FC Twente - Rebuilding with Youth

[kizmarlo]

FC Twente - Rebuilding with Youth 

2018/2019 Season Preview 

I'll admit, I'm not as 'up' on European football as I once was - but whilst searching for a team to take into my first long-term save of FM19, I discovered that Steve McLaren'shh former haunt Twente had found themselves in the second tier of Dutch football. By all accounts, it's down to financial mismanagement and instability, which makes the perfect storm for the sort of side I like to manage.



FC Twente have flirted with significant problems since 2014/15, with point deductions being given for their lack of financial control. The second of these deductions led to the firing of 18 staff, including the entire scouting team, according to trusty ol' wikipedia. After fighting and appealing the decision to forcefully relegate the side as punishment, it all become redundant as relegation occurred through natural causes last season.



Despite all of this, the club has held onto it's 30,205 capacity, all-seater stadium, De Grolsch Veste, and most definitely have the potential to bounce straight back up. However, the club have appointed a new stingy Welsh manager (me), who is determined to do things 'the right way' (whatever that means), so we shall wait with baited breath on how it will pan-out. Upon arriving at the club, the new manager announced that the club will be heading in a new direction - only signing players 21 and under - in order to fabricate a new model club that will hopefully act on a similar level to Benfica; encouraging financial stability and developing young talent to aide that cause.



The Squad:

Needless to say, the squad is very good for this level, and I'd be very, very disappointed to not get back into the Eerdivisie at the first time of asking. 

Not included here are the big names of Haris Vuckic and Oussama Assaidi, who have been dropped into the reserves as they are both out with very long term injuries. It's a shame I can't get them off the wage bill, but we'll just have to wait and see what sort of level they can play at when they both recover (around March-April, hopefully).



Other than this, however, we have some very good players at our disposal still. My particular highlights are Joel Drommel, Dylan George, Aitor Cantalapiedra and, of course, Ennio (Raymond's son) van der Gouw.



I immediately identified a gap in our team, and I wanted to bring-in a new centre-back. Due to a lack of funds (understandable), I had to sell before I bought; and the discovery of van der Gouw meant that my back-up keeper was surplus to requirements, so Jorn Brondeel found his way out of the door for £300k to Beerschot-Wilrijk in Belgium.



With that money, I scoured as much as my fledgling scouting team would let me, and found a new first-choice centre-back from FC Midtjylland in a structured deal worth £550k.

Pre-Season & Tactics:



Essentially, my tactical knowledge on this game is poor at best after some short-lived experiment saves so far. However, I am determined to get this right. I'm trying to create a split system with high pressure and urgency up-front, but defensive stability in-behind. The sort of thing that can win games in the second tier, yet provide a strong base for the fight post-promotion. As such, we'll be playing a fairly simple 433 with an Anchor at DM, with some forced creativity on the wings in the form of an Advanced Playmaker (Cantalapiedra/George, rotating) at right wing. It's not something I've tried before, but I like the idea of having a non-gung-ho-type Inside Forward, drifting inside onto their left foot and creating key passes for our lone striker. On the left, we'll be backed-up by a traditional winger, and one surging runner from central midfield.

Needless to say, it's been an alright start - but I'm definitely not counting my chickens just yet.

[Ben]

Another name from the olden days! How are you Kiz? Great to see you still playing and posting. Good start in Holland, I like your approach and I like the look of Nicolaisen. Keep it up!

[kizmarlo]

Dec 16, 2018 21:24:51 GMT Ben said:

Another name from the olden days! How are you Kiz? Great to see you still playing and posting. Good start in Holland, I like your approach and I like the look of Nicolaisen. Keep it up!

I'm good ta - great to see you about too. Not going to lie, reading your Beira-Mar save was the catalyst for me fancying writing-up another long-term save, so thanks for ruining my social life!



Nicolaisen's a class act, it must be said. Nothing spectacular about him, but to be that well-rounded at his age is a great starting point for development. Either he'll stay-around for a while, or I'll get a good fee for him in the future should a cheaper new option become available. That's generally the ethos of the whole save... should be fun tinkering and developing all over the shop.

