Hello and welcome back to my second update of my Toulouse series (Second attempt).
Before I dive head first into the End of Season 15/16 update I want to start by saying how much I have enjoyed this save so far. Not just because of the short-term success that I have experienced, which I’ll come onto shortly, but by making a complete pig’s ear of the first attempt and then having a go at fixing it in the second attempt.
I haven’t done a lot differently to the first attempt except be more consistent with my tactical approach. I have probably been slightly more adventurous with my approach to training, tactics and transfers.
Ok, back to end of season update. Are you ready for this? We finished 3rd! Yes you read that correctly in the first season we finished in 3rd. I didn’t make any changes to the data using an in-game editor, I actually managed to get Toulouse to 3rd in my first season in charge. How did I do that I hear you ask? well, I am glad you asked and I shall tell you, I havent got a clue.
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The 3rd place finish has come about after only bringing in a one player, Zivkovic. Additionally, I must add with Wissam Ben Yedder out injured for 8 months in total which was pretty much the whole season with damaged cruciate ligaments. We still managed to defy the odds and finished 7 places above the media expected 10th place. As you can see we were quite comfortable in 3rd with Monaco 9 points behind but we were too far behind Lyon and PSG to really threaten their superiority this season.
In the last 15 games of the season we only lost once to Angers on the last game of the season. The players must have been thinking of Yachts in the Caribbean or holidays to Dubai as they just didn’t show up. To be fair to Angers, they applied early pressure and didn’t look like a team who were in the bottom three and about to get relegated. Not only did Angers manage to beat us they also beat the drop and finished 1 point above the 3rd relegation place on 33 points. We must have had friends in the Angers team and gave them a win, aren’t we nice!
To be honest the match was pointless, we could not catch Lyon in second place and Monaco in third couldn’t catch us either, but it would have been nice to finish on a win.
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So how did we manage to get 3rd? Well, good question…
Pesic scored 20 goals in the league, second highest goal scorer for the season.
Zivkovic’s 18 assists was the second highest in the league.
4 of our players found themselves in the Stars of the Season award – proving we had a team full of confidence.
I think our success is partly due to my tactical stubbornness, I didn’t change the tactic once and yes we didn’t win every game but we were consistent. Similarly, when we were not at our best I only changed the personnel and left the team instructions as they were. Occasionally I’d push the defensive line up one notch to normal from its default slightly deeper and added tight marking if the opposition were getting too much space. Other than that every game was played with a fluid team shape, control mentality in an asymmetric 4412.
The tactic just seemed to bring the best out of our players. Distribution from the goalkeeper was wide to the fullbacks. The fullbacks with a wingback role and attack duty were our out-and-out wingers and we’re rarely marked. This was because both of our wide midfielders were instructed to sit narrow which ultimately took the opposition midfielder away. To accommodate such attacking full backs I employed a CMD and half way through the season changed this to a DLP on defend duty to give my centre backs a passing focal point. In addition, the CMD role was moving up with the rest of the midfield far too much and made us susceptible to more long balls being played in behind us. Next to the DLP I had a box to box midfielder who plagued the opposition with vertical runs straight into the box. He didn’t score that many goals but did on occasion pop up with a goal or two. My AMC was a trequartista who just found pockets of space, combining that with an advanced forward who pushes the opposition defensive line back to create space for the trequartista.
So before moving on have a look at the gallery below to see exactly why we came third.
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One negative point I noticed over the course of the season was the number of the fouls we committed. I am either going to change the general training to defending to improve the team in this area or add a team instruction to stay on feet to see if we are diving in too much.
Set pieces also need some work after my assistant kept telling me we have too many players marking posts although, I don’t remember setting this and I don’t remember conceding too many goals from set pieces.
Oh and by the way not only did we achieve the Overachiever Award I also won Manager of the Year and saw my reputation go from 2 stars to 3.5 stars, happy days.
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So tactically, we are going to stay as we are for next season. I don’t want to rock the boat too much and I don’t want my players to have to learn something new. Looking at the familiarity of the tactic it’s still completely familiar right at the beginning of pre-season so, we are going to work on teamwork instead of match tactics.
Moving on to the returning loan players, this will be like signing 5 new players so I am going to ensure the I don’t make too many other changes to the squad. The two players who I think will go straight into the team is Sylla a 22-year-old left back and Aguilar 31-year-old midfielder. Sylla should do a superb job overlapping Zivkovic and Aguilar will slot in at the centre of midfield as my Deep lying playmaker with his attributes. I will also use Aguilar to tutor the players who are going to be his direct replacements in Blin, Machech and Bodiger. I think Bodiger is the closest to a replacement but if he doesn’t progress well enough I will need to find one. Michael Carrick was available on a free transfer and did only want £28k a week but we is 32 and I need to look to the future unfortunately. Tom Carrol was also an option on a free transfer too but he still is but wanted £30k a week and I wanted to secure my existing players to long-term contracts before any new signings first. I know I can probably push the wage budget a bit higher as I’m not looking to bring in any players with a fee and with the extra Champions League to money, assuming well get through the early qualification.
Preseason started well, with a 0-0 draw with Dortmund and a 3-0 win over Le Harve, we’ve started exactly as we’ve finished last season. I am a little bit concerned that we will struggle down the right after Tisserand returned to Marseille and all the available right backs are too expensive on all fronts it would seem, transfer fee, loan fee and wages so well stick with what we have for now.
Our season goal this year is to get European qualification though league position and to be honest if I can qualify for the Europa League this season I will be extremely happy.
We have done well in the first season but we still need a lot of work and I have identified some areas below, and i hope to begin putting in steps to resolve some of them over the next few seasons.
1 – The club Financially ok but needs improvement
2 – We have got Great Youth Facilities but we need some better coaches
3 – We have a large Backroom staff with lots leaving at the end of the season
4 – We still have a few backup/rotation squad players on unrealistic wages
I am looking forward to sorting out the backroom staff at the end of the season which has been made easier by the majority of them leaving at the end of the contracts but other than that we will need money to fix them. I hope you have enjoyed the end of season update and I will be back shortly with a mid-season update. I am also going to and bring you a relatively short tactical piece going into more detail about the Toulouse tactic, so look out for that too.
Before ending the post I wanted to bring you a few screenshots of the manager movements that have happened at the end of the 2015/16 season in this save and I wanted to say “Who says Football Manager isn’t realistic!”
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Thanks for reading and see you soon, Matt
Toulouse 06 – End of Season 15/16 Update Hello and welcome back to my second update of my Toulouse series (Second attempt). Before I dive head first into the End of Season 15/16 update I want to start by saying how much I have enjoyed this save so far.
