Hello! It’s been a while since I did a blog post but I thought I’d finally try and get back into some Football Manager blogging by looking at some tactics. This time I’ll be looking at the summer where football (almost) came home, England ended their penalty shootout nightmare (lol) and would stumble just short at the semi final stage once again. As ever this experiment will be carried out by simming a whole season with the AI in charge of the predicted top side in the Premier League (Man City) and the bottom side (Fulham).
Out of The Wilderness
Ahhh the 90’s. I was a little lad growing up, britpop was a thing and in the summer of 96 the whole nation went absolutely football crazy, mostly to the sound of the smash hit song ‘Three Lions’. What a time to be an English football fan! Things hadn’t always been this rosey however…..
England were awarded the hosting of Euro ’96 in May 1992 after beating bids from countries such as Greece, Portugal and Austria. It would be the second (and so far most recent) tournament England would host and it came exactly 30 years after the 1966 World Cup, a tournament that England also won. Surely it was written in the stars that England would win again on home soil?
Well…….not exactly.
When England were awarded the tournament in 1992, football league clubs had only been allowed to play in European competition again for about 2 years after being banned in the wake of the Heysel disaster in 1985 where 600 fans were injured and 39 were killed. UEFA felt the need to act in order to curtail the effects of English hooliganism on the rest of European football and indefinitely banned English football clubs from all competitions, cutting off English football from the rest of Europe.
The Heysel disaster marked the start of a dark few years in English football as, just a few weeks later, the horrific Bradford City Stadium fire claimed 56 lives. This dark period was then capped off with the Hillsborough Stadium disaster in 1989 which saw a further 96 lives claimed as a result of a crush at the front of the stand. This truly was a dark period for English football. It was in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster that we finally saw the green shoots of recovery sprouting as massive reforms (thanks to the Taylor Report) were enacted across the country creating safe seated areas and seeing a lot of unsafe and outdated stadiums being either partially or totally rebuilt. It was this vastly improved stadium and footballing infrastructure that helped England secure the tournament a few years later.
Away from these human tragedies, English football itself was in something of a mess during the early part of the 1990’s. The ban from European competition had seriously hampered the quality of English football at the very top level as the lack of high level international competition stifled elite development. In turn, this impacted the national team as England struggled at tournaments, a pattern that had been ongoing anyway since the 1970’s. Between Euro 72 and World Cup 94 (12 tournaments) England had managed to get through the first group stage on only three occasions and had failed to qualify for 6 tournaments. Things were so grim in the Euro’s that England hadn’t even won a single game at one since Euro 80. With the exception of Italia 90 this was a very grim period for English football on and off the field with very little to celebrate. It had taken the best part of 30 years but the time for healing was at hand!
It’s Coming Home
Fortunately the England squad at the time was acutely aware of all this and were totally focussed on trying to win a home tournament being free from the distraction of having to qualify.
ah.
oh……
With manager Terry Venables wanting to ‘get away to a different environment’ in the build up to the tournament, a trip to East Asia was organised just a few weeks before Euro 96 kicked off. England beat Hungary and China 3-0 before being given the last day of the trip off to ‘have a blast’ and holy shit did they ever. Players were pictured drenched and semi naked with Paul Gascoigne famously being pictured necking tequila in a dentists chair at a night club. Not quite finished blowing off steam, on the flight home Paul Gascoigne (allegedly, although the entire team took responsibility) smashed up two TV screens and a table after a slap on the head from Alan Shearer causing £5000 worth of damage.
As we’ve seen already however, from great adversity comes great triumph and in the face of the inevitable British tabloid onslaught…..
…..the squad rallied together along with the manager and chipped in to pay the fine as one and took this as an opportunity to create a strong team bond. They were ready for the tournament….which would also be an uphill struggle.
Going into the first game, this was a very inexperienced but talented squad. With the exception of Stuart Pearce, Tony Adams, Paul Gascoigne and David Platt, no other player had more than 25 caps. Despite the lack of international experience the squad was packed with some of the best Premier League players from the 1990’s. Names such as David Seaman, Alan Shearer, Gary Neville, Robbie Fowler and Steve Howie Teddy Sheringham will live forever in the collective memory thank to their contributions for club and Country.
When the tournament finally got underway, England started off with a drab 1-1 draw against Switzerland just to bring things back down to earth. This set up a huge match against the auld enemy: Scotland. The winner would go a long long way to qualifying from the group with Scotland riding high after drawing with Holland in their opening game. The stage was set for a classic.
The first half flattered to deceive however as they got to the break at 0-0 at which point Terry Venables switched things up by bringing on Jamie Redknapp for Stuart Pearce and moving to a 3-5-2 in order to dominate possession better. It worked almost straight away as only 8 minutes into the half Redknapp was involved in the move that saw Neville crossing for Shearer to head in. Scotland hit back well however as Seaman did excellently to deny Drurie from a header before Scotland won a penalty. Gary McAllister was famously denied from the spot by Uri Geller……and more importantly David Seaman’s arm. With the game still on a knife edge at 1-0 Paul Gascoigne stepped up and scored one of the all time iconic England goals.
