FM21: OGC Nice — Les Aiglons (Tactical analysis)

The full release is finally here, if you like to emerge yourself in your save, like myself, then you won’t have made it much further than playing a few competitive fixtures.

Here is what I have been doing behind the scenes prior to even kicking a pre-season ball.

Pre-season started as planned, Magnus guiding OGC Nice to victories over lowly ranked opposition, always nice to get a few easier fixtures in to help boost morale right?!

Club Brugge were up next followed by Barcelona, Brugge were the first team which we left the field of play with the taste of defeat. The side from Belgium created 21 shots from 50% of possession. It was a case of men vs boys! (0–2)

Next up was Barcelona, it didn’t start to bag, an excellent finish from Amine Gouiri inside the first two minutes got me dreaming, however moments later a rash challenge from Andy Pelmard reduced us to 10 men in the eight minute, from that moment we were out of the game. (1–3)

Like all great managers, we told the squad this was only pre-season and there was nothing to worry about!

On paper the results in the opening four games looked like Stienkelsson had made a good start with Les Aiglons, however our Swede was not happy, something just didn’t feel right.

The side had an average of 51% possession from the first four league games and were struggling to create any clear chances. As you can below, conducting an analysis of our key passes, most of these are coming from advanced positions.

Taking time to analyse the shot maps presented to us also lead me to drawing a few conclusions, the first one that my team weren’t trigger happy, 18 shots in total over the two games, 15 of which were from inside of the box. You are now picturing Arsenal under Wenger right? Thought so!

This could lead me to one of two conclusions, either my team are shit at converting opportunities or that these were not clear cut chances. The latter was the conclusion after breaking down the match highlight (comprehensive).

My immediate thought was to change my philosophy from counter attack to a greater emphasis on a high press, why?

This style is identified by the board as part of their vision for the club, so adopting it would please the powers that be and the players certainly have the right DNA both physically and technically.

However, my main line of thinking was that my defensive unit aren’t exactly the best in terms of jumping, strength, positioning, marking and concentration. Therefore inviting teams onto us when out of possession could be a risk.

Therefore by increasing the lines of engagement I would be putting the opposition under more pressure, hopefully allowing us to capitalize on mistakes.

I will also look to force opposition outside, to keep them away from zone 14, an area of the pitch in which penetration and chance creation are often linked to.

In possession, happy with the amount of the ball we were seeing, however not happy with the speed of play on transition or the chances created. In order to hopefully create better chances I decided that the tempo of play needed a boost, this will hopefully create more penetrative passing lanes as the opposition look to deal with the increased fizz of the play . We are still keen to work the ball into the box but have set the instruction for passes to be played into space, again looking to maximize the effectiveness of our DNA and also help get from A-B faster.

The new 433 DM wide

Testing

As you can see from the below heat maps, against FC Nantes using the old tactic I only have two players who’s average position is within the oppositions half, compared to the five against AS Saint-Etienne.

When looking at the heat maps of the starting 11 it is also clear that my team are not only seeing more of the ball in the oppositions half, they are seeing more of the ball in general in.

For the AS Saint-Etienne game I also had the ‘shoot on sight’ team instruction selected, accumulating 27 attempts across the course of the game. Something that I am sure Dan Gear will say is ‘fake news’.

However, these 27 attempts only generated an xG value of 1.59, most probably due to the fact that 11 of them came from close to the outside of the box or from a further distance.

Despite this seven shots were taken from areas which you would think would be good goal scoring opportunities, four of these were blocked and only one leading to a goal.

A striker is an area which I will be looking to strengthen in the transfer window, this will provide Kasper Dolberg with competition as at present he is my only option in leading the line.

As for chance creation, their is a improved balance to the team, this is shown in the game against Stade Brestois, with four chances created from each side of the pitch. This makes sense with the team instruction to add emphasis on the overlap.

Training

After watching the videos created by @foxintheboxfm link here > DON’T leave your assistant to do training in FM21the month of September was a defensive month.

Looking at the defensive efficiency of the team, taking the additional time to schedule your own training routine looks like it is paying dividends.

As you can see OGC Nice are in the bottom left quadrant which labels the team as quiet and impenetrable!

Taking a quick look at the attacking efficiency, the team are aggressive and wasteful, taking above average shots per game and converting below average for the league.

With this in view the month of October will be focusing training on the attacking side of the game as we look to improve our attacking efficiency.

I have taken a snapshot of our training schedule over a two week period above for you to get a flavour of what life on the training ground looks like.

I hope you have found my latest blog insightful, for those of you that are on the Football Manager Slack you can follow my save a little closer over on my channel #steinkelsson.

Until the next time,

Au revoir!