SR67 - Comments

I have decided to re-write this. With the focus shifting back to squad development and tactical pragmatism. I will start with a summary of my first season and build up to where we are not with bi-annual season posts to follow.

2016/17 Season
As you will have seen from the previous thread we had a very successful season. I started by navigating the UCL qualifiers and putting out Hapoel Be'er Sheeva, Partizani and Rosenborg. A good run of domestic form followed including the 9-0 thumping of Rangers and lift the League Cup with a convincing 4-1 win over St. Johnstone in the final.

The UCL group stage got off to a terrible start for us. Back-to-back-to-back defeats left us bottom of the table with only 1 goal scored and 9 against. Incredibly in the games that followed we drew 2-2 with Juventus, hammered Spurs 7-1 and beat Leverkusen in Germany 3-1 to finish above them in 3rd place on the basis of goals scored. This was in the process of racking up a run of 17 games undefeated domestically. This was undone by a lack of planning and back luck as we faced Partick Thistle. A high defencive line, slow CB's and a good perforce from their keeper ended the run.

We then went another 15 games without a loss domestically until priorities took over. We had went on a great UEL run knocking out the likes of Club Brugge [3-1], Schalke [a4-4]. So when it came up to fixtures around the UEL quarter-final I rested the whole squad resulting in a loss before the first leg and a draw before the second. However it was worth it when we beat Fiorentina on aggregate 2-0 to reach the semi-final.

The remainder of the season we dropped just 2 points and lifted the Scottish Cup with a win over Hearts. In the UEL semi-final we came up against high-flying Athletic Bilbao. A ruling 180 minutes saw us take the tie 3-2 on aggregate thanks to a James Forrest equaliser in the home leg. In the final we lined up against Man Utd. I did my homework, got the tactics and line-up right (or so I thought). We were more that a match for the as we came back from 2-0 down at half time to take the match all the way to penalties.



Our luck ran out in the final. We came up against the side that would finish 3 points off the EPL title and we took them all the way to penalties. When you take everything into consideration we had a great season. We showed that we can make an impact in Europe and not just there to make up the numbers. Domestically we wrapped up the treble with ease. We won the Scottish Premiership by 18 points, with us scoring 92 goals along the way. It will be a tough season to top but a challenge I look forward to.





Transfers
I only made one signing during my first transfer window. Diego Poyet arrived on a free transfer but was quickly loaned out along wit a few other players to reduce the wage bill. Then came the January window and in come two new faces.

Julian Green joined from Bayern Munich meeting all signing criteria that I had set, and all at the bargain price of £950k. We needed an extra forward as I only had Leigh Griffiths and Moussa Dembele, the were both playing very well but the amount of fixtures coming up one injury could have caused problems. He could also offer cover on the left wing. As I lucked out getting in a quick CB - Rob Holding opted for Swansea and Jerry St. Juste was not for sale. I went down another route and brought in a FB who could cover CB for a fee of £3.8million - Linus Wahlqvist. This meant he or Mikel Lustig could cover CB when more pace is needed. Several players left the first team ranks notably Cristian Gamboa [£1.5 mil to Marseille], Nir Bitton [£3 mil to Marseille], Efe Ambrose and Kris Commons [free]. 

Could one of the Mods please lock this.

I'm not happy with the slipping standard of writing towards the end of the season and pre-season. It will continue in a fresh thread as it has strayed from the topics and styles I originally wanted to discuss.

Thanks.

Phase 4 of my scouting network was set up early pre-season. Leigertwood will cover the Caribbean region looking for talented youngsters, Ayala will be looking ofr the best young players in South America and Da Silva North America.



A host of players have arrived on free transfers. The first - genuine competition for Craig Gordon. Lovre Kalinic will be my first choice keeper in years to come and challenge Gordon for the jersey this season. His passing and first touch isn't great so that is something we will have to work on.



The versatile Marco Friedl joined and was loaned out to feeder club Kaiserlautern. On reflection I should have sent him elsewhere as I don't see him getting much game time.



He doesn't fit my singing policy but he was one I couldn't ignore. He's the typical box-to-box midfielder and managed an incredible 17 assists last season for Burnley.



Another player who impressed so much last season is Nemanja Maksimovic. A great season for Astana seen him become a full international for Serbia. He couldn't get a work permit so will spend the season in Italy.



Matthew Knox is another example of picking out the best in Scottish youth. He will spend the year in the Scottish Championship with Dundee Utd - a step up from L1 at Livingston.

