Cherry Picking at it’s best!
Bournemouth survived their first year back! The Cherries are an entertaining team, they play great football and have a wonderful philosophy. Up the Cherries!
This is a little series with each EPL team on FM24 as a quick guide on how to get started. We wanted to put a simple guide together to help people on their management journey. The problem for a lot of managers is knowing their best team, how to pick the players and evaluate them.
Managing Bournemouth from day one could be the start of your journey into Football Manager 24. So who are Bournemouth? Are they any good? This is where our guide comes in.
In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know to get started with Bournemouth, including:
- What objectives Bournemouth have and why they are important.
- The different types of players and how they work in the squad.
- Tips, tactics, and best practices to succeed with Bournemouth.
Read on so you can start your awesome journey with Bournemouth!
Bournemouth Objectives
Let’s start by looking at the supporter objectives. None of these objectives come as a surprise to me. Anyone who watches Bournemouth will understand that they are an ambitious club that want to build on their status. They already play entertaining and attacking football, and possession football normally will accompany that. In terms of meeting Soton, then you have at least a year outside of cups before that happens.
So the board agree, let’s play entertaining football. All ambitious clubs will require this as entertaining football goes hand in hand with winning football. Signing players under 23 for the first team is unusual, but it keeps the costs down. Players that are 20-22 cost 20% less on average than older players.
So they actionable objectives are very interesting. Bournemouth have developed a strategy as a selling club. They want you to spend the budget to maximise investment in your first team, and that the players you buy are bought with the intention of selling at a profit. I love this club already, as it has clear identity.
Bournemouth first 11
Let’s take a look at the key players in the squad using current ability. So straight away we have a problem, we have 3 players who play AML. One is a loan, so not a big deal, we’ll play our two guys. It’s nice to have a large number of key players again, and that they play in the spine of the team. The only problem I can see is the goal keeper being 33, but it isn’t an immediate concern.
So there are a number of formations available to us with the key players. We could go with the 443 DM, 442 Attack, 451, the list is endless. We will need to look at where the squad positions can support. Solanke and Moore make a great combination too, which makes decisions more difficult. A nice problem to have with a team.
Look at the potential of some of these players! Straight away whatever formation we choose it needs to include Kerkez, Scott and Zabarnyi. The obvious problem is that the weakest part of the team is the defence, but in years to come there is a real opportunity to create a great defence. This is unless you decide to sell them as per objective.
Bournemouth Tactics
After looking at the depth of the squad and ability, it is clear to me that we need to be playing the 4231. This is a perfect formation to play in line with the objectives of attacking, entertaining, possession football. Additionally it works with all the objectives and the squad.
Starting from where the goals are coming from, Solanke can be a beast. He is fast and will close down defenders. Alot of the play will come from down the middle with Scott sliding balls through to him. Traore is going to be dangerous on the overload in the centre and creates a wonky 442. Semenyo stretches the ball wide and to the byline, these guys will manipulate the defence.
The problem with this formation is that it is very attacking, and with no DM it leaves the back line exposed. The wingbacks will provide cover for the wide players and create new passing patterns. There are not many defensive roles in the team, so we need to be scoring goals and pushing the opposition back.
Get started with Fulham today
From this guide it shows just how fun Bournemouth are. They play great forward thinking football and are giving the youth a chance of coming through the ranks. The main strength of the team is the talent available, they have a flexible squad which is capable of playing in different styles. The weakness of the team is that the defence is just not good enough at the moment so it will be high scoring games.
The opportunity with this team is to recreate that defence with the potential available in the youth at the club. This means will need to lean into the coaches that have high working with youngsters, scouts that can identify youth and the board investing in the youth facilities. This is the tip of the ice berg, but it will all help.
The threat of the team is the objective of the club. If they go down the route of bringing in youth for profit then you need to continue pumping money into new signings. The cycle will keep resuming and the club does not progress.
Start with Bournemouth today and you are assured to have some fun, comment below how you get on with them.
