The club that is stuck
Birmingham City have been missing from the Premier League for 12 years, 12 long hard years. They’ve just been stuck in the mire of the Championship.
- Birmingham City have not been seen in the Premier League since 2011-12.
- With a media prediction of 17th in the Championship there is some work to be done.
Welcome back to another instalment of the Fallen giants series. In this series we take control of teams on FM24 that have been in the Premier League and now residing in one of the other leagues. With this guide we will be managing Birmingham City.
In this short series we look at how to set your team up on the first day of the first season. This is not a comprehensive guide, it’s going to be enough to start your journey. The problem for new managers here is that they get carried away, but do not know the details of the team they are playing with.
Managing Birmingham City is going to be an easier challenge than some of the other fallen giants. They haven’t fallen too far from the tree in terms of leagues, the are just one promotion away from the big time. So let’s find out who Birmingham City are and what can we do with them? Enter our guide.
In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know to get started with Birmingham City, including:
- What objectives Birmingham City 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 Birmingham City on FM24.
Continue reading on so we can take Birmingham City back to the EPL!
Birmingham City Objectives
As we always do, we need to build a strategy for this club to focus on going forward. Birmingham City on FM24 need a new identity to work towards, the one they have at the moment just isn’t working. The way we do this is by aligning our strategy with the board and supporter objectives to start. If there is one way to lose your job, it is to ignore the board and supporter objectives.
First up we have the board objectives, and to be honest there isn’t much to go on. You can look at this in two ways, they aren’t bothered or they have given you cart blanche. We’ll go with the second option as they have requested you play entertaining football.
Now entertaining football does not necessarily mean successful football. What they mean by entertaining football is to play at a high tempo passing and pressing game.
Let’s move on to the supporter objectives, these guys look much more engaged in the club. They want entertaining football like the board, so at least they are on the same page. They also want attacking football which is great as attacking and entertaining football share similar attributes. This is indicating that the style of football we need to play is gegenpress.
The most interesting part is the developing players through the youth system. I love this objective as it allows you to develop the culture at the club and create the infrastructure around it. This is where we change the staff, coaches to work with youngsters, scouts who can see potential ability and a great head of youth development. That will get you started.
Birmingham City first 11
Our next step on the journey to Birmingham City returning to the big time on FM24 is setting out our squad. The way we do this is by using the current ability stars in the squad reports. From this we divide the team into key players, first team squad and unwanted players. It’s pretty easy, 2.5 stars is the average, so anyone 2.5 stars or under is on the list to move on.
Anyone who is three stars will make the squad and above that they are key players in the squad. The idea behind this is that we want to push the standard of the squad. We take the key players and we start to build the formation with the squad players filling in the rest of the structure.
Looking at the key player in this team we can see that we have quite a few. There are two formations which are jumping out at me here, either a 4231 or a 433. There are a number of variations of each one, the squad will decide this with the strength in depth.
After looking through the squad, we can see that we can only field one striker, there is no depth there and to field two would take the quality from somewhere else on the pitch. We have a goalkeeper, a back four and one striker up front, this leaves 5 midfielders, but how? Due to the number of attacking midfielders I have leaned into a 4231, but could have easily gone 433 DM.
Birmingham City Tactics
Let’s put all of our observations and decision together, this is what is going to make our Birmingham City team on FM24. The first thing to put in place is the formation, we have decided to go with a 4231 because of the number of key players who play in attacking midfield.
The 4231 formation is a possession based formation that plays through the centre. This is ideal for teams that have a quick striker that they want to push the ball through to. The wingers are there by design to try and stretch the defence wide and cross the ball in. The advanced playmaker is to play the ball through and link with the water carrier and ball winner.
The wingbacks are going to support the wingers from deep if the wingers run out of space. The striker is the biggest problem, I have chosen the complete striker to see how they score goals first. Simple backline with the 4 and a sweeper keeper to mop up balls.
Get started with Birmingham City today
To be honest I am looking forward to managing Birmingham City on FM24 in the first season. I don’t think it will be difficult to get these fallen giants back to the Premier League. They have some good players and an opportunity to recreate money in selling players and invest it.
The strength of this team is the midfield, they have so many midfielders that are of a great quality. This team has an opportunity to create a lot of chances, they have some great passers of the ball. The weakness to the team is the strikers, there aren’t many and the ones that are there aren’t all that good.
The opportunity with Birmingham is to create youth culture and bring through great youth prospects. Get the best youth coaches in, get the scouts in who look at potential ability, loan out the under 21’s and above all else, get a decent head of youth development. The threat is that you never get out of the division, which is what they face right now.
Share or comment on this article: How to manage Birmingham City on day one.
