CurtyFM — Blogs — 5 Star Potential

I started writing this blog with the intention of it being an update for my current save which happens to be a network game with my pal and fellow WeStreamFM-er, Herb The Nerd. However, after some analysis, I decided that this should be a standalone piece which highlights a particular issue that I’m having with one of my strikers.

To properly make you aware of the issue, first I should introduce you to the save. Myself and Herb started our second attempt at a network save a week or so ago (I won’t go into detail about the first attempt, it didn’t end well for me after a particularly bolshy performance in a meeting with the Rangers board). We decided to veer away from the British Isles, albeit just across the water to the Netherlands, where I took charge of AZ and Herb plumped for Feyenoord.

I’ll touch briefly on the current state of affairs within the save, although I will endeavour to write a separate piece outlining our trials and tribulations.

After 25 games of the season, Ajax remain unbeaten, with Herb’s Feyenoord and my AZ side battling it out for the 2nd Champions League place.

You might notice that AZ have only lost one game all season, but have been handicapped by the nine draws on display, more than any other team at this point in the campaign. This brings us to the issue at hand and the reason behind this particular blog.

It’s fair to say my AZ team doesn't have any issues when it comes to scoring goals.

We have the second most prolific attack in the league, despite only having two strikers of note on the books. One of those strikers is Adalberto Penaranda, currently on loan from Watford, who, it’s fair to say, is enjoying life in the Eredivisie. With 16 goals in 22 starts, he’s the league’s top scorer at the time of writing.

His partner, Myron Boadu, is a Dutch wonderkid and potential superstar.

Looking at his season statistics, there doesn’t seem to be much wrong, however he’s incredibly frustrating to watch in game. Mainly because he seems to be the chief villain when it comes to missing this type of chance.

Now I know one-on-ones have been a major talking point in this year’s version of Football Manager, but to my eye, my other striker doesn’t have the same problem when it comes to being through on goal. If anything when Penaranda has only the keeper to beat, I’m usually supremely confident that it will result in a bulging net.

So, we’ve identified a potential weakness, how do we go about fixing it?

My first port of call when looking to solve this issue is to look at the player and his development. I can see from Boadu’s player traits that he ‘likes to lob keeper’.

Now I might be way off in terms of the game mechanic, but it suggests to me that perhaps he waits for the keeper to go to ground so he can attempt to ‘dink’ the ball over him. This means that if the keeper stands his ground, Boadu might be in two minds of which action to take, resulting in a weak attempted finish. I’ll almost certainly be trying to train this out of him in the future, however my first decision was to train him to try and round the keeper. In my opinion, his acceleration, agility and balance make him an ideal candidate for this trait. Obviously I can’t share any results of this yet, but if it works, be aware there will be a follow up to this piece where I declare myself the Champ of Football Manager. Oh wait, I’ve already done that….

After re-assessing his training and development - he is only 19 - I decided to make comparisons to other strikers in the league. Penaranda could be over-performing after all, so it might be unfair to measure their performances against each other.

Boadu is third when it comes to average minutes per league goal, with only Penaranda and evident super-sub Huntelaar above him. Straight off the bat, this suggests that maybe I’ve got nothing to worry about. However I ‘feel’ like I see him miss clear cut chances all the time in game and it drives me up the wall. There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing your striker miss chance after chance. Here’s another one for you:

Now the real shame of all this is that I’m unable to see individual statistics around clear cut chances. I can go into each game and add them all up manually, but there’s no easy way of seeing who is missing the bulk of the chances we create.

That provides a nice segue on to the team performance. We’ve already seen that we score a decent number of goals, however when you look at how many chances we create, you’ll wonder why we’re not topping the scoring charts by a country mile.

We’re so far ahead in this table, even from Ajax who have scored 10 more goals than us in the league. ‘Well Curty, you must be leaking goals. That’ll be why you’ve had all those draws.’ That would be the easy answer, however it’s really not the case.

In fact, we’ve kept the most clean sheets in the league and have only conceded 19 goals in 25 matches with only Ajax conceding fewer on 18.

My next stop on our statistical tour was to see how many clear cut chances we’re wasting.

To my mind, scoring 73 out of 93 clear cut chances is pretty good. I’ve seen this ratio much lower in previous saves. The disappointing element of this is that I cannot break it down by player as previously mentioned.

All of these team statistics tell me we’re doing the right things, we’re creating chances and not giving much away to our opposition. We’re on a good path. Maybe Boadu needs competition for his place in the team? Maybe he’s just young and his consistency hasn’t peaked? Maybe I should be grateful that I have Boadu at all and enjoy the goals that he does score rather than the ones he doesn’t?

This might be the longest analysis blog ever where essentially there’s no real solution to the problem, or even if there is a problem in the first place. I apologise if you’ve got to the end expecting a miracle cure for profligate strikers. Many FM-ers moan about players not performing to expected levels, and it really feels like that with Boadu. However, with the absence of certain statistics in the game, it’s hard to prove my case. After all, looking at his minutes per goal record, it confirms his status as one of the most effective strikers in the league, even at the young age of 19. Maybe it’s just my tactics after all.

