Author: dbbaldwin (Page 7 of 13)

Welcome back, footy nerds. If you’re just joining, the previous installment is available here, and the first installment in the series is available here.

With the season starting in July, we had already played a month at the end of the last update. I’ve kept going from there, and at the end of September things were looking very good, indeed.

So good, in fact, that the club offered me a four year contract extension. Given that this is “Sunderland ’til I’m Sacked,” I felt compelled to accept it.

The only real negative in the opening two months was the Carabao cup penalty loss to lowly Blackpool. I’m not exactly devastated that we went out. The extra focus on the league will be nice, and if we can make a run in the FA Cup, I’ll call it a wash. We aren’t winning either cup, and my focus is truly on the league.

The opening two months have given me a better idea of who is and is not in my plans for the January transfer window. As the cliche goes, if you’re standing still you’re falling behind. We need to improve a position or two if we want to challenge for back to back promotions. You can see the ratings for the last 5 games and the overall ratings for the season so far. It’s unusual to have so many players with 7+, but given our win record, not too surprising. The concern for me is the players that are subpar even when we’re doing so well overall. 

Gooch has been underwhelming, and he’s my best right winger. I need to find an upgrade stat. His contract expires in the summer, so I’ll try to move him for some kind of fee. O’Brien is similar. Nowhere near good enough compared to the rest of the squad and has an expiring contract. I’d prefer to get paid for him to leave, but the worst case is we let him go on a free in the summer. Ross Stewart hasn’t been terrible, but he’s not going to score 30 goals in the Championship like he did in League One. 

The problem is going to be replacements. I’m still in bargain shopping mode, and unless I add a sixth loan, I don’t see how I’m going to find a good replacement. We have 2 million quid in the transfer kitty and 15 million in the bank, but we’re losing over a million a month.

We hummed along in October and November, dropping points here and there, but continuing to stay at or near the top of the league. Wright and Willis both came to me complaining about playing time, and I agreed to give them starts. Wright came back to tell me he was happy with his playing time, and then a couple weeks later this happened:

Which I honestly didn’t see coming. His value was listed as 1.7m, so I offered him around for 2.5m, which was clearly not enough because LAFC (from MLS) instantly offered 2.5m with no room for negotiation.

I feel as if I am real life Brentford, i.e. taking decent players, helping them succeed, and selling them for inflated prices by being near the top of the division. If I can move some more of my dead weight in January, I’ll be a happy manager. If nothing else, I’ll feel good about spending a couple million on an upgraded winger.
November saw our first long-term injury with Neco Williams going down for 6-7 weeks with a knee injury.

I have O’Nien to cover for him, and Wright–while he’s still here–can help as well. We’ll be fine. I hope.

Our second long-term injury landed a week later.

This one is less of a concern. O’Brien was a good rotation option last season, but he’s only played 367 minutes so far this season, and nearly all of those were from the bench. Again, we’ll be fine. (An aside: when playing FM, the players don’t feel real. They honestly don’t feel real when watching football on the television, either. Somewhere out there is a real Aiden O’Brien, and maybe he has a Google alert on his name and sees this. Mental health is a real thing, and I feel bad treating players–even virtual players–as if they are purely commodities. Aiden, if you’re reading, it’s not you that’s subpar. It’s the footy nerds rating your abilities. You’ve been a good player for us, and I hope you don’t take it personally when we can’t re-sign you this summer.)

And then the hammer fell. Parrott went down for two months. To be honest, his form had faltered badly, so it wasn’t like we were bereft, but the loss of all three players stung.

You can see it in our results, too.

Point after dropped point, and those draws were not matches we dominated. They were largely matches where we scraped a goal near the end to claw back a point. The only really bad loss was the one to Brighton, but if you look at the quality across Brighton’s 11 and ours, the scoreline isn’t unfair. (Even with a fully healthy squad.)

The Championship season is a long, brutal slog. Forty-six games with two cup competitions thrown in. We may have limped for a while, but we did finally break out of our funk with a 5-1 thrashing of Birmingham, and we finished the month of December in a very credible position.

The board are delighted, of course. I would be, too, if we hadn’t spent a while in first place. With everyone fit and Parrott with a modicum of form, we could finish in the automatic promotion places. As it is, I’m expecting us to end up in the playoffs.

