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Published on November 19th, 2016 | by SYC Matt

The Norwegian Way – Chapter 2 – Our First Season

So here we are, resuming our journey through the Norwegian football pyramid, to dominate the country, Europe and then the world. Maybe I’m getting a bit ahead of myself but I do have high hope for this save. I’ve not enjoyed playing a save this much for many years so I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone that read, or promoted the first post. The response was overwhelming and I hope I can do the rest of the save justice.

In the previous post, we left ourselves after a very solid start to the league season and a less than confident start to the cup which saw us knocked out after only one round. If nothing else this will give us less fixture congestion later in the season so we can concentrate on the league. The way I intend to format these posts is to provide the information for all the fixtures in picture form but only take a more detailed look at certain games, otherwise, these posts could reach the length of small novels.

We had ourselves a massive reality shock in our very next league game as we simply weren’t at the races. We committed far too many fouls even by our standards and despite keeping large amounts of the ball we were unable to carve out any real chances. In the end, we went home comfortably beaten and at the time I was very much considering a total overhaul of the tactic but decided it was too soon for that as I wanted to see how we coped over 8-10 games in order to attain a decent sample size.

Over our next set of games my decision to stand by the tactic was vindicated after a strong run of results saw us go unbeaten and keep ourselves in with a shout of the solitary promotion spot in the division.

The 6 game run gave me real confidence in the tactic and the players we had at our disposal, as we were very much getting what we deserved from the games. The even games ended in draws and the games we dominated we were able to pick up the win. Obviously, I think we need to turn some of those draws into wins particularly at home if we are to stand any chance at winning the league this season. I hope that can come with increased tactical cohesion and some tweaks along the way.

Taking a look at the league table after the first 9 games and we are still right in with a chance. Our loss to Notodden FK is suddenly looking a lot less embarrassing as they have been the standout team in the opening stages of the season and look to be the team to beat (Which yes I understand we failed to do). Another major plus side of those fixtures was the points we were able to take from the teams in direction competition with us. A hard earned draw away at Fram Larvik joined by an unbelievable performance at Asker. Not to mention wins against the current 5th and 6th placed clubs. I’m cautiously optimistic based on these results but they may not tell the entire story with a long way still to go in the league. The only real low-light in the set of fixtures was the 1-1 draw at home to Baerum in which we were bailed out by a goal from Christensen. We could have been joint top with a win but it’s very much a case of swings and roundabouts and all that jazz. Turning our attention towards the mid-season squad report you can see that we have no runaway lead goalscorer, instead, the goals have been spread fairly evenly amongst our forward thinking players. I actually see this as a positive as we are not beholden to one player to get all of our goals. I also hope this will mean that injuries will have less of an impact on our firepower unless we were to suffer a virtual pandemic of them. It’s also interesting to note that our two best-performing players in terms of match rating are our fullbacks. This was very much a feature of this shape when I used it with Wimbledon so it appears that it has carried over to FM17.

Given the start we had enjoyed I had hoped it would continue long into the season, however, it seems the FM gods (Also known as our tactics not being good enough) had other ideas. Our next two games left me very much questioning our tactic again, but more specifically our ability to break down really poor teams. Teams that came into the game with the intention of strangling it. The match against Pors Grenland is easily one of the worst games I’ve ever watched. The ball barely left their final third but as much as we huffed and puffed we were unable to blow down their house. The three little pigs escaped with a point that day. At least against Ørn-Horten we were able to create some better chances, however I was almost more disappointed in this result as we threw away a lead against a side who could barely hit a shot on target (Not that we can talk as our shooting accuracy was on par with Stevie Wonder after a couple of Whiskeys).

At this point, I gave into the tactical itch that I needed to scratch. With this, I bring you both a cautionary tale and some advice (I know i said i wasn’t here for that but let’s just call this a teachable moment). New to FM this year is the pre-match tactical advice, or rather the presentation of it. It has always been there in the backroom staff reports however those were nice and easy to ignore in previous years due to them being hidden under a kit bag in the proverbial dressing room that is FM’s sub menus. They also seemed to lack consistency with requests being made to play radically different shapes and instructions in every game. Over that first 9 games my assistant had been nagging me about some tactical changes that he thought could help us in the games and i had been asserting my dominance by ignoring him. I decided it was now time to humble myself and bring him home from social Siberia. His suggestions were to simplify the tactic, put the tempo and defensive line back to normal, and remove the work ball into the box instruction. That last suggestion left me in cold sweats, as far as i was concerned that was the only instruction preventing my restrained frontline from reverting back to their trigger happy selves. He also suggested some changes to the numbers of attack, support and defense roles. I decided to leave those for now as despite my new humble self i wasn’t about to admit to being totally wrong. I did switch my fullbacks from automatic to attack to give us a bit more going forward as very often in games I had seen them standing too close to our wingers instead of bombing on towards the byline.

