I wrote a blog article on this site for Football Manager 2023 entitled ‘The Art of Building an Army‘, where I look at a number of factors that I exploit to improve, and then maintain, the depth and quality of the squad. These include the importance of having a balanced squad, with little gap between wages; player personality type; how to ensure that the next players are ready to move on by identifying talent early, and putting these players on a development path (which I then discuss in more detail in a later blog post on ‘Youth Development Arts‘). However, since I moved my Football Manager 2023 save to Football Manager 2024, the players I included in the squad have now become icons, and in one case legends at the club. As time waits for no man, these players are now approaching, if not already, into their thirties. This begs the question, and is the focus of this blog post – how do you move on from a legendary player?
In the graph below (please click on the graph throughout this post to open a new window if necessary) you can see the squad as it currently stands at the end of the 2035-36 season. Players in orange are players on loan, and players in yellow circles are local players at the club.
Here, you can see the spread of minutes, and the value of loaning out players who are not yet ready for first-team action, as they will receive more minutes at the club than if they remained at Bayer. 04. The lines of a player’s marker indicate the number of years the player has been at the club. As you can see, there are a number of players who have been here for a number of years, some of whom, most notably Canpolat Darande and Christian Priso, have been here their entire playing careers (if you exclude youth development loans).
The problem is, three years after the season shown above, these players are getting older, and in some cases, looking to leave for new experiences. In fact, many have already come out. Endrick and Høyenhall have both left after 21 years of service, leaving for Barcelona and Real Madrid respectively.
However, others still exist. Juan Manuel Fornal is a perfect example of this. Signed from Valencia for £63 million, Fornals has been a mainstay in the team for ten years now. But now, with interest from Saudi Arabian clubs, he is refusing to discuss a new deal and I am in danger of losing him. This is difficult to do after years of loyal service. Although his individual tenure here was not particularly remarkable in terms of the number of goals scored and assists made (which is remarkable considering his natural ability to organize play) – he was more of a piano player than a ‘player’, as the great Billy Shankly put it . During his time at the club, he had palmarès that could rival any great player in the world.
The story is similar with the club captain, Todor Engibarovwho has been at the club three years longer than Fornals. The two are close friends outside the training ground, along with Argentinian striker Federico Parilla. The Bulgarian was appointed as club captain on July 31, 2028, and the club has not looked back since then. Under his natural leadership in the dressing room, the club has lifted no less than twenty-three trophies. Engibarov has shown that although he is also happy to ‘carry’ the piano, he has the ability to hit the notes when asked to play a more attacking role, either behind a lone striker, or even in front of himself when injured. crisis in the 2035-36 season.
Both could have had far more brilliant individual careers in terms of goals/assists, but their role was more about the collective than the single result.
One of the main ‘players’ who plays these songs is Jannik Weuthen. The German international was signed in the same summer that Fornals arrived at the club, in what turned out to be a very eventful year in the transfer market. Weuthen has scored 55 league goals for Bayer 04, for a total of 98 goals in all competitions. An attacking left inside forward, his blistering pace, combined with his agility and technical skill, has earned him 115 goals. Overall, he has 213 goal involvements in 354 matches (including substitute appearances), or 0.60 per appearance. In only two of the ten years he was at Bayer 04 Leverkusen did he fail to reach twenty goal involvements in a season (eighteen goals in both seasons – 2030-31 and 2036-37).
However, their future at Bayer 04 Leverkusen will not last long from now on. Not because of their manager’s wishes, but in two of three cases, through their own choice.
Together, they have been a strong presence since joining the team, and there will be big changes when they leave. These three are team leaders in dressing room dynamics, so this needs to be managed carefully in terms of timing. At the moment, there is no interest in Engibarov, so it is likely he will stay beyond the 2037-38 season, but it is likely the other two players will head to Saudi Arabia and the fortunes the players will undoubtedly make with their talents. . To give you an idea of what might have been, Diego Coppola, who was at the club for ten years, left for Al-Hilal in a £25m deal and a contract worth £1.2m/week.
