Post by ForgotToFlush on Nov 14, 2024 22:24:45 GMT
Welcome to my FM24 AAR!
AAR stands for After Action Report and what it means is that I'll be playing a game, then giving you a breakdown of what happened after. I've first seen this done on MU with all sorts of different games but the idea has existed before that and I'm too lazy to find out the exact origins.
As for the game we're playing, Football Manager 2024 (FM24) is the latest installment in the Football (not the American kind) Manager series. FM25 has been delayed until next year so I thought I'd give you a peek at what I'm doing until then. It's a simulation game where you assume the role of a Football Manager (of course) at any club or nation of your choosing. We're responsible for hiring the staff, setting up training, signing players, and making tactical decisions to (hopefully) win lots of games!
In case you're unfamiliar with how football works to begin with, well we're going to playing in the European Leagues, specifically in the English Championship, with the hopes of eventually winning the Champions League. The Champions League is populated with all the best teams from the top leagues throughout Europe.
With that being said, the inappropriately named English Championship is NOT the top league in England, the England Premier League is.
The European leagues (and many others across the world) employ a hierarchy system. The 3 best teams in a given league can get promoted to the league above them, while the 3 worst teams get relegated to the ones below. This ensures that there are always 6 fresh teams in each league at the beginning of each new season, making consistency a difficult thing to achieve. Nevertheless the path to the Champions League is achieved by not only securing promotion from the Championship to the Premier, but by then being one of the best teams in the Premier. With that out of the way, let's get into the specifics on how to achieve that.
The Past
I'm currently managing Blackpool Football Club. This is actually going to be my 4th season with them, having already played through 3 full seasons with the club.
As you can see the club has struggled for consistency, bouncing between leagues with very few trophies to their name. After a dismal spell in the Championship, and fresh off relegation to the lower SkyBet League One, I came in during the 2023/24 season and helped them get re-promoted. From there, we've achieved two 5th places finishes in a row in the Championship, establishing ourselves as a good squad overall, but not quite good enough to get promoted to the Premier quite yet.
Despite our two year spell of "good but eh", the Board is happy with how we've performed and I won't be getting fired any time soon. We're achieving all our goals, the players love me, the fans are okay with me I think (I never check Twitter), and we've won a whopping 58% of our games.
Our tactical approach is the Gegenpress. What this means, is that when we don't have the ball, our players are slamming on the gas to try and get it back. We're aiming to chase the ball down whenever we don't have it, and keep it for as long as possible whenever we do, playing with patience in order to find the perfect time to strike. We especially try to keep the ball in the opponent's half, committing more players forward in exchange for leaving our backlines more exposed. If you're familiar with European Football, you can think of Bayern Munich before they lost Lewandowski. Almost all of our players are going to spend most of the game forward, passing well, and maintaining possession. This is a very aggressive approach and we've been executing on it quite well.
We create lots of chances and we score lots of goals, at rates much higher than the rest of the League. So why haven't we been promoted yet? Well two reasons. Firstly, that aggression can backfire:
We foul a LOT, and we still concede a lot of goals despite being strong defensively. With all of our players so high up the pitch, the opposition just has to get one man behind our lines and they instantly create a good chance. Additionally, we end up banking on outscoring our opponents, as opposed to comprehensive victory. What this means, is that as a tactical concession, we're okay if our opponent scores a goal, as long as we score more than they do. In games where we don't score, it's harder to hold on for a draw (which still gives us league points) and instead we find ourselves losing.
Further, this tactic is VERY INTENSE. Our players are running CONSTANTLY to try and win the ball. This means our players get injured at a high rate, and we constantly find ourselves without key players for extended periods of time, leading to poor bouts of form. Even if we avoid injuries, we need to rotate our players more often than other teams do. When a player we rotate in doesn't produce anything near the level of the player he's replacing, it usually means we're losing points.