Finances aren’t great, but we have 2.6m coming from Wright (2.5m) and McKay (150k) leaving for LAFC.

I’ll spend it if I find the right players, but pickings look slim. I’d like to find guys that are good enough to play right now and still have room to improve, and that’s hard when you’re already near the top of the Championship.

And no sooner do I type the words, than this happens.

LAFC, you bastards! You absolute shitgibbons.  We had a contract! Your lack of Designated Player spots is your own problem. Give me my money. Naturally, no one else was interested in him either, and now he’s gone and withdrawn his transfer request.

We will deal with the transfer window in the next update, but know this: I. Am. Fuming. 

Update: the Championship run-in is now posted here.

Welcome back, footy nerds. You can read about the end of the 2020/2021 season here. This post will cover the transfers and training in the 2021/2022 transfer window.

Last season ended and work started the following morning, still hungover. We had too many players that weren’t the level needed to survive in the Championship. There was a culling.

Some of these guys left earlier in 2020/2021, but I moved on Wyke and Flanagan as quickly as I could when the 2021 summer transfer window opened.

More people left as the game ticked over to the new season. The guys leaving on a free were mostly youth prospects that weren’t going to make the first team or be good enough to have much value in the future. A few weeks later I noticed that the board is upset about letting those guys leave on a free, which is annoying. Their contracts were about to expire. Maybe I could have included a sell on clause, but that was too much effort for what might have totaled 100k in two or three years. The biggest loss was probably Xhemajli, but I somehow managed to get 500k out of him, and he was realistically going to be 5th choice.

By extending Neco Williams loan at the end of the 2020/2021 season, we looked like this as a core going into the transfer window:

My goal was to replace a few of the starters with upgrades. The current squad was okay, but I didn’t expect to have many of them on the books in two seasons, so I wanted to make them rotation options this season and either release them on frees or sell them in twelve months’ time. The most critical need was depth at left back. Carl Winchester is not the level I want in midfield and certainly not the level I want at left back.

I’ve resigned Burge just as his contract was about to end. He’s… fine. Good enough for now, and on low enough wages that I can sell him easily in January if I find someone else better. (Which feels mercenary as hell to say, but we’ve got a team to run here.)

My top centerbacks last season were Wright and Willis, so I’ve extended Willis to 2024 to keep him from leaving on a free. I expect he’ll be a good rotation option if I can find an upgrade.

Further forward, I think MAX POWER and Jamie Allen are okay. They can do a job at CM. O’Nien is versatile enough to play both DR and DM. Two or three versatile players are the key to squad management, so I’m happy to keep him around. George Dobson was on loan last season, and he’s back and looking like he can play the DLP role tolerably well.

He’s not as technically good as I’d like, but his mentals are solid, and he will be a good rotation option.

It was the attacking band really that really worried me. Aiden O’Brien did well last season, but I think we can surely find an upgrade. Gooch, though a fellow Yank, is similar. Probably good enough, but I’d take an upgrade if I can find one.

Ross Stewart, at striker, had better numbers than his character sheet would suggest. You can’t argue with 30 goals, but you can absolutely argue with 11 Acceleration, 12 Pace, 10 Anticipation, and 13 Finishing.

My first port of call was free transfers. Guys who would be upgrades on my current players while having resale value in a season or two.

Kean Bryan has come in on a free and immediately is valued at 2.4m.

He’s a pretty good allrounder who can start at CD-L or DL. Importantly, he has a bit of acceleration to enable him to play our high defensive line, and enough passing that he won’t be a liability in playing out of the back. I’d prefer a bit more jumping reach and bit better defensive stats, but he was free.

Jimmy Dunne brings more defensive solidity to center back and will be fighting with Wright and Willis for a starting position. His valuation seems low, and I hope to sell him for for more at the end of the season.

Jakub Moder came in on loan from Brighton and immediately slotted into the DLP position as the starter ahead of George Dobson. I expect Dobson to get plenty of minutes, but Moder was a clear upgrade.

Alex Pritchard was another free, and he’ll slot into our AMC slot vacated by Ben Woodburn. He’s another good allrounder with nothing special that jumps out and not much room for improvement, but if he can hold down the center of the pitch and keep the ball moving, I’ll be happy.

