The beauties of Football Manager

Do you play Football Manager 17 Kate?

Ok, now that you're here I need to apologise, the opening image is completely out of context.

But you know, bloggers would do everything, absolutely everything to attract new readers...

Anyway after this sweet diversion, we're immediately back on track, this post is splitted in two parts: the first about how I tweaked the tactic I'm using, while the second is a brief mid-season update so that you can discover what's happening to the mighty Bologna Football Club.

I described in my last article how I planned to play this year: revamping the old W-W shape (2-3-2-3), utilising a fluid system, short passing and a narrow formation, read more here.

I started playing with two MC's both on attacking duties, that was an intriguing choice, it gave me a lot of bodies into the opponent box when attacking.

From this...

On a negative note, having too many central midfielders making forward runs was leaving my team really exposed in the middle of the park, where only my deep lying playmaker was ready and well positioned to recover the ball quickly, the balance was lacking and the team were suffering too much.

A rapid change of roles clearly helped to improve things all over the pitch.

I'm now using a ball winning midfieder (PI's: hold position and shoot less often to cool down his raging bull attitude) on support duty and a roaming playmaker (PI's: move into channels and shoot less often) on the left, they're still dangerous while we push forward but they rarely leave holes behind them.

They seem to work well together, when we lose the ball in the final third we can promptly recover a decent shape and try to stop the subsequent counter attack.

....to this!

Most importantly this partnership in the middle of the pitch enhanced the performances of other players around them, like my right inside forward, Simone Verdi, his game has recently gone to another level, now he has more room to exploit around him and has better support from the middle of the park.

At the same time Donsah, my promising deep lying playmaker, is not lonely anymore, the roaming playmaker often drops deep to offer his help, to protect the defensive line or to receive an easy pass, now he's got more options when he decides, as instructed, to play a short pass.

How the players interact between them, how roles combination impact on your gameplay, this is where the game looks improved over last year version, change the roles and you can alter your shape, basically without changing it.

We could say these are the beauties of FM 2017 (the title was spot on...), a more refined match engine and roles that finally let you tune your tactic without the need of radical changes, subtle additions that make micro-management easier and more logical.

Some things could obviously be improved: the impression is that too many offsides are called during a game, while keepers sometimes make silly mistakes, or at least look silly watching them in the 3D match engine.

The analysis screen below is taken from the game we won (2-0) over Lazio, it shows the interceptions made by my midfield trio: Donsah (DLP n.17), Rizzo (RPM n. 22) and Dzemaili (BWM n. 31) a combined total of 20 interceptions.

Interceptions are an underrated key statistic, they show how well your team (here in particular the core engine of the team) is positioned on the pitch.

As you see the central area is well covered, interceptions are about denying space to your opponent, they let you launch a counter move immediately, they're vital and more important than tackles won.

This is the heat map for the same players in the same match...

And finally the screen that displays the passes completed for the midfield trio (102+116+108), other men played well in that game, other players scored and set up assists, but this game was won in midfield.

These are all the official games I played until now, if you follow me on Twitter (don't you?) you should already know some of them, only four lost games is a nice achievement, maybe there are too many draws, some of them obtained in games where we weren't well focused, but the table speaks for itself, we're 3rd in a damn tight serie A run and we're aware we have some big clubs chasing us, that's why the second part of the season looks interesting, could the minnows resist? While the first and the second spots are probably gone, from 3rd to 12th place there are 7 points only, dropping points and positions down the table look extremely easy.

Maybe too easy.

If the board seasonal target was to avoid the relegation (check here to know about my overall targets for this career), now we can see an exciting path in front of us, full of danger but surely exciting.

Victories over Inter, Fiorentina and Lazio have been the highlights of our season so far, we're overachieving but other teams are defying the odds as well, Chievo and Udinese above all.

While I'm writing nobody joined Bologna in January, I don't have any major injuries and I can't afford to improve the team, fringe players don't interest me. There are high chances we could stay as we are at the moment, still some days left for the market though.

That's all for now folks, stay in touch and if you enjoyed, as usual, spread the love and Forza Bologna!