With that said, after considering the risk reward, I think it's still worth using the Gegenpress for next season. We know it can work, it suits our personnel, and we know where the drawbacks lie. Our formation of choice is the 4-2-3-1 I posted above, but we also employ a 4-3-3 depending on the situation.
The 4-2-3-1 commits another player forward in the Attacking Midfield, allowing us to be more aggressive. This leaves us a bit thinner in Central Midfield, but again, I think the tradeoff is worth it. We switch to the 4-3-3 when we're ahead and we just need to absorb pressure and see out the game to get our result. The key difference is instead of an attacking midfielder, we switch to a holding midfielder, who will look to support the attack from our half, usually with long passes, and in defence he acts as an extra safety net in case the opposition breaks our defensive line.
Now let's break down what we have in terms of talent:
The key to the Gegenpress is the Pressing Forward. Our Striker, when we don't have the ball, will harass the opposition until we get it back. By constantly pestering the opposing defence, they're pressured into taking shorter, quicker passes, which makes it easier for us to intercept and regain possession. Leading the way is Brandon Thomas-Asante.
After joining us a little over a year ago, he's scored 42 goals in 52 appearances (absolutely astonishing numbers), with 32 of those goals coming from the most recent season, netting him the top goalscorer award for the league year. Pay attention to his Acceleration and Pace stats, he can dart from defender to defender to harass them while off the ball, before launching killer runs with or without the ball to find scoring opportunities. He's been far and away our best player during his time here and is perfectly compatible with the type of football we're trying to play.
Right next to him is Liam Walsh, our Advanced Playmaker.
His stats may seem unimpressive, but they combine in ways that make him lethal as a playmaking threat. He aims to find himself in pockets of space where he can receive the ball and make decisive passes to Thomas-Asante or our other attacking threats. Walsh and Thomas-Asante have established chemistry and they frequently assist each other when scoring goals.
Rapid-fire running through some other key players now:
Ollie Scarles projects to be a strong player on paper but he's young and inconsistent. Still, he's been developing well with us and can play a variety of positions on the pitch. Dion Rankine was actually signed on a free transfer but his raw physical attributes are near elite level. Similar to Thomas-Asante, his Pace and Acceleration are unmatched, and he features a strong Aggression score. Playing as a Wing-Back, he uses these stats to run all the way from the Defensive Third to the opponnent's by-line before sending in a cross to the central area. Martin Ekpiteta is our Captain, and is our stalwart in the defensive line. He's also a goalscoring threat, and you'll see him in the box during Corners looking to head the ball into the back of the net. Shandon Baptiste is the Swiss Army Knife in the midfield, capable of doing just about anything I ask him to at an elite level.
Last but not least I want to highlight Brooklyn Lyons-Foster:
We're playing him as an Inverted Wingback. What this means is that while defending he'll hold normal positioning alongside the rest of the back four, and when attacking, he actually becomes a midfielder. This lets us commit more bodies forward to hopefully score more goals. So the 4-2-3-1 really only applies to defending and we usually try to look more like this:
Notice Lyons-Foster now in our midfield line, with Rankine bombing forward so we have 6 attacking players upfront. Again, the goal is to overwhelm the opponents in their half so we can break them down and score lots of goals.
With the lengthy tactical breakdown out of the way, let's run through some of the other important bits of context:
We're big on trying to develop players in-house for a couple reasons. We're not the richest club so we need to be resourceful in terms of gaining talent, and youth signings are incredibly cheap. We can gamble on a large number of them and we only really need one or two of them to pan out for it to be worthwhile (Kingdon is already looking good enough to spend significant time in the first team). Additionally, if multiple players get injured at once, and we're outside of the transfer window, then using a decent youth team player as an emergency backup is a necessary step. So with that said we not only field U-21 and U-18 teams, we also frequently loan out young players to other teams so that they can get more experience.
Finances
I just alluded to not having much in the way of finances but we're actually one of the poorer teams in the league.
Remember, that former Premier teams get relegated to the Championship, meaning that we consistently have to compete with high spending teams on a limited budget, which is.....challenging to say the least.
