Build successful values at your new club
We look at a new technique in setting up your club on FM24 from day one using Man Utd. They have been struggling in recent times, so good time to take over.
In this guide, I will just be going over the basics in how I set my teams up from day one. This is will include basic squad management and tactic creation. Most of what we cover here are suggestions and recommendations, following those prompts does not guarantee success.
Man Utd have been struggling since Alex Ferguson left. He was an integral part of the club and when he left the managerial hotseat there was a void. Fast forward to now and Ten Haag is the manager. They have since not regained the glory days of Ferguson, but maybe under your leadership they will on FM24.
You’ll find everything you need to know to get started with Man Utd, including:
- What squad management is and why it’s important.
- The different types of team set up and how they work.
- Tips, tools, and best practices to succeed with Man Utd on FM24.
Read on so you can get a basic understanding of how to develop your squad.
Club Objectives
The first thing we have to decide here is what sort of club are we or what we want to be. It’s far easier to play as the club your are and grow into a super club, than to pretend to be a super club from the start.
In the book ‘The European Game: The Secrets of European Football Success‘, there are five types of clubs:
- Super Clubs
- Contenders
- Mid-Achievers
- Marginal Achievers
- Youth Developers
On first inspection, I thought Man Utd would be either be a super club or a contender. With the objectives they have set you can see that they are trying to fight on two fronts. They are looking to sign the best youngsters for the future and the first team while developing them with the youth system.
They also want to sign the biggest names in football. This is quite the conflict for me as they are signing players under 23 as they are gambling on potential. While at the same time they are buying the biggest names in football that will starve positions in the first team for development.
As a club Man Utd are obviously in a rebuilding process and this is why they are focussing on youth players. Maybe there is the need for a complete overhaul, but signing the big players isn’t the way that is going to happen. As we all know, there are a lot of fantastic young players on Football Manager.
Man Utd first 11
The next step of managing your squad is to look at the players you currently have available to you. To do this, I go to the squad screen, and select reports from the dropdown and sort the players by either their current ability or potential ability stars.
I used the current ability stars with Man Utd to build my tactic. In hindsight I should of stayed true to the youth developer club, but I felt with the expectation of Man Utd fans, it may have been too difficult. The current ability formation left us with a choice of 4-2DM-3-1 (Wide) or a 4-2-3-1 (Wide).
Using the potential ability filter, we can see that we end up with the same formation. So works out pretty well, whichever search filter we use. If we look at the consistencies between both filters, then Fernandes, Varane, Rashford, Casemiro, Mount and Martinez all create the core from this team.
Man Utd Tactics
After using the information from above we need to put it into a tactic going forward with Man Utd. Following the steps from above we will create the team formation and picking the team. From the data that we have this is how the tactic looks:
Now you maybe asking yourself, how did we put the tactics and strategy in place. Well a lot of this is based on the defence, looking at their attributes. First we pick the defence using the method above for Man Utd. We then look at their physical stats to pick their tactics and then move forward.
So we look at the pace of the defence to pick how high the line is and we use the average pace to work this out. So if we have a pave of 15, 12, 11 and 14, we add it together and divide by 4, making 13. Then using this number we would use a standard line for this defence.
The rest of the tactics are then worked out towards that. So passing will be normal, the tempo will be normal, as well as the width being normal. This dictates our framework of the tactic. The other options create the flavour around it.
Man Utd Results
Additionally Man Utd have a fantastic squad available. Starting is not going to be easy as you have a small transfer budget. The team are fairly young and could serve you well in the future if you stick to the youth developer club identity.
This is how we finished the season:
At times it was a rough season, as their was no natural goal scorer available for months at a time. We did end up winning the Europa League though and came fourth in the league.
While these are not massive achievements, they definitely a good launchpad for Man Utd in the second season. I will go through the different recruitment processes I go through each summer in another blog to support this journey.
Get started with Man Utd today
That’s how I used my football manager knowledge in order to get Man Utd off to a good start. The best part about using this approach is that it is not just based on theory – it’s proven to work in Football Manager.
Now you’ve seen how well these squad development ideas work, it’s time to carve out some time to put at least one of these tips into practice soon.
Also, which of the approaches are you most excited to try first? Let me know by leaving a quick comment below.
