Bastard Coated Bastards: Reign of Terriers
After a long FM24 hiatus which was spent mainly working, surviving, nappy changing and occasionally playing Star Trek Online, the urge to break legs came back. It peaked when my son came home from pre-school with an enthusiasm for football and explained the most important parts of football to me. In his words:
- You’ve got to kick
- Throw
- Kick it into the net
- You’ve got to try and push them down
In this list my son gave me, ‘them’ means anyone else near the ball. I didn’t even prompt him. That’s in his blood. And I’m assuming the blood of anyone who crosses him on the pre-school astroturf.
But what to do? The FM24 cycle draws closer to the end and inevitably when the new version comes out I’ll be drawn to it like a moth. Do I have time to kick lumps out of people from the lower leagues all the way to the top? Not really. But I also felt too bitter about the last save (see the last post) to go back to the seasons I’d put in there. I needed a challenge that would still have the scope for immediate, short term violence and bastardry.
The Terriers
I decided to do what I never really do and actually manage the team I support. The mighty Terriers – Huddersfield Town. This actually lined up well for a save, as 1) Terriers are real yappy ankle biting bastards. I hate them.
2) Town got relegated in real life as they are shite. Giving me a real challenge in the short term to keep them up, with the rewards of the Premier League nearby if I could survive and improve them.
In reality the squad is thin, old and rubbish. The new Chairman has still somehow managed to asset strip them as well, so it’s really light on gems that could be sold off for quick money to reinvest. A real bin fire of a club really. Perfect. Let’s begin our of Reign of Terrier!
Aims
Given how bad the team are in real life surviving would do. The chairman agreed and we were just set the goal of staying up. The Championship is a rough league but I was confident we could scrape by in the first season.
We would then be building a team that would nip at the heels of other teams, passers-by, posties, and small children. We would be the underfoot underdog. With the aim of getting into the top flight, disrupting everything and forcing people to come and watch brutality ball on a wet evening in Huddersfield. Fun fact the stadium is on the edge of the red-light district. An area that caused me as a young child to ask my dad, “Isn’t that woman getting cold? Has that man stopped his car to give her a coat?”.
An amazing family away day for supporters of the Premier League elite. Think paying to enter a ground through the back of some terraced housing is beneath you? Wait until you have to walk by people who are paid to be entered in a terrace house.
The Terriers-fying Foundations
I’m really going to milk the Terrier puns for the posts SEO. Let’s have a look at the club at the start. Fair to say…middle of the road at best. Financially poor, shallow squad, and close to no signs that we were recently a Premier League club.
But, there are worse foundations. We did have a few players of note.
I was a big fan of Balker, Rudoni, Headley Radulovic and Burgzog. A mix of the physical and the creative. I say mix but I guess it’s Rudoni providing the creative. But they could potentially form a good core. It’s always nice to have someone like Radulovic who can play as a target forward from the off.
There were other core players like Spencer, Helik, Nicholls, Hogg, Thomas, Koroma and Healy but there were issues there. For example, I wasn’t planning on playing with wingers so Thomas and Koroma were dead to me. And, spoiler alert, Captain Hogg ruined his knee 3 games in and took an early retirement.
We would need to improve, and had a small chunk of change in the wage budget to do it but it would only likely extend to a couple of players. Our transfer budget was a big fat zero so we would need to hold on.
Terrier-ific Transfers
Increasingly feel like these puns need taking out back and shooting. Like an actual Terrier.
Who did we get in then? Well on the player front I managed to bribe Danny Rose and Yannick Bolaise. Our new elderly Terriers.
Now, I don’t think either could be called bastards. Well, maybe Danny Rose with his 16’s in certain areas could. And at 5ft 9 was close to Terrier stature. Yannick couldn’t though. He was nice and only really wanted to be an impact sub. I just needed some depth in attacking positions, and he seemed like the cheeky chappy for it. He would be my luxury flair player.
I also got a loan stirker, Gelhardt from rival/scum Leeds.