Our staff are above average, but no surprise, out facilities are just okay. Additionally our Stadium is one of the smaller ones in the League (but we frequently sell it out!) Now let's look at our plans for the next season The Future
With all that said, the long term goal is to win the Champions' League. BUT, while I just spent a ton of time talking about Blackpool, we don't necessarily have to achieve this with Blackpool. Let me break it down:
While we're exceeding all expectations, the expectations themselves are incredibly low. Our board is not ambitious in the slightest, while I want to achieve glory sooner rather than later. This means that it'll be harder to get them to agree to things like upgrading our facilities, increasing our budget, or hiring more staff. It's especially dire given our overall financial situation:
Now I'm no executive but the big red numbers don't seem all too good. All of the financial worries have sparked numerous takeover bids across the last season, but the board continues to refute all such claims. So if new, ambitious, leadership isn't coming in, and the current board wants to keep playing it safe, where does that leave me?
Well, across the last season I received job offers from teams in the top flight of other European Leagues. I rejected them all because the idea of leaving Blackpool is difficult: we have a good squad, they pay us well, and I have the full backing of the players. Also while I'd be going to a team in a higher league, a lot of the job offers were from bad teams in higher leagues, and that just feels like a lateral move. But if I continue to show off managerial flair, while we continue to be non-ambitious and mediocre, suddenly those offers become a lot more appealing....
So with all that said, that'll be the crux of the season: Do I need to leverage my way to a top flight team and bring them to glory, or can I go all the way with Blackpool? Stay tuned to find out!
Last Edit: Nov 15, 2024 0:30:06 GMT by ForgotToFlush
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Post by ForgotToFlush on Nov 15, 2024 23:58:57 GMT
Update 1: Transfer Window Activity + Interview with a HUGE club???
With last season behind us, it's time to get ready for the next one. We'll be looking to bring some players to bolster the ranks and hopefully give us that extra bit of quality we need to be promoted.
First things first, some admin stuff to take care of:
The board wants us to finish mid-table. As I alluded to in the last post, this goal is fairly unambitious when we've placed 5th two years in a row. Nevertheless, we're retaining all of our key players this year and we should be able to make good on this goal. I've told the team however, that we're going to be gunning for a spot in the promotion playoffs. While 1st and 2nd Place in the Championship secures automatic promotion, 3 through 6 plays a series of playoff matches, with one of those teams getting promoted as well. We'll go over the specifics in more detail if we do make the playoffs, but for now we need to focus on actually getting there to begin with.
Callum Lang has been with us for a hot minute now and we've offered him a new, short contract where he'll act as a key reserve during our campaign. He's been a mildly prolific goalscorer for us but his crossing leaves a lot to be desired for a supposed wing player. Expect to see him thrown on in games to try and net us goals when we really need them.
We also renewed Liam Walsh's contract before the transfer window opened. You'll remember how I emphasized his importance to the squad, especially because of his chemistry with Thomas-Asante. While he's getting older, I believe he can still be a key player in our midfield alongside Baptiste and:
Meet Albie Morgan. He'll occupy Central Midfield alongside Baptiste and look to roam around and find space to receive the ball. From there, his Vision and Passing ability can hopefully combine to produce some good football.
With all that said, here's how we stack up in terms of our current squad.
We look great in Midfield for sure, but we lack quality in terms of depth on the wings. So with that we'll definitely be looking to sign at least one more Winger, probably after selling Scott Banks to make a deal possible. In terms of Defenders, we're set for starters but again, we don't have the depth necessary to make our high intensity system more viable, so expect to see some reinforcements brought in there.
Our glaring weakness here, is among our goalkeepers, and represents our number one priority going into the transfer window. We'll look to hopefully sell Grimshaw and Walton, while signing a new starting goalkeeper who is hopefully rated much better than those two. You may wonder why we're keeping Gauci, but it's because he's younger than the other two, and still has room to grow. He's also agreed to be a Backup throughout his entire stay here, and will get plenty of opportunities during Cup Matches.
