[FM20] União Desportiva Alta de Lisboa - The Battle For Lisbon

[Saethus]

União Desportiva Alta de Lisboa
The Battle For Lisbon
 

The Past
 

União Desportiva Alta de Lisboa were formed in 2005 as the result of a merger between Sporting Clube da Torre and Clube Desportivo da Charneca. Whilst information on the club is difficult to find (the club website is more or less the only reliable source of information I could find!) it seems that the club is troubled and treated unfairly by local authorities with disputes over facilities, the stadium and the legitimacy of the institution as both a football club and entity. This gets more tricky to digest as a non-Portuguese-footballing-expert as Football Manager credits the side as being part of the inaugural Campeonato da Liga season, despite Wikipedia pages amongst other things accrediting this success to Atlético Clube de Portugal instead. Evidently, the club despite being based in the homeland of Portuguese footballing dominance is nowhere near the level envisioned of them in the inaugural 1934-35 season.

Competing in the Lisbon Pro-National (fourth tier) in real life, the side has been promoted during the 2019/2020 season to the Campeonato Nacional Prio (third tier) on the game. I have taken this approach in-line with that of the Dafuge and Youth Academy Challenge amongst others in creating an interesting dynamic via managing a previously unplayable club. In doing so, I have also set my managerial attributes, experience and badges at the same level proposed in both aforementioned challenges. The dream? Take UDAL to the top. Become the kings of Lisbon with no dispute. The reality? We have to compete against Benfica, Porto and Sporting amongst others - football royalty. Clubs that will no doubt go on to achieve dozens of titles before we even achieve our first. Clubs that whilst from the same location as our own will develop world class talent whilst we get their unwanted runts.

I have never attempted to document my progress (or lack thereof!) on a forum before, so please excuse any messyness, inadequate writing or lack of cohesive thought/regularity. If anything, it'll be a bit like our football for a while. I guess we're going to improve together. Hopefully.
 

The Future

 

Before beginning, I have to give recognition to two users who have shared their experience, triumphs and heartache and inspired me to do the same - the fantastic work of @Ö-zil to the Arsenal! and @_Ben_ with their Benfica and Guadalajara journeys respectively, despite a bit of a Lisbon conflict of interest now arising for myself... I'll see past it. O-zil's posts are glittered with valuable tactical, developmental and training-centric ideas which have sparked my imagination as to the possibilities of what can be achieved developing within, whilst making crude transfer acquisitions both from domestic-based clubs and abroad at the top level. Ben's posts are in stark contrast and demonstrate the struggle of not relying on attributes as a sole focus, implementing a style of play at-odds with the level of the squad and documenting so with fantastic external data visualisation to engage the reader further. The vision as prefaced is to achieve as much as these two whilst taking inspiration from both sides of the game that they have documented. As such, my vision is as following:
 

• Attacking football. I want us to do things in style. The colours of the club were the very first thing that stood out to me and in my head they just SCREAMED Barcelona. That said, possession is not a focus of mine. I want to create foremost.
• Developing players. Our stadium is absolutely tiny. 1500 capacity. We will not be in a position to spend huge sums on talent and I believe that with my own understanding of the development process we will be able to produce talent at the club.
• Analytical, data-centric approach. In FM games previously I have certainly been guilty of looking at the bare minimum statistically. This time around I want to demonstrate through data visualisation just how valuable certain players are/are not.
• Flexible tactically. I usually just pick a tactic and build my team around it. This time, I want to make the absolute most of what we have and use my analysis/statistics to see if it is working. Not just a plan A manager.

In all reality, that's it. Anything else I would add simply falls in to one of those categories in one way or another, so without hesitation;

 

The Present

First Team / Under 19s / Facilities / Finances

As it stands, we've just turned semi-professional. Whilst this is a financial burden, it is also a blessing in disguise. We do not have a single player at the club who we are paying on a weekly basis. Every single player is on £0 per week under an amateur deal. This allows me complete freedom with who I decide to keep on and we are not lumbered with players on big wages or any similar situation. That said, the first thing to ensure is we get some of our top talent contracted on a more permanent basis. Speaking of which, these 2 are by far the most talented players at the club - and remarkably - one of them had previously only been playing in the under 19s!