He looked like a decent all-rounder that I could rotate into one of my striker roles to keep things fresh. I did try a few other players on loan as well but I was either rejected for being too rubbish, or the players went elsewhere. I tried to get Jack Cork but it just wasn’t to be.
That’s the players. What about the backroom staff? That’s right. We all know being the best bastard you can be, and taking on the Yappy Terrier as a totem, happens before you walk out onto the hallowed turf of the John Smiths Stadium.
I got Lee Clattermole. Bosh. He would be my bastard trainer. Shaping and guiding the branches of the bastard tree. I also picked up Park Ji Sung for persistence (he was also hands down one of the best players ever), Bergkamp for persuading my players to reduce their carbon footprint and not fly anywhere, Kenwyne Jones as an appropriate target/brick shithouse role model, and Martin Jorgensen. Why Martin? Because I wasn’t paying attention and thought he was CM99/00 legend Mads Jorgensen. Petrov was added as I couldn’t remember if he was a hard bastard or not, but I did remember him fondly. I also signed Huddersfield favourite Lee Novak to inspire the kiddies.
Terriers Tactics
At the very start of the season I took a look at the squad, saw we had some wingers and thought yes, this is it. I can have a bog standard 4-4-2. And these are what I came up with.
Stodgy direct and aggressive 4-4-2’s. I imagine these would do fine for many teams. Not us though as the Terriers seem to have crap wingers and not enough defensive stability to hold their nerve for a good low block. We ground out a few reasonably positive results in the first month but it was dire. We looked very much like a team that would be flirting with relegation.
So I changed things up and adapted a tactic from earlier in Bastard Coated Bastards for the Terriers. Introducing Mambo No. 7.5 (the remix).
Very aggressive, very direct. Creates situations where we out number the opposition during attacking moves via the brute force method of just having more bodies forward with 3 up front. No fancy pass-and-move or off the ball genius to create the chances.
It also removes the need for wingers which is great as mine are rubbish and they tend to get quite expensive. We fiddled with the set pieces to get a combination of short corners, inswingers and long throws. Short may seem odd but they are really effective and I’m convinced that the cross from the short player is much more effective than the corner taker’s efforts.
The Season
As mentioned above as the not-so-mighty Terriers we started the season with a pretty stodgy 4-4-2 that after a few games was abandoned for the much more aggressive tactic covered above. Once the tactic changed the quality of our results started to. Once we got used to it, and tweaked the set pieces, we started to get points. We really started to punch above our weight.
After the first half or so of the season we were intermittently snapping at the ankles of the bigger boys and flirting with the playoffs. A far cry from the Terriers reality which was making up the bottom of the table.
We did have a few rough games and bumps. One was the rebelling from players when I failed to fulfil a promise to Sorba Thomas. A player who had made nil impact for us. As I write this he has come on as a sub, failed to mark his man, giving away a 94th minute equaliser. He wanted a new contract and I said I would talk. He demanded an 80% wage increase, and the talking became swearing. He wouldn’t agree and got the hump, and then a few others also joined in.
I was briefly worried that this would throw us completely off and destroy our form but I dealt with it by telling them all they would regret this. There would be consequences. My favourite interaction option. Within 3 days Yuta was sold, Bellagambi followed soon after. Nicholls was placed on the transfer list. Only Headley emerge unscathed because he was injured. This allowed him time to understand the error of his ways. Nicholls likewise came back into the fold after being dropped for a few games.
Thomas remained on the fringes of the bench, but not even an intermediary shifted him (with the offers coming in being too low for even our penny-pinching board).
Another falling out was had but this time with Farke, Leeds manager. Huddersfield and Leeds managers were never going to be the best of friends but there had been an understanding to allow Gelhardt to play. After 18 appearances though Farke was less than impressed because I – long ball merchant that I am – wasn’t playing him as a false 9. I told him to take his tippy tappy bullshit elsewhere and Gelhardt was gone.