Great start and great kits this year!

A lot has happened since the season came to a close. The board upgraded both club training and youth facilities. The training facilities are currently classed as 'excellent' and the youth facilities 'great'. This should help us produce more of our own players and better players to filter out through Scottish football.



Great news for the Scottish game as we are climbing our way back up the rankings, we need to move up one more place to have an effect on the qualification places. Celtic also shot up 22 spaces, hopefully the other clubs can help the nation coefficient this year.







There was a lot of transfer activity. Lets start with the players who left; firstly Kolo Toure chose to retire at the end of the season, possibly due to lack of game time towards the closing stages. Doris De Vries also retired. Bailly, Allan, Ciftci, Janko and Boyata all left and raised £3.25 mil between them. None were going to be anywhere near the first team. A lot of players left on loan, monthly thoughout Scotland.





The first arrival was Jai Quintogo, a quick striker who will spend the season on loan at top flight side St Johnstone. The finished 5th last year so he should be part of a good side this season.



Ederson Hyndman has been my most expensive singing yet. He cost £4 million from Bournemouth and will line up with former Fulham teammates Paddy Roberts (who's loan was extended) and Moussa Dembele this year. He looks a good all-round player and I expect him to develop well under the tutor of Scott Brown.

Thanks @Dan I'm really eager to get into it.

Touching distance Dan, hope you do it this year!

End of Season Review
Scottish Premiership
We were outstanding, we racked up an incredible 96 points. We won all but 7 matches and the majority of them were what I call a tactical loss. By that I mean before or after a CL/EL fixture where the squad was heavily rotated. Another loss came in a run of 10 games in December. But enough about losses. What about the highlights? A 9-0 win over Rangers costing Mark Warburton his job, and winning all 4 derby fixtures. A 3-0 win up at Pitodrie over the runners up. Leigh Griffiths netting 4 agains Ross County.

Domestic Cups
Not much to say on these, both wrapped up relatively comfortably. Partick Thistle gave us a scare in the Scottish Cup as it took us a replay and a last minute winner from Moussa Dembele to send us into the quarter final.

Champions League
We coasted through the qualifiers and into the riches of the group stage. The first round of fixtures made it look as if we were there to make up the numbers but in the final 3 games we drew with Juve , spanked Spurs 7-1 and put Leverkusen to the sward in Germany to progress to the Europa League last 32.

Europa League
What a run this was, we just never seemed to get the luck of the draw. We played to 4 sides from Germany, Italy, Spain and England. And somehow managed to reach the final. After and incredible comeback from 2-0 down we eventually lost on penalties .

Squad
Incredibly there wasn't a single poor player in the whole squad, no-one averaged under 7.00. This as you can imagine is a managers dream problem. Even the back-up keepers made the step up. I had two strikers who scored over 30 goals each and Scott Sinclair managed 23.

Awards




Finances

On the run up to the final I kept an eye on the Man Utd line up. I figured they would line up in a 4411 formation so to counteract it I was initially going to two with a 4141. The. I thought about it, there was going to be a lot of space in-between defence and midfield to exploit. So I pushed James Forrest and Tom Rogic up to try and work some magic.

At half time I noticed Forrest was very isolated, he only attempted 11 passes. So I brought on Callum McGregor as a wide midfielder. We eventually equalised an Rogic became a CM and Scott Sinclair pushed up in the hope his pace could get us a winner. It wasn't to be, we stretched the game out to penalties but poor finishing cost us.

Thanks @Fola glad you're enjoying it!

A great end to the season to set us up for two big cup finals. We fought hard to get through against a solid Bilbao side sitting 7th in La Liga. With Hearts in between the only player who started the 3 games in a row was Craig Gordon, I rested the starting XI. Once that was sealed we came up against Rangers and finished the season with a 100% record over them thanks to a Leigh Griffiths hat-trick to take him to top of the goal chart. Have a look at the stats from the game. Again the full squad was rested for the Dundee game.

We finished the season on 96 points, just incredible. We romped home with a lead of 18 points, scoring an impressive 92 goals. I not only overtook Dundee we finished top in the possession charts. What I noticed about Dundee was they play with a narrow 5 man midfield, meaning they get quite good pass stats and possession. Another interesting one was the cross completion, I always thought it was poor - obviously not in comparison.

Its good to see Hibs come up and Killie go down, this means we will have a much stronger league next year.

Very intrigued to see how many Saviola scores

Dan, what happened? I seen the first leg and couldn't believe the second. Has anyone been sniffing around Hassall yet?

