Welcome back to The Boldklub!
I’ll be honest, once I created this save it took me ages to actually get into any kind of gameplay. Not because I was taking my time to get everything set up, but I just couldn’t get motivated to sit and play for a significant period of time to get into competitive action. I slowly chipped away at pre-season, learning about the squad and tweaking the tactical systems I talked about here. Now we’re into the competitive action, and I’m hooked! So let’s take a look at everything so far, and see how I’ve started at Lyngby!
Pre-Season
Pre-Season was a fairly resounding success, on the whole. Obviously, results aren’t everything while the action is non-competitive, but the confidence that is gained from a run of wins can only be a good thing.
We tried each of our tactical systems during these games, mostly our Control Possession 4-1-4-1, tweaking a few things as I came accross things I wasn’t a fan of, most notably the roles in the midfield as I felt we were a bit passive at times. I also found that the 4-4-2 Wing Play system was a good option to change to in games where we were struggling to break sides down.
Transfers
Despite the club being in severe financial trouble, I felt we needed to do a little bit to the squad to cover a couple of areas, and bring in a bit of talent.
Petry, Mouritsen and Corlu were already at the club when I arrived, meaning that I only got 2 of my own deals over the line. Young English winger Ben Hinchcliffe joined after being released by Hull City, and Morten Rokkedal is a full-back who joined slightly later in the season after his release from Superliga side AaB. He’ll provide competition to Adam Sørensen, as our other option Nicklas Mouritsen, is really more suited to playing at center-back.
These were two deals that were cheap enough that we could get away with them, despite being over our wage budget. We looked at several other options, relying heavily on getting players in on trial to have a look at them before deciding if they were worth trying to squeeze the budget for.
A lot of the players here weren’t ever likely to be viable options, either not good enough, too expensive, or play in positions where I felt we were strong enough. As you can see Hinchcliffe and Rokkedal were signed after their trials, and Isak Gabriel Skotheim is a young midfielder I wanted to add to our Under 19 side, but we couldn’t agree terms. If the opportunity comes up, I’ll look to bring him in again.
The last couple of small notes are that we added a few extra members of staff, pictured above, and also that we terminated the loan of 35-year-old goalkeeper Thomas Mikkelsen after only one appearance. As I stated in my first youth assessment, Oskar Snorre is my first choice this season, only some catastrophic form would change that. As such, Thomas was filling an albeit mandatory space on the bench, but when I realised we were paying him more than £1000 a week for the pleasure, making him one of our top earners, I happily sent him back to his parent club OB. Side note, I did mention that Oliver Funch isn’t ready to challenge for a first team spot just yet in my youth assessment post, and this promotes him to my back-up goalkeeper. If I get the opportunity for a free loan, I’ll be looking to bring someone in. For now, he sits on the bench, and may be given a baptism of fire at some point.
Danish First Division
Before we get into any results, a couple of fairly important things that I should probably have learnt about the division before I started the save. Firstly, we can only name 3 subs, one of which has to be a goalkeeper. I had no idea of that until I got to Matchday One, which meant that I had kept together a fairly large squad which was over the wage budget, only for the majority to not even make the bench. Had I known, my approach to pre-season would have been massviely different, with youngsters getting loan moves and some of the higher earners moving on.
The other thing I wasn’t aware of actually affects the blog more than the save itself. The Danish First Division is split into three ‘Periods’ each consisting of 11 games. We play each team 3 times over the season, and the winner gets promoted with second and third facing two Superliga sides in a Promotion/Relegation Playoff. This affects the layout of the blog, as instead of doing half-season updates, I’ll be doing one per ‘Period’.
So with a Media Prediction of 3rd for this season, a strong start was imperative.
We got it, but things weren’t quite as simple as they may seem.
Firstly, I still wasn’t convinced by what I had seen during pre-season. In our 4-1-4-1 set up, we looked too passive, there was a lot of possession for possessions sake. For this reason, in our first game at home to HB Køge, we lined up with our 4-4-2 wing play system, securing a routine 2-0 win. This was followed by a disappointing 2-1 defeat to FC Helsingor, where we played with a back 3, trying to control the ball. We weren’t helped by a very early red card, but we were playing awfully, and only really looked like being in the game after half time when we switched to a counter attacking style of play.
Tinkering with that counter attacking idea led to the run of form that followed, with 4 consecutive wins. Surely heading into September, we would have nothing to worry about?
Two games without a win doesn’t sound awful, but they were two big games and we played atrociously. What I was finding by this point is that my early concerns about pressing were wide of the mark. As a team more than capable of dominating games (only Silkeborg have a higher average possession than our 58%), we aren’t spending massive amounts of time chasing the ball, meaning that when we do need to press we have the energy to do it effectively and very often quite aggresively.
That led to a bit of a rethink, and a new tactic.
A more aggresive style of play, still focused around dominating possession of the ball, but instead of using the Control Possession style to keep possession without much penetration, we’ve looked far more threatening since the switch. The other thing to mention is the change of shape to a 4-2-3-1, despite saying that we wouldn’t use an AMC due to a lack of depth. The guy that changed my mind isn’t in this screenshot, wasn’t in my Youth Assessment, and wasn’t in my original first team squad, but he’s come on leaps and bounds and gives me another option.
Emilio Simonsen
Emilio is a very talented young footballer, who got his chance playing out wide in a Danish Cup tie and played fairly well, so I slowly introduced him to the first team squad and ever since he’s been putting in 10/10 training performances regularly and has developed massively. Definitely one to watch going forward, as he is one of my most consistent performers right now.
All of that leaves the table looking as follows.
It’s very, very tight at the top, but we sneak first place on goal difference. Obviously it’s a very strong start to the season, and we’ve looked very good at times, but there’s a long way to go and with only one automatic promotion place, we can’t afford any slip ups.
We only went top with our last victory, which does our morale good, but also has another important prize.
For a club as short of cash as we are, any prize money we can get through the season is a huge help. I didn’t know that we were going to get this payment, and I don’t know what the difference is between first and second place finishes, but if we manage to maintain top spot all season then we’ll wipe more than 750k of our debt just through league position.
Danish Cup
Three away games, two routine wins, one disappointing loss.
It’s a shame to be out of the cup, we were actually allowed 7 subs so it was a good chance to give some fringe players and youngsters a run out. We started with a comprehensive win over Allerød, a lower division side. That was then followed by a solid 2-0 win over FC Helsingør, before a really disappointing defeat to Hvidovre IF, where we played very well, depsite going down to 10 men, but were undone by 2 direct-free kicks and a penalty.
So that wraps up the first third of our season, and it’s a really solid start. I’m loving the save, loving the little quirks of the Danish First Division, and I’m pumped to see how the season unfolds!
Thanks for reading.
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