[kizmarlo]

Shaping a Club

As I admitted in a comment above, the reason I'm getting back into FM in a big way is mainly due to the level of detail that Ben goes into, and remembering just how much I used to love doing it too.  Now, I certainly don't have the patience to learn the whole new training system just yet, I'm taking baby steps to ensure long-term success by recruiting a backroom team that should help us develop young talent as best as possible.

Out goes, well, everyone really.  And in comes a team full of high-level experience.  Granted, these guys don't have the best training attributes, but I figured I can increase that specialisation in years to come.  More important to me was making sure that we had the right 'men' to look after our young blood.

Look at those personalities for a second division team's coaching staff 

My personal favourite appointment is the poaching of Jonas Thern from IFK Varnamo.  Rangers fans may remember the season he had with you in 1998 - but more importantly for my own attachment to the save is that he spent three seasons (89-92) at Benfica, the club I am somewhat trying to model in this game.  For this level, he looks a fantastic HoYD, and should be with us for a long time if things go as I expect.

Beyond this, and as mentioned beforehand, I'm obviously looking to increase the number of coaches at the club once our budget and stature allows it.  This club needs to be cultivating as many young players as possible, and this is the easiest way to do it.  Having minimum 3* coaches across the board in training is the first step, and I'm delighted we've got there from the offset.

Training-wise, we've had some good results.  New signing Nicolaisen has hit 9+ ratings every week bar one, and young Afghan striker Omid Musawi has also been churning great training performances and mild attribute increases.  He may not ever 'make it' for me, but seeing young players apply themselves in a new system is very reassuring.  Nicolaisen, however, is really coming good.  A left-footed ball-playing centre-back is all kinds of 'my bag', and he'll most likely be sticking-around a fair while at the club.  He also shows signs of being able to retrain to CDM, which is possibly useful given 32-year-old Wout Brama's decline - but I'm more hopeful that we can purchase a new CDM in the summer instead.

To show the team as it is, you can see that I have attempted to change things and somewhat over-commit in attack in order to try and increase our forward effectiveness.  However, every tinker I make isn't seeming to work, as I appear to have accidentally become the second coming of José Mourinho - being top of the league and going unbeaten in the first 19 games, only conceding 12 goals (11W/).  Don't get me wrong, it's a great start, but I'd like us to be able to put teams away rather than scrape 1-0 wins and 0-0 draws all season.  The wide advanced playmaker is now an inside forward, and I'm tinkering with the central midfield to try to recycle possession quicker and do something with it.  Originally, Brama was an Anchor Man, but we were getting hardly any creative output from anyone other than Espinosa.

So, to summise, we've been doing well.  Top of the league at Christmas, and plenty to keep my mental cogs ticking-along.  I'm not expecting a huge amount of action in January, though there's a lot of interest in my bang-average striker, so if I can get a good fee for him, I may dig my toes into the market to get a good young replacement.  Other than that, I've triggered contract extensions for Dylan George and our keeper Drommel, and there are 5-6 squad players that now have six months to prove whether they are good enough to stay with the team.  The difficulty is knowing that I have to replace them with U21s if they do leave, and I don't want a major overhaul on the eve of (potentially) our return to the top division.

[ianf]

Great to see you back and looking forward to following this with interest.

[kizmarlo]

Dec 19, 2018 19:57:42 GMT ianf said:

Great to see you back and looking forward to following this with interest.

Thanks Ian (this is the original Ian, I assume?) - it's hard work, but I'm enjoying getting back into FM after a long break.  Glad to see someone's reading my progress, haha!

[Nick]

Great choice of club, Kiz, and great to have you here and posting about FM again.

I hadn't realised Twente had been relegated until this season started and I had a little bet on the Dutch second division. Good start and, as you say, promotion is the only aim this season and, if we're honest, should be a bit of a cakewalk. It does allow you to experiment and give starts to some younger players that may normally have been overlooked.

[kizmarlo]

A Tale of Two Halves

Spoiler Alert:  The following is somewhat tragic.

After coasting through the league unbeaten for the first six months, we hit the winter break in a big cloud of optimism.  So much so, that I let my 'bang average' striker leave FC Groningen for a fee of £1.2m, figuring that our team was good enough to support a young player taking his place... especially with such a good defensive record.  However, it simply wasn't supposed to be.  6 wins from 19 left us dropping from comfortably top, to 3rd in the table - and into the Playoffs.

