FM24 VfB Stuttgart pt. VI | A European final, and the 2024/25 overview.
Apologies for the cliffhanger in the last part, but I just couldn’t resist. I felt that the image of our side with the trophy was one that deserved to headline a post — and that it will.
What a win. I can’t really put into words the feeling of winning this final against Celtic. Of course when you play a side from outside the dominant seven leagues you expect to put them way. A European final is never for granted and the Scottish side that included David de Gea, Scott McKenna and James Forrest definitely brought the game to us, dominating on the statistics.
Unfortunately for them both of our 19 year old wonderkid’s stole the show. Dennis Seiman was a brick wall between the sticks, proving his place as one of the finest keepers in the world, and Jovan Milosevic, our Serbian striker, netted his fourteenth goal of the season with a close range header — winning our first piece of silverware and qualifying us for the Champions League. After fourteen years, Stuttgart are back in EUFA’s premier competition.
Stepping away from cup competition, we obviously first take a look at the league. A strong fifth place finish for the second year in a row saw us take more points home and with an eleven game undefeated streak to end the season we’ve set up strong for next year. My one frustration with the season is Hoffenheim. A +13 point on their xPTS is frankly insane, as both their attack and defencse massively over-performed — only Bayern Munich themselves over-performed more in this metric. At least we’ve not lost anything, as or famous Europa League win qualifies us for the Champions League regardless of league position.
As you can see from the data hub, especially compared to the one included in part three of this series, this years 5th place finish is significantly stronger than the year before’s. We’ve improved drastically in a number of area, including pitch tilt, defensive efficiency and crossing. Our general performance chart is an excellent indicator of this, as achieved a 0.3 higher non-penalty xG p/90 than the Bundesliga average, and 0.14 fewer expected goals against.
The two areas in which we haven’t improved are in tacking and, more significantly, where our defensive actions take place.
You can see from the first two graphs that at least within our first team lineup the tacking is adequate. Our starting wingers, central midfielders and defenders are all average or above-average at tackling. Usually, you’d look at the defensive line when addressing where our defensive actions take place, but we are already playing a higher defensive line, so it rules out that cause of the issue.
Our main issue, at least from my perpestice, is our centre-backs unreliability with the ball. Outside of Boscagli and Zagadou, our best two defenders, we are consistently losing the ball from our defenders. Perhaps our team instruction to ‘play out from defence’ is inviting too much of the press and causing us to lose possession early in the build up, meaning that 1/3 of all defensive action are happening in recovery of this turnover within 18 yards of our own net.
All centre-backs, including the inverted full-back are instructed to ‘take fewer risks’ which according to the FM Guide, asks these players to ‘retain possession first and foremost, playing a sensible and patient passing game without unnecessarily conceding possession to the opposition.’
Because of the issues we’re facing, I’m going to remove the team instruction to ‘play out from defence’. Given the goalkeepers instruction to ‘take short kicks’ and ‘distribute to centre-backs’ alongside the defensive unit’s aforementioned instruction to ‘take fewer risks’ we should retain the defensive build up shape naturally.
The aim of removing this instruction is to take responsibility from the defenders in terms of making something happen and creating unforced errors which result in a turnover. Instead of this, we should adopt a patient approach, waiting for the opposition to allow a pass into the pivot or creative players and minimising the unreliability of the defensive unit.
Much like at the end of 2023/24, our first port of call is to plot our average rating of players against their minutes played — ensuring that our most important players are achieving the rating necessary to succeed.
You can see from the graph that our general level is actually quite high, with the team performing excellently all round across our 22 man squad. The highlighted players have all rated 6.9 or below, making them standout under-performers even though they are generally performing ‘okay’. Simply put, ‘okay’ has been surpassed by the rest of the side. Sasa Lukic gets a pass, since he only joined in January.
Secondly, due to the increased number of fixtues I did notice fatigue and injuries affect us this season. Since all players, even my lacklustre quartet, are performing ‘okay’, the three other named players will become emergency back ups — as a 26 man squad allows me to have 3 players capable in all outfield positions. Stenzel as backup for defensive mid, Fritschi for centre-back (as Zagadou can play LB, and Stenzel can play RB), with Saldanha as the backup for the striker position.
Jamie Leweling has been displaced as a winger by the arrivals of Bailey and Zaragoza, with Fuhrich and Ulrich the rotational options. He instead will act as emergency back up for both wide positions.
The first two players to join this summer were confirmed in March and April respectively. Skye Vink, a highly rated striker from Ajax from Ajax for £5m (doubling to £10m after 50 goals) to play back-up to breakthrough star Milosevic, as he fits a similar profile and can happily play back up. This season he’s achieved 12 contributions with a stellar 0.39 non-penalty xG p/90 and 1.54 shots on goal p/90.
Callum Doyle links up with Stuttgart via Manchester City, continuing the trend of English youngsters joining the Bundesliga for gametime. He was available for a measly £9.8m, and gives us excellent back-up quality for Boscagli as he’s a natural inverted full-back. Across 19 games for the now five-peat English champions he averaged 7.01, showing clear quality and potential.
These two players were signed and scouted through our recruitment network, leaving me two more players to sign for my ideal 26 man side — a defensive midfielder and a left footed centre-back.
The first of my data-driven signings for the summer is that of Martin Moormann. The Austrian defender joins us from Rapid Wien after a seven year stint at the club. Costing only £3.5m he is an adept back up at centre-back, statistically on par with Evan N’Dicka who is a top European defender at this stage. He’ll play back-up to Dan Axel Zagadou for the LCB spot.
The second of the two, and the final non-replacement signing of the summer is that of Senne Lynen. For a measly £6m, he joins us from fellow Bundesliga side Werder Bremen. A bit of a no-brainer, he’s happy to play as an ‘impact sub’ so will not demand game time but averaged 7.06 in the league last season. He is blatantly Bundesliga standard and actually outperformed the elite Sandro Tonali in DM statistics over 2024/25.
Hopefully he helps us achieve great things in 2025/26 — which will be coming your way soon.