So with that in mind, here's what we have to use to achieve this:
We actually have a bit in the bank due to some previous player sales, and we also have some room in the wage budget with some of the higher earners departing the club. This should go in a long way in not only signing a serviceable Keeper, but also by filling some of the cracks in other parts of the squad.
While we're focusing on Blackpool going into next season, I'm also keeping an eye open for job opportunities. You won't believe what happened to fall into my lap:
Now, I'm far from a United fan, but this is exactly the kind of opportunity I'm looking for. There's no guarantee I get the job, but the thought of being paid by MUFC has me salivating (I currently make about 8k pounds per week but I imagine the Man U job comes with a huge pay rise). So with my head in the clouds, I drop off my CV and cross my fingers for an interview. Who knows, they might be big fans of what Blackpool have been doing the past several years.
With all of that out of the way, on to the transfer window! We open with some sales to create some financial flexibility.
None of these players had much future at the club. Grimshaw and Walton were on the older side, near the top of their potential with their current ability being lackluster. Banks is young, but lacked both talent and potential so we're happy to move on. Clearing these names off the books allowed us to bring in:
Meet Benicio Baker-Boaitey. He's young, talented and brimming with potential. He'll likely spend his first season playing as a key reserve, but he has some positional versatility which can allow him to pop into the first team if the right opportunity arises. We actually sign him on a free transfer due to his contract expiring, leaving us enough room to sign:
Our next big coup is the new starting goalkeeper, Sam Tickle. Despite being young, he's already incredibly talented and can potentially improve from here.
With that settled, we can now give a renewal to Matty Virtue.
Despite being an older player, he still displays some quality and will be an important rotation player in the midfield. He's also an important leadership figure among his teammates.
The transfer window is always an exciting period, but remember, we're hedging our bets on potentially getting a better job. And would you look at that:
I've attached a bunch of the questions they asked me during the interview. Most felt like layups, they're a bit of a rudderless club so they probably feel compelled to take a swing on a young and successful manager such as myself, despite the lack of top level experience. However the question about breaking promises threw me for a loop. It's true that I ended up not keeping some promises throughout my years but to me it feels like an inevitability of the game. For example, sometimes I promise a player more time on the pitch, but they end up failing to meet my standards and I can't keep starting them. You can imagine there are more examples as to why I'd need to renege on my word and it's part of the managerial cycle. I have to juggle keeping the board and the players happy, but ever so often I need to prioritize one, and the board happens to be the one paying me.
So with all that out of the way, we can cross our fingers and wait to hear back, while we zoom through the preseason towards the season opener.
Flush note: I've decided all the updates should have Youtube clickbait titles.
Quick Facts
Club: Blackpool Competition Status: N/A Current Best XI (in my humble opinion):
Yeah it would've been nice for this one to pan out but it isn't meant to be quite yet. I'll keep my eyes peeled for some more attainable opportunities down the road, because it does us no harm to be curious. The job ended up going to Thiago Motta of all people, who's had a prolific playing career and has been recently managing Bologna. We'll check in with them from time to time to see how it works out for them.
Cedric Kipre joins on a free transfer and is immediately our best Centre-Back. He's not the aerial threat Ekpiteta is but he's a massive, strong lad who has no problems conducting some plays out of the defence. Micah Hamilton actually played for us two years ago, joining on loan to help us get promoted to the Championship. He's back again on loan from Leeds, and hopefully can act as a good luck talisman for our promotion efforts. While he's young and talented, he doesn't excel in any specific position of our current tactics, and will likely be a key reserve. Fraser Terrell is a young defender joining us on loan from Dundee United in the Scottish Premiership. We don't expect too much from him, but we did need the extra defender, especially for cup matches.
