Unigo Posted October 19, 2018 Share Posted October 19, 2018 Introduction A new game means a new career. Vitesse is always a tempting club to manage for me, i’ve been a supporting them for a good few years, even before all the takeovers and the strong link with Chelsea. Now, this link has provided us with great players of the years and still does. But, i feel it’s time to (slowly) take control back again. So, we’re going to attempt to make Vitesse an equal force in international football compared to Chelsea. In the first few years that might still require some Chelsea-rental involvement, but i expect them to drop our relationship when i become more of an international competitor (or else i will…). What this means exactly i’m still working out, but for now i think the goal should be to finish above Chelsea in the Champions League. The club Now, Vitesse, founded in 1892 is one of the oldest clubs in Dutch professional football. They have access to a fairly modern stadium and have recently renewed their training grounds and facilities. With Russian ownership of the club the financial situation isn’t bad either (at least not as bad as before the takeovers…). To summarize, we are handed a club with no debt other than a state-loan with 5 miliion remaining and the following facilities: All in all a very good basis, though i’d prefer a better data-analysis facility. and eventually the rent of the stadium is costing quite a bit of money. So, in the future these might need a different approach. Over the past few years the club performed quite well. Last season Vitesse took 6th place and in 2017 they took there first big price in winning the Dutch Cup. But, Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord are traditionally the biggest clubs in the Netherlands and for the spots below them Vitesse are having some fierce competition. The trainer I want to stay a bit close to myself in selecting the stats for the trainer. So, as a basis, i went with the highest coaching-credentials, but the lowest football experience. I’ll never be a footballer or play on any decent level, but (in theory) there is a chance i’ll get all these coaching credentials. The lack of reputation might be bit of a challenge at the start of the save, but we’ll see how it goes. Next time we go a bit more in depth into the squad and possibly a brief look at a fitting tactic... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DefinitelyTaylor Posted October 19, 2018 Share Posted October 19, 2018 Good luck! I enjoyed a save with Vitesse last year and managed to finish 2nd before jumping ship. I think they're a quite overlooked club as they have the potential to grow, in a league that is dominated by those clubs that you mentioned. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
oriole01 Posted October 19, 2018 Share Posted October 19, 2018 Following. Vitesse were one of the first European clubs I ever became familiar with, played with them a ton on FIFA07. Good luck on bringing them into the continental reckoning! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unigo Posted October 19, 2018 Author Share Posted October 19, 2018 In this next post we're getting into all stuff i usually do when starting at a new club. No matches yet, and a lot of developments in a short amount of space, but at the moment of posting this is where we stand. In the next post i'll give you a brief update on recent events (contracts that have been accepted, players that have been sold, etc.) Building the club Before we get to players and tactics, i want to make sure the infrastructure of the club is suited for the task at hand. So, that means looking at the trainers, scouts, medical team and the staff at the youth teams. I tried talking to the board about the data-analysis facilities, but got no positive response there. The coaching staff is lacking a fitness trainer and a head of youth development (if i choose to get one). Fortunately we have space for 3 new staff-members, so that gives us some for much needed colleagues. At this point we have offered a contract to Andy Liddell as a fitness coach, and have contracted Jan Gosgens for a general coaching spot. When looking at the scouting staff, we also need some fresh blood. We currently have a chief scout, a chief data analyst, and three scouts. To find the (underpriced) gems that we need to grow, we need more scouts. At this point we have offered contracts to Gery de Buyser, Roy de Haan and Marc Schuiteman. In the medical department we have some decent physio’s, a doctor, but no sport scientists. So, we offered a contract to Koen Bauwens and Dirk-Jan Heatubun as sport scientist and head of sport science. Squad overview Now, when we look at the available players, the A, B and youth squad looks as follows: Main squad B squad -19 These images give you a general idea of what kind of quality we have at our disposal. This leads to two conclusions We have a ton of talent coming up. A few are ready for first team time (Gong, Doekhi, Faye, Karavaev, Buitink), but even among the players that are not ready yet for first team football we have some amazing talents! In the main squad 4 players are with us on a loan. Eduardo who is likely to be the main choice in goal, Clarke-Salter who could be handy in defense, Odegaard, a big talent from Real Madrid who can play on the midfield and on the wing and last but not least, Musonda who also can play on the wing. Odegaard and Musonda are both in contention for a starting 11 spot. Tactics For starters: i am creating my own style. Based on the squad and its qualities i want a few things to come back in the way we play: utilize the quality we have on the wings Play a pressing style, that our aggression and workrate should suit We have some quality on the back positions as well, i want to make use of this as well. Based on this, we will play with 4 defenders, 1 striker and 2 wingers. This leaves us with 3 spots in midfield. How i’ll arrange the midfield positions will be decided during the season, we’ll see what works. For now i go for Regista in DM position, a box-to-box midfielder to create some movement and support in both boxes and a ‘normal’ midfielder. All three players have a support duty. The attacking-three are an inside forward on the left, on support duty to (hopefully) cover the back a bit, a winger (we have no decent opposite-footed players on the right except Odegaard, but he has 4 finishing) on the right with the attacking duty. The striker is a deep-lying forward. In defense we will start with two fullbacks. Maybe we’ll switch to a complete wingback if the attacking influence is too low. But, i’m a bit cautious here, i don’t want my backs to be too committed to their attacking duties resulting in defensive gaps. On the left we have an attacking duty, to (hopefully) overlap the inside forward, on the right we work with a support duty. The two centre backs are set on a defensive central defender for now. Now, including team instructions, this is the tactic we’re working with for now. During the season we will see how things work out and what needs changing. Transfers I’m a bit reluctant to start bringing in players right away. We’ll see how the first few games go to decide if i need some new players. Now, knowing myself i’m always quite tempted to start spending money, but in this case i want to force myself to look at our available talents first. Also, having learned from reading Moneyball, the numbers game and Soccernomics I’m not that enthusiastic about spending a lot of money on a 28-year old striker. If i buy, i’ll try to get relatively young players (minus 25) for a good price. When i arrived Navarone Foor is listed for a transfer. He won’t get a starting 11 spot, but he might be useful as a stand-in. And, i think we don’t have too many decent midfielders yet, so he might get some time this year. I’ll remove him from the transfer-list. Regarding selling players, there are a few ones on the nomination to leave us if i can get a decent price for them: Alexander Buttner: Alexander is a Vitesse-icon and is a quality left back. Mostly attacking minded, fast and a great crosser. His issue is that he’s 29 years old, earns 30K a month and that Lassana Faye is a decent replacement. Buttner is a bit better in crossing, But Faye has a slight edge in defensive qualities. On top of that: Faye is 20 years old and has a bright future with the team. On top of that we have Max Clark who is quite versatile and is a good player for the midfield and the left back position, so for back-up we don’t need Buttner either. If we can get a decent offer for him, we might have to let him go. Khalid Karami: Khalid has joined Vitesse this summer. Truth be told: i wonder why. Julian Lelieveld is a decent back-up for the right back position, but he is currently on a loan at Go Ahead Eagles. Julian is 20 years old and needs playing time, which he won’t get with Karavaev being the first choice on the right back position. For now i might keep Khalid, but any decent offer and he’s off. Yoel Thode is a young talent in our -19 squad that can play on the right pack position as well, so we do have some choices to make on that position, so it’s not like we have a major issue if he leaves. Maikel van der Werff: Maikel is a main pillar in our defense and incredibly important. But, he's 29 years old and his contract runs out in 12 months. I don't want to risk him walking out of the door on a free, especially since he's worth 2.200.000 at this moment. Renewing is contract is very costly, since he demands a salary of around 40k a month. If i get a good offer and can find a replacement, i might let him go. Mukhtar Ali and Wellington Verloo are young players, but with little growth potential. They do earn a decent wage though. So, if we can let them go (or loan them out) we will surely go for it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
deltablue Posted October 20, 2018 Share Posted October 20, 2018 Hopefully Stamford Bridge won't be too far Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unigo Posted October 20, 2018 Author Share Posted October 20, 2018 16 minutes ago, deltablue said: Hopefully Stamford Bridge won't be too far Nice one, very clever! Update 3: the first two matches and transfer developments...Staff upgrades The past few weeks we've been busy with confirming a bunch of new signings in the staff department. Now we can confirm that Bauwens, Liddell, Schuiteman, Heatubun, De Haan and De Buyser are all confirmed. Friendlies We've also played our first two (and only) friendly matches. We won with 3 - 2 against Hibernian, but lost 1 - 3 from Rostock. Based on these two games (might not be a big enough sample though) i’ve added shorter passing for the whole team. To not totally cripple the team i gave the regista the ability to use more direct passing. Reason is that in both the games i regained possession quite well, but i lose it rather quickly as well. I hope to avoid this last part with the shorter passing. Transfers: out Buttner sold for 1.300.000 and 130.000 in two installments to FC Utrecht. We do contribute 3.900 a month to the wage bill, but that’s a small part of this original 30.000 a month salary at Vitesse. This adds 700.000 to my transfer budget. Mukhtar Ali sold for 130.000 to Dinamo Moscow, also adding around 70.000 to the budget. Transfers: in We also brought in a new player: 24 year-old Isaac Sackey signed a 3-year deal with Vitesse. We bought him from Alanyaspor where he played 25 games last season. Isaac is estimated to be worth 1.100.000 before the deal was done, we paid 975.000 for him. Additional signing costs set us back a bit more, so 1.200.000 was deducted from the transfer-budget. He will make 27K per month with Vitesse, but the contract also contains an optional 2 year extension to be triggered by the club. So, for the curious ones: this is him: As you can see he has some growth potential left in him. We bought him to compete with Serero for the DM spot. Serero is technical and gifted, but lacks in defensive skills and is quite small with his 1.64m and 58 kilos. Sackey is a Ghanese giant of 1.90m and 88 kilos. So, i imagine both will get decent playing time, with Serero also competing for the other central-midfield spots. This is how they compare: Competitive matches After the tactical adjustments it was time for the first competitive matches of the season. We played AIK in the 2nd qualifying round for the Europa League. The home game resulted in a 0 - 0 tie, the away game we scored two goals and won with 0 - 2. This puts us in the 3rd qualifying round against Molde! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
john1 Posted October 20, 2018 Share Posted October 20, 2018 Good luck with Vitesse Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidthekid Posted October 20, 2018 Share Posted October 20, 2018 Good luck in the save. Sackey could do a Job, hopefully he can improve in the mentals. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unigo Posted October 21, 2018 Author Share Posted October 21, 2018 16 hours ago, kidthekid said: Good luck in the save. Sackey could do a Job, hopefully he can improve in the mentals. Thanks! I hope so too, but i figured there's a reason i could get him for a relatively low transfer fee. If he had good mentals too Vitesse would be way below his level i think. Update 4: a rough start for the team A short update now, to finish of August and the transfer-period. After that i’ll switch to monthly updates. Results After qualifying for the 3rd qualifying round of the Europa League we went on a bad spell. Although the way we played looked promising, it didn’t give is the results we needed: 0 - 1 loss against Molde (Europa League) 0 - 2 loss against FC Groningen (Eredivisie) 1 - 1 draw against Molde (Europa League) 1 - 4 loss against sc Heerenveen (Eredivisie) Now, the results against Molde knocked us out of the Europa League. This means we’re missing out on the much needed extra payout that international competitions generate, but also cuts us short of games against good competition that we could use to develop our players. If there is some positive to get out of this: we made it past one qualifying round, and the lack of European football means we can fully focus on the competition. Which, given the results we’ve booked sofar, is needed. After these results i decided to switch tactics. I’m not going into a completely different direction, but you will see some changes in formation. This tactic still uses a higher defensive block, a lot of pressing, wingers and 4 defenders. The changes are that the defensive backs are less attacking-minded, the wingers are dropped back to midfield (though still providing with and going forward in attack) and we dropped a midfield spot to give us an extra striker. My idea is to alter this tactic depending on the opponent, so one game i might play with a central midfielder and a defensive midfielder, the next game i could opt for a attacking midfielder and a central midfielder. To give you an idea of what this looks like: We have only played one game with this new shape so far. We played AZ Alkmaar, who at that time (after two games, so it does not say much) were first in the league. This resulted in: Despite 3 goals conceded, i’m quite happy with the way we played. Let’s see if this tactic indeed works for us in september. Transferwindow Now August is over, the transferwindow is also over. On our side there’s nothing new: no one sold, nor anyone contracted. There is one transfer that that caught my eye though, because it involves a player from the Eredivisie and Chelsea… If De Ligt indeed has the potential everyone thinks he has, Chelsea just made our mission a whole lot harder... In the next update: September! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
john1 Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 Tough start and sad to see you got knocked out in Europa League Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unigo Posted October 21, 2018 Author Share Posted October 21, 2018 Update 4: september We start the month with the wonderful news that the board thinks i should do my job slightly better. Well, that does not come as a surprise to me, given the results we booked so far. Let's see how we did this month. Results League: Vitesse - Ajax 1 -1 League: PEC Zwolle - Vitesse 0 -1 League: Vitesse - ADO Den Haag 0 - 0 Cup: Helmond Sport - Vitesse 0 - 3 League: Feyenoord - Vitesse 4 - 1 All in all i'm not unhappy. The result against Ajax is good, but Feyenoord proved too difficult to beat. The win against Helmond is not surprising, but those matches are ones you can only lose anyhow (if you win, it's normal, if you lose, you're in trouble). Other news I was negotiating with a few clubs for Maikel van der Werff, but with no result. I'll still try to get rid of him, he's not performing well and is allready out of the starting 11. the UK leaves the European Union. The coming weeks we get more details on rules, this might play in our advantage if the rules are quite harsh on English clubs. We lost Janus van Gelder as our most experienced scout, i'm working on bringing in 2 new ones. due to a good financial situation our retained transfer revenue was upped from 55% to 75%! Next month Next month will be crucial to our season i think. We've got matches lined up against Heracles (currently 2nd), Excelsior (12th) and Fortuna (17th) in the Eredivisie. Despite their current positions these teams should be below Vitesse, so i'm hoping for atleast 7 points out of these games. There's also a game planned against Top Oss for the cup, they are one division below us and are 16th, we should be able to fairly easy beat them. With the board getting more and more grumpy i think they will demand my resignation if i fail this month. The topic title won't be fitting for this career in that case, so let's hope i can stay! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unigo Posted October 28, 2018 Author Share Posted October 28, 2018 Update 5: Oktober Right, this update took me longer than i thought. I'm not going to blame that on Red Dead Redemption (and work), but...it was because of RDR and work. Now, let's see how we did: Results League: Vitesse - Heracles 1 - 1 League: Excelsior - Vitesse 1 - 3 Cup: Vitesse - Top Oss 2 - 1 (in extra time) League: Vitesse - Fortuna 3 - 0 So, all in all, we did what we set out to do. Heracles proved to be a big challenge, they are still sitting at 2nd spot in the Eredivsie after 10 games. The win over excelsior and Fortuna are solid results though. We struggled against Top Oss. Partly because of using some B-players, but also because of trying a new tiki-taka tactic the first half. This resulted in 75% posession, but no goals. Other news Khalilou Fadiga and Henk van Hout join us as our new scouts. Isaac Sackey is doing quite well! In total we paid 1.2 million for him, but he came in at a worth of 2.9 million. Currently he's worth 3.2. He played all 10 eredivisie matches as a starter, and has an avarage rating of 7.17 in those games. I'm glad this transfer works out! Next month November is going to be a tough month for us. We start of against PSV, who should be among the title-favourites. They are currently in sixth place, but let's not get our hopes up. After that, we face FC Utrecht, who are currently in 1st position in the eredivisie, so no easy challenge either. We finish off the month with Willem II and FC Emmen, both in contention for relegation. We should at least get 6 points in the last two matches, any points above that are a bonus. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jakirola Posted October 28, 2018 Share Posted October 28, 2018 Good luck always had a soft spot for Vitesse Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
john1 Posted October 28, 2018 Share Posted October 28, 2018 Decent month Good luck against PSV! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattmccready Posted April 14, 2019 Share Posted April 14, 2019 Enjoyed reading this. Pity you stopped. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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