During this period we also lost a few more players and the squad was getting lean. Strikers Ward and Koroma after some dismal showings were moved on, as was right back Turton. To remedy this old man and Terriers legend Jordan Rhodes was recalled from loan, and 17 year old Rory McCleod was brought in from Dundee for £35k.
We also brought in Soonsup-Bell on loan from Spurs to keep our attacking options covered. Elsewhere we brought in Iroegbunam to provide cover in midfield.
We then marched on and had to use many rests and holidays to keep players fresh. But the rotation didn’t seem to hurt us too much.
We did have a few players hurt physically, though. After about 10 games, flair man Yannick took a tumble and ended up out for a chunk of the season. Captain and supposed talisman Hogg’s kneecap more or less fell off and he decided to retire with almost immediate effect. You live by the sword, you die by the sword.
The Terriers continued to bite the ankles of those around and we hit a nice groove. We dropped points here and there but for the most part we did well.
As a result our form was good and we remained in the lower end of the playoffs for much of the 2nd half of the season. We never really dropped off but at the same time the gap between us and the top 3-4 was too big to overcome. If we had started off with these sort of gritty performances from the off we might have done it.
The final table looked great and we ended up confirming that playoff place. East and West Yorkshire rivals were represented, as were the duo from Norfolk and Suffolk. We were drawn with Norwich, led by former Hudderfield Town and Terrier promotion hero, David Wagner.
At this point I was feeling pretty confident. I had no doubt we could go toe to toe with any of the teams. The only worries I had were around fitness and injuries. Both my better left backs, Headley and Rose were injured or just returning from injury. Most midfielders were tired. And Bojan Radulovic, 3rd top scorer in the Championship and target forward extrodinaire wasn’t firing on all cylinders after coming back from injury. But overall the team were flying.
The first leg was at home. And although it felt fairly even we were just a little more dangerous. Both in terms of attacking moves, and just you know, physically attacking them.
Big man Bojan, talismanic target forward, headed home twice. The nerves from conceding so early evaporated with his first goal. By the end of the match I felt like we could maybe do it. The playoffs and potential promotion had never been on the agenda at the start of the season, but here we were. Playing well and in touching distance.
Over to the second leg and it felt apart like a cheap pair of braces.
It’s the hope that kills you. We went a goal up and all was well. And then a switch went off in van Hooijdonk’s head. He obliterated us. In fairness we outplayed them but everytime the ball fell at his feet it just went in. Towards the end of the game I shifted to all out attack and for the first time almost ever I saw the team actually attack more. Legend Jordan Rhodes grabbed a goal and we came close with leveling it up on aggregate but in the end it wasn’t to be. Timeout for the Terriers.
It was gutting but on balance we weren’t meant to even be in the mix. Promotion would have meant a season of our yappy Terrier being savaged by the Premier League Dobermans before dropping back down into the Championship again.
What really made it sting though was all that money we weren’t going to get. We’d missed out on one of Football’s most lucrative rewards. Surely our board would see our success and back us to build further for next season?
Think again. Thank’s Kev. We would go into the new season being all bark and no bite.
Making the Terriers Bigger Bastards
Okay, so maybe we didn’t succeed in getting promotion. But there are more important things than this. Did we succeed in being violent and aggressive bastards?
I’ve tried various things to make my teams more violent in the past. One approach I’ve tried with great succes was targetting individual players with opposition instructions. Singling out key threats or at least key passers to nullify them. I’ve done the same with tired or injured players.
But what I’ve not done, and something I’ve missed doing for many versions of FM, is target the psychologically vulnerable. Past FM’s allowed you to call players out in the media and label them a weak link. If you picked carefully you could crush a players spirit before the match even started and their performance would be poor. Usually low bravery, agression and/or determination players. You could do the same by talking positively and making them nervous or overconfident.
That option to engage with the media has been sadly missing for sometime. I’ll throw a genuine party if it is ever added back in. But, despite it being absent I can still launch psy-ops against the more gentle opposition players. I decided to experiment with singling out players with low bravery and/or composure, aggression, and determination.