The first game with these new tactics seemed to bring a positive performance from us. Our opponents were the whipping boys of the league at this point so it’s easy to ignore the positives to be taken from the game. We scored 5 goals and created a greater number of high-quality chances than we had in previous games. We moved the ball around much quicker and didn’t pass for the sake of passing, I give all the credit for this to my assistant as those instructional changes seemed to be responsible. On the downside was the two goals conceded against a team who I’m still not entirely convinced know what a goal is. Both goals were from long passes over the top into space vacated by our newly pushed up fullbacks so perhaps it might be better to get our wingers to provide the attack duties instead. The final change I made for the match was dropping Tveit and pushing Steinar Berås into the striking role with Wily Pepa slipping into his spot on the wing. That added pace up front gives us another outlet in behind and seems to provide some more opportunities. Unfortunately, that idea was nipped in the bud as soon as it started as Berås picking up a broken arm late in the game which will keep him out for 5 weeks at least as I chose to send him to the specialist.

Our next game saw us away at another of the struggling sides, once we went down to 10 men I would have happily settled for the point but I was over the moon when Tveit gave me something to think about by getting on the end of a long ball before bursting through on goal to slot us in front. I immediately threw us on to contain but it wasn’t enough for us to hang on in the end. The other major concern was losing Willy for a minimum of 7 weeks which will leave us digging deep to fill our wide positions.

Thankfully the transfer window opened soon after and we were able to finally have use of a few players I signed just after the previous window had shut. Robert Severin Fossum will give us some back up as a striker and with his potential, he can either become a first team fixture for us or be moved on at a later date for a considerable profit. Sondre Karterud is in a similar boat but due to our lack of backup options in the defence, he may find himself getting more first-team football this season than he might expect.

We also saw a frenzy of interest over the window for our young midfielder Jonas Håland with the above offer being the best we received. I have long term plans for the lad at the club so won’t be letting him go anytime soon if I can avoid it. He was happy to stay as he is a fan of the club so hopefully, we will see him getting more first-team action in the coming seasons.

Our next two games saw us struggle considerably without some key players, the draw with Moss was a fair result and we can maybe consider ourselves hard done by for losing the following fixture. We are in a results business and these results simply aren’t good enough with teams like Notodden stretching their lead over us to as much as 8 points. We found ourselves at a crossroads in the season, I was happy with the direction the tactic was heading but the injuries had hit us hard. I made some more adjustments ahead of our next run of games as we had to throw everything at our remaining fixtures to at least stay competitive. I reverted back to our attacking fullbacks as we definitely had more goals in the team with that style even though it did leave us more vulnerable at the back. The final change again came from my assistant who had been suggesting we play with a standard mentality against the stronger sides, reserving the control style for games against the lower ranked teams.

The changes I made may well have been the turning point in our season, where we went from uninspiring and inconsistent to a team with goals and more importantly, wins. A back and forth game against leaders Notodden saw us come away with a very deserved win and revenge for the defeat earlier in the season. Following up with a slightly lucky win away against Baerum which I firmly believe we would have lost earlier in the season. The return of Berås was a massive boost to the team as well.

Despite those two wins we still found ourselves 2 points off the pace and Notodden had that very important game in hand over the chasing pack which could increase the gap as much as 5 points. Those extra goals we had managed to find gave a boost towards parity with our rival’s goal differences. Taking a look a little further down, as much as I’ve complained at times about us this season spare a thought for Kvik Halden who managed just the one win all season. The real work started here as the fixture computer had matched us up against many of our rivals over the next few games in a row so wins here would be vital if we had any hope of snatching the title away.

Over the course of those 3 games, we began to show why the real life Arendal were able to win this league at a canter. Not only were we playing brilliantly but we were getting the wins we deserved. Having a clean bill of health in the squad certainly helped us perform to our maximum. Christensen’s season ending injury had me worried but the team were able to rally and with the tactic finally settled and clicking we were able to flex our muscle properly for what felt like the first time this season.