Diogo Alpalhão:

Diogo is exceptional for this club. 4.5* current ability. Strong, aggressive and very adept defensively. In terms of the league, he is only rated as "good" by our staff but he is wanted already by 3 sides at the same tier of Portuguese football as our own, so he absolutely needs to be tied down to a part-time contract immediately.

Sebastien Moulin:


Perhaps, no, certainly more exciting still is Sebastien Moulin. I have absolutely no clue how the club has this player, and furthermore no clue how he was only in the under 19s side to begin with. A player who evidently will have been developed at one of the larger Lisbon-based clubs due to his tactical, mental and physical prowess. This is a player that I have big ambitions for and I hope can spearhead our attack for years to come - but we will see how he develops long-term. The only real concern with him is the balanced personality and that he isn't on a part-time contract yet but hopefully in the long run this can be sorted out.

A quick breakdown of the other areas at the club requiring immediate attention...:

1. We have 0 scouts and we also are allowed NO scouts - just a chief scout in charge of... well... himself. This is a huge priority as currently we are unable to see any players really without offering them trials directly.
2. We have no coaches at the club. In order to develop players, we have to train them. In order to train them well, we need good coaches. We're allowed a maximum of 2, so we will have to be picky. One will certainly be an attacking-focused coach for our development of Moulin.
3. We have an ABUNDANCE of young talent at the club! Not an issue at all, but these players are going to need mentors and that will likely be costly on the wage bill. We have no fantastic mentors at current, so this needs addressing.
4. Until I know what our squad for the season will look like, I have no idea what type of tactic, shape or overall mentality we are going to play on. I am not a tactical expert, but will attempt to explain things well throughout the journey, completely open to critique and ideas.
5. Our facilities are - for this level - exceptional. It will of course be costly to run them and keep them up to these standards - and further them - but a key priority is going to be making the most of this situation we find ourselves in.

But most important of all - survival at this level. The club is newly promoted and we have to be realistic in our approach. As much as I want to attack, we are not the best team in the division. In fact, over the next 5 seasons the board simply want us to remain in this division for now as our current vision. In all honesty, a season or 2 period of adjusting to the level and seeing where we stand would be great. Let's just not get relegated. I will attempt to update this as regularly and thoroughly as possible - all ideas, critique and just general support and comments are very welcome!

 

 

COME ON YOU União Desportiva Alta de Lisboa - it doesn't *quite* have a ring to it yet...

[Saethus]

So much for going up the divisions together...

[Saethus]

 

União Desportiva Alta de Lisboa

The Battle For Lisbon

 

Laying The Foundations

 

So, as highlighted in the breakdown… We had work to do and fast. We had just about 45 days to turn a side full of amateurs into a competitive, semi-professional side with not only potential but an ability to keep the side in the division. To start off, we needed the right people alongside us to do it - the new backroom staff. This was the first thing we sorted out at the club in order to have a successful window, begin training effectively immediately and get a gauge of how well we compare to behind the scenes to the other sides in the division.

 

Our main stand-out capture was that of Abel Silva joining us as assistant manager. Abel has a wealth of experience - starting his career as a player at Benfica but also his career as a staff member for the same side as a scout. Racking up over 150 appearances in Liga NOS as well as 13 appearances for the Portuguese U21 side it was a no brainer. Fantastic at judging the ability of players and a well-rounded coach for this level was a must due to our desire to not only find a large amount of players in this window, but also develop them once here and Silva fits this role excellently. As shown in the image above, our staff are more or less average for what would be expected in the division and is certainly an area requiring improvement in the not too distant future.