Therefore, there are a number of questions that need to be answered: When should I move on from these things? How do I change the minutes, but more importantly, how do I change the quality?
The first is tricky – they are still performing at a top level. Do I stay and let them go free? With the service they provide, they owe nothing to the club. At the same time, my chief financial officer said that it was better to realize the value of the asset now than to let an asset simply disappear.
The question in the middle is the easiest by far – there are players on loan who could come in and play the roles of Fornals and Engibarov. Even Engibarov’s leadership skills will be covered as his time at the club comes to a close. While Fornals and Engibarov dominate the Bundesliga and Champions League, Leon Bernsdorf (acquired from RB Salzburg in 2033 for £10 million), Adrian Mihailescu (FC Voluntari in 2032 for £2.5 million), Rainer Neumann (Lugano in 2032 for £10 million) and Emre Yuksel (Bayer 04 Leverkusen academy graduate in 2033) have all been on their own development paths since joining the club.
The path is shown below in a clickable infographic:
As can be seen, each player has racked up substantial playing minutes at nearly every step. It’s also worth remembering that these players need to be functional players – so incredible goal and assist records are not necessary. They must be able to stay in shape, maintain possession, and then work hard to quickly regain possession when it is lost before recycling it. Some are ready for first-team action back at their contracted clubs, but it won’t be that easy, given the longevity of the service provided by Fornals and Engibarov.
This is what makes the final question – regarding its quality – so difficult to answer. It is questionable whether that is possible. Only time will tell if these players are ‘next’. Perhaps my hand would be forced in favor of Fornals – an offer of around £100m would be hard to refuse for a player at this stage of his career – but I would also miss out on a valuable mentor with his perfectionist personality. At least I’ve got players who are potentially ready to go, and I’m already ingrained in young French players, Aristide Antennain the first team squad so he can develop alongside Engibarov, Fornals and Petyo Bachev.
Certainly with regards to Weuthen, there appears to be a shortage of young, high-quality wingers of his ability. The recruiting focus has been going on for more years than I care to remember for left-sided forwards, and none have returned, despite only setting the current ability at three stars.
This may require a tactical change to a back five, the use of full-backs to provide flanks, and a focus on recruiting more centre-backs and central midfielders to have players who can be used for those tactics.
As you can see in the squad depth chart below, we have a good level of depth in both midfield and defence. However, only with Andy Hillman brought in to act as new blood on the attacking left flank, and with Batuhan Kilic has been retrained to play there due to his preference as a central midfielder, tactical considerations need to be taken into account.
I’ve tried it, made use of it Recreation of Alonso’s tactics is available from The View from the Touchlineand it works quite well with Elliot or Ballesté playing CW(S), and Portilha or Nyamsi doing the same on the right side of defence. I then moved on to creating my own Klopp-inspired tactics – which worked brilliantly, with too many offsides, and our xG performance was poor against teams opting for low blocks.
If this is the way forward, then time will tell. The above 4-2-3-1 tactic has led to incredible success over the years – including an unbeaten domestic season in the league and DFB-Pokal, only losing once to Liverpool in the Champions League group stage on our way to winning the Trophy European club.
What is clear is that Fornals, Engibarov, Weuthen and others will leave the club – the football club is bigger than any individual player. Indeed, looking back at the squad depth list, there are a number of contracts I have to renew this year before we reach the remaining 12 months on players’ contracts, and they are showing less desire to want to renew, as Fornals has already done so.
I guess it boils down to the fact that Fornals, and perhaps Weuthen, won’t necessarily go the way I want them to – the player’s power has increased to such an extent that they can have more control over their fate. Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing – I strongly support workers’ freedom of movement (ahem)…. I’ll wait for any offer from Saudi Arabia for the Fornals – if it doesn’t come, then fine. He would spend twelve years at the club, Although somehow he was not a well-liked member (for context, Weuthen was a club legend), he will be remembered as a quiet leader, and will leave with our blessing.
Sports News
website focused on news and information about the world of football. This is one of the popular websites in Indonesia accessed by sports fans, especially football enthusiasts, to get quick and reliable information.