Three games against weaker sides saw us continue the fantastic run of form, scoring goal after goal and looking far better defensively. Our goal difference was climbing at an alarming rate. In amongst all this winning, I was privileged to see a very bizarre game in which our opponents scored 3 own goals, with their keeper grabbing a brace of horror. It was a blessing to us as we hadn’t looked like our free scoring selves on the day. On another day we could have lost that game and with it destroyed the tidal wave of momentum we had built.

Our astonishing run saw us finally top the league for the first time this season, albeit Notodden had a game in hand but it was still a moment for us to cherish no matter what happened in our final few games. The league had turned into a 3 horse race that could go right down to the wire. We had gone from the worst goal difference of the bunch to having the best, something I knew could be a key factor if things got tight. This was part of the reason I never had the team lift off the throttle when winning games and chose to go for big scores instead.

Notodden’s game in hand was at home to struggling Odd 2. Amazingly they were only able to limp to a 1-1 draw after coming from behind. I believe at the time they were sitting at the top of the injury league, I think this may have contributed to their slight downturn in form, allowing us and Fram Larvik to close in on them. With our final two games of the season away at bottom club Kvik Halden and at home to 11th, we were in with a great chance of pulling off an unexpected promotion.

The scoreline may not look it but we got the first part of the job done away at Kvik Halden, we could have scored 4 or 5 but it just wasn’t our day. The most important thing was getting the win, though it did come at the expense of losing key figure Steinar Berås for up to 6 months with a horrible Achilles tendon injury.

The final day of the season was a stressful one from start to finish. Notodden were at home against a struggling side and I felt confident they would win despite their injuries. When we fell behind very early I wondered if it would all be for nothing, thankfully our biggest rivals also conceded early. For a time it looked like Fram would sneak in out of nowhere to snatch the title away from both of us. Tobias Olsvik’s double and a well-worked goal from Willy Pepa ensured that we got what we deserved from the game. Notodden were also able to turn their game around to win so it was a very tense final few minutes as the clocks ticked down. When the final whistle went I was elated, we had turned a very average season into an excellent one and would reap our rewards with promotion to the 2nd tier.

In the end, it was our goal difference that saw us victorious. We had been hard to beat all season and only losing 2 games very much shows that off. The issue we had was turning some of the draws into wins which we did in the second half of the season in emphatic style. Willy Pepa was our best player over the whole season and top scorer to go with it. Having our top scorer only get 10 goals doesn’t worry me too much as looking at the number of other players chipping in shows we have goals from all over the team. If we were able to recruit a fantastic goal scorer at some point that would only make us even better, or at least that is my hope.

In response to us winning the league the board have upped the wage budget massively giving me around £4,000 p/w spare to play with, however the rules for the second tier i believe make it so all players on contracts have to earn at least £350 p/w so some of the budget will go on getting all the wages up to code. We were given £70,000 in prize money which is certainly nothing to be sniffed at but fails to make that much of a dent into our mounting negative bank balance. Tight money management isn’t something I’ve had many experiences with on FM so getting us out of the red will be a new test for me. Thankfully next season the money even for finishing last is huge compared to this season and staying up could see us rake in over £200k. If things do begin to deteriorate further we may have to look at player sales, though that is something I’m reluctant to do that as we won’t have enough money to replace them. Christensen is our best player on paper and is valued at around £100k so if a bid was to come in for him that was close to £500k i may have to consider selling him. I would of course get as many favourable clauses as possible to make the most of any future transfers. The only hope i have next season is to do enough to survive, with 4 relegation spots it will be tough but I’d like to think with the right signings and if the tactic keeps working we may just have what it takes to stabilise in the league. If we can stay up I will start to plan for some steady years in the league while I build up some young talent for us. I do want to improve the infrastructure at the club but that will have to wait until we have enough cash to make the improvements without jeopardising the financial stability of the club. I have tried getting the board to let me have a senior affiliate but they were unable to find one which was disappointing.

I hope you have enjoyed the first full season of this save as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I’m very much looking forward to next season, it will be a very different type of season as we will be the underdog most weeks so will need to be strong at the back and making sure we take our chances.

About the Author

SYC Matt A football fan just like the rest of us. Battling with the usual ups and downs that come with supporting one of the less glamorous teams. Crusader for footballing justice.