#3 Die Roten Teufel

Welcome back to the third instalment in this series were I aim to take 1.FC Kaiserslautern back to the great heights of years gone by. We last left of looking at the squad for the upcoming season and outlining the type of player I will be looking towards during this career. CLICK HERE if you haven’t seen the squad yet.

Tactical Plan

After looking at the squad, initially I struggled to think of a shape and system that would suit us. Due to a high amount of defenders and central midfielders I thought that a variation of a 451 could be useful, with the idea we can easily transition to a 4123 with a DM or a 4231 with a AM. So that was the plan going into pre-season. After the first game it was blatenly obvious that the strikers we have at our disposal were simply not good enough and were getting too isolated working up top on their own. I wanted to utilize our wide men whilst having a good balance in midfield, but that meant leaving 1 man up front which I wasn’t liking.

The next game we transitioned to an old fashioned flat 442 which straight away we seemed more suited to. After a bit of tweaking through the friendlies we came up with a better plan. Below is the system that we put together.

By no way do I feel this system is the finished product yet, however, I do feel that it is a basis that we can build upon. After reading FM_Samo’s excellent article on his version of a 442 (READ HERE) it got me thinking, how else can it be implemented and what variations can we take on this ‘old fashioned’ team shape.

The beauty of a 442, is that it can be used and implemented in so many different ways, whether it’s having two attacking wingers, two holding midfielders, one deep midfielder and one bombing on, overlapping fullbacks or a flat back four that doesn’t adventure much past the half way line, pumping it long to a big man little man partnership, you get the idea by now. The beauty of it is that not one way is right nor wrong, nor is one version better or worse than the other. They all have there strengths and weaknesses and that is something I hope to highlight with this system.

First of all, as mentioned in the previous post, I want this side to be physically and mentally tough. That in my mind doesn’t shout a rough and aggressive press, getting stuck into every challenge and being right in the back pockets of the opposition, no. How I invision it, is us being a tough side to break down, I want to be defensively solid and make sides really work to open us up and leaving us the opportunity to catch them out when they are exposed.

That being said, what I don’t want is for us to be too deep or negative that we invite the opposition to camp in our half and bombard us for 90 minutes.

1. I don’t the we have a good enough side to be able to resist that kind of relentless attack.
2. I don’t think I’d enjoy playing and watching that game to game. Let’s face it, it’s about fun and enjoyment at the end of the day.

When it comes to our set up, I’ve kind of gone for a mixed bad approach. I want it on the whole to be pretty basic with my intentions to change mentality and shape from game to game. I am a creature of habit and as the above image shows we are on fluid. Fluid is our starting point and if I feel like it’s getting the right movement throughout all transitions against our opponents then I’ll keep it, if not we will move accordingly. Sometimes structured will be a good approach as we can lengthen our playing lines and stretch the play if on the back foot and wanting to break forward.

The defensive line is one that can be managed from game to game but generally I want my centre defenders to be pretty basic but not too basic they just to hoof it away like a Sunday league defender, trust me as a fullback that used to play at that level myself it was one of the most infuriating things. I’ve always be of the mould that if you have control of the ball your opponents can’t score, so rather than it be panic stations and we clear it long each time, I like a gentle build out from the back approach, but with the caveat that if under too much pressure they will just clear their lines.

We also have a fullback each one support and attack, this will also be adjusted game by game depending on where our opposing threats are, but from our own attacking point of view, it adds different layers to the attacks. These guys are our main outlay from the back, our Sweeper Keeper will distribute to these guys who then have the options to start the transitions going forward.

My midfield is a very balanced quartet, with our wide men both having an attack and support role. Similarly to the fullbacks this adds layers to the attacks, this time however, they are on opposing sides to the fullbacks so they are not treading on each others toes. Neither have any specific instructions except to cross more often and to aim for the centre.

The two centre midfielders probably have the hardest job of all, especially in this day and age where midfield 3’s are everywhere. The weakness there is they will get out numbered, so in my eyes, they need to be conservative in their flurries forward and main focus to protect the central defenders. So in order to do this I have opted for a DLP with a Defend duty, who’s main role is to recycle the ball looking to dictate the game. His locked instruction is to hold his position so he will be my deepest of the two. This is where I see Albaek and Halfar operating from. Their partner in crime will be a role that over the last year on FM I have become very fond of and one that previous to that was very frightened of; the Ball Winning Midfielder. Due to it’s aggressive nature, I have always been afraid to use it due to the miss conception that it roams a leaves huge gaps in the midfield. To be honest, I don’t have a pressing system, if I did then maybe this would occur, but from what I see of it is his overall aim is to get back into position so he can make a challenge. This role will be used on support, support you say, yes, support. The support option makes it work like a box to box midfielder, making positive forward runs, looking and wanting the ball in the final third and even getting into goal scoring positions. For me it is a really underrated role, that you don’t often see people talking about, not from what I’ve seen anyway.

What I really like about this years addition to the game, is the ability to find the weaknesses or danger areas of a tactic just on the tactics screen. This may have been mentioned by someone on a blog post or YouTube video at some point since the game was released but I’m late to the party, so for me it’s new news.

The tactics pitch is sectioned off into zones that look like squares on a chess board, but these squares give off more than just a groundsman’s fancy pitch design. The brighter the green square, the stronger that zone is fot your system. When the square goes darker with a hint of red, that highlights a weak spot for your tactic. So even for someone that isn’t that tactically minded can see where the potential flaws are when creating a system.

Here are the examples of our weaknesses:

As you can see, it’s in the areas that I’d expect to see with a 442, however, none of these issues have me worried ahead of the season. All systems have weak spots, I’ve highlighted mine and I will look to build similar systems that can be implemented if any of our opponents are wise enough to exploit these weaknesses.

Now the ramble about tactics is over, lets see how they have actually got on.

Friendlies

An unbeaten pre-season which is very pleasing to see and up against some decent sides in Wien and Sion. Good confidence builders for the campaign ahead.

2. Bundesliga

As you can see above, we’ve had a variety of results this year. I can’t say the aim to be solid as a rock has paid off just yet but it is early days. Aside from a couple of dreadful defeats where we were just picked apart, especially against Bochum; for those who are in my slack channel would have seen my rant about their treacherous long throws. Sigh! It reminded me of Chelsea on FM15, oh the pain!

One thing I can say though, is our strikers have been finding the net, especially our on loan Lithuanian, Spalvis. His contract is expiring at the end of the season so I’m hoping I can lure him to sign for us on a permanent basis.

Let’s take a look at the table at the Hinrunde.

Sitting nicely in 6th place, we are one place above where we are predicted to finish and the board, fans, players all seem happy. I’ve been given a contact extension until 2020, which I have snapped up. To be honest, all I’m looking to achieve in this first campaign in stability and then build to promotion in a year or two’s time. Remember I have made no signings what so ever and am using the same squad which are sitting rock bottom of this league in real life. Anything other than relegation really is a decent season.

DFB Pokal

The Pokal saw us go through two rounds against lower league sides until we met our match against Dortmund. Now, I never expected or intended to go far in this competition but I wanted to compete, which I felt we did. Personally I didn’t want to be destroyed by Dortmund and ruin our moral at this point of the season so I went with a narrow Contain system, with short passing to keep hold of the ball. As expected we lost but luckily it wasn’t a demoralizing one.

So if you have made it this far, I applaud you. This sums up the Hinrunde ahead of our 5 week winter break. Join us again next time to see where we are come the end of the season. Can we continue in this vein of form? Or will we start to get exploited with our two man central midfield and lack of defensive cover?