Whilst not an excellent group of staff, we are well-rounded and our goalkeeping area provided the most concern, potentially signalling that a more experienced, developed goalkeeper would be a sensible transfer decision for now as opposed to a player requiring coaching immediately. Prior to making any transfers, here is how we stacked up attribute-wise to the rest of the division:


Below average, but certainly not abysmal. Each and every player accounted for within these graphics had signed a part-time contract and those that were not good enough were released. This left us with around 7-11 players (depending on how many we could bring in and what improvements could be made) so we had a big window ahead of us. Our wage budget standing at £15,000 gave us a lot of freedom however I wanted to get signings in early and accepted that we would make mistakes that could be fixed in the near-future, with most signings only receiving a 1 year contract due to the uncertainty in their attribute masking. Multiple trials were given, however this was still not a great way of fully identifying their attributes. The approach taken was to assess players we had *some* knowledge of based upon their ratings and appearances last season - whilst not perfect, it allowed us to sign players who have already been performing well at our level, or just below it. In total, we made 17 signings taking our first team squad up to 24, depending on which young talent we gave opportunities to.



A couple of things to note. We only signed 2 players for an actual transfer fee and we only signed 2 players previously unattached to a club. As mentioned previously, our scouting knowledge was DREADFUL. Whilst I could have taken full advantage of the trial feature, I decided to be "realistic" in a sense and approach players with a good performance level last season. A couple of players however stood out...

Albertine Alves
Our club record transfer - but a good one. Signed based upon the recommendation of Toni, our new DoF, here are the attributes we could see prior to his arrival, compared to his attributes upon signing. 

All things considered, a damn good signing. A fast, physical and creative player able to play in multiple attacking and wide positions. His arrival costs us an initial £20,000 with the potential to rise to £37,500 based upon performances and league appearances. If he stays with us long enough to justify him playing 50 matches then I believe he'll have been worth the money overall. One of only a few players on a 2-year contract, but I feel as if he has a level of potential far superior to that of other members of the squad.

Francisco Senica

Our only other cash signing who appeared on 31 occasions for Mineiro Ajustrelense in the 3rd tier last season having previously played for at the time Liga NOS sides Vitoria de Setubal and Belenenses as an academy player.


A defensively astute midfield player who I see as an integral part of our squad. At just 21 years of age, Senica has the potential to grow and will ideally be used as the rock in our midfield. Another 2-year contract and the £1,200 fee really should not hurt us whatsoever in the long term. With our 2 paid-for transfers out of the way, here are a selection of other talented players that we managed to pick up ahead of the 2020/2021 season.

Arroyo, Soares and Goncalo

Arroyo is certainly the best player that we have signed in this window. Playing 30 times for Oriental Dragon (unbelievable name) in the Setubal First Division (4th tier I believe) last season he managed 7 goals and 6 assists from central midfield alongside a 7.18 rating. He also managed 4.12 tackles per game during that time and an additional 2 goals and 4 assists in the cup, demonstrating the potential for him to be an all-action midfielder. His attributes were barely present at the time, but his stats alone last season demonstrated a potential for him to be a fantastic player. Soares arrives as an experienced option in goalkeeper due to our coaching situation, but also has 15 determination and a "fairly determined" personality which could see him be a mentoring option in the future. He managed 28 appearances in the 3rd tier last season for Oriental Lisboa picking up 10 clean sheets in that time and only conceding 25 across the league season. A rating of 6.88 being very solid for a goalkeeper, hopefully he performs similarly for us. Finally, Joao Goncalo appears to be an absolute star in the making. Making 12 appearances in the 3rd tier during the 2018/19 season in real life, Joao's ability reflects that in-game. Despite only appearing 4 times in the division last season, he spent the majority of his time with Alverca B and racked up an unbelievable 19 goals and 7 assists in 34 games. This gave him a 7.58 rating. By far the highest I had seen of any available player and his attributes paint a picture of why he was so effective at scoring from midfield last season.

