My FM26 Save or: How I learned to defend with 10 men and still conceded a lot of goales

So in my last blog I talked about how I was going to start learning C++. I promise that I am still doing that but I wanted to write about what I like to do in my free time.

What is an FM26

Football Manager is probably one of my favorite sports series. Most people call it a spreadsheet simulator with a Football skin on it, and I agree.

It is probably the most detailed sports management game you can find. The majority of the time spend in this game is spent hiring staff, scouting, signing players, managing training, analyzing data and most importantly making the tactics instead of on the pitch.

What is a youth only saves

A youth only save is when you restrict yourself to only using players that come through the youth system instead of transfers coming to save your team. It is the biggest challenge I have taken on to this day. I usually just start unemployed (not because I am playing as myself) and take charge of the first team that would hire me.

But this time I have already picked a team to stay with as long as I can. The team I have chosen are RAAL La Louvière who start as the worst team in the belgian first division so I am going to be fighting relegation the whole time until I can get a couple of great players out there.

Tactics

When you don't have a good team you have to make sure that you at least have good tactics. I am no stranger to relegation battles in FM so I know how to set up a team for that situation. I have set up a Fluid Counter-Attacking team to give me the best chances.

Out of Possession

Because defense is most important for me right now I will start with that. I am setting up in a very defensive 5-2-2-1 where the two attacking midfielders always track back to support the defense so I am basically defending with %90 of my team. That can be changed as the situation of the match change and we want to keep more men forward for the counter attack.

I instruct the players to sit deep so that there are few threats inside our box but that also makes it so that we are more vulnerable to long shots because players are more reluctant to close down those shots. But imo it's more preferable to the alternative.

In Possession

In possession my team sets in a 5-2-1-2 with one of the attacking midfielders pushing a bit higher to get more men in the box. The wing-backs also push higher to provide some width to our attack and stretch their defense. We keep 3 defenders back at all times to defend against counter attacks.

Results

After that brilliant tactical analysis you might be wondering how is the tactic doing in practice. Well... results have been... mixed. At the start of the season I thought our problem would be scoring, but in the beginning of this season it has been very clear the we have to somehow do better defensively.

The worst of the results has been the 4-3 loss at home to Union SG where we were up 3-1 by the end of the 30th minute. The biggest problem in that game was the defense from our left hand side of the pitch where we let two easy crosses into the box that led to goals.

Even with these results we sit one position above a relegation battle so I guess it could be worse.

C++ Update

That was it about my FM save now I just want to talk about my progress learning C++ as well.

I have been reading the book A Tour of C++ by non other than Bjarne Stroustrup himself. I picked it because I wanted a comprehensive but relatively short tour of C++ and I thought that was the best way to make sure I don't miss anything. I am about a quarter of the way thorough the book but I think I'm going to pick up some speed and try to finish it faster and try to use the book as a reference for things that I want to learn.

Now I have to go. bye.