Sunderland FM26 Club Overview

This is our first step in the Sunderland FM26 team guide, looking at the board and supporter expectations. These expectations will provide a context on the club identity through their recruitment and tactical style. This will then in turn govern our tactical approach.

Let’s start with the board expectations, they have two recruitment objectives and one tactical objective. The tactical objective is an easy one, whatever we do, it must revolved around high pressing. This is can easily be achieved with Gegenpressing, Control Possession, Vertical Tiki Taka or Tiki Taka.

The recruitment side of the objectives indicate a modern standard of performance or profit. Get players before their peak, so they are cheaper, develop them and then keep them if you need their performance or sell them for a large profit. Outside of that they want you to blood some youngsters each season.

Looking at the supporter objectives it is clear to see that they are aligned with the board. They want the high tempo pressing too which means the same tactical styles are recommended as above. They also want the youth to be developed, so let’s get our youth system built to create the best youth teams.

Tactical Styles Verdict: Gegenpress, Control Possession, Vertical Tiki Taka and Tiki Taka.

Want to try this with a different team? Check out the Brighton version here.

Sunderland FM26 Squad Guide

Our next step is to analyse the squad, with it’s strengths and weaknesses. The way that we do this is by using the assistant reports with the star rating. We first check who our key players are by the current ability and then the promising youngsters with the potential ability.

We then use the best positions of each group of players to map out the formations which are available to us. This will then give us the structure of our team.

Key Players

Looking at the Sunderland key players you can see that their best players are all new signings and most are through the core of the team. This shows a team that wants to stay up in the Premier League and has ambition.

You can see that they have recruited strongly in defensive areas with a left back, 3 centre backs and a DM. They must have been happy with the offerings they have up front. So many formations open up here such as 343, 532 and 352 for example.

Best Youth Prospects

Now moving onto the top potential within the squad, we have nearly a whole squad page of players with more than 3 stars. This is a big indicator in what Sunderland are trying to build, a team of tomorrow. The problem with that is it could suffer today for tomorrow, but even so they can fall back on the performance or profit concept.

Habib Diarra and Noah Sadiki look like amazing players which they have brought in. On the other Chris Rigg and Abdullah Ba look amazing from last year’s squad. The future is very bright and indicates something resembling a 433.

Formation Verdict: 343 or 433.

Sunderland FM26 Wonderkids & Young Talents

So unfortunately the Sunderland FM26 team guide hasn’t got any wonderkids to tell us about at Sunderland.

The only advice we can give is to recruit some of your own from other clubs. Get scouts who are great at judging potential to find them, get coaches that are great at working with youngsters to develop them.

Get a decent head of youth development to help develop the club and encourage decent trialists.

Sunderland FM26 Tactics & Best Formation

So this is the most important part of the Sunderland FM26 team guide, putting it all together. We’ve got our data driven ideas on tactical style and formation, plus the key players we want to include. This will be enough to get us started in the first season with Sunderland.

I have elected for a 433 DM in possession and 4141 out of possession. The reason for this is the squad fits a 433 DM when mapping the formation and the 4141 is the natural out of possession partner to it. Both are very solid and both lend into the Gegenpress style that I have opted for.

There are a lot of good midfielders at the club and the 433 utilises their skills brilliantly. This is the best formation for the Gegenpress due to the very narrow nature in the centre and the flooding in centre midfield.

The movement is really easy to see with this formation, the wingers push up to AML and AMR to support the attack. They then go inside, the wingbacks then keep the width and stretch the opposition where they can. Very basic and very traditional, with the view of a lower skill level team.

This shape works even better if you use the FM26 433 transition model.

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Transfer Recommendations for Sunderland in FM26

Positions to Strengthen

I think the Sunderland FM26 team guide has highlighted one of the biggest areas of concern, the attack. There was a lot of investment into midfield, defence and youngsters for the future. When you look at the key players only Adingra is a forward, so this is a place for investment.

Potential Signings

I would be looking at top scorers with high physical attributes to start with. According to our age curve analysis on FM24 the best time to buy forwards are at 20 years and then let them go at 23. This will get the best performance and profit.

I would look at typical Gegenpress attributes like Aggression, Anticipation, Work Rate, Stamina and Acceleration.

Sunderland FM26 Save Challenges

The one and only challenge for Sunderland is to stay up. While they are doing really well in real life, they don’t seem to be all that good on FM26.

Once you get through that first season, you can redesign the team to your way of playing and that makes a huge difference.

Conclusion

Sunderland pose that traditional challenge we love to complete on each football manager, keeping them up. As we have detailed in the Sunderland FM26 team guide, there has been some really good recruitment with a mixture of key players and youngsters.

I took on the challenge of keeping Sunderland up in the first 6 months and I was surprised that we managed 7th by Christmas. I will definitely keep this save game challenge up and post it at later date.

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