With the ball played into him and Colin Hendry closing him down, Gascoigne casually flicked the ball over the defenders head and volleyed emphatically into the net to make it 2-0.
And then followed it up with one of the most iconic England goal celebrations as they recreated the dentists chair incident from the Hong Kong trip!
Legendary stuff. England rounded off their group stage with a game against Holland who had earlier sent Edgar Davids home for telling his manager (Gus Hiddink) to stop putting his head up some players asses. England went on an absolute tear and were 4-0 up shortly after the hour mark thanks to two goals each from strikers Shearer and Sheringham. Holland scored a late consolation of little consequence through Patrick Kluivert but England finished easy winners and went through top of the group.
Ah. I guess that late consolation was of some consequence. Thanks to this goal Scotland were cruelly denied getting through the group stage of the competition on goals scored with just one goal going the right way for Scotland being enough to send them through. Devastating.
With England riding a huge wave of momentum the country truly felt like nothing could stop them as Spain were their opponents in the Quarter finals. In a game of few chances England forced a couple of good saves out of the Spanish keeper while Spain (rightly) could feel hard done by for having not one…..
….but two goals disallowed for offside.
The second one in particular is truly an awful, awful decision.
Speaking of awful decisions England were let off the hook once again after Gascoigne got away with scything Alfonso down in the box only to see the Spaniard booked for diving.
The game reached extra time at 0-0 and although England edged the latter stages of the game it went to penalties. This would be the second ever penalty shootout England had been involved in after their infamous semi final defeat at the hands of Germany in Italia 90. Spain on the other hand were about to take part in their third.
England started well as Shearer scored while Hierro nearly broke the crossbar with his effort that bounced out, both sides scored their next effort before Stuart Pearce stepped up, drilled his penalty into the bottom right and exercised his demons from his penalty miss in 1990. Eventually David Seaman saved Nadal’s penalty (the uncle of tennis player Rafa Nadal) to send England through 4-2!
With huge favours from the officials, a raucous home crowd on their side and a true feel good factor returning to English football there was a feeling of inevitability this football might just come home once again. Next up were Germany in the semi finals, 30 years on from their ultimate triumph over them in the World Cup final, the venue was even the same. Fate was truly on England’s side. Even penalty shootouts couldn’t stop England any more as they had well and truly put penalty heartbreak behind them.
Ah. Shit.
After both sides exchanged early goals England probably edged the rest of the game over a talented Germany side but they simply couldn’t be separated and it went to extra time locked at 1-1. This really ratcheted tensions up a notch as golden goal was still a thing in 1996.
In the extra half hour England definitely enjoyed the best of the chances. Darren Anderton hit the post when unmarked from a low cross as he couldn’t quite get the shot on target into an empty net from a McManaman cross. The most agonising moment for England was still to come however.
A good cross field ball from Sheringham was volley across goal by Shearer into the patch of an onrushing Gascoigne. With an open goal at his mercy all he had to do was slide it into the empty net.
He couldn’t quite reach it.
Penalties awaited.
What followed was a masterclass of penalties as both sides emphatically scored all ten spot kicks. Southgate volunteered to take the 6th one for England and his low, weak effort was saved by Kopke. Moller scored for Germany and It was all over. Football wasn’t coming home.
After this crushing blow to their bitter rivals some England fans put on a disgusting display of rioting in London and a few other parts of the country. In Birmingham people threw bricks at an Aldi supermarket (a German brand) while in Brighton a Russian student was stabbed five times after being asked repeatedly if he was German. The summer of 1996 showed that English football had made significant steps towards healing after the disgusting scenes of the 1980’s however there was still a rotten side lurking.
Tactics
So how exactly did England set up to play at Euro 96? Well that’s actually a difficult question to answer as they frequently alternated between something of a 4-4-1-1 and a 3-5-2. As far as I can tell Terry Venables tended to set England up more often in the 4-4-1-1 at the start of games so I’ll go for that for the purposes of this experiment with the 3-5-2 only being used from the start against Germany and Scotland.
Here is how England lined up to start the final group game against Holland. With a flat back four and the two central midfielders sitting a little deeper this allowed the two wingers to get forward and provide crosses to the strikers. The two full backs would also provide support and overlaps in wide areas, again with the intention of providing a good supply of crosses to Sheringham and Shearer.
In the centre of midfield Ince or Platt were expected to sit a little deeper and provide some limited box to box support in order to allow the more attack minded Paul Gascoigne to get forward a little more.
Perhaps the key part of this successful side however were the two strikers: Sheringham and Shearer otherwise referred to as SAS. These are two huge names in English football and in 1996 they were both somewhere near the peak of their ability before age or injuries hampered both of them. They started every single game with Robbie Fowler the only striker to play any minutes at all during the tournament (even then he only got about half an hour of game time).