With that all out of the way, let's finally play some football! Our first game is against QPR:
The board is expecting this to be a draw, with our data analysts calling us "evenly matched". Still, we approach this game like no other, because I'm confident in our tactical shape and that we can unsettle them with early aggression. The lineup is my preferred 11 minus Ekpiteta, who is injured to start the season and is replace by Ethan Pye.
We start off evenly matched, trading possession, struggling to get shots away with nothing of note happening for the first third or so of the match. Finally, we get a breakthrough in the 40th minute:
It's a beautifully executed set piece, with an inswinging corner finding Kipre at the far post. He uses his strength to win the aerial battle and head the ball away from goal, where Dion Rankine is waiting in space like a shark. After a simple chest touch to control, Rankine launches the ball straight into the back of the net, with QPR's keeper never standing a chance. Note that Kipre's presence in the box commanded two defenders, allowing Rankine to remain unmarked and get the shot away with all the time and space in the world.
With the season opener jitters now dispelled, we continue to pile on pressure, before winning a penalty in the 45th minute:
Thomas-Asante dispatches it with ease, leaving QPR to go back to their dressing room with a two goal deficit looming over them.
The second half sees us retain control but without additional chance creation, so we turn to the bench to continue piling on pressure. Sure enough, it pays off:
We catch QPR on the counter, with Thomas-Asante sliding his pass in front of the defensive line to catch Lang on a run. Lang does well to set up the play, taking it into their box, all the way to the byline while dragging across two defenders with him. He stops and turns before firing off a perfect pass to Walsh, who comes trailing into the box to dispatch with ease. After, QPR scores an own goal in the 96th minute, cementing their total collapse and our strong start to the campaign. 4-0 doesn't seem too bad for a game we were expected to draw, if I do say so myself.
We move ahead to the first round of the Carabao Cup, where we face Millwall from the league below us. Given that we're facing lesser opposition, I took the liberty of rotating most of our squad:
Strong build up play in the final third leads to Terrell playing a pass over the top of everything, finding Lang on a brilliant run into the box. Lang's man is so lost that he needs a map, allowing our forward to have just enough time to fire off the shot from a tight angle and score.
We maintain our chokehold on the game before finding another breakthrough in the 68th minute:
I'm not quite sure how to describe this one but the ball went in front of the goal and then one of our players kicked it. Sometimes it's that simple. We then get drawn against Chesterfield for the second round of the cup, who sit two leagues below us. We expect another easy win, and we'll check in with that game in a bit.
Off the back of those two strong showings, we now come across a very early challenge for the season: A match against recently relegated Fulham. And there's no other way to say this, but we got trounced.
We struggled to generate anything, we got dominated in possession, and got suffocated in every part of the field. Fulham may not be a good Premier team but a bad Premier team beats a good Championship team any day of the week, especially a low spender like Blackpool. Nevertheless, we look to turn things around against Huddersfield, a team we've beaten every time we've faced last year:
Yeah this one didn't work out either. We seize control of the game early, with Thomas-Asante capitalizing on a bad back pass to score an easy one. From this point on, the game turns into a circus. Our star signing of the transfer window, Sam Tickle, fully dislocates his shoulder in the 33rd minute doing LORD KNOWS WHAT. We're forced to turn to backup keeper Gauci, who needless to say, is in no way, shape or form ready for this moment. Our players are rattled, our keeper is nervous, and we concede an easy tap in minutes after Gauci comes on.
The scores hold level until the 62nd minute, where my star midfielder Baptiste, loses all his marbles and fires a slide tackle towards our goal, essentially passing the ball to the opposing striker who leisurely tucks it away for Huddersfield to pull ahead. Baker-Boaitey subs on and turns in a spectacular effort to equalize. We look capable of holding out for a draw before we completely collapse in the 96th minute, conceding a late winner off of a very simple set piece play.
