The St. Gallen Save: Pre-Season Diary

In this series I'm trying to bring together all elements of Football Manager as part of a cohesive strategy aimed at propelling St. Gallen to the top of Swiss football & beyond. I'm not an expert in any aspect of the game, but there are some parts I know less about, or have ignored all together. The aim of this series is to learn & improve as I go...

In the last post, I was discussing my tactical plans for St. Gallen as well as the attributes I felt were important in implementing that style of play. From there, I assessed the players I have available to me at the start of the season, and their suitability for the system. I now have a pretty good idea of which players will be key for me this season, which players I can potentially develop and improve, which players I'll be aiming to move on in the next 12 months and identifying which areas of the pitch are priorities for recruitment.

This isn't really a guide to pre-season, rather an account of what I did and why. If you're looking for a guide on how you can approach pre-season, there is a really good one here. I've nicked a few ideas from that, that I'll be looking to use in my own game.

Planning Stage

I'm fairly confident at this point, having assessed my squad, that I can surpass the expectations of the board and the predictions of the Swiss media (5th place) and finish in at least 3rd place. With the 2022 World Cup forcing a truncated fixture schedule in the first half of the season, there is the potential for us to have a serious advantage over the sides who are in European competition this season. With FC Basel, Young Boys, FC Lugano & FC Zurich all aiming for European Group Stages, almost half of the League could be facing a real struggle with the fixture congestion.

With that in mind, pre-season becomes even more important for us. So, I'll be aiming to use the time I have in pre-season to:

1. Tailor training to get some good fitness work into the team early, before switching to a more tactical focus that will help with Team Cohesion and tactical understanding.

2. Use the friendlies to make sure the majority of players have full match sharpness ahead of the first competitive fixture.

3. Balance the difficulty of the friendlies so that we can get a few morale-boosting victories, but also test and tweak tactics against a decent level of opposition.

With just over a month to go before the season starts, let's get stuck in.

Week 1

One thing that is immediately obvious is that we're not maximising our staffing options, with fairly low numbers across the coaching, scouting and medical departments, as well as a lack of analysts. Several job adverts are instantly created.

I've taken the idea from the linked article linked above to organise a Friendly Cup, so that we'll be playing two games on our first pre-season weekend. The teams involved are all from outside the top two tiers, and are all Semi-Professional sides, so it should give us a chance to rotate the squad and win a couple of games, without necessarily being a walkover.

The training focus throughout pre-season will be geared towards fitness work, and anything that offers a boost to Tactical Familiarity and Team Cohesion. All other attribute development will basically take a back seat for the time being.

It's hard to read too much into the first two friendlies given the quality of opposition is fairly poor, and that I decided to field a reserve XI in one game and full strength in the other, when I probably should have mixed and matched to level out the quality of both XIs.

6-2 win vs Black Stars - build-up looked pretty decent and well-controlled, although passing from FBs/DM could have been more aggressive. Decent movement from CMs and front 3 to stretch and overload opposition, so shape looked OK. Looked pretty vulnerable to long balls over the top at times. Could be down to low quality XI, but a little concerned by the lack of pressure on the opposition back line at times.

1-1 draw (won 5-3 on pens) vs Wettswil-Bonstettan - a really disappointing performance. Total control of possession (76%), but not enough penetration (1.96 xG). Kept possession well, but failed to progress the ball well enough against a defensive low block.

Week 2

Again, the focus is largely on fitness work, as well as improving Tactical Familiarity and Team Cohesion. With the friendly matches now stