Out of Oskarsham [2013]

Title gives it away really. I got sacked. Probably fairly although I would have liked a few extra games to try and turn things around.

Sacked!

After the record high of 4th the media was expecting a healthy midtable finish of 7th for the club. Which I thought was more than attainable. At least I did right at the end of the 2012 season before I started trying to recruit some players.

Pre-season

They really didn't want to come to the club. First of all I tried Hinningsson and got the dreaded, "You'll have to make a fantastic offer..." message at the contract screen. Based on his 26 goals last season and the fact he was on a free now I pumped all my transfer budget (a whole 12k!) into the wage budget and offered the best I could. £250 a week, £7.5k sign on and all the other bells and whistles I could. I didn't hold back. I put a yearly wage rise of 50% and a promotion rise of 50%. He laughed it off.

It didn't go much better for any other targets either. I normally check and see who's been realised from the squads in the divisions above and see if I can tempt anyone into joining. It took a while to trawl through every team above Oskarshamn in Sweden and the return was pitiful. I got a few extra youth prospects.

The loan market wasn't much better. Very few teams wanted their players to go to such a small team, at such a low level of football (sorry Oskarshamn). So I decided I would rely on the players I had and my new youth players.

At least until my first choice winger got sold from under me by the chairman for £33k. I had a back up but it rankled a bit.


The Season

Our form was patchy. When the team was fit and all my so called first choice players were there we did alright.  We did lose a few matches undeservedly but generally the results were fair.

When were weren't fit and had injuries we couldn't win. We weren't even scraping points. As a result we yo-yo'd up and down the table - mainly from mid-table to the relegation playoff place. We only once dipped into the dreaded relegation zone.

With 15 games gone the board had decided enough was enough and sacked me. We sitting just in the relegation playoff place. With 7 games left to play I'd like to think I could have climbed back to midtable safety but the board didn't want to gamble on that. Which is fair enough. 7 games gave them enough time to reach safety with someone else.

Off I went to find a new job. I was quite worried. At this point my managerial career consisted of one season of slight over achievement (but no reward) and a sacking after a poor season. Not exactly a stellar C.V.

Okay Oskarshamn [2012]

Don't worry, I'll eventually tire of the alliteration in the titles.

We had an okay season. Bit of an anti-climax considering they were positioned to challenge for promotion but I managed to work my mediorce magic and we finished in 4th.

In my defence I could point to an injury to my one decent striker forcing me into a bit of a rethink tactically. As a result when at home I stuck with my original tactic and placed my next best player there. Away from home I went for a strikerless spoiler of a tactic. I still had my Treq but I pulled him back to the AMC position. Everything became more compacted about about keeping position.

I had tried to bring in a replacement striker but Oskarshamn as a location didn't have a lot of pulling power. I think it has a nuclear power plant nearby but I'm not sure that's what draws footballers to an area.

As a result form was hit and miss and we did slumped.

Still 4th was a record high for the club. They had still punched well above their weight and in theory it was a good platform to build on....

Season Analysis

These will become more and more detailed with time but for Oskarshamn the analysis was fairly easy. We needed a better strike force. We needed more depth. We needed players and agents to actually take our calls.

If we hadn't been in a situation where we had to rely on one striker to get the goals we could have done so much better. Anton Henningsson scored 26 goals in 22 games. We scored 50 goals total that season. That one player bagged over 50% of the goals. Most of the rest were shared between the players in the AMC role.

At the the side of the pitch there seemed to be some problems too. We had a lot of high scoring games as you can see from the fixture list. If we had tightened the defence just a little, conceded one or two fewer goals then we would have been much higher. Defenders were on the agenda too but in a general way. The defenders I had were okay, none were terrible, but none of them were great either. They could be gradually strengthened.

So the plan was to get a striker, ideally Henningsson, and then strengthen generally. I didn't want to make any wholesale changes. A bit of stability would be grand at this point.

Off to Oskarshamn [2012]

The Offer

 
Well there it was. Not actually the first offer I'd received but one worth taking. The first offer had been from a Swedish team fighting against relegation, and with only a handful of games left I didn't fancy walking into my first relegation of my career.

So I held on and accepted this instead. A small team playing well above the level they should be.

With a few games left they were actually a challenger for promotion. Definitely worth taking a chance on, and with the Swedish season being quite short (22 games at this level) and good place to build the career. I don't have the time I used to so a 22 game season means I could whizz through a lot more.

 As I'm writing this retrospectively I don't have all the details that I might include to hand so I shall go through things roughly.

Basically I had 2 days until might first match. When I looked at the team I couldn't quite see how they had managed the 442 formation they had been playing. They didn't really have much in the way of a striker force. Plenty of those combination AML/R's and ST's that seem to scream but no one that actually looked like an out and out striker apart from one player we had in on loan. And they were awesome, a Mr Knuttson.

So with only 1 decent striker, plenty of wingers and attacking midfielders I went for...a 4-2-3-1 (or perhaps a 4-5-1, depends how you feel about these things).

Defence

2 wingbacks and 2 central defenders. Nothing special here, tactics or player wise. The wingbacks would surge forwards and work with the wingers to create space and overlaps.

Midfield


For the two central midfielders I have one advanced play maker and one deep lying playmaker. These two would hopefully pull some strings. The DLP from deep, maybe with some long searching balls. The AP from the hole behind the striker. Both were on support duty.

On either wing I had...an attacking winger. I was tempted by inside forwards cutting in but frankly the players I had wouldn't have been able to do that well. They were fast, and some of them could pass and cross. So that's what I stuck too.

In the AMC position I had an attacking advanced playmaker. Their job would be to provide an outlet to the striker if they ended up with their back to goal, or to act as a provider with deft (ish) defence splitting short passes.

Attack

Up front I had my lone striker playing as a Trequistra. A little odd a tiny isolated team playing in the lowest level (on FM anyway) of the Swedish leagues but I'd had some success with this before. They can bring in others players quite well and react to space as it opens.

If that didn't work though I had no problem stepping in and changing matters so they became a standard poacher.

Style

Beyond the basic positions I set man marking for zonal and strategy as counter. I did have a control variant as well. This was largely so I could react to odds (there's a fantastic post on strategies from the SI forum, I'll see if I can find it). If I happened to be favourites then control would be my approach, if I was the underdog (as I usually was) then counter attack would be the name of the game.

I actually like playing counter attacking football if I can. I think it works really well, especially if you've already scored and the opposition are under pressure.

Anyways, I thought that would play to the team strengths and give me some flexibility. I brought in a few extra youth players. All 17 or under. I wasn't expecting them to be able to do much more than run fast. They would be my subs to try for desperate last minute hoof and hope situations.

Onwards Oskarshamn.

<< Normally I'd put a lot more in about the history of a team and its surroundings, as well as why I joined but for several reasons (one that will become apparent in a couple of posts) I thought it best not too. >>