FM24 VfB Stuttgart pt. III | Cattermole’s arrival.
In the last edition, we went over the tactics we’ll use for our Stuttgart side, adapting Unai Emery’s model from Aston Villa.
Ah the Bundesliga, I forgot how fun you are to manage in. We’ve come to the winter break and given the fact we’re 4th in the league, I’m pretty happy with our season so far. Our losses so far have only been to Union, Mainz and Dortmund — two of which I’m fairly disappointed in to state the obvious. Fortunately we go into Christmas being undefeated on home turf, something I’d like to cling on to for as long as possible.
As a footnote, we were predicted to finish 10th in the season preview, so we are definitely overachieving. One aspect that we definitely are not overachieving in is our staffing, at least not yet. As we struggled for transfer budget I didn’t want to go out there and buy a player for the sake of it, so we instead used the cash to sack the entire staffing team and bring in a new backroom batch.
Some names you may recognise are the great Lee Cattermole, Kevin Ball and former German NT goalkeeper Jens Lehmann. Having previous experience at Stuttgart, he’s been brought in to be a stable point in a period that will involve a lot of change for the players. He’ll also be the spokesman for the club, handling all media interactions.
Good news and happy new faces isn’t the only change in the air. Our starting defender Hiroki Ito has departed the club for £21.5m, after Al-Hilal activated his release clause. I’m pretty frustrated and honestly can’t believe I didn’t check the squad for release clauses beforehand. Now I need to change Guirassy’s contract…
I won’t be looking to sign a new full-back in January, I’m not a fan of winter signings. I’ll instead be converting Dan-Axel Zagadou to play in the ‘inverted full-back’, since a back three of centre-backs in possession is what I’m actually looking to create anyway.
Bittersweet qualification.
As you can see we finished fifth in the Bundesliga. Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy with the finish and how the squad have achieved it. The media predicted us to finish tenth, so a Europa League finish is very welcome and sets me up for a challenging second season with Stuttgart.
This was helped massively by our home record. Zero matches lost at home in the Bundesliga, with 35/52 points captured.
My only real disappointment from this year, beyond bottling the fourth UCL spot, is the fact that there is a distinct gap between the Bundesliga and the top three. Dortmund, Leipzig and Bayern Munich are quite frankly in a race of their own — a race that we need to get amongst sooner rather than later.
You can see from our data hub entries that our implementation of Emery’s 4–4–2 is working well in the league, and given the fact we finished third in the league for goals scored, it is our defence that needs real improvement.
Taking a closer look into our defensive efficiency, we are extremely average which would suggest that a tactical change is necessary. This likely goes hand in hand with our pitch tilt, as the teams who excel in one tend to excel in the other (Leverkusen, Leipzig and Dortmund). Whilst I do think this will partly be due to the quality of those sides players, I also think our tactical set up can be part of the equation.
Our ‘in possession’ and ‘in transition’ instructions I’m content with, as our attacking efficiency is only bettered by Bayern and Leipzig, so it’s our ‘out of possession’ tactics that I think could be improved. In order to force the side to play higher up the pitch I’m going to ask them to create a high line of engagement alongside a higher defensive line. Whilst this leaves the side just as compact as the mid block and standard defensive line does, it does move the players and therefore the ball should stay further in the oppositions half more consistently. This will improve our defensive efficiency and reduce the oppositions shots on our goal.
Next season is a tough one, with a big first season to follow up from and an increased number of fixtures. To handle the extra games, we need far better depth — so make sure you read the next part of this series where I’ll go over the transfer philosophy and begin making signings.