They are a pair of smart, technical footballers with the added bonus of being exceptional in the air and during the tournament they combined to score 7 goals with Shearer claiming the golden boot with 5. They were perfectly suited to England’s quick attacking game with a lot of crosses coming into the box.
Here’s how I set the tactic up in FM. I’ve got the team set up to be attacking and positive with the focus of play down the wings. All of the wide players are focussed on crossing the ball into the box as often as possible to simulate how England tended to create most of their crosses. You can find the tactic on the workshop here.
So how does the final league table look after simulating the season……
Fulham you sly dogs, good effort on surviving that insanely tight relegation race.
Fulham
Lets take a look at Fulham first then as they survive an epic 5 way fight against relegation to finish 16th while managing almost a point per game. Mitrovic finished top scorer with a very impressive 17 league goals a whopping 53% of the teams entire goals for the season!
They finished the season as the leagues lowest goal scorers with only 32 goals but with the 14th best defence to go with it. Looking at the results a lack of consistent goal scoring does seem to be the main obstacle between Fulham and a more secure season.
Fulham’s form was patchy through the entire season and they mainly survived thanks to a run of 3 wins and 3 draws in January that pushed them up to 10th in the table and a similar run of form through March and April which pulled them away form the bottom three. You could argue that they were still fortunate to survive however as they failed to win any of their final 6 games against some quite average opposition however, survival is survival no matter how you manage it I guess.
In the head to head games with Man City they managed to get a credible draw at the Etihad which is something while both their biggest win and defeat were 5-0 score lines during April!
In the cups they managed some quite credible results as they were unlucky to lose on penalties to West Ham in the Carabao (maybe this set up is weak at penalties?)
While in the FA Cup they sneaked past Luton before going on a run to the Quarter finals after beating Cardiff and Southampton before being beaten comfortably by Man U.
Not a bad effort to be fair with a fairly weak squad on the game! Maybe the positive, pump balls into the box style works pretty well with their players I guess.
Man City
Although this was a positive season for Fulham the same couldn’t be said for City as they slumped to a 7th placed finish in the league. City were languishing around 7th for most of the year as form was patchy with consistent wins very hard to find. Their best spell of the season came through December and January where they still couldn’t string together consecutive wins but this did lift them all the way up to 4th. Weirdly City only put back to back wins together in match 35 and 36 of the league season as they beat Fulham and Arsenal.
Sadly they couldn’t maintain this form at all through the rest of the year and they quickly sunk back to 7th where they pretty much remained for the rest of the year as they were cut adrift of the Champions League places by 13 points by the end of the year. In the end De Bruyne finished the clubs top scorer (14) and assister (10) as he was had and shoulders above most of the squad. As a team they have the 5th best attack in the league scoring 59 goals but only the 10th best defence which lets them down.
In Europe, City were drawn with a mixed group consisting of Real Madrid, Dynamo Zagreb and Ludogorets, surely you would expect them to finish 2nd behind Real…..surely? Only one point from the first four games was an awful start to proceedings as bottom place looked on the cards only for a minor miracle to occur as City beat Real Madrid before drawing with Dynamo to finish on 5 points and steal 3rd place from Ludogorets. Gutting for the Bulgarian side, great for this experiment though!
This put City into the Europa League where they got a tough draw against Roma. After a heavy 2-0 win in the first leg it looked as if City would progress only for them to bottle it in Rome and lose 2-0. The game went to penalties where once again this tactics Achilles heel was exposed as City were knocked out on penalties.
Surely the domestic cups could provide some success this season at least? Although the Carabao Cup is usually Man City’s annual romp to victory they were dumped out by Watford in the Fourth Round with a very surprising 4-1 defeat.
They fared a lot better in the FA Cup however as they beat two Premier League opponents on their way to the semi final where they lost to their local rivals Man United. Sods, ending the cup dreams of both teams in this experiment.
Conclusion
I’m not quite sure what to make of this one. It clearly has some value as both Fulham and City had half decent seasons to some extent and weren’t both relegated as we’ve seen with some tactics in the past.
This tactic definitely doesn’t fit the make up of the current City squad as they are not geared towards scoring from a lot of crosses pumped into the box whereas Fulham are slightly more with having Mitrovic up front. With some tweaking in fairly certain this could be made into an effective tactic and I’m semi tempted to adopt this into some kind of use in my main save!
If you were curious how this tactic stacks up against the rest of the league here’s how the attacking stats line up as Fulham are one of the worst teams being both passive and wasteful with only Brighton having a worse conversion rate while Man City are in the aggressive and clinical segment making them roughly the 5th or 6th best team in the league going forwards.
At the back Fulham were surprisingly good as they faced a lot of shots but their opponents struggled to convert while City were the polar opposite facing relatively few shots but conceding a high proportion of them, only conceding 10 less goals than Fulham over the season.
I guess the major tweaks you would need to make to this formation to make it more useful is finding a way to shore up your defence as the leakiness of Man City’s was very surprising considering the quality of players they have in defence!
Thanks again for reading this blog piece I hope you enjoyed a rare (these days) FM blog post. Alex
StratMan Gaming 