any version of the game, but in this instance, we blew Arsenal away and Kluivert scored 2 goals to send us through to the European Final. Chelsea were without Hazard for the final so I thought we would be able to grab a result, but unfortunately it wasn't to be. The spine of my team - De Ligt, De Beek, De Jong, Kluivert and Dolberg all underperformed and unfortunatley Martinez was unavailable through injury so we were rather toothless in attack.

Nonetheless, I was delighted with the progress we had made and having our first appearance in a European Final. If I had of been offered being knocked out of the Dutch Cup early but reaching the Champions League final at the start of the season, I would have of course taken that!

In season three, I would be trying to keep the spine of the team intact and challenge for European glory yet again!

U19s were unlucky and lost the league on the final day of the season.

Ajax Jong also narrowly missed out on the league, losing out by 1 point. Not as good as season for the other teams, but not a disaster by any means.

 

[mcarson419]

Season 3 2019/ 2020

The transfers from last season were a mixed bag. Martinez was a success and immediately attracted lots of interest. Bayern made an offer and he was desperate for a move so I let him go. Kempf proved to be a great defensive partner for De Ligt. Veltman continued to be inconsistent and although he was club captain and a leader, I felt the time had come to move him on. Sessegnon endured a difficult year with injuries and poor form so was sold, with a 9mil loss. There was lots of interest in Sallai from the Premier League, and he eventually signed for West Ham. Kristensen always asked to be allowed to leave and although he was first choice RB, I did not stand in his way as he moved to Rome. Cerny also requested to be let go and found himself in Germany. 

As a result of the poor dealings in the previous summer, I tried to spend less money this one. 7.5mill would be the highest spent, on Carolina - an impressive Dutch talent. Krul was brought in as backup. Stengs and Paes are young Dutch talent. Klassen was loaned to try and add some experience, and as a former captain he knows the league well so would be a great rotation option. Vlasic had great stats and again, was intended to be loaned for cover.

As deadline day ended, I felt on paper, that I had a weaker team than the previous year. I had invested in youth and had the next few years in mind. There had been bids for De Ligt during the summer, but he got injured and was ruled out for a number of weeks, meaning no-one was bidding for him. De Jong expressed an interest in moving to Barcelona but they never made an offer. Numerous offers came in for Dolberg, all of which I rejected and he did not seem to mind and never expressed an interest in leaving. So the core of my team remained.

We had a good pre-season and ended it by picking up the Dutch Super Cup again.

 

As a result of the defeat to Chelsea, I again questioned if my team were capable of dealing with counter attacking play and pace. I tried a new tactic of 3 at the back with 2 wing backs to try and solve this. It was not a great success and I struggled at the beginning of the league.  Under Jaap Stam PEC Zwolle raced into an early lead. I reverted back to my tried and tested tactic and results improved greatly. Again we won the league. Zwolles challenged wore off after a run of poor results.

Personally, I was not happy with how things went in the Dutch Cup the previous year, and made a point of fielding a capable team and trying to win it this year. We did just that. Sierhuis had a great run in the cup and at times, come on as a super sub. We didn't exactly run riot, but got the trophy and that is what mattered.

On making the Champions League Final the previous year, we had improved the Dutch coefficient meaning the league winners would automatically qualify for the group stages. This would not come into effect however until 2020/2021, so again we had to qualify. Even though we had reached the previous final, the minimum requirement for the Champions League was to qualify for the group stage. After the disappointment of losing the final, I was determined to win the trophy this year. I thought the extra years experience would stand to the players and if we got to the latter stages of the tournament, the players that underperformed last year would step up and fulfill their potential.

We did exactly that. The Roma defeat coincided with the poor form in the league and the 7-1 win against Fenerbahce was the game which I reverted back to my original tactics. Again we drew Spurs and these were two difficult games which were only able to win one of. The knockout stages gave us two hard draws. The 5-1 beating of Bayern was a highlight for me, as they were continuously declaring interest in our players and trying to unsettle them. Our home form was the catalyst for us qualifying in the Bayern and city ties, and we qualified for the final well, by beating Inter in Milan and Amsterdam. The other Semi Final was an all London affair, with Arsenal playing Chelsea. Part of me wanted Arsenal to win as I did not want to contemplate losing to Chelsea again. Chelsea came through the tie though, and we beat them in a game that would not have been fun for the neutral. Kempf grabbed the winner with a header and we were crowned champions of Europe! Dolberg, De Beek and Kluivert were outstanding throughout the Cup run and this is shown by their contributions in each stage.

We had won every trophy available to us domestically and in Europe. A fantastic season and one of my greatest achievements in Football Manager to date.

The U19s continued to stay in the top 2, although this year, it was by a greater margin.

Jong were impressive and won the league.

 

I must admit, at this point, I thought about leaving the team as it was and looking for a new challenge. Teams would again be coming in for our top players, and even though we had won the Champions League, I was not sure I would be able to hold onto the players. But I thought I would try and win back to back Champions League titles. Returning my focus back to production and development of Dutch players. In my head I had the idea of the Lisbon Lions. Of course I could not win a Champions League with players all from Amsterdam, but I would try and have a squad of players, only from Holland.

 

[mcarson419]

Season 4 2020/2021

As I said before, I am currently in my fourth season. That is why there was a lack of squad picks, youth prospects etc. But I will upload these as I progress. 

Here are the transfers from the start of the season. Krul was decent and was a free agent after his loan spell so I signed him, again as a backup and for some potential tutoring. I have been looking at van Bergen for a while and he has steadily progressed and I was in need of a right winger.

Sierhuis had a productive season but asked to leave so he was sold to Everton. The rest have been loaned out to aid development.

This is how my squads are now.

Senior Team

Jong Ajax

Ajax U19

Another slow start to the season. So far this has been a common theme. I would be interested to see if others who have managed Ajax have had the same problem? Although 9 from my starting 11 were unavailable for several fixtures due to being selected for the Olympics.

We won the Dutch Super Cup - slightly fortuitous on penalties.

We got an early lead in the European Super Cup. Then went 2-1 down, but managed to come back and win 4-2 against Liverpool.

The idea of back to back Champions League titles is all over after a terrible start. As things stand, I will be lucky to qualify for the Europa League.

 

[mcarson419]

On a brighter note, the Dutch cup has been a better story. I fielded a team of only Dutch players. It was not against a huge club, but it is a start.

[mcarson419]

Youth prospects

As I would have expected, there has been a steady flow of players produced and a few are now in contention for the first team.

Tuncay De Haan

Great prospect that has been starting am for me. He will be a replacement for De Beek.

Thomas Van Der Plas

Was the first gem of a regen to come through. He was used mainly for cup games etc. but I see him as the replacement for Dolberg.

Arie Cortie

Krul was mainly brought in to tutor Cortie. Onana my first choice is South African. Cortie is a prefect Dutch replacement.

 

Igor Barbosa

The newest youth prospect to come through the ranks. I found it odd that he came through and was Portuguese. I have no Portuguese scouts or affiliate clubs so thought it was a strange one!

 

 

[SixPointer]

Nice one winning the champs league!!! I’m managing heerenveen really enjoying Holland. The standard of youth players is brilliant 

[mcarson419]

On 5/10/2018 at 17:58, SixPointer said:

Nice one winning the champs league!!! I’m managing heerenveen really enjoying Holland. The standard of youth players is brilliant 

Thanks! Was all the sweeter considering they beat me the year before! I always enjoy managing in Holland. As you say, lots of potential! Heerenveen would be a good challenge. Trying to get the 'bigger' dutch teams off the top! Good luck with it!