Josh Onomah is a favorite pickup of mine. He starts as a quality Championship player and he can grow into a decent Premier League player. He was my big purchase of the window, costing me 1.9m from Fulham. He’s another pretty good allrounder, and he can play effectively across the attacking band or in central midfield.

All the way in the front, I picked up two loan strikers.

Idah brings solid pace and acceleration, along with the ability to play on the left and cut inside. His anticipation and finishing are both good, and I’m hoping he can combine well with his on-loan-from-Spurs teammate on the overlap and his other on-loan-from-Spurs teammate further forward. (Edit: I loaned in Dennis Cirkin from Spurs, but apparently forgot to include him in this list of players. Consider him included. He’s a good left back for this side.)

Many a Spurs supporter is looking in real life toward Troy Parrot with the hope that he’ll be the next Harry Kane. He is well on his way in FM. Solid all around with excellent heading. Would I have preferred the real Harry Kane? Yes. Will I take discount Harry Kane to help me stay in the Championship? Also, yes.  Spoiler alert: I’ve played to the end of the transfer window already, and Spurs supporters in my alternate universe will have nothing to complain about. To wit: his valuation at the end of August had gone from the 2.2m above to 7.5m.

At the end of August, my starting 11 and my tactic going into the season looks pretty solid.

I’ve tweaked things tactically a little. Idah is now playing as inside forward to take advantage of his better finishing and worse crossing. Cirkin is playing as a fullback rather than a wingback on the theory that we could use a little more defensive solidity.

Here’s another look at early season training. We’re going for primarily physical and tactical training in the opening weeks and adding in plenty of winnable friendlies to help build morale.

The league campaign starts on 31 July, so August will see a blend of tactical and technical training, and September onward will be largely technical.

It’s currently the end of August in the save, so I’ll pause the writeup here, play forward over the coming days, and see where we get by January.

Season 2, Part 1 is here

Welcome back to Sunderland ’til I’m Sacked. Part 1 is available here if you’re just joining the party.

One tiny lesson I’ve learned over the years is that no one appreciates a prophet in their own time. If you’re predicting doom and you’re wrong, you’re an idiot. If you’re predicting doom and you’re right, you’re an asshole. Guess what happened to Sunderland’s beating heart?

Six weeks injured, that’s what. With MAX POWER on the sidelines, we had to press forward as best we could. To be honest and kind of spoil things, it worked out better than I expected. So I guess I’m only half a prophet: both wrong and an asshole, apparently.

The January transfer window was fairly drab. I brought in one loan and let a few fringe players leave. Conor McLaughlin left for 20k to Shrewsbury, Brandon Taylor for 10.5k to Wigan, Grant Leadbitter on a free (but I’m paying 5k a week in wages (ugh)) to Hull, and Remi Mathews for 20k to Derby. I would have gladly sold McGeady at this point, if only to get his wages off the books, but I couldn’t find anyone to take him.

As the end of the transfer window neared, Jake Vokins went down injured. With us paying his wages and him about to miss two months, I made the call to terminate his loan and get someone else in. I was successful in getting Neco Williams from Liverpool, and the sharp-eyed among you may immediately see the issue. Vokins was one of our two left backs. Williams plays right back. I thought I was going to get another loan in to cover the left, but it didn’t work out, and I was stuck playing the second half of the season with Denver Hume starting and Carl Winchester giving him rest whenever we could afford it. Not ideal.

January and February weren’t great. With Power injured I shuffled my midfield and gave Carl Winchester more minutes to mixed results. 

Along the way, we had one of the most bananas shootouts I’ve ever seen. An even dozen spot kicks for each side, ending when the original takers came up for their second kicks and Lewis-Potter faltered while Sunderland’s own Chris Maguire proved himself to be a steely-eyed missile man.

Neco Williams, at least, was stellar, with an average rating of 7.09 across the season. Unfortunately, I agreed to play him as a wingback, which I interpreted to mean “right back in the wingback role” but Jurgen Klopp interpreted to mean “playing in the wingback position in a back three.”

Dude chased me about it twice! Look, I don’t have beef with Klopp, but the man isn’t going to dictate my entire formation. I more or less told him to sod off, figuring I’d get my revenge in a couple seasons when I saw him in the Premier League. Or that he’d deny me future loans. Which… eek. (Ominous foreshadowing alert: hold this thought.)

