United we stand, divided we fall
Man United have had a rough time since Fergie left, if the truth be known, they’ve lost their identity. This is the start of another new era at old Trafford.
Welcome to another edition of how to manage an EPL team in the first season on FM24. What we do in this guide is take over each Premier League club and manage them for the first season. We then give our thoughts and recommendations on how to manage that club to help you start off.
In this guide we manage Man United, have one of the biggest fan bases in the world, not just the league. While this enables them to create revenue streams, a lot of that money has been wasted over the years buying promising players who do not deliver. Ever since Fergie left, Man United have been trying to find their identity.
In this guide we are going to:
- Look at the league performance and individual performances.
- We will look at the tactics which have been used in Football Manager 24.
- Potential transfers and areas of improvement.
Read on if you want push Crystal Palace up the table and into a new era!
Man United results
In this section we discuss the results so far this season. While this is general data it can have good indicators as how we are performing. You do not fix the result, you intervene in how you got the result to change the trajectory. We can also see the type of teams we play well against or if we play better home or away.
As you can see from the results we have had a few good streaks over the first half of the season. This lends to our good position in the league, one of the big turning points was beating Man City in the derby. There is a certain amount of inconsistency to our results too, like losing 4-1 to Crystal Palace.
The main thing we can see is that we have won 60% of our games, which is close to where we need to be. The win ratio and our goal record both agree that we should be high in the table. We are one of the top scorers in the league scoring 2 goals a game and conceding 1 a game.
The result of all this data is that we are playing well, but need some more consistency to win the league. We need to focus on winning the games that we could lose and reduce the losses. We’ll tighten up the defence and look to add more pace in the forward line to win the ball back quicker.
Individual Performance
This is where we get the magnifying glass out and inspect the under and over performers. This is where we can identify the strengths and the weaknesses and how we can use them going forward. Again we only use the basic squad data as we could be here all day.
Looking at the average ratings, I am surprised to see that there are only a few 7+ average ratings. Varane has been the king of the set pieces in the first part of the season. Rashford is the key player in this team and a serial match winner. There are a lot of players who are in the 6.9 average rating, so I can settle with that.
Looking into the Xg data we can see that there are a few heroes, players who are exceeding or doubling their target. Rashford is 3 ahead of his expectation, Sancho and Varane have doubled it and Hojlund has gone crazy on it too. Overall this counter attacking football is creating some tasty chances for the team as a whole.
In the pass completion standard test we only have a handful of players that have not achieved 85%. In Rashford, Eriksen and Fernandes I would have put money on them performing better. I would l say that because they are working in the final third, more of their passes are riskier.
Man United tactics
In this section we take a look at the FM24 tactics that we have used for Man United this season. We normally take the tactic that created in the day one series and use that to start with. Sometimes we will change the tactic, as not all theories work in practical.
So the first thing to notice is that we decided to use a fluid counter attack rather than the gegenpress. This defence just doesn’t work with a high defensive line and were getting caught flat footed. As well as this we played a few of the top teams in a row and we were described as underdogs, which made me think.
With the fast front line and the slow defensive line, a counter attack actually makes more sense. With this type of football we are going against the attacking football the fans want, but I will sacrifice that in order to keep the good performances. We have got a strong centre midfield to win the ball and recycle the ball.
Defensively things seem to be better with a deeper line as it stops pacey forwards and we can have tall centre backs that are good in the air.
Conclusion
Man United have been a fairly complex team to manage on FM24. There is a huge expectation on a team that is made up of expensive oddities. Why did they buy Eriksen when they have Mount and the world class Fernandes? It’s going to take quite the rebuild to make this team a title competing team.
The strength of Man United is the abundance of resources that they have at their disposal. It doesn’t seem to matter how many expensive mistakes they make, they seem to make money.
The weakness of the team is that they are very fractured. There have been a number of managers over the years at Man United and there are remnants of a number of squads still there. Time to trim the fat and focus on a team culture.
The opportunity of Man United on FM24 is the number of amazing youth products. They have a wonderful system, that produces top class youngsters. We need to support these players early with appearances, bringing in coaches that are great at motivating and working with youngsters.
The threat is that if Man United do follow some sort of culture, then they will remain lost in their approach. As well as that if United do not win anything over the years then they will fall away from the title contenders.
Time for you to start a FM24 save game with Crystal Palace and change their fortune. Please like and comment what you think on this series.
