With a new season of Football Manager mere days away, I wanted to pay a fond farewell to the Wolverhampton Wanderers team that I put together across 200 hours and five virtual seasons. The save, which I started unemployed with the intention of working my way up to one of the top jobs, morphed into one of the most exciting squads of young talent that I’ve ever put together and will give me a reason to keep this save running even after I have my mitts on the 2019 version of the management sim.
Tactics
As a virtual manager, I believe that you should buy players to fit a system and ethos rather than creating numerous ways of playing based on what opportunities the market offers, so that’s where I’ll start.
After a few experiments with creating possession based tactics to mixed success on prior saves, I decided that this season it seemed that the match engine favoured a slightly more direct approach. To that end, I created a balanced tactic that found a sweet spot between ball retention, chance creation and pressing without leaving gaps at the back. Think of it as a less aggressive version of Klopp’s post-Coutinho way of playing at Liverpool.
Overview
Mentality
I used the same tactic home and away, tweaking mentality depending on the match situation:
| Mentality | When to use |
| Contain | Never |
| Defensive | Struggling to hold onto a lead away from home |
| Counter | Away fixtures against teams stronger than you Home fixtures against very strong teams |
| Standard | Away fixtures against teams you are stronger than Home fixtures against teams of equal strength |
| Control | Away fixtures against teams you are much stronger than Home fixtures against teams weaker than you |
| Attacking | Never |
| Overload | Whenever you’re chasing a goal in the last 10 minutes |
What to expect
While I’m sure this way of playing will infuriate tactical purists for having too many Team Instructions and that it seems like the gap between Midfield and Attack needs to be bridged, as the results in the next section show, this system really does work and it’s important to remember that Football Manager is an imperfect simulation that has flaws which can be exploited. Hence the insane set of Strikerless tactics that worked in 2017 that have been nerfed to hell by Sports Interactive in the 2018 version of the game. Overall stats that show off the strength and weaknesses for this way of playing are below:
Results & Honours
After getting the job as Wolves boss (on the back of being an ex-international player) on the game date of 18/12/2017 and guiding them from 18th and up via the playoffs, the team finished 6th in its first season in the 18/19 Premier League, improved to 4th in 19/20, finished 2nd in 20/21 (despite only losing two games) winning the Champions League, before finally landing the Premier League title a season after.
Like in every game of Football Manager, there are teams that set out with vigour to thwart your best efforts to become the best in the land and on this save it was Jose Mourinho and Manchester United. Using the Red Devil’s amazing spending power, Jose amassed an array of talent that quite simply I didn’t think I could beat to the title until they, finally, had a dodgy season. At the end of the current season, their frontline consists of a choice between Harry Kane, Paul Dybala, Romalu Lukaku, Alexis Sanchez, Marcus Rashford, Delle Alli, Radia Nainggolan, Jesse Lingard and Riccardo Perriera. It’s a little much. That being said, although I’ve only won the title I’m more than proud of what my team of youngsters has managed to win.
Players
So who were the heroes that I used to finally overhaul Jose’s array of talent? Well, I used is a less than healthy mix of talent we all know and amazing regens for a team that, in reality, shouldn’t be mature enough to win a title against that United team. Here a selection of the best:
Defenders
Midfielders
Strikers
Want the Save File or have a question?
Want to have a little fun poking around my save or have any questions? Then get in touch and I’ll be happy to chat with you.