These 5 players will be an essential part of our core this season and their arrival, amongst others, has caused our team comparison page to look slightly more healthy. We are now just about average in the division and whilst I could make additional signings, I'd like to see how our current 24 man squad does before making any additional signings. These players offer us flexibility and solidity in midfield which will be essential to our survival I feel. Whilst pre-season is not yet complete, we managed to pick up a 3-1 victory over fellow 3rd tier side Felgueiras 1932 in an evenly contested match using the following system:

The 4-4-2 DM system



Whilst unspectacular and certainly not yet finished, I feel as if this shape could be an effective plan for us at times this season. With Moulin (eventually) signing a 2-year deal at the club, we will certainly have to find a way to use his pace and goal scoring ability to our advantage and this system is based upon doing that. Regrouping and countering in our defensive/attacking transitions sees us drop in to a solid 4-4-2 shape with 2 holding midfielders looking to nullify the threat of any opposition attacking midfielders (which seems an area of strength in most teams this season) and play the ball either long over defences to the pacy Moulin, or to our target man who I will now introduce...

Mamadu Sane

Meet Mamadu Sane. A striker with 23 goals in his previous 51 league appearences, 15 of which coming last season, we have a real target man at the club. I have never really attempted to use a target man style of player, but I've witnessed the effectiveness of it from creators such as BustTheNet. The idea is that if we can not play over the top to Moulin, we'll have an option to hit the ball to Sane who can either feed Moulin himself or hold the ball up and allow our more creative players such as Arroyo, Goncalo and Alves to attack the opposition on counters. Hopefully I can figure out how to use Sane effectively as a way to create space for these players but I may need help from fellow FM players in order to figure out how to do so.  

The 4-4-2 is really the only system we have began to develop with 2 friendlies played, but it seems a sensible option and allows us to play with quick transitions and multiple ways of attacking the opposition. With centre halves that are good in the air and reasonably pacy, I feel comfortable that we can defend quite high and narrow especially with the protection of 2 holding midfielders. Potentially we lack depth out wide, but it's something that we can address as the season develops. Overall, I'm really happy with our business and overall development. It's going to take time, but hopefully we can manage to stay in the division this season or otherwise it's back to starting again! Speaking of the division, there are 72 sides that play across 4 randomly-drawn groups and here is who we are up against this season:

A couple of teams of note. Oriental Lisboa (where we pinched our goalkeeper from) will be our only Lisbon-based derby in the league this season which is a good way to ease us in to things and hopefully develop a winning mentality against this type of side! In, well, worse news - we're also against sides such as Uniao da Madeira who are predicted to finish 5th out of the 72 sides, SC Olhanense who are predicted to finish 7th and CS Maritimo B who are predicted to finish 10th. These are some really tough sides to be coming up against, but I suppose the reality is that we will not be looking to compete against them for league-position regardless. The good news in a way is that you would expect these clubs to batter the relegation-placing 5 teams from 14th-18th which is over 25% of the entire league. We have a couple of sides such as Silves and Lusitano Evora SAD who are expected to place sub-60 out of the 72 sides which gives me hope. We're predicted to finish around the 55th placed mark, which signals us as a relegation threat but by no means a certainty - probably about right considering our average ability level in the squad.

Thanks for reading, if there's anything else that you would like to see then feel free to let me know and I'll get right on it - I'll give a further update as we approach the season and see where we stand during the early parts of our league campaign.
 

[Saethus]

União Desportiva Alta de Lisboa

The Battle For Lisbon

 

Progress and Distress

Having previously left off mid-way through pre-season and in a spot of uncertainty both tactically and in our expectations for the season, you join us at the mid-way stage of the Campeonato de Portugal Prio D campaign. It’s been… interesting.

So, that’s how we’ve fared. Up and down, frustrating, but now seemingly stable. It was really hard to know what to expect coming into this season, so our initial start led me to a false sense of our ability if truth be told. It would be unfair to suggest that we were *lucky* to begin with, but whatever was working certainly dropped off. In fairness, we scored quite a lot from set pieces early in the season and none of our forward players really contributed a tonne goal wise. Perhaps due to my inexperience using a target man whatsoever, I had a bit of a crisis and wasn’t really sure how best to use him - so once dropping into the relegation zone I just decided not to. We’re now lining up like this…
 

 

A… tad different - but there's a method to the madness. Something that we’ve really struggled to take advantage of is the goal scoring abilities of both Arroyo and Goncalo from midfield and I feel as if having them withdrawn so deep in the 4-4-2 DM system was probably something we could do with changing. As you can see in the table screenshot, we’re generally pretty good at the back. The 6th least goals conceded in our group of the division but we’re not the best at scoring - especially when taking into account ~20% of our goals scored have come from set play.