We moved on from the spotty January / February form to a run of green so beautiful the Irish would weep. That included making it to the final of the “Papa John’s Trophy,” which was so critical to the Sunderland board that they didn’t even have it in my season objectives.

A trophy? Named after mediocre chain pizza? I mean, I’ll take it, I guess.

Oh, and it even paid a little bit. Not as much as we immediately paid out to the players in bonuses, but better than a cross straight to the jewels.

It also led to this bit of weirdness.

I couldn’t honestly care less about Scowen getting yellow cards in the Pizza Cup, but the discipline policy says that he has to be fined, so he got hit with losing a week’s wages. It feels pretty steep, but he took it without complaint. I would have been furious in his shoes.

The run of green continued. And continued some more. Did I expect to win the league? Yes. Did I actually win the league? Also, yes.

We didn’t just win the league. We won it in style and comfort.

We ended the season with a couple meaningless draws and an equally meaningless loss long after the league was won. Job done.

The thing about this Sunderland squad is that it’s Pretty Good. Not brilliant, but well-balanced. I added a couple loan upgrades, put the players into roles where they could succeed, and they did a job. I know people on the Football Manager Show podcast are down on it, but it’s totally fine for League One.

Ross Stewart scored 30 goals. Max Power–sorry, MAX POWER–had 14 assists (while missing two freaking months). They’re both in the squad from day one.

As we go into the Championship, my goals are what I reckon to be realistic. We’ll probably finish midtable, far enough from the relegation zone that it won’t be a real worry and close enough to the playoffs that my virtual supporters will be simultaneously delighted and frustrated about what might have been.

I’m about to go raid the transfer market, by which I mean bargain shop like it’s Christmas Eve, I have no presents, and Aldi is closing in 10 minutes. We’ll be hunting for free transfers and loans with maybe a cheap buy or two if I can fit it into my budget.

The real worry is the budget. We started the season with about 7.5m in the bank. We ended it with 441k of debt. The board claim that I’ll have a wage budget of 249k (I’m spending 166k at the end of the current season) and a transfer budget of 3.5m. If I can keep the spending down, we might just about break even on the season.

Oh, never mind. Y’all hold on while I go open Kyril’s chequebook…

I’m on holiday this week, England is in the midst of a covid outbreak, and I have lots of writing procrastination to do, so expect more updates ahead of schedule. Until next time, nerds!

Update: The 2021 transfer window is now online.

Alright friends, I’ve been listening to The Football Manager Podcast from The Athletic, and I decided to throw my hat in the ring for their latest Football Manager challenge. If you’re not familiar with Football Manager (FM), it’s a youth exploitation role-playing game with some football (soccer) tactics on top. At least, that’s how I play it. The challenge is to start with Sunderland, an English club fallen on hard times, and take them back to glory. If you aren’t familiar with Sunderland and you have even a passing interest in football, go watch the Sunderland ’til I Die documentary. It is Shakespearean tragedy on a football pitch and does a fine job explaining how the club has gotten to where they are today.

I’ve setup my game with only the English leagues, a large database, and myself as manager with the checkboxes ticked for having the appropriate ability to manage in League One. I am not using attribute masking for this save. I did on my Verona save, and I literally spent more time poring through leagues and teams looking for players than I did in the rest of the game combined. Screw that. With attribute masking off I can filter down the players to a manageable list and save myself a ton of time. I’m justifying this by saying that any modern football club is going to be able to lookup player stats in far more detail than FM provides, so it’s a wash.

When you first land in a FM save, it’s overwhelming. I’ll try to explain a few things as I go.

First up, you need to have a look at your squad to see what kind of tactics they can play and where you have holes. Sunderland have a fairly decent squad from day one, so I went with a pretty standard 4231. I wanted to keep it simple and let the side’s superior quality win me matches. One of the principles I’m following here is that I won’t download a premade tactic. Also: no save scumming.

Here’s how my tactic looks.

