FM24 VfB Stuttgart pt. IV | Scouting for Stars.
Previously, we looked at our first season in charge, slightly adapting the tactic for the coming season.
My favourite part of any year, it’s the end of the season. In the last edition we covered the basics of our foundation year, the first European qualification since a decade ago and the setup we struggled against last season.
This time, my focus is on recruitment.
Who to replace.
The first thing to tackle when deciding on a recruitment focus is on where you actually need to recruit. I’m a fan of the ethos that you are only ass strong as your weakest link — so we need to identify the weakest link.
In the above scatter graph, I’ve named and shamed five individual players. These are players underneath my minimum average requirement of 6.8, who fall below the quality of the average player with their pitch responsibility (a.k.a. minutes on the field).
Nubel, Undav and Stergiou are all players on loans — so are easy to let go of. Jeong and Millot have a low responsibility within the side, so you would think are relatively low-priority to replace but with European games next season our rotational options will be replied upon far more.
Stenzel is perhaps the biggest cause for concern, as he played 1,874 minutes for the club and failed to impress in a role that Josha Vagnoman achieved a 7.18 average rating in.
Two of the loans within the team will be made permanent. Jamie Leweling and Anthony Rouault have had the options to buy on their loans activated as they placed above the ‘elimination line’ or had above 6.8 average rating.
To gain some better perspective on what I’m looking for in a player, I’ve used MintE’s excellent data tool to class my players and show off their qualities. The four groups define to three phases of our in-possession build up, the 3–2–5.
1st Unit — this is our ‘defensive unit’, who make up our back three. Their job does not focus on chance creation, and is purely to defend our box.
2nd Unit — classed as the ‘pivot unit’, these players form the double pivot in midfield that sits in front of the back three, so must be all rounders. Adept at defending and good at distributing the ball forward, these players are the beating heart of our tactic.
3rd Unit — the ‘creative unit’ is there to make up a trio of positions; our ‘winger’, ‘wing-back’ and ‘inverted winger’. Primarily for chance creation,, the quality of these players is a heavy factor in how well we function in the opposition third. This is evident as they contributed to 31 of 63 total assists for the club across all competitions.
4th Unit — our ‘attacking unit’ is there to score goals — plain and simple.
Looking at the radars, it confirms that Undav, Stergiou, Jeong, Stenzel and Millot do not fit the mold of the other players finding success within their ‘unit’. A reason I find these grouped radars helpful is that it also shows the Mittelstadt, despite averaging 6.83 over 479 minutes, is not of the same archetype as his colleagues. I’ll also looking to recruit a replacement for him this summer, giving me a prospective six signings before considering any outgoings.
In order of priority I need to sign a central midfielder, a centre-back, striker and right winger before considering any outgoings. Since Mittelstadt and Stenzel are perhaps the least offensive of our poor players, I’ll only look to replace them if the opportunity arises.
The Scouting Method.
Since I want to take an analytical approach to scouting I want to use the tools at my disposal before I send my scouts on to their respective assignments.
I’ll take every player who has played over 1000 minutes for their club, between the ages of 20–30 and export their in-game statistics data into a spreadsheet. It’s at this point that I utilise the excellent work of FM Stag’s article on ‘What good “good” look like in FM24?’ to then find my shortlist of options to scout. The barometers for respective statistics will be set at the ‘ok’ level, since we’re not yet at the stage of attracting elite talent.
For the following positions, I’ll be using the respective FM Stag baseline to filter my shortlist.
CB — ‘centre-back — stopper’. DM — ‘midfield — destroyer’. RW — ‘wide attacker — provider’. ST — ‘striker — goalscorer’ and ‘striker — provider’.
Any player who fits the criteria will be scouted, and everyone given above a ‘B’ rating by my scouts will have their agent approached to gauge interest in joining. I’ll then compare the players who are interested in MintE’s tool to see who is worth actually signing for the money.
Attacking Unit.
Saldanha was our first signing of the season, for a bargain bin price of £2.9m from FK Partizan. The Brazilian contributed to 29 goals in 32 league games for the Serbian side last season so can hopefully make the step up to the Bundesliga.
Unfortunately we could not renegotiate conract terms with Guirassy, so he left for his £17.25m release clause to Al-Alhi in the Saudi league. His replacement of Beto was thankfully already lined up, giving us another strong option upfront. A £35m total package secured the signing, more than I wanted to spend but in reality it’ll only reach that total if the Portuguese lives up to his potential with us.
I’m quite happy with this, as although it was slim picking when searching for a striker, with only Dani Gomez another legitimate option willing to join, we signed two high level players who perform well statistically.
Creative Unit.
Another slim pickings, the list of wingers who were willing to join us definitely wasn’t strong, and even our eventual signing Bryan Zaragoza didn’t join on my ideal terms. Bailey was my first choice, but demanded £125k p/w, and given that Bryan had a £12m release clause and would take a lower wage his addition to the side was a no brainer as he is clearly a better player than the last option, Jack Harrison.
Defensive Unit.
Our first choice of Anel Ahmedhodzic signed for Nottingham Forest which did put a slight dampener on my plans, but the two individuals were signed with versatility in mind.
Mendes cost us a mere £3.5m from Almeria and is capable of playing as a right back to provide cover for the frankly injury prone Vagnoman, but will be the second option for the right centre-back position.
The main signing of the two is Olivier Boscagli, who we approached in January when Ito left the club. He wouldn’t join without European football but now that we’ve achieved a Europa League finish he was happy to leave PSV Eidenhoven for us.
Youth Development.
Despite the loss of our starting goalkeeper Nubel, as he returns to his parent club Bayern Munich, and our need to get another midfielder in the pivot after Millot’s departure we have opted not to. In goal, our 18 year old prodigy Dennis Seimen has been promoted to the starting spot, and due to Boscagli’s extreme versatility he will rotate into the pivot, with 18 year old Samuele di Benedetto playing backup.
As we go into the 2024/25 season and our first foray into Europe in the next edition, here’s a reminder of the tactics and the team.