I feel as if this system also allows us to exploit the pace of Moulin and the creativity of Alves also. Our attack was quite static with the target man, whilst it opened space I’m certainly not an expert on how to use that space, or if I’d even created *good* space in the first place. A strikerless system however I can view as a lot more basic - it allows us to counter attack as planned previously, but from a deeper line of engagement due to the lack of strikers which should hopefully encourage teams to attack us a bit more. Most defences in this league are quite slow - but they’re organised and we’ve fallen victim to that so far this season. Moulin has developed his game to become accomplished in the AMC position and I’m also very tempted to push Goncalo up into the AMC strata alongside him to create a 4-4-2 of sorts, with Senica and Arroyo the 2 deeper midfielders - we shall see.

A deeper look
 

Our *wonderkid* Moulin has developed very well in all truth with key attributes such as his decision making seeing a significant increase (+2) as well as becoming accomplished as an AMC based upon my tactical plans. With that said… he’s scored a measly 3 goals in 16 league appearances. Without a single assist. Moulin is realistically our only player ACTUALLY good enough to compete very well at this level right now, so I want to look further into why his performance has not been what I’d hoped for.

Here’s what I came up with, a radar demonstrating some of the important stats I’d look for in an attacking player across a season. Seeing as Moulin has played a considerable amount of matches in a withdrawn shadow striker role I opted to not include aerial-based statistics on his radar.

What we can see is that whilst he evidently has not been prolific, he’s taking very few shots. Really it’s partly my fault that he’s not been able to get on the end of moves and actually have opportunities - BUT - when he does get opportunities he hits the target very regularly. Without spending an exorbitant amount of time tracking a very basic “xG” for Moulin, we can assume that he’s likely opting to shoot from good locations due to his accuracy. He’s also a very astute and safe passer in our side, whilst completing a decent amount of dribbles and winning fouls. I’m not really surprised by any of this - his attributes indicate he’s a direct, fast and clinical attacker. My only concern would be his low goal conversion %, but he’s inexperienced, we’ve played poorly and really he’s not actually had that many shots to assess overall. Evidently, we need to get him in better positions and I think that having a creative, smart player such as Goncalo alongside him may help with this.

Alvarinho


Signed towards the backend of pre-season for a paltry £4,500 from Liga II Ledman side SC Farense, Alvarinho has been exceptional. More or less everything good that we do in attack comes through this man.

This radar REALLY backs it up. He’s heavily involved in more or less EVERY area. Evidently, we’re doing better out wide than we’re doing centrally. More of a reason to have an additional attacking player in central areas. In fairness, I think his crossing numbers are somewhat inflated by us having used a target man as well as him taking the occasional set piece, but there’s no denying his impact has been far greater than that of Moulin. Perhaps more impressively he’s achieved this over a greater sample size than Moulin who had to sit out some matches due to either a pre-existing suspension or lack of fitness. On the opposite wing…

Albertine Alves


A somewhat similar situation to Moulin where we have a young player evidently developing but not quite yet the finished product producing week-in-week-out. The initial jump-out statistics such as goals and assist do not exactly jump out in a positive manner, so once again let's look a bit deeper.



Once more, a completely different story. Granted - we’ve got another wide player who wins fouls and dribbles a lot, but his end product is nowhere near that of Alvarinho. Something somewhat surprising is Alves’ effectiveness at winning the ball back given his 5 bravery and 8 work rate but maybe his high aggression of 13 has something to do with this. Either that or his high pace allowing him to intercept opposition passes as they attempt to break down our compact shape - we do play on “regroup” as opposed to using a counter-press after all.