As it is the tail end of the season I decided to get a few more youth players out for first team football. The selection process in deciding where they go is as follows; squad status, league status, competition in position. Tony Ralston is the most interesting one here for me as he joins Jamie McCart at Dundee Utd. McCart tipped to be a star for the future is impressing at Dundee Utd and coaches informed me that he is now a ‘good Scottish Premiership defender’. A season a Kaiserslautern may be in order next season, something I am eager to utilise.



Three more transfers have been arranged for the end of the season. Marco Friedl and Jai Quitongo will come and a most likely be loaned out to gain first team experience. The real gem here though is Emerson Hyndman who will cost £4mil from Bournemouth. He will join former teammate Moussa Dembele (and hopefully Paddy Roberts) in the first team squad.



This month was all about prioritising. Hearts result was unexpected as we had a full strength side, but these things happen. We wrapped up the title in the following match at home vs. Partick Thistle, a beauty from Captain Scott Brown securing the title. In both Kilmarnock and Ross County games we heavily rotated to prioritise the Fiorentina (3rd in Seire A) and Scottish Cup Semi. In Italy we lined up 4141 and held out won then went 4411 in the home leg and dominated from the off. Up next in our European adventure is a tough tie vs. Athletic Bilbao.

The most interesting tactical change here was using Scott Brown as a DM, CM or BBM as opposed to BWM. His aggression sees him booked/sent off far too often, compared to real life figures its insane. His yellow cards went form 6 in 8 games to just 1 in 8.

You went through that £2mil quite fast! You'll be needed a big sale or promotion soon I think.

Becoming a real yo-yo club here, will be good for the development of the younger players though I suppose.

The H&W result was a shocker, if anything that's the one you would have expected to win.

Great season you're having here Dan, back-to-back promotions would do wonders for club reputation I imagine.

Tiote should be a great signing, just got him on a pre-contract for Hertha Berlin.

Interested to see how your wage budget goes. What is the max you can offer a key player?

We progressed again in the Europa League and now face Fiorentina in the Quarter Final. We almost blew it, in Germany we were up 3-1 and ended up losing the match. We eased through another two rounds of the Scottish Cup on the march towards the treble. Another win over Rangers kicked out a 100% league record for this month. One very important thing I learned in terms of tactical adaptability was to always keep the opponent formation open in the match screen.



In terms of stats, we seem to be missing a load of penalties. Despite have some good finishers in the squad. However here is the good news. Look at out league table. We are netting 2.8 goals/game and conceding 0.8 goals/game. We are the best passing side and since changing the tactics up we have climbed form 5th to 3rd in terms of possession. Hopefully we can make up the 0.05% between us and Dundee.

@Dan @Shedender Stirling just wasn't doing it for me, we were far too inconsistent. I just wanted to get the season finished and move on.

TNS manager went to Wolves and the job came up, we got a kind draw in the UCL agains Lincoln RI so we could progress to the next round.

Through one round before I even rocked up..

Champions League football...

It might look like a bad month but we did play 1st, 2nd and 3rd.





Best of youth intake

January and February went extremely well for us. We picked up maximum points in the league to take us and incredible 18 points clear meaning we can win the league in the next moth if results go our way. However we are still in both the Europa League and Scottish Cup, so that might delay it as we chase the domestic treble and European glory. If you look at the goalscorers you can see the headache that Leigh Griffiths and Moussa Dembele are giving me.

The Club Brugge result seen us progress to the last 16 of the EL and face an in-form Schalke.







I noticed we were losing the possession battle more often than I would have liked and our passing stats had dropped. To combat this I changed up the game plan slightly. We kept the shape fluid but shifted from attacking to control. Higher pressing and play from the back remained, however direct passing was replaced with retain possession. Another small tweak is the GK has been instructed to distribute to the FB rather than the CB.

These changed were made before the home leg against Club Brugge and then Hamilton. They have got off to an impressive start. In the games we had 55% and 61% possession and completed 88% (486/551) and 91% (740/786) of passes respectively.



I arranged two pre-contracts for the end of the season. First was Lovre Kalinic who will battle it out with Crain Gordon for the jersey next season and young Matt Knox. I could have signed Knox for pennies in January but he's playing regularly and will likely go on loan next season.

Looks like you've made good progress this season, hopefully next year you push for the playoffs.

A season in the lower division might be what the team needs. Better chance to develop the younger players and get moral up.