Les Gones

[zlatanera]

Décembre 2018

• Lille OSC: Traoré (22) Memphis (77, 89) Cheikh (80) | MotM: Memphis (9.3)
• Stade Rennais: Memphis (29) Dembélé (43) | MotM: Memphis (8.8)
• Toulouse FC: Ndombele (23) | MotM: Ndombele (8.3)
• Borussia Dortmund: Tousart red 21’ | MotM: Weigl (8.3)
• AS Monaco: Les Monégasquesare 18 points behind us in 7th, and although we actually should have beaten Dortmund with 10 men the draw at Toulouse shows we’re vulnerable. Straight from the kick-off Ndombele just punted it out of play…a good start! 3’ Golovin floated in a free kick and Chadli beat Lopes to it, his header looping in. 25’ Chadli nodded down Subasic’s long ball, Tousart intercepted back to Marcelo, Ndombele to Aouar in the centre circle, he played it up to Traoré on the touchline, he cut in and drove forward, entering the box and needling it through the mass of bodies towards the 6 yard box where Dembélé fired in! 32’ we were camped around the Monaco area, Ndombele with 4 players ahead of him on the edge of the box played it in to Traoré, he knocked it back to Tousart who passed short to Memphis, he turned his man and lashed one into the top corner from 25 yards! 44’ Tousart knocked it back to Denayer on half-way, he launched it forward over Memphis who crossed low from the byline and Dembélé had his 2nd! 68’ Monaco countered, N’Doram carrying it into our third before laying it left to Chadli, he crossed just into the box and Nkoudou met it with an airborne volley that gave Lopes no time to react. 87’ Memphis played it over the defence for Aouar, Naldo beat him to it but under pressure played it back to Subasic, Aouar kept chasing and intercepted his pass to Badiashile - nutmegging him with his weak foot with the same touch - before firing in low into the far corner! | MotM: Memphis (8.9)
• EA Guingamp: Cornet (7, 56) Aouar (90+1, 90+3, 90+4) | MotM: Cornet (9.5)

The Coupe de la Ligue has a rule that you have to include a minimum of 7 players involved in the previous two games in the squad, to  ensure competitive sides are fielded. I openly mocked that idea, my starting XI: Racioppi | Rafael - Y. Mapou - Morel - Mendy | Solet - Cheikh | Traoré - Gouiri - Marçal | Cornet. An injury to Gouiri meant Rafael spent most of the game as our Trequartista, and all five of our full backs actually featured before I finally brought on Aouar to grab that late hat-trick.

• Montpellier HSC: Tete (2) Memphis (49) Marcelo (58) Dembélé (87) | MotM: Memphis (9.0)

[zlatanera]

Mise à Jour des Vacances d'hiver

Well this is all going very well! Top of the league by a point - PSG lost to both Marseille and Dijon FCO 1-0 away from home - with the joint-best defence (but most clean sheets), best attack, joint-most possession (yeah, that's PSG too), and most chances created despite our wage bill being barely over a quarter of that of the enemy to the north, we're also through in the Champions League and Coupe de la Ligue - the latter despite fielding something that mocks the idea of players having positions on a football pitch. Oh, and all this is despite Nabil Fekir only starting 10 out of a possible 25 games due to injury, meaning we may actually improve in the new year! 

On an individual level everyone playing in the front 6 positions has scored a goal, with surprising proficiency from Aouar (9) and Ndombele (7). Once again Memphis is by far our most important player, with 12 goals and 11 assists, but Moussa Dembélé is leading the line well with 15 goals in 19 appearances. I've been training a lot of my players to have the trait Plays One-Twos to help out play but instead for Dembélé, after noticing his Shoots With Power trait can hinder him one-v-one with the goalkeeper, has learned Likes To Round Keeper which will hopefully making him even more clinical. 

I've decided to post up the full Champions League group stage, but its quite a big image so I'll spoiler it as I have more interesting things to finish the post with.

 

Spoiler

 

The first thing is to say that when our group was first drawn, despite knowing how good my tactics can be, I would have been happy with third place - and not just because I arrogantly assume I'd win the Europa League at a canter. In the end thanks to that win against Man City (and if our ties had been a two-legged knockout we would have won that too) we qualified with a game in hand, the narrow Dortmund loss only dooming us to 2nd place.

Of years to finish 2nd though, this is probably a better one as I'd rate Juventus and Manchester United as more fearsome prospects than the teams that finished ahead of them. Group D would have been an absolute dream of a draw, but I was surprised to see that in something I wouldn't deem a 'Group of Death' Bayern couldn't make it out of Group H. 

I'm quite pleased we drew Roma - them or Valencia were the two 'easy' draws. Also I like playing against the players I so recently had such a fun short save with. They're a different prospect under AI Eusebio Di Francesco though - much more of a low-scoring, tight-at-the-back outfit. I think we'll bring the goals out of them with our playing style though, so I predict 6-5 on aggregate.

 

Although the aim of the game here is to play a proactive possession style of football I also get great satisfaction out of a well-worked set piece routine - I'm English after all! In our final match against Montpellier we opened it with part-surprising part-planned goal from a throw. This is the routine:

Unlike on corners the two players on LOA duty don't stand 1 yard apart but instead actually obey social distancing rules and spread out, which is why I felt comfortable setting my opposite full back in this aggressive position. The primary aim is to get the ball to the AMC for either a pot shot or a quick dribble before laying it off to the two men in the area, but if that's not on the idea is to play it out to the full back, allow them to come forward and whip a cross into a box that now has 4-5 white shirts in it. This...wasn't quite that, it was more fun though:

 Ferland Mendy created a goal attempting a run like that, but I was really surprised to see it from my most defensive full back! 

[zlatanera]

Prix - Hiver 2018

An annual award, yet he's only been back in the country for 6 months. Yeah, I think he's been that good too Ligue 1 voters!

That whole separation of Ballon d'Or from FIFA leading to the creation of the FIFA Best awards means Aouar is the inaugural winner of this award. He's doubled his career goals tally already in only 6 months under my regime - on an individual level he might actually be better this time around than in Les Gones!

Edited April 17, 2020 by zlatanera

[quee]

On 15/04/2020 at 03:17, zlatanera said:

• Amiens SC: Aouar (6) Fekir (20) Ndombele (69) | MotM: Fekir (9.0)
• Reims: Tousart (32) Fekir (41) Cornet (63) Dembélé (pen 79, 87) | MotM: Rafael (9.2)
• RC Strasbourg Alsace: Aouar (4) Terrier (20) Memphis (43, 50) Fekir (48) | MotM: Memphis (9.6)

Isn't it better to just change the fixtures view with goalscorers instead of typing it all up? Always bugged me when I read your threads, no offence 

Though, MoTM, you have to type. 

[zlatanera]

7 hours ago, quee said:

Isn't it better to just change the fixtures view with goalscorers instead of typing it all up? Always bugged me when I read your threads, no offence 

Though, MoTM, you have to type. 

It bugs me too tbh. But what bugs me more is that I can’t adjust the widths on that screen so I have half of it devoted to showing the next / selected game whether I like it or not. Factor in my 13” MacBook Air screen not being the largest (I’m on 95% zoom and with only icons on the sidebar just to get more space), realistically any more than two goals and you can’t see them. Maybe removing the TV icon and time would get me a tiny but more room but not enough to make a difference and I want the rest shown. I think the bullets at least look nicer than the way I used to do it, but that’s just me. 
For this save I may as well just have ‘MotM: Memphis’ ready on my clipboard, he’s been incredible!

Edited April 19, 2020 by zlatanera

[zlatanera]

Mentoring - Under 19s

I didn't notice mentoring was available for your youth squads until about 6 months into FM19, and to be honest I'd mostly dismissed it as irrespective of hierarchy differences all players' influence is Light. I figured maybe it was a dead end, given the amount of issues I had with FM19 at the start I actually thought it might have been a mistake the they left them in. But it was bugging me so I asked, and was informed that it can still work. So I'm trying it out.

The most common personality in our youth ranks is Balanced with 9 Determination, which is not ideal. We only have about 4 good personalities, and 2 of them are luckily the Team Leaders among the group, whilst Gouiri has the highest Determination (14) of all the Balanced characters and his higher reputation should help him retain influence. 

There was no real reason behind who got put in which group except that I gave Gouiri the guys with the lowest Determination figuring they might be more easily influenced when they're closer together in personality terms, and I didn't mentor anyone with over 10 Determination as that would lead to then entire squad being in mentoring groups which is absurd. This may be a huge waste of time, but given how frustrating it can be to have no influence over a player's personality until they make the first team I think its worth it. 

[zlatanera]

Janvier 2019

• OGC Nice: Dembélé (25) | MotM: Dubois (7.9)

• Reims: Marcelo (35) Dembélé (83) | MotM: Mendy (8.0)

• AS Monaco: 11’ Tete stopped Nkoudou dead in his tracks, we played a few short passes on the right of defence then Fekir came deep to collect and played it into space for Memphis, he moved it on ahead of Aouar who drove into the box and powered a shot across Subasic and in! 52’ Monaco made the mistake of penning us in our own half, Tete won it, Fekir, Ndombele, Memphis who crossed across the 6 yard box where Cornet fired in at the second time of asking! 68’ we had a free kick near the corner on the left, Dubois drilled it in low and amongst a crowd of bodies Fekir turned it in! 90+3’ 30 yards out on the right we had a free kick, Traoré got it over the wall and down low towards the corner of the net! | MotM: Aouar (9.1)

• AS Saint-Étienne: 10’ Perrin pushed someone in the area, and Dembélé gave us the lead from the spot! 11’ Memphis’ corner was headed in at the near post by Marcelo! 14’ Fekir’s corner from the right was delivered into the 6 yard box and Denayer burst through the crowd to head in as well! No more highlights, but more importantly no injuries either. | MotM: Marcelo (8.5)

• Amiens SC: Cornet (3) Pintor (37) Gouiri (89) | MotM: Cornet (7.5)

• Paris Saint-Germain: The first of two games against PSG in 3 days, I rotated my entire outfield for the Amiens game - that was Pintor’s debut! - so we’re now at almost full strength. Rafael is presently negotiating a transfer to Shanghai SIPG, but it’s still hard for me to let him go so he gets one last start. 38’ Thiago Silva had a goal disallowed as Marquinhos had apparently pushed Tousart. 40’ Mbappe went off injured. 61’ VAR gave Cavani a penalty for a push, but Racioppi saved! 73’ I went more direct and brought on Traoré for Ndombele. I was briefly tempted to go for the Louis van Goal move and swap my keeper for the penalties, but as Racioppi had already saved one he kept his spot. Despite setting Marçal on for Rafael the ref blew the whistle before he got on the pitch. Areola saved from Dembélé, Fekir and Memphis and we were out, Cavani redeeming himself by scoring the winner. We’re deserved losers there, PSG out-shooting us 21 to 8 yet actually taking fewer long shots.  | MotM: Marcelo (7.6) - Racioppi got the same rating.

Edited April 22, 2020 by zlatanera

[zlatanera]

Fenêtre de Transfert - Hiver 2019

So this actually covers two transfer windows: the standard European January transfer window of 1st January - 31st January, but also the domestic Joker transfer window, where French clubs can each bring in 1 player from their fellow domestic clubs. The latter was something I'd ignored in the previous edition, and most likely would have again this time out given the ineffectiveness of my scouting team (I'm trying not to just manually scout all the wonderkids I know from fmscout but its hard when my scouts can somehow recommend me everyone on the books at Vélez Sarsfield except Thiago Almada). But I'll explain why I did lower down. 

Traîtres / Départs

Spoiler

There are two categories within this. Firstly, the guys I forced out of the club - Départs: there were 21 in all, most prominently Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa. All of the players with expiring contracts I offered out for free, and got rid (MY-M had a great personality and didn't complain about not playing but was our 3rd-highest earner). Then I also transfer listed a bunch of youngsters who weren't going to make it. Surprisingly a lot of them were in high demand, allowing me to negotiate deals for double value (instalments) + 10% next sale for 8 of them, yet unsurprisingly they were mostly unwilling to leave - some players turned down over 10 different moves before finally shifting off. Two - Joss Nkongue and Méroine El Hammiri - rejected multiple offers on deadline day! Once the deadline passed I cut them loose out of spite.

Now for the Traîtres:

I'm a Manchester United fan, so I love Rafael. He came to the club so young despite being on the books he couldn't play for us during the glorious '07-08 season, and eventually outshone his brother on the way to over 100 appearances and 7 trophies, including in Sir Alex Ferguson's final season. In FM he's always been a great performer for me too, although those weak defensive stats probably do cost me some goals he never actually makes mistakes. But 29th January Shanghai SIPG came in and he wanted to go for the money. I'd only handed him a new contract in June, and before interacting with players I always negotiate a deal just in case, so I knew I could get ~€20m for the move. For a guy with no potential growth, but an admittedly great personality, who is quite injury prone and only cost us €2m this was an outstanding deal. Plus we had Kenny Tete and Léo Dubois behind him...

So of course on deadline day Bayern decided to make me miserable! First, to add to an earlier unsettling of Ferland Mendy, they bid for Memphis, wouldn't meet my €96m asking price and went and spent €90m on Federico Chiesa instead. Then, immediately after the Rafael deal was sealed, they decided they needed to replace Rafinha with our man. I'd planned to give Tete a good go of it this time, but he wasn't going to be happy and €30m is great price, one I don't expect they'll make a profit on (Joshua Kimmich is incredibly fit, he'll never play and be transfer listed within 12 months). Similar to Rafael we've made a large profit - €26m on his initial €4m fee! Still, Traitre!

Héros / Arrivées

Spoiler

As previously stated, my scouts haven't yet found enough suitably enticing prospects for me to go mad, so there were 2 transfers: 1 for the long term, 1 panic-buy reunion on the 31st.

Georginio Rutter was my Joker transfer. Although I only got it over the line on 31st December after forgetting about the existence of the window, he has a worse personality than last time around so any extra time for our squad to work on him is a bonus. 

In Les Gones he exploded on loan to Borussia Mönchengladbach scoring 18 goals his first season, then 10, then 19 on loan at Real Sociedad after that. The rise of my newgens meant he was never going to get a look in however. I can't rely on the youth intakes being just as great this time, so I brought him in again! €2m + 10% profit is a tidy deal, unless he gets demolished by injury I can easily make a Rafael-level profit.

Yeah, the panic-buy is another reunion! In Les Gones he won every top trophy he could, including the World Cup, and only cost me €13m in summer 2019. This time around though, time pressures meant Norwich were a lot tougher to negotiate with. I also got a little impatient, so its €20m cash + 10% profit. In the world of this save that makes him one of the most expensive transfers the club has ever made, and the board are quite unhappy with me - probably because despite that fee he's signed as a Hot Prospect. But there were no better options available, and likely never will be. Here's hoping he settles in fast! 

In keeping with the reunion theme I am eying up Lisandro Martínez again as he's probably the best young left-footed ball playing centre back out there, but he's reluctant to move on after only 6 months at Defensa y Justicia so I have to muddle through with a pretty weak centre of defence.

 

Edited April 21, 2020 by zlatanera

[zlatanera]

Février 2019

• Paris Saint-Germain: We’re 6 points ahead, but PSG have a game in hand. At home, I really want to win this and lay down the gauntlet. I swapped my full backs, and Traoré came in for Aouar but otherwise I’m giving players chance at redemption. Mbappé is injured but Everton - my #1 Memphis replacement - joined them over us on deadline day and slots in to his position. 26’ Fekir’s corner was played into the 6 yard box, Tousart shot off the back post like he’d borrowed Mbappé’s boots to get in front of Buffon and head in! 32’ Memphis had the ball near the corner flag, saw Tousart offering support and booted it past half-way instead, Di Maria easily beat Tousart to it before switching it to Neymar, he got into the area and crossed low and Everton sneaked his shot under Lopes. In the second half we hit the woodwork thrice whilst Denayer nearly gave me a coronary by almost lobbing Lopes from half-way, but it ended level. | MotM: Tousart (7.6)

• ASMB Belfort: Dembélé (25, 33) | MotM: Dembélé (8.7)

• OGC Nice: Fekir (14) Marçal (44) Memphis (45+3) Ndombele (62) | MotM: Memphis (8.5)

• EA Guingamp: Ndombele (41) | MotM: Ndombele (8.3)

• Roma: Eusebio De Francesco’s side are a different proposition to when I managed them - a lot of 1-0s - but nevertheless still a threat, especially given our relative struggles in recent weeks (that hammering of Nice saw them score first and consistently create on the counter, all our goals were outside the box). 65’ an extremely chaotic bit of midfield play resulted in Dzeko hitting a pass off the back of El Shaarawy, Traoré knocking it away from Nzonzi to Aouar who launched it over to the left, Florenzi headed it away, Memphis took it down and crossed from the touchline, Kolarov headed away, Traoré knocked it down at the edge of the area and Ndombele hit a low half-volley into the net! 85’ El Shaarawy drove towards the edge of the box then laid it off to Kolarov, he got forward and crossed low to the far post where Perotti fired in. We’re probably going out at this round. | MotM: Ndombele (8.3)

• AS Monaco: Memphis is still unsettled, despite Bayern moving on from him in mere hours, and hasn’t offered anything in open play since then so I dropped him for Cornet. 1’ straight from kick-off we went at them, when it got cleared down the left we just came back again, Denayer moving it forward to Ndombele, to Aouar, out wide to Aarons, headed away by Glik, Aouar to Ndombele again who passed to Cornet in the area, he faced up to his man, burst left and shot low across goal and in! We created multiple opportunities yet failed to add to our tally and a succession of Monaco set pieces in add time had me worried, but we held on. | MotM: Cornet (8.3)