Devils, play, cry.
I unironically think I’m pretty good at Football Manager.
If that all sounds like a bit of typical United fan bragging, however, worry not!
A severe humbling follows.
The perfect new challenge has arrived.
Unfortunately, that’s where my real certainty about Ruben Amorim ends.
Where things get much harder is in interpreting how exactly that 3-4-3 works in practice.
First up, the research.
(Short answer: maybe - but we’re not here for short answers!)
Others describe a 3-4-2-1, where the back three and two midfielders stay closer to their original positions.
As for how this works for Football Manager?
My main takeaway at the moment is that this is going to be a headache.
Part 2: The setup
It’s time to settle on a plan.
Other times, they use quick interplay down the flanks, relying on the wing backs heavily.
Translating that adaptive style to FM is going to be a challenge.
Navigating that turns out to be the biggest challenge of all.
On to the tactics, at last!
We’ve talked about overall shape, but now it’s time to getreallygranular.
I’m sort of half-right, but more on that later.)
Now for the personnel.
Immediately we have issues.
Everywhere else is a question mark, but let’s run through the decisions quickly.
I am worried about depth here.
(Spoiler: I am right to worry.)
So that’s what I start with here.
This is also where I decide to get a bit fancy.
And that’s really all your options.
Aiming to stick with what most analysts expect the real Amorim to do, I go with Marcus Rashford.
As it turns out, this is one of many, many mistakes I made with this starting line-up.
We go on to lose 3-2, only mustering about 0.43 expected goals (xG) to their 1.56.
Hojlund looks dangerous and Fernandes got a goal and an assist, which is good!
Everything else looks very bad.
What else is very bad?
Luke Shaw is injured, about 35 minutes into the first friendly of pre-season.
The issue here is, according to FM24, Garnacho cannot play left wing back.
They won’t defend as much, but we should be dominating possession anyway!
The next friendly, against another minnow, I tinker a bit.
The third, against Bayern Munich, we win 3-1.
I did say we shouldn’t get too excited, I just didn’t listen to myself.
Mazraoui fills in for Shaw on the left.
Let’s save the fancy stuff for when we’ve got a bit of momentum.
Thankfully, there’s a (sort of) workaround anyway.
Instead of a left-sided Libero, I use Maguire as a classic ball-playing defender in the middle.
There’s an extra bonus here too.
A lot of analysts point out that from goal kicks, Amorim’s back three do something unusual.
But often Amorim’s central defenderstays in the middleinstead, pushing forward a bit.
And this game was semi-competitive as well, being the Community Shield.
Technically, we’ve just won our first trophy.
After a very wobbly pre-season, suddenly things are looking up.
It’s too early to panic yet, I tell myself, not entirely believing it.
The thing with FM is it takes a lot of time for players to learn tactical systems properly.
Currently these boys are playing like strangers.
True to real life, but Amorim’s got to find a solution to that.
Our next game, barely a few days later, is against Chelsea at home.
I will be honest: right now, I have no idea what’s going on.
Why are we easily beating the good sides and struggling against Spurs?
I’m trying to beat these guys at their own game, and I’m winning.
Until I’m not.
The season continues like this.
Win a game, lose a game, on and on.
A loss to Fulham.
A win in the Europa League.
A loss in the league again.
Meanwhile, most of my players are struggling for any consistent form.
Against smaller teams, we’re controlling possession.
It’s time for a rethink.
There are a few tweaks I make which suddenly and quite dramatically work.
In FM, they play with twowingersrather than two attacking midfielders.
Suddenly I’ve got a role for Marcus Rashford that he actually understands.
Until I realise that, actually FM does sort of have an answer for this.
But actually, it’s about probability.
Balanced doesn’t mean mid-length passes, it means amixtureof passes.
Sometimes they play short, sometimes they go long, sometimes they do a bit of both.
They adopt the approach that helps them beat the opposition at hand.
I put all this into practice and what happens?
Four wins on the trot.
Short of a left wing back, you say?
May I present Theo Hernandez, who getsthree assistsin his first game.
Josko Gvardiol, now at City in the real world, is the perfect left-sided channel defender.
There are more experiments and more tinkering.
I try using the two deeper midfielders as defensive midfield positions, which works quite nicely.
Like most of this whole experiment, mix results continue.
But how many lessons can we take about Football Manager?
Actually, for someone who once thought he knew a lot, quite a few.