Process
At the start of each game I would go to the OI screen and sort by bravery. Anyone with less than 10 was a potential target. I only picked one player at a time so if I had more than one choice I would then check their other attributes to get a feel for which was the biggest wimp.
10 was an arbitary choice. Playing in the championship meant there wasn’t always a player that met the criteria, so I didn’t do it every game. It’s not a technique that I’m convinced scales up well with level and attributes.
They then got the works applied to them with the OI’s. Everything I could. I then made a note of their match rating at the end of the game, and their average match rating before the game (I had to do this when selecting at the start of the match to ensure it wasn’t affected by the match rating itself). This let me get the difference between the two so I could check the impact.
Results
From the mid point in the season I managed to do this to 10 players. I couldn’t start earlier than the mid-point as the average match rating would potentially be a bit skewed and give me an unreliable result. I couldn’t get more than 10 either as some teams just had no wimps on the pitch. But I did manage to find some. Normally I wouldn’t call out individuals but what are the people in the list below going to do about it? Cowards.
I want to call it a success. I can’t definitely say we hurt them psychologically as it’s a sample of 10 that just has whether the numbers go up or down compared to a season average baseline. But we see an average drop of .3 on the match rating. For me that’s potentially huge. For me a player with 7 has done okay, a player with 6.7 was filler at best. Its a big enough chunk of rating that it would I think for many people change how you perceive a performance.
90% of the players did worse than their season average. So it feels like once again targetted violence has won. I’ll be adding it to my repertoire. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I’d say you can so long as that dog is an unpleasant Terrier and the trick is just unbridled aggression and violence.
Terrier KPI’s
We crushed a few people psychologically. Fantastic, already happy to ignore the playoff pain and declare the season a success off the back of that alone. But there are more stats to consider. Yes we had kicked lumps out of some players, but were we kicking enough players generally? Were we playing enough direct longball football? Was I making Dyche, Allardyce, Pulis et al., proud?
I think…yes. Plenty of cards, and 22% more fouls than the next dirty bastard in line. Can’t really go wrong with that.
Although not top dog in terms of set piece goals we were pretty close. An area to improve for sure but not by much. I’m not sure how it counts goals from corners but I’m assuming it doesn’t have to be assisted by the corner taker and can instead have a few passes inbetween. If not then technically that number is a little higher.
With long throws I seem to have gone mad and couldn’t find any stats to do with them. But the eye test confirms we throw long, and we threw long often. They were a constant danger.
And finally target forward, Big Man Bojan Radulovic, bagged 25 goals, in 45 appearances.
Where next?
We seem to be hitting a good level of violence. The style of football is something I’m enjoying even if it’s making opposition players and fans bleed from their eyes (for different reasons). We seem to be good there.
The board, players and fans seem to be happy with survival again next season. I’ve got higher hopes than that. With a few shrewed signings I think we can literally kick our way up the table. The signings will have to be shrewd with the terrible budget we have. There’s some deadwood to shift but they are terrible players who either haven’t played much or haven’t performed well so I’m not sitting on piles of money.
I’m going to continue to be a bastard, and continue to bite the ankles of the bigger teams. Psychological warfare will be put to full use in the 2nd half of next season once again. I’m confident we will reach the promised land of the Premier League, and spoil it for everyone, long before FM25 makes it’s chalkboard-less appearance.
The tactic have any PI’s?
thanks
Everyone who can tackle harder/get stuck in has that on. And I mean everyone. Check your keeper and see if you can apply it there too.
I think the wingbacks have cross early on if it’s not on already by default.
The three central midfields have take more risks with passing on if they can.
And what you can’t see from the tactic is I have two position swaps on. He anchorman and DLP rotate. The poacher and AF also rotate. To get that to happen you need to make the changes during a match. Save/export the tactic and then after the march import the tactic back in and save it. You can’t seem to do it via the normal tactic interface outside of a match unfortunately.
ok thanks for that.