Notes:
 

1. Moulin needs to get involved more. In fact, the entire centre of the park needs to get more involved. 
2. Our wide players seem to be losing possession a lot by dribbling wide but not really having a focus, so this has to be addressed.
3. We’ve improved as of late, so the idea of going strikerless has certainly not seemed a terrible one.
4. A lot of the players we signed in pre-season are simply not at the level to compete in this division at a level higher than we currently are playing. Whilst not really our fault due to the scouting situation, we’ve got to get the most out of what we’ve got and I would rather give them until the summer to prove themselves instead of making changes in January.
5. Players are developing well! Moulin and Alves have seen substantial attribute improvement so I am happy. If we can get them performing then I have no doubt this will help them even more.
   
   On a somewhat more positive note - we recently received our intake preview.
   

It's looking very good. I've seen the "golden generation" tag on a lot of saves/intakes at this level, so hopefully it's an ACTUAL good intake and not just due to our current lack of... ability.

It’s been a successful start to the season, but not an outstanding one. There’s a tonne of work left to do to ensure we do not get relegated and push as high as we can. Players like Alves and Moulin have attracted interest from 2nd division sides so we’d really rather be in a position where we’re making progress on the pitch rather than just off of it!

[Saethus]

Having since reviewed the radars for the attacking midfielder/forward, I'm going to be changing them a bit. They will still be the same in the next update in order to keep the continuity/comparison to those already posted, but I'll be lowering how high the non-penalty total is in a new attacking midfielder/winger template, as well as considering a way of adding the "chances created" stat from FM in. I'm not really sure what to replace to add it though. I feel as if everything in the radar at current is pretty good and makes sense. For roles like a shadow striker in my strikerless system I'll be keeping the attacking midfielder/forward radar the same for non-penalty goals for players like Moulin because I expect a player in that position to score more than my wingers or opposition wingers.

Any thoughts would be much welcomed - I've since finished the season I just need to write everything up . As mentioned, the radars won't change for the next update but will do for season 2... unless I've been sacked by then .

[Ronaldo Beckham]

Enjoying reading this so far. I always like people using stats deciding on who to buy so I will be keeping an eye on this.

[tyler16]

Great start, will be following closely!

[Saethus]

8 hours ago, Ronaldo Beckham said:

Enjoying reading this so far. I always like people using stats deciding on who to buy so I will be keeping an eye on this.

Sort of forced at this level but I agree that it's a nice way of playing the game. Can be easy to just see flashy attributes on a wonderkid and sign him despite him having played poorly for another team

4 hours ago, tyler16 said:

Great start, will be following closely!

Cheers, definitely a lot to think about tactically and recruitment wise but hopefully we crack the code before long!

[Saethus]

União Desportiva Alta de Lisboa

The Battle For Lisbon

 

2020/2021 Season Round-up

Our first campaign is complete and we're still in the job! Albeit... Maybe the club should be fortunate to have us instead of the other way around based on how we've just ended the season:

FOURTH! We've ended the season just 7 points off of 2nd placed Amora - however we were never really in with a shot of qualifying for the playoffs due to our first half of the season as you can tell by the past positions chart. All things considered, this was a ****ing great season and a near-perfect end to the season from us. During the previous update I was slightly concerned that we would even stay up and manage to score goals with our new system, but not only did we finish fourth we ended the season as the 2nd top-scorer in our group.



The highlighted results stand at:
Played: 17
Won: 11
Drawn: 4
Lost: 2

A remarkable return of 37 points from 17 league matches which would have seen us end on 74 points had we began the season like this which would have seen us place 7 points ahead of Amora in 2nd. I think, to be fair, we had some fortunate results towards the end of the season. A few 1-0 victories that could have gone either way and all-round some pretty good form and fortune with set pieces. Our new system worked absolute wonders.

The New System

As mentioned, I wanted to introduce another player directly in to the attack to help us create more goals at the expensive of some defensive stability. Whilst uncertain on some roles which changed throughout the season, this was our shape. As well as pushing a central midfielder in to the attack, we encouraged our left back to get further up the pitch. Whilst set as an IWB, a lot of his time was spent out wide due to the nature of Alvarinho cutting inside often to dribble. The advanced positioning of our players really caused us to be deadly in transition, something that we had struggled with in the early stages of the season. Whilst we also conceded more, I think a considerable amount of these goals conceded occurred when we were getting used to our new shape. As you can see towards the end of the season, we kept things relatively secure and also picked up a decent amount of clean sheets considering our style. A run of 7 straight wins to end our season as well as an emphatic 6(SIX!)-2 victory over 7th placed CD Pinhalnovense really demonstrated our improvement.

Something else that I expected to be exciting... which wasn't, really. The intake:

Whilst Santos and Pereira are reasonably talented, they were the only 2 players that we opted to sign. The rest quite simply did not seem up to the standard of the current U19s and we're going to have to delve in to the market to keep our numbers healthy in the youth side. Disappointing, but hopefully Santos and Pereira can develop nicely with Pereira already demonstrating a fairly professional personality.

Another sight that is not pretty whatsoever.



We are bleeding. Badly. Whilst I've remained quite strict on the budget and not spent even remotely close to what the board have allowed, we're in a really bad way. I am uncertain how much money getting promoted would net us, but I can only assume we're going to have to get promoted or consider selling some talent in the not too distant future. At current it's manageable and we've certainly got some interest in players, but I'd rather this wasn't the situation. I believe a lot of our spending comes down to our decent facilities and there's not really too much we can do about that as I do not want to even consider asking the board to downgrade them just to pay again to upgrade them in the future.

A star in the making - Pedro Paz

I scouted 1 player thoroughly this season due to his performance level and he is one of only 6 players that we have 100% scouting knowledge on - but he's exceptional. By far the best we could ever hope to sign. Well, HOPED to sign, as he's since extended his contract and we're in no situation financially to be spending our transfer budget on him.



Quite simply, Paz is everything I dream that Moulin can become for us. A real prolific, direct goalscorer that can drive up the pitch and win fouls for the team.

It's not a one-off either. This is a player that has demonstrated unbelievable goalscoring ability across 3 seasons now. This level of consistency is something we should be desperate to look for considering how hot and cold our season was overall. Even more impressively...

He achieved this in a side that finished ONE point above safety. Paz directly contributed to 25 of the 39 goals that Santarem scored across the entire league season - 64%. Quite simply, he's ridiculous. A player that we'll certainly be keeping tabs on and a potential option in that shadow striker position long-term.

Our own talent

So, earlier on in the season I broke down 3 attacking talents at our club. Moulin, Alvarinho and Alves. These 3 had demonstrated differing levels of output and allowed me to better understand where we were going wrong. Below is a side-by-side comparison of the player data after 17 games of the season and after 34 games for these 3 individuals.

Moulin


Whilst his outpit was still nowhere near that of a player like Paz - Moulin demonstrated a significant improvement in his output during the 2nd half of the season. His already good areas such as dribbles, shooting accuracy and passing accuracy remained at a high level, whilst he demonstrated a considerable improvement in his non-penalty goals return and his shot conversion %. Moulin is still very raw and doesn't really contribute much other than goalscoring and dribbling, but that's what the system is designed for him to do. Concerning still is his lack of shots per game. It would indicate to me that we still didn't really get him in to amazing areas and that his form ran hot towards the end of the season, converting a high % of his shots. It's something to be concerned about but we shall see if this improvement continues next season.

Alvarinho

To be honest, Alvarinho is just great. Turning 31 next season however, we should be looking at other options for this position. What he provides us however is a creative dribbler that works hard to win the ball as well as producing good shot numbers per game. I posted about it earlier, but this winger radar will need updating to better demonstrate their non-penalty goal and shots per 90. Alvarinho contributes very well in this area however for consistency between the 2 radars I opted not to change them yet. All round, Alvarinho's fantastic output from the beginning of the season remained relatively consistent in the following 17 matches.