I’m using fullbacks set to attack, which gives me plenty of width in attack without having them quite as far forward as wingbacks would be, so my defense is reasonably solid. My midfield is a Deep Lying Playmaker set to defend, which causes him to drop deeper and look to play a variety of passes through the lines and across the pitch. My other central midfielders are on basic, support roles, which helps us keep shape and provide lots of passing triangles through the center of the pitch. The wingers are an inside winger on the left who cuts inside and shoots and an attacking winger on the right who tends to go to the byline and shoot in the side netting. I prefer him to actually cross the ball, but the fullbacks are providing crosses, so I can’t really complain.

If you look at the team instructions, you’ll see that we’re playing a high line and pressing with More Urgent intensity. It’s not Jurgen Klopp heavy metal football, but we’re also not Liverpool, (other than Ben Woodburn, who is, technically, Liverpool).

The next thing you should do is setup your set pieces. I don’t do every last one because I’m lazy, but I set attacking and defending corners and freekicks, but not even all the freekick options. The FM podcast hosts are shaking their heads at me, I’m sure.

My defensive corner routine is nothing special. I put players on the posts and keep most of the team in the penalty with a mix of zonal and man marking. I do like to keep my AMC on the edge of the area to clean up headed clearances and my striker forward to enable counter attacks. If I were really minmaxing this, I’d adjust those players for every match to keep my tallest players back and my fastest players forward, but I don’t. Maybe next season.

This is my current attacking corner routine, and the one I’ve used all season with pretty good success. I have 9 goals from my centerbacks, with maybe one or two from free kicks, and at least two or three from my strikers charging into the area and getting headers. I do keep three back, but that’s because I was burned too often by counterattacks in my Verona save.

In my Verona save I used this and mixed it with far post and edge of area routines. None of the three were terribly compelling, so I went with near post here, and I have zero regrets.

I’m using mixed delivery on free kicks. We’ve scored at least one banger directly from the taker and one or two more from headers. This is an area I could do better.

Once you get your tactic setup, you’ll want to do something about training and friendlies. In the preseason both training and friendlies exist to increase fitness and build knowledge of your tactic. I tend to play two friendlies a week against inferior competition, then mix in one or two better sides toward the end. I didn’t grab a pre-season training screenshot, but here’s one that shows typical training midseason.

I like to mix in the match training to keep the bonuses from attacking movement and defensive movement (they last a few weeks each), plus adding in plenty of set pieces. What you don’t want to do is run your players into the ground when they’re already playing two matches a week, so I’m using lots of technical sessions to increase their skills without as much impact on their fitness.

The season started with us being short a few coaches and scouts. I hired some. There’s no magic, really.

I wanted decent coverage in each category, which I have. I’ll worry about this more in the future when I have more money to hire better quality coaches.

Like I mentioned, Sunderland start with a pretty good side and no glaring weaknesses. Looking at the squad, I did decide to make a few additions. Ben Woodburn came in on loan from Liverpool and immediately claimed the AMC position for himself. Jamie Allen came in from Coventry for 90k with a 20k bonus due after 50 appearances. Barrie McKay came in from Swansea for 41k with various addons that could take it to 75k. Jamie has slotted well into midfield, rotating with Max Power (a real player and a brilliant name), Josh Scowen, and Carl Winchester in the two central roles. Barrie’s transfer was in October, just before the covid-delayed deadline. He’s been a great addition and has played on both wings.

Our results at the end of September could hardly have been better.

The shootout victory over Leeds was very well received, and even the shootout loss to Wycombe went down fine since we had exceeded expectations. Our results in the league were the stuff of dreams.

Things progressed well from there, which is saying something.

We pretty much just cruised through October and November. We haven’t been outplayed in a single match.

It definitely helped that we had very few injuries, though you can see the downturn in December. That coincided with Max Power, the heart of our team, spending two weeks on the sidelines with an injured foot. He was back in time to help us take full points from promotion contenders Hull and Accrington, at least.

I could hardly have asked for better results. Here’s how the table looks on 1 January.

Looking ahead, I’ll try to make some moves in January to sign some players with expiring contracts, including moving some of my oldest, most expensive players (Aiden McGeady and Grant Leadbitter) to free up some wages.

We’re clearly in a great position going into the second half of the season, but this isn’t even the halfway point. There’s a shocking number of matches to go, and one or two key injuries could easily derail us.

Here are the lads that will hopefully carry us back to the Championship in a few months’ time.

Update! Part 2 is here.