Twitch

The First FM Streamer Showdown

 
 

This weekend saw the first FM Streamer Showdown take place over two nights on Twitch. The premise was simple, 8 players draft a 500 million pound team, they all play against each other in a single game league format which decided the seeding for Sunday’s knockout competition where the first winner would be crowned.

If you didn’t read last week’s blog about how the draft went down and our predictions, you can find it here.

We rolled in to the weekend with many of the streamers predicting SecondYellowCard to be the tournament favourite whilst at the same time hoping that their draft picks and prepared tactics would see them come out on top. As we reached 7pm on Saturday, every streamer was live on Twitch and the first round of games kicked off.

All four of the first games ended in a draw which nobody would have predicted before the start but it showed that the teams were balanced and it would be a battle of the best tactician that would be successful. As we progressed to the second round of matches we started to see the impact of the tactical tweaks. HerbTheNerd vs UnarmingPine was the shock result of GW2 which saw Herb run out 5-1 winners, a result that saw the emergence of Tammy Abraham as a potential for draft of the tournament.

GW3 picked up where GW2 finished, with some amazing results. FoxInTheBoxFM beat DoctorBenjy in his sole victory of the league format but the round of the tie had to go to Curty vs UnarmingPine. Curty’s side were 3-0 up within 15 minutes, only for Pine’s side to salvage 2 goals in 10 minutes to make the tie tasty in the second half and just two minutes in to the second half Football Manager Wonderkid, Erling Haaland, bagged a goal to bring the tie level. Curty then took the lead again with a goal from Timo Werner only for Kasper Dolberg to tie the game in what would finish as a 4-4 draw.

GW4 brought us a match-up between Lollujo & DoctorBenjy, Ben had referenced the tie as a bye, but the 1-0 victory showed that it was probably tighter than he had expected. Herb & Zealand played out a tremendous 3-3 draw but it was UnarmingPine that took the spoils in GW4 with a 5-0 victory over out tournament favourite, FoxInTheBoxFM. £90m signing Eden Hazard came up with the goods scoring a 24 minute hat-trick piling the misery on to a devastated Foxy.

GW5 ended with four teams tied on 8 points meaning it would be all to play for, Lollujo had beaten Curty 2-0, HerbTheNerd dispatched SecondYellowCard with another Abraham brace & Zealand pilled more heartache on to Foxy with a 3-0 victory. The penultimate games of the league saw WeStreamFM nemesis’ Curty & Herb face off against each other with Herb winning the game 2-0 with a brace from Bruno Fernandes, once again proving that he is the superior Football Manager (note. he paid for this sentence.). DoctorBenjy & his tip for victory, SecondYellowCard, played out a 0-0 draw. Lollujo kicked Foxy while he was down handing him a 5-1 thumping but there were calls for set-piece hackz throughout… FMBase or Zealand as we’ve come to know him took advantage of Joel Matip’s red card in his game against Pine, Julian Brandt scoring the winner in the 60th minute securing 3 points for the American.

We went in to the final round of games with Herb & Lollujo joint top of the league on 11 points, it was all to play for. Lollujo won his game against UnarmingPine 2-0 and had wrapped his tie up faster than the game between Herb & Ben which saw Herb leading Ben 2-0. Ben, seeing that Lollujo had won and already 2-0 down, decided to go all out attack, some say it was to try and get himself back in the game, others would tell you that putting Luis Suarez in goal and playing defenders was probably a ploy to help Herb finish top of the league and destroy Kev’s morale but we’ll let you make your own minds up on that.

 
 

So with all 7 games played HerbTheNerd was crowned league champion and the seeding was set for Sunday’s knockout tournament.

 
 

Player Stats:

Goals - Tammy Abraham 10, Sadio Mane 5, Robert Lewondowski 5

Assists - Ben Chilwell 6, Son Heung-Min 4, Antony Martial 3

Average Rating - Tammy Abraham 8.37, Hector Bellerin 7.72, Fabinho 7.65

Clean Sheets - Lucas Hradecky 4, David de Gea 3, Samir Handanovic 2

Player of the Match - Sadio Mane 3, Fabinho 2, Renan Lodi 2

Sunday & Knock Out Football Manager

We rolled in to Sunday with Saturday’s league standings dictating the draw for the first round of the Streamer Showdown Knock Out. A lot of noise had been made overnight, some had been testing tactics until 2am, some were calling for a match fixing investigation and then there was Herb, the league winner, just turning up with no prep to face Foxy who was fresh from licking his wounds and desperate to change his fortunes.

It wasn’t a great start from the WeStreamFM boys, Herb lost to Foxy with a last minute winner and Curty, well when your centre half does this you know the game is out to get you:

In the other games, UnarmingPine clearly done some work overnight and destroyed SecondYellowCard 7-1 over two legs and DoctorBenjy progressed with a 3-1 victory over Zealand.

The semi-final matched UnarmingPine with DoctorBenjy in the top half of the draw with FoxInTheBoxFM playing Lollujo in the bottom half. It’s fair to say that Lollujo made it very clear that the person he didn’t want to play was Foxy, even after Saturday’s performance, yet his performances over 2 legs saw him run out a 6-2 winner with set pieces proving to be a powerful weapon in his arsenal. In the other semi-final we had a tight first leg with Pine taking a single Erling Haaland goal through in to the second leg. Ben wasn’t worried before the game and his players sensed his confidence and started the game on fire scoring after 2 minutes with a Sergej Milinkovic-Savic wondergoal, picking up the ball in his own half running through the spine of Pine’s team finishing with a powerful effort. Game on. Ben continued to dominate the game and in the 34th minute David Brooks popped up with a left footed curling effort from just inside the box. Milinkovic-Savic completed the scoring with a screamer from the edge of the box seeing DoctorBenjy progress to the final where he would meet Lollujo.

The two legged final couldn’t have been tighter, we had seen Lollujo score big against everyone, other than DoctorBenjy and these two games continued in the same fashion. Lollujo took the lead from a set-piece, but it was actually DoctorBenjy’s Trent Alexander Arnold that put the ball in to his own net. As we approached halftime, Ben-Yedder found his shooting boots and popped up with a goal to bring the tie level. The second half was tight and a draw was probably deserved. The second leg started like the first, Lollujo’s Varane scored from set-piece after 19 minutes. DoctorBenjy clawed one back when Nacho picked the ball up on the edge of the box and rifled one in to the top corner. The game was end to end in the second half but neither side could take the advantage and the game went to extra time. With both sides tired Luis Suarez had a brilliant chance to win the game for DoctorBenjy but he fired it straight at David de Gea. The game went to penalties.

Lollujo - Vardy ❌, Fabinho ✔, Mbappe ✔, Barkley ✔, Chilwell ✔

DoctorBenjy - Felix ✔, Suarez ❌, Depay ❌, De Jong ✔

Lollujo is crowned the winner of the inaugural #FMStreamerShowdown 🏆

 
 

What a fantastic weekend of Football Manager action, there were twists and turns everywhere you looked and we can’t wait for Season 2.

The event was organised & implemented brilliantly by everyone involved, thanks to Ben & Foxy for putting it together, the streamers for taking part, Steve, TheFMEditor85, for building the database & Dave Azzopardi for hosting a 9 man network save… that didn’t crash! Most importantly, thank you to everyone that watched the streams over the two days, we hope you enjoyed them.

Dave is compiling a highlights package of the tournament so keep your eyes out for that.

Until next time… get your nuts out.

FM19 Tactics: The Aldershot Way

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. 

——- 

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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