As the old adage goes, when it rains, it pours. We start the season 1W-0D-2L before we're greeted by a litany of injuries:
That's two CBs, two midfielders, and our first choice goalkeeper all out before our next game. Despite that, we turn in a good performance against Sheffield United:
This one's a bit scuffed. Sheffield go down to 10 men early, but we fail to capitalize on the man advantage and actually concede right before half time. After I scream obscenities at my players for the duration of the break, we come out guns blazing. Scarles in particular was determined to impress, showing flashes of his true potential. First he finds Galdino off a short cross for an easy assist in the 61st, before finding the back of the net himself off some beautiful linking play from our team. Despite being 2-1 up, we keep our feet on the gas long enough for Thomas-Asante to put the cherry on top from another assist by Scarles.
Our second choice goalkeeper gets injured in training, meaning that we need to turn to our THIRD-CHOICE keeper for a match against Reading. Now, we don't actually have a third choice keeper, because that is a luxury for clubs at this level, and we actually just have a youngster from the U-21 team. Needless to say, it's a struggle:
The final score makes it look much nicer than it actually was. Reading tests our young keeper from distance, and unsurprisingly he's completely incapable of stopping the shot, so we concede early. We struggle for the majority of the match before we win a penalty. However, we FAIL TO CONVERT, leaving us behind with less than a half hour to go. Despite all hope looking quite lost, super sub Kyle Joseph finds the back of the net in the 72nd. Reading finds another level to go to though, quickly sinking our spirits with a go-ahead goal five minutes later. We switch to an emergency 4-2-4 formation, throwing as many bodies up front as we can, and it pays off in the 93rd minute:
Off of a defensive mistake by Reading, Scarles fires a quick cross to Walsh, who finds Lang in the air for a header that rockets into the bottom corner. Reading lost composure at the very end so we manage to snatch a point and take a step up the table.
No surprise here as we thoroughly dominate League Two Chesterfield, with Gauci returning to the side. Thomas-Asante was on form, scoring a brace, including a cheeky backheel in the 91st minute. If there was ever a time to experiment it'd probably be against a team like Chesterfield.
The board is already satisfied with our cup run, since they expected us to not make it past the first round (remember what I said about them having no ambition?). For the third round, we're away against West Ham. They're a midtable team in the Premier, so playing at their grounds represents a big payday for us. It's also good that the board is already satisfied because there's a very slim chance we'll be able to offer real competition in this match.
Nonetheless we look ahead to our final game in August against Oxford United. With our players slowly coming back from injury, it was time to correct our league form. We strike early:
Morgan does a lot to make this work. With Thomas-Asante running parallel, the defenders are forced to make split second decisions, allowing Morgan just enough time to slip ahead of the line after receiving the pass. He then beats the keeper to see us go ahead in the second minute.
He receives the ball in a dangerous area, and once again he knows exactly what to do. He receives, beats the defender, turns, stops and fires it away with all the composure in the world.
Oxford ekes out a goal in the 66th, so we fire right back:
We fumble a free kick around a bit before the ball somehow finds its way to Thomas-Asante, who launches it into the woodwork. Everton Galdino is there to capitalize off the rebound, beating the keeper from an ultra tight angle to regain our two goal lead.
Kipre then finds the back of the net to send the fans home extra happy.
No surprise here, Fulham sit 6 points clear of us but there's plenty of time to catch up. Now we look ahead to the transfer deadline. With all the injuries, do we look to bring anyone else in for the added depth? Or do we trust what we have and hope to see it through until the window reopens in January.
Post by ForgotToFlush on Nov 21, 2024 23:38:12 GMT
Update #3: I take my Striker out back and SHOOT him in the head + Job Offers???
Today the team struggles for form as we race towards the January window; can we meet the expectations I set out in preseason?
First order of business is the September transfer deadline. Despite most of our squad being full, our form is worrying and the deadline day will be our last opportunity to get better until January. Therefore, if we don't improve the current squad, and said current squad keeps the poor form on, we'll be stuck like that for months and won't be able to make any progress towards our goals.