Alves


Alves demonstrated a considerable improvement during the 2nd half of the season in nearly every category. He became considerably more of a goalscoring threat, accurate shooter, key passer and foul-drawer whilst maintaining already-good areas such as his dribble numbers. I'd be very interested to see how Alves is portrayed on the new radar and if he continues to develop in this way we will have a very good wide player on our hands. Alves' defensive output seems to have declined, but that's not exactly an area he is fantastic at attribute-wise and is not why he's in the team.

On a whole, our 3 attackers outlined in the mid-season update have improved in the areas I wanted them to. Moulin's low shot numbers and Alves' passing accuracy are still areas of concern and are perhaps linked, but I won't know this until I examine what is actually going on in-game. Still, it's interesting to note and I'm really impressed with how these 3 have ended the season.

3 Key Positions

So, as mentioned in the tactical sub-section of this post, we changed things up and introduced a new attacker, as well as making some changes to the full backs. Joao Goncalo joined the attack whilst Tom Furtado at left back received a duty change as opposed to Jorge Xavier on the opposing flank remaining on the previous support duty. Here's how these 3 players looked statistically come the end of the season:


 

There's a lot to take in here. We'll start with Goncalo. Though his numbers are skewed by playing deeper at the beginning of the season, Goncalo ended the season with a fantastic accuracy in his shooting as well as solid passing accuracy and assist numbers. He also shoots a considerable number of times per match for a player not intended to be a primary goalscorer, another which will likely see their radar parameters change come next season. I'm really concerned about the lack of key passes from Goncalo and it's certainly an area that I will have to have a think about, but as of now there's not really enough to say if he was good or bad in that attack-joining-semi-creative-role that I'm after to assist Moulin's output.

Furtado on the other hand demonstrated very consistent numbers across the board and is evidently a completely different type of player to Xavier. He's generally better on the ball despite producing less key passes and his lower defensive numbers are to be expected of a player on an attacking duty partnerred next to a holding defensive midfield player. Xavier is really raw. Despite him being good defensively, he's terrible in the air despite having to clearly win a lot of headers and it's an area we need to fix next season. He's only on loan and I'll likely take the option to extend his deal for a season, but we'll be bringing in competition for him next season to see how a different type of full back would perform.

 




Furtado is considerably slower, but is generally a far better player. Mentally these 2 players are incomparable and Furtado is far further in his development than Xavier. Speaking of development...


 

Veteran coach Antonio Violante joined us mid-season and has unbelievable mentals for this level. He's also fantastic at working with youngsters with years of experience in multiple countries doing just that. Whilst our goalkeeping coaching was our worst area, I decided it wasn't really worth bringing in a dedicated goalkeeper coach when our current goalkeeper Soares was approaching the end of his career and was not likely to improve, as well as having no promising young goalkeeper coming through the ranks at present.

That's about it for now - we've had a fantastic end to the season and seen considerable development of some of our talent, but the squad really needs an overhaul heading in to next-season as we can not be entirely dependant on set piece goals from our centre-halves or another exceptional season from Alvarinho as he also heads towards the end of his career. I have a few targets already lined up and we'll see how well I do in the market in the next update!
 

 

[Saethus]

Settled on the design for the new attacking midfielder/winger radar and here's the GOAT to display it.

This is an example from a predominantly holidayed/simulated save with Barcelona to get an idea of how well elite-level players come across in the radars. This is a Ballon d'Or season from Messi so this is the level we need to get our players to some day... no big deal.
 

[tyler16]

Interesting stuff! Imagine it's difficult to get the thresholds completely accurate.

[Saethus]

So a bit of an update... a **** one.

I've completed Season 2 and have a few updates ready. But it's more or less pointless now as I can't progress past the end of the season without my game crashing on a set date. I've tried using older versions of the save, a laptop, etc but no luck. I'll keep trying new things and get the save sent over in the bug section if I have no luck, but I thought the few of you following should know. I am gutted