Thanks for reading. You can catch up on my live streams by following my Twitch channel twitch.tv/Curty, my ramblings on Twitter @CurtyFM & weekly updates on the save on the 5 Star Potential Podcast.

Written by @CurtyFM

I want to start by saying that this is by no means a guide for lower league management (LLM), but after completely altering how I set up my LLM 442 formation after I was lucky enough to have a ‘Golden Generation’ youth intake, I wanted to share the transition I made from an incredibly basic system, to something a little more complex which aims to get my key players as involved as possible during build-up play.

I recently started a LLM save with my beloved Aldershot Town. If you ever look for guidance on creating a LLM tactic, the advice is generally always the same: keep it simple, stupid. Lower league players have lower attributes in most areas compared to anyone playing in higher divisions, so it makes sense to keep things as basic as possible, right? Well, to an extent this is true. Players will still be capable of moments of brilliance, it’ll just happen much less often in the lower leagues. Personally, I think when recruiting for a lower league team, aim to focus on a couple of key attributes for a player, rather than all of the attributes the game recommends for a role. Need a winger? All he’ll need is pace and crossing. Need a striker? Look for finishing and off the ball. Anything else is a bonus at this level.

With this in mind, when I first took over my Aldershot team, I wanted to create something basic which would complement the starting squad. Here’s the aptly named ‘Curty Brexit’ formation:

The general idea behind this system was that I wanted to make full use of our quick wingers. We had a real lack of ability in central areas, so building up play from central midfield made little sense. I wanted to get the ball wide, starting from the goalkeeper, and then bombard the opposition box with crosses. The idea was effective as you can see below:

We scored 105 goals during the season, over 20 more than any other team in the division. Defensively we had issues - predominately caused by our aggressiveness down the flanks and slightly kamikaze roles in central midfield - but my ethos was to score more than the opposition and it proved fruitful. I also made use of pressing forwards who constantly put the enemy defenders under pressure. If you’ve ever managed at this level you’ll be aware of some of the highly questionable decisions defenders can make when they’re caught on the ball. The pressing forwards were there to create indecision and panic if the opposition decided to build from the back. It’s fair to say they got their fair share of goals from defensive errors. The system was basic, but effective for the level.

During the youth intake in season one, we were blessed with some real talent coming through the ranks. However one player stood out amongst his peers. Meet Daniel Elechi:

As soon as I saw Elechi, the cogs in my head started turning. How can I possibly build this guy into a 442 formation? Will I have to change the system completely to accommodate him? What can I do to get the best out of him?

Elechi made his debut in that first season, once the title was won. He became Aldershot’s youngest ever first team player and the clubs youngest ever goalscorer. His journey had started. My focus going into season two was to build the team around Elechi. Despite the fact he was only 16 years old at this point, he was comfortably my best player and my best prospect. I wanted to make the most of him before some horrible big bully club came along to snatch him from my grasp.

Initially we tinkered with a 4231, playing him in his natural AMC position. Now, I’m not sure if the team wasn’t set up well enough to get the most out of his ability, or whether most AMC roles in this version of FM are slightly underpowered, but no matter what I did, he struggled. We then moved to a 4141 and tried to use him in the central midfielder role on an attack duty, but again, perhaps it was his unfamiliarity playing from that position, or the general team set-up, but he wasn’t getting involved in build up play, or getting on the end of chances we created. In the end, he played a bit-part role during the season as we struggled to a mid-table position, failing to win any of our last eight matches to miss out on a playoff spot.

I decided at the start of season three to go back-to-basics, well, sort of. I wanted to go back to a 442 formation, but still try and get the best out of Elechi. Here’s what I’ve been playing in pre-season:

My inspiration was very much based on Atletico Madrid and their style. I decided to play with a low block, but keep a positive mentality in my players when they’re on the ball or countering. This allows them to take more risks in attacking transitions, which still gives us a good platform to create good football in opposition territory.

The deep-lying forward role seems made for Elechi so far. The wide playmaker role doesn’t encroach into his space but still feeds him the ball regularly. Once Elechi’s on the ball, he generally has several options with the CM support and wide playmaker around him, or the advanced forward offering an out ball. It’s incredibly early days for this system, but so far it achieves everything I want. The narrow, low block makes us extremely difficult to break down, the CM roles are kept nice and simple – the CM on support can be altered to hold position or get further forward depending on the match situation – plus I’m getting my most creative players on the ball when going forward. The positive mentality also gives these guys a little more creative freedom to express themselves, not always a good idea for lower league football, but with a talent like Elechi, it’s a risk I’m happy to take.

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If you want to see the system in action, you can catch me live at 2pm every weekday over at twitch.tv/Curty.

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