Beginning of Something New

[leofiachra]

I have played FM / CM series around two decades and never in my life I have ever thought something like SSL would be possible. I don’t know you guys but I have been waiting for the first game since signing up to the forum, I kept talking about it around the house and to my long-distance girlfriend.

Because of the snow we were trapped in the house two days and I just kept my SSL tab open the entire time, waiting for the attribute approval, checking the build again and again. I know this should all sound crazy, but try to walk in my shoes. I love football and Football Manager but I do not have any friends who play FM or (this is the weird part) knows football at all. Yesterday I was with my girlfriend on discord and the game was about to start then she asked if she can sit along and watch, I had two wins in a row, so to speak.

This will be the first and last informal, story-telling article I am planning to write. For the rest of the weeks, I want to create my own personal tactical study here. Of course there will be a story to tell throughout the season and fingers crossed we will be talking with positivity about Atlético Medellin but majorly I want to keep this as a study.

Let’s sum it, nice win bois, keep it up. Good brace by Bergkamp, solid game for everyone, quite happy with my assist but man I do have to work on that finishing. Could end with a brace for myself!

Take care everyone, the world is weird.

Leo

[Canadice]

Happy to hear that you have found your "people" and welcome to the league! There will be a lot of exciting firsts in the next couple of months. Looking forward to the tactical studies!

[leofiachra]

It's 12.14 a.m, on forum clock it's still Sunday so I have time for this. I have been working on the team. 

I downloaded the game file and started going through the textbook to see what we can do with these boys. We have seven players so this looks at least promising. Right?

No mate, **** me we have 4 purebred strikers I am raging in front of the monitor, trying so bloody hard not to punch it. I can make the roles part work, that's easy. But positioning and parcellation of the pitch is impossible to share if we are going to make everyone play at their natural positions. We do not have anyone back at defense except Nifemi. So all these boys will have to play at a decent tempo and make sure they do their part defensively. This is a good excuse for me to stay awake and enjoy FM. 

We lost against Sydney. We were bad. We can't do much about the GK situation, as I said, this team HAS TO run. This team has to score every single reasonable xG shot. And we didn't do any of these. We were lazy,  we didn't went down the pitch and come back fast enough. 

I need to improve my concentration. And we need to start playing as a team. 

I am going back to my tactics tab, need to figure out a way to make this work.

Take care guys,

Leo

[Canadice]

This class is filled with offensive talent so all of the team's tactics are going to be heavily focused on that. Hopefully we see some more players joining in at the defensive end of the pitch to balance out the Academy teams this season and allow a balanced influx of players for the SSL.

[leofiachra]

#3 

Stepping Back, Sacrifices and Cohesion

Been a while and there is so much to make up for. Academy League is going way different than what people expected. But we need to go back some matchdays, this didn't happen overnight. See, we were in the locker room and joking around. One of us asked if we were frustrated about title odds. I was fuming off season so I joined the club. To our surprise, all of us were on the same page and decided it was time we made a difference. It's not just about development anymore, it's about winning. Proving the odds wrong, at the very least. We started working on tactics, Martell with me in midfield was an idea but cut our goals a lot, he has midfield talent for box to box but we wanted to keep him closer to goal with that finishing talent. We tried Nifemi as AML and Bot as AMR, we conceded way too much. We realized whatever we do we had this GK and CB problem. Cod was so short and opponents like Bharwani exploited this. He is a decent corner taker but height is crucial. So we solved this problem first. The board didn't agree at first but in a couple of weeks they were convinced. In the process we discussed about utilizing Nifemi's abilities around opponent box but we needed an anchorlike player who would play offense and defense. I am terrible at defense but I can play CM. It's simple, we take the ball, O'Hara runs forward. Imagine tilting a pool table to our AMR side. Then Nifemi has his wide area where he can just do whatever the **** he wants and he is very good with the ball so we have this advantage. My work is simple, I am the first emergency guy, I keep Nifemi's position safe, when we have the ball, I just make sure we keep the ball and Szelesi can receive the ball, preferably between midfield and opponent defense. When the ball is hoisted away I take the first pass to start everything again. 

By the way I scored this banger last week, it's a shame we lost 3-2. It was a small milestone I wanted though so I am happyish. Anyways, I'll be back with more as things unfold in the future.

Take care everyone
Leo