SR67 - Comments

I have managed to convince the board to offer me a new two-year-deal. I expect to be challenging for promotion to the Premier League by the end of it. We have just taken the first steps towards making that a reality but securing a Play-Off spot. However 2nd place Oxford look like they have the easier run-in. If we can beat Peterborough in the next fixture I'm confident we can at least secure automatic promotion.

Cheers mate almost there!

I just offered Duncan Watmore mutual termination which he accepted saving the club around £70k over the remainder of his deal.

However, the board are still mad.

As part of my player evaluation, I have made a few handy Exel sheets. Basically, it comes up with a Total Football Sunderland DNA score. Going into next season I have set the following thresholds (based on being in the Championship). GK will be exempt and scored in there own way. This is the way I work out the current squad.

18-21 - 50%
22-24 - 55%
25-27 - 60%
27+ - 65%

Being knocked out the FA Cup by Reading may turn out the be a blessing in disguise. 13 points from 15 means we now sit top, though we could drop a place when games on hand are played. It has done wonders for our goal difference. Joel Lynch has been a rock at the back, pairing mostly with Ibrahima Cisse during the run of clean sheets.

Domonic Samuel came in on loan from Blackburn and scored on his debut. He fits the bill on an F9 quite nicely and is on low wages compared to some who left. His arrival also seemed to have spurred Will Griggs to score his first goal in a long time. The big sale of the window was 29 y.o. Tommy Smith to Inter Miami for £900k, which will go through in February. A regular starter who was replaced by more suitable CB's in Tommie Hoban and Cisse. A few others left for less notable fees but It freed up £42k p/w. Massive for a League 1 club.

We currently lose around £1.5m p/m so the reduction in wages should ease that a little.







First I've seen this

I've been given the month to turn things around...

Our form has been shocking and I'm under quite a bit of pressure now. Will Griggs has gone from a goal every other game to no goals in 8. I was very reluctant to spend in January but I may need to bring in another forward as the back-up players are just not up to it and I'll look to ship out to free up some funds. January is going to be a very big month overall. I brought in Tommie Hoban on a free and shipped out 4 younger players on high wages who would be leaving at the end of the season.

This how I want us to line up going forward. We're not that far off it at the moment. There are a few players on high wages that just don't suit and I'll look to ship out in January. I made one signing with Ibrahima Cisse signing a 3-year deal. He fits the profile perfectly in terms of age, low wages, free and has sell on value, and versitlie. He is a midfielder but I'll be using him as BPD.

Goals for 2020/21

• 100 points
• 100 goals
• <22 conceded
• Net positive transfers

Squad Review



Loans Ending

• Fraser Forster
• Mo Elyounoussi
• Odsonne Edouard

Contract Ending

• Jonnny Hayes

Already Sold

• Nir Bitton

We had the chance to clinch the league at Ibrox but crashed to a 2-0 defeat. Ultimately it had no great effect as we went on to win the title by 9 points and wrap up Celtic 4th consecutive Treble. Incredibly Livingston made it to the final despite needing the play-off to save them from relegation beating QoS for survival. Dundee Utd ran away with the Championship.

The versatility of the squad is incredible. This was my subs bench for a 2-0 win over Bolton. This is something I will look at when signing players.

Full-backs - should either be capable of playing CM/DM or wingers
Centrebacks - ideally can play in midfield also
Central midfielders - should be competent in a number of roles, possibly even cover CB
Sticker/wingers - they should be able to interchange

Signing Criteria


This is the signing criteria for Total Football Sunderland.

For League 1 I expect a minimum of 10 for 12/14 stats. When looking to recruit I will look to push them towards 12. The current squad in relation to the filter we are lacking in central defence. Joel Lynch is the closest - let down by 9s in anticipation, decisions and OTB - however, he is a BPD so that is a positive. He's performing well in the role so far and at 31 has no sell on value really. I'll keep him until his contract expires at the end of the season and re-evaluate.

Tommie Hoban looks like he could be a very promising signing. He looks an improvement on my 2nd choice CB Jordan Willis. His injury history is a concern but if I can get him on a cheap enough deal weighted with appearances until the end of the season I think I will. He is out until December so I will hold off but he is definitely on my radar.

I have identified some targets for the positions above.

CB - John Souttar is my number one target as he looks like he could play the ball out from the back and be a replacement for Kris Ajer. I also have young Robbie Daes who looks like he can come back form loan and do a job for us. Both have had a fairly good season so far.

GK - It will be disappointing not signing Fraser Forster at the end of the season. A combination of trying to stick to the rules and wage demands mean he'll be returning South. I did arrange to bring in Angus Gunn at the end of the season for £3.5m. At only 24 he still has a lot of room for development and his wage demands were half of Forster's. Though representing England at all youth levels his father Bryan Gunn has 6 caps for Scotland.

AM - I took up the option to sign Billy Gilmore for a club-record £20m. He has to be a success because it would be impossible to recoup our losses if not. I also signed Ryan Gauld, once considered the most exciting prospect in Scotland. At £1m and fairly low wages, it was an easy decision.

As chance would have it my vison and the club's vision appear to line up. Going forward I will set up with an intense attacking 4-5-1. I want goals, and I want lots of them. Currently, we have the right squad for it at this level. The only thing missing is a playmaker. That will be my one January target, providing I don't sell anyone. Like I said I want to keep squad disruption to a minimum.

Luckily we have a very good youth squad. I have promoted two to the first team from the u23s to see if they suit my idea of the type of playmaker I want. One of them looks like they could fit the mould. Most of them look like they could step in January if I was to offload some of the higher earners.

Going forward there will be a wage structure in place. I worked this out at around £150k p/w using 60% of revenue from annual ticket sales. I'll adjust my estimates as I get more information going forward. November will be a good time to review this.



I also had a clear out of the department heads to bring in my own team. Chris Doig joins as my assistant he's been around the Football League for a few years so should be a useful appointment. The other appointments as follows.



Pre-season went smoothly as we won most of our games. Lynden Gooch and loanee Antoine Semenyo have impressed so far with 5 goals each of the wings. They are both versatile and can play right across the front three. The ideal type of players when trying to keep the squad small and close-knit. Each position in the squad will have three KPI's (key performance indicators) that I'll assess quarterly. What exactly they are is TBC but for wingers the are as follows.

1. Key passes/90mins
2. Cross completion % (W) or shots on target/90mins (IF)
3. Dribbles per game

Moneyball in the North-East:
Taking Sunderland back to the Premier League

What's going wrong at Sunderland? The big question.
From starting up and having a quick browse I can see some mismanagement already. Looking at my first XI, only three of them are in the top 10 earners at the club. The club is healthy financially however the £10m annual wage bill will quickly eat into the £15m bank balance.

I'm happy with the squad size as the focus will be on promotion. Cup competitions will be for back-up and youth players due to the demands of a 46 game league season. The squad should be good enough to see us out League 1 but I am missing a playmaker and unless there is someone coming through it will be my first purchase.

I have decided to go down the Moneyball route to sort this mess out. I took Alex Stewart's 10 commandments from his The Set Pieces blog that he derived from Soccernomics. In italics is my take on them and how I'll implement it.

Moneyball in the North-East

1. Net wage spend is more important than net transfer spend (pp. 14-21) – This means that a £1m 28 y.o. winger might not be the bargain you assume if they want £80k p/w over 3 years. The time you add it up with bonuses etc. you are north of £15m. The better option might be the 23 y.o. prospect with two good seasons under his belt for £4.5m but only commands a wage of £18k p/w. This will set the club back less than £8m after 3 years and you should have a sellable asset.
2. Don’t needlessly splash out on new players or sell old ones when you take over a club – the New Manager Syndrome (pp. 21-22) – Avoid new manager syndrome by disabling transfers in the first window. Max of 3 signings in summer and 2 in January, 1 if top of the table/overperforming.
3. Don’t buy players who impressed at international tournaments: they’re likely to be overvalued and past performance is no indication of future performance, especially when they’re playing with a different team (pp. 22-24) – There are different incentives and a different tactical set-up at tournaments, and it’s a super small sample size. – Not quite sure how I translate this into FM as it is probably not as erratic as IRL.
4. Some nationalities are overrated, like Holland, Brazil, and England (pp. 24-25) – It’ll be difficult to stick to this managing Sunderland, I suppose the key is to avoid overpaying. Use the transfer list and bosman deals.
5. Sell your players at the right time: when they’re around 30 years old, goalkeepers aside (p. 29) – The current first-team squad has 5 players around this age that I will look to replace by the start of next season.
6. Use the wisdom of crowds: ask all your scouts and a Director of Football if you have one (pp. 43-44) – Take full advantage of the new staff roles and have recruitment team do the work for me. However, I will take control of negotiations to keep things as tight as possible.
7. Buy players in their early twenties, which avoids the problems with not developing properly, and means previous statistics have greater value (pp. 45-47) – Easy to do, set the scouts to look for players 20-25 don’t sign anyone over or under for a fee.
8. Centre-forwards cost more than they should (p. 47) – Go strikerless, retrain, look for loans/frees? Not sure how to attack this yet. I’ll get 2/3 seasons out Will Grigg so I should probably get looking at the end of the season as there doesn’t appear to be anyone in the u23s or u19s.
9. Sell any player if a club offers more than they are worth and try to replace them before they are sold (pp. 48-49) – This is obviously subjective. How much is your forward worth if he has scored 20 league goals in January and you are on track for promotion? If a player becomes unhappy, we find a replacement and sell. I might need to come up with a formula here to make the decision quantitative.
10. Don’t buy players if you don’t need to: develop a youth network and try to develop your own players (pp. 49-51) – My limit on signings policy should help here. Max of 3 in the summer and 2 in January. As for youth players, I will look to bring in some promising youngsters <£250k to fill in the gaps.

An update on how the squad building is going. This is essentially how the squad would roughly look in 2-3 seasons if I wasn't to add to it. Technically Kris Ajer breaks a lot of rules however I imagine there will be a bid for him before then anyway. He is being kept around due to the fact of his homegrown status.

Looking at things I need the following

1. CB
2. GK
3. AM

The players below fall into the same category as Ajer - they can hang around a little longer but will essentially be sold for profit.

Squad Building
Current first-team squad members: 25
Squad size at the end of the season: 32
Reserves: 17 (11 out on loan)

So as you can see from the numbers the squad is very bloated. I have an idea of at least 10 that will be shipped out permanently and some that will be loaned out. From next season the reserves will consist of 11 players all either Scottish or that have come through our youth system (bought before 18 or younger).

Current non-Scots at the club u21 will also get some more leniency when selling however, the aim remains the same. I don't want a massive overhaul more gradual.

Transfers
So far there have been two major sales. Odsonne Edouard joined Man City for £60m reaching £75m after appearances, I did manage to include a clause that seen him loaned back to finish the season. Long term club servant Nir Biton also left for Southampton for £8m, he was a handy player to have but his departure will force me to look to the younger players to step up. 10 went out on loan and a couple of youngsters on frees.



First to come in was Cammy Logan, a young Scottish right-back who I probably shouldn't have signed. He looks like he could turn into a good full-back but we are probably covered in that area. Tony Watt of Barcelona fame returned, he will be a decent 3rd choice striker and do well in the reserves. Billy Gilmour was loaned with the option to buy for £20m - I'll probably take it up as he looks a real talent. As I said above Odsonne Edouard returns on loan to add to his 33 goals. El Hadj Coly has been brought in to continue the conveyor belt of French strikers passing through Celtic Park and turning a tidy profit.

Domestically the wheels have come off a bit. Since dropping points for the first time of the season against Hearts we have only won 3 in 7 league matches. We have spectacularly threw away a 6 point lead and are now behind on goal difference with a game in hand.

In Europe, we have exceeded expectations. We came extremely close to last 16 qualification. After an incredible 4-3 win over group-topping Athletico following another win over Galatasary all that was required was a draw at Stamford Bridge. Unfortunately, we fell just short losing 1-0.









Open for a surprise

Facility Upgrades

So I've now had time to have a proper evaluation of the Scots under 30 at the club. This is how we line up meeting the criteria in the first post. I have looked to extend all of their contracts so essentially these are the players I'll look to improve on when making signings.

Of the younger players here Stephen Welsh and Ewan Henderson have been promoted to the first team and impressed. I'll look to bring in Karamoko Dembele and Calvin Miller in January once I make some space or maybe loan them out.

So going forward from the 2020/21 season they will all be promoted to the first team leaving me 7 spaces for non-Scots for that season.



Intake Preview

I've managed to make one transfer out so far, hopefully, they make it permanent.



I promoted two youngsters to the first team and both are performing well. Ewan Henderson particularly. We now have 11/25 Scottish players in the first-team.



The first team standouts. Odsonne Edouard has been phenomenal with 20 goals, 14 coming in just 8 league appearances.




Domestically it has been utter domination. Particular highlights so far have been a very young side winning 6-1 over Dunfermline, Mikey Johnstone netting 4 as we win 8-1 in Perth and of course the Odsonne Edouard hat-trick in the win over Rangers.

We strolled thought the UCL qualifiers and were drawn a tough group. We currently sit 3rd and a home win over Galatasaray should seal UEL last 32 after an injury-time penalty earned us the points in Turkey. The Chelsea loss at home was disappointing after coming back from 2-0 down to conceded a Pedro effort in the 88th.

Interesting...

Changes

Player Eligibility

• Scotland Internationals born/raised outside Scotland
• Born/raised in Scotland but capped for another Nation
• Eligble for Scotland but uncapped for their Nation

Squad Building

• Reduce number of non-Scots by 25% January 2020
• Each season reduce the number for non-Scots by 50% from season 2020/21
• Have a max First Team Squad of 25 (now at 23 so in the maintain phase)
• After 2019/20 each non-Scot counts as two spaces

We've had a great start to the season with promising friendly results and a comfortable 1st round CL win. I have struggled to even get anyone out on loan as I disabled budged in the first windows. I assume there have been some changes this year. So the six players above have been placed into the reserves until January.

The first-team squad size is now 23 which means I will need to bleed in some youngsters.

Squad Building
My main priority looks like it could be a struggle finding some good quality centre-halfs. Obviously Scott Brown is missing here but at his age, a replacement is needed soon. I would also like to upgrade the keeper at some point but Scott Bain is capable to take over from Fraser Forster at the end of the season.