In the 2nd Round, we put our bad form aside to win 7-2 on aggregate against FC Volendam.  However, a 4-2 defeat against PEC Zwolle meant that they retained their top division status, and we went back to the drawing board.

As you can see from the table, we drew so, so many games.  Far too many.  And as such, I made a commitment to shape the squad in a more gung-ho, attacking manner.  I've flip-flopped from a cautious mentality, to one of 'we're going to score more than you' in the space of six months.

With this in mind, I conducted a 'state of the club' review, and found that I wanted to potentially sacrifice immediate success in order to get my youth project underway.  One case in point was Assaidi, who was by far our highest earner.  The second highest wage at the club was £3.2k p/w, and Assaidi was on £11.25k p/w just after cruciate ligament surgery (at 31).  His contract was expiring in the summer, and I hardly stepped-in when he was negotiating a move to Rapid Vienna (a terrible club if ever I saw one).

With these wages freed-up, I knew I didn't need to make too many sales in order to bring-in some young talent.  However, one of our first-choice centre-backs had been begging for a move, and was becoming disruptive to the dressing room - so Peet Bijin leaves for Willem II for £900k.  Given the board gives me 35% of player sales in the transfer kitty, I was going on a splurge.

Welcome to our first wave of young players entering the FC Twente production conveyor belt.  Melvin Sitti was brought-in from Sochaux in a structured £425k deal to play as our deep-lying playmaker.  He's not spectacular in any specific area, but for the level we're at, he's marvellous.  I'm working on his physical stats to make it so that he hopefully stands-up to top-tier football in the near future.

Kevin Dellinger was a £90k signing from Lyon, who couldn't find a role for him.  At the moment, he's rotating with van der Heyden in the Central Midfielder (spare man) role we're running, and I hope that once he's more familiar in the slightly deeper role, he'll start coming good.

Next, we have Meritan Shabani.  A now-full Kosovan international signing for £50k from Bayern II, he is our star Mezzala, running the empty space vacated by our inside forward on the left.  I'm not sure how much more he can develop, but even the slightest improvement will make him a very, very useful player for the Eredivisie.  

The reason why I brought-in quite so many young players is because our own intake was particularly poor this season.  I'm hoping that in years to come, I can lean on that more than bringing in external signings.  I've always thought on FM that team cohesion is so important, so that's something I want to keep going as long as possible.

On that note, I had some very good news in the summer that should help our long-term ambitions:

That money was never going to get spent well on acquisitions at our level, and so I persuaded the board to improve both our training and youth facilities.  I'm hoping I can get them as good as possible, as quickly as possible; in order to support the new philosophy of the club.  On that note, I didn't want to overspend on an inside forward and striker for this level, as I'm hoping I can attract better, and more cost effective options once promotion is acheived, and therefore we did complete two very good loan signings in the form of Franck Evina from Bayern II, and Rafik Zekhnini resigning for another season from Fiorentina.  You can see how pre-season went with them below:

One final thing to add before I try to rush through this season (I'm that optimistic), is the signing of a young 16 year old Nigerian (17 in the screenshot I took) from Racing Santander for £70k.  As soon as I expanded my scouting budget with the influx of funds from Corona's sell-on fee, he popped-up, and I think he's got all the hallmarks of being a fantastic little player.  I'm going to try and give him as much game-time as possible, and I'm so very, very excited by the look of him.

[kizmarlo]

Dec 20, 2018 20:05:11 GMT Nick said:

Great choice of club, Kiz, and great to have you here and posting about FM again.

I hadn't realised Twente had been relegated until this season started and I had a little bet on the Dutch second division. Good start and, as you say, promotion is the only aim this season and, if we're honest, should be a bit of a cakewalk. It does allow you to experiment and give starts to some younger players that may normally have been overlooked.

Hey Nick - you had to jinx it didn't you?!?

Seriously though, it's good to be back - and it's also great to see familiar faces such as yours still about.

I am hopeful for promotion this season, mind.  I'll admit naivety as this is genuinely my first save of FM19, and that's perhaps where it went wrong with not understanding the correlations between tactics and the new match engine.  We'll get there though, I'm sure of it.