So with that in mind, I start number crunching. The game does a great job of giving you data on your players so I pour over the spreadsheets looking for something actionable:
Now while we're reliable in possession, so are our opponents, getting a lot of clean passes through against us. However, what really stands out here to me are the crossing numbers, as it's true that we have a lot of physically gifted wing players, but they lack skill with crosses. Thinking that this can potentially improve our attacking output, we go ahead and sign someone on a free transfer:
Meet Noel Lopez. He's younger than some of our wing players (Lang and Galdino) while playing at the same level and having some upside. And to cap it off, he can hopefully put in a good cross.
With the transfer window behind us, we look towards maximising this squad over the next couple of months. In my mind we're already working towards being sellers at the next window, to shed some of our older players and commit to this young crop of players we currently have as they're about to enter their collective primes.
We return to the Carabao Cup:
West Ham are a fairly prolific football club and a huge test for our squad as we struggle for consistency. While they're currently middling ingame and in real life, they've had a successful run in the UEFA Europa League, a level that we're currently aiming to surpass in the near future.
Despite the difference in stature between clubs, we show up to London Stadium with the full belief that we can contend in this match. Sure enough, this happens in the 3rd minute:
It's fantastic link up play between our young wingers, as Scarles finds Lopez in the box, who's able to hold the play up and confuse the defenders to give Scarles just enough time to relocate. Scarles darts laterally across two defenders before delivering a sublime finish.
Roused by the early strike, our boys continue to pile on pressure before striking gold in the 9th:
Asante-Thomas poaches the ball and takes it out wide. In a move that mirrors our first goal, he finds Scarles in the box before zooming past his defender to recollect the ball. With the new space created, he launches a cross towards the middle, which catches a deflection to find a hungry Liam Walsh, who dispatches the tap-in with ease.
In an ordinary league match, we'd consider a 2 goal lead safe. However with such a quality disparity between the two teams, we can only hope to clench our fists and play more solid football. West Ham soon answers with a strike to reduce the deficit. We manage to hold out for the rest of the first half, defending well despite West Ham's attempts to get back into the game. We try to switch our focus on protecting our 2-1 lead and seeing this one out.
West Ham must then have received one hell of a halftime speech.
They come back with another goal in the 76th, and suddenly things are level with plenty of time to go. Now here's where I mess up.
In the F.A. Cup, when a game is drawn, a replay of the game is scheduled a couple days ahead. In my mind if we held out for a draw we'd simply have another chance of winning in a future match. So with this in mind I start rapid fire substituting my players and I instruct them to sink back and play defensively. The fresh legs can keep up with our opposition and hopefully we'd be able to see it out.
But this WASN'T the F.A. Cup. This was the Carabao Cup.
In the Carabao Cup, when you draw a match, it immediately goes to penalties! When substituting off my tired players to hold out for a draw, I subbed off all of our best penalty takers! My plan to hold out for a draw worked nonetheless, and West Ham was unable to go ahead. Now we go from the frying pan to the fire though, staring down a Premier team in a penalty shootout with our best players for the moment chilling with me on the bench, and we ran out of blue powerade.
After giving a halfhearted pep talk to my team, we went ahead to the shootout, with reserve keeper Gauci suddenly carrying the hopes of our cup run on his feeble shoulders. You'll remember from the start of the season that he hasn't been in the best of form since the injury to first choice keeper Sam Tickle.
Paqueta of West Ham steps up for the first shot of the game and..........it's saved..... Fauci stops the shot.
This puts us in a huge position to win the game, but it's still only the first shot. I manage to regain composure long enough to see Galdino dispatch his penalty to see us go 1-0 ahead. We trade shots for the next two rounds to go 3-2 ahead before the unthinkable happens:
Fauci stops another. With West Ham now mathematically unable to score more than 3 for this shootout, scoring our 4th will see us take the match. Baker-Boaitey steps up to the spot....
I made such a point of hyping him up, but the unfortunate truth is that our star striker Thomas-Asante is aging, and has regressed from the brilliance he was outputting last season. Remember, during preseason I emphasized the importance of outscoring our opponents because we're always going to find ourselves conceding, but you can see during that month we scored one goal during ALL of our league matches, which is incredibly worrying. Additionally, his immediate backup, Kyle Joseph, was also going through a dry spell, meaning that we kept finding ourselves incapable of finishing all the great chances we were consistently creating. The 4-0 thrashing by Leicester was incredibly dire. Yes they're a Premier side, but if we want to contend for promotion, we simply had to do better in big games like those.
Despite this, Sam Tickle returned during the end of the month to hopefully right the ship and help us concede less. He was showing signs of regressing post injury, but a large deal of our offseason business went towards signing him and we desperately needed him to pan out. Additionally, we made some tactical tweaks to hopefully unlock more chances for Thomas-Asante, as I fully believed in his ability to be our leading striker.
Let's break this down. With Tickle back in goal we show some promise to start the month and get results against Nottingham Forest, Norwich, and Middlesbrough, who are all good teams. However, we then sink to an embarassing loss against 24th place Plymouth, before drawing against 23rd placed Bolton after leading for most of the match. Dropping points here is devastating to our promotion chances and will surely haunt us later in the season when things get tighter. Immediately after this match, my team captain requests a meeting to tell me that the team is underachieving and as a result, morale is going down, and I find it hard to refute this. We were indeed underachieving, sinking to mid table with playoff aspirations moving further away.
We finish the month strong at least, beating Hull who are much higher than us in the table. This, combined with a dominant victory in the Carabao Cup, help morale out significantly. Morale is a tricky thing to manage in this game because you can have a great tactical vision and quality players, but if morale is low, then you won't win much of anything at all.
Remember, we're locked into this current version of the team until January, and our November sees us facing some strong opposition. With this knowledge, I start scouting for jobs and I happen to get very lucky:
5 whole top flight positions open up, with three in the Spanish La Liga and two in the Italian Serie A. All of these seem to have appeared for the same reason, where a manager underperforms to the point of the team finding themselves fighting to avoid relegation. With their clubs in such precarious positions, it's not inconceivable for them to want to take swings on a lesser known manager such as myself.
We apply to all 5, and sure enough, they all reach out to me for interviews.
I'll try to summarise across all 5 interviews as best as I can here. Valencia and Atalanta are the biggest clubs among this group and you've probably seen them be notable if you've watched any kind of European football. Real Hispalis stands out because they're willing to give me a transfer budget of 91 MILLION DOLLARS, which doesn't even feel like a real number to work with when I've spent my years scrounging for free transfers at cash-strapped Blackpool. Empoli, Valencia, Real Hispalis and Vigo all have a similar wage bill, implying a similar level of squad for each, with Atalanta's bill being a step above. In the interviews I told the board that I'd be capable of finishing mid-table with any of these teams.
In terms of questions asked to me, they all brought up similar concerns:
- My experience: Being a younger manager and suddenly trying to manage the top flight is a big jump! - Moving on from Blackpool: They all wondered if I simply waited to raise my stock by overachieving with Blackpool (remember the media still thinks we're due for a relegation battle) before jumping ship and the answer is yes, absolutely. - Not knowing the language for any of these countries: I've already got Duolingo downloaded - The fact that I applied for all 5 of these at the same time: Word happens to get around:
I sell myself as best as I can and soon enough, offers pile in. Everyone except Atalanta offers me a contract, at around the same wage (which is definitely higher than my current). All of these offers are too difficult to refuse, but I still delay on making a decision so I can play a handful of fixtures with Blackpool to see if the form improves:
Those two losses look stark, but they came against good teams in the top 5 so I wouldn't be entirely down on these results. Still it's enough for Blackpool to sit at 13th in the League, with playoffs becoming further out of reach. The prospect of top flight football is too good to pass up at this point, so I make up my mind and hand in my papers. With my bags packed, and my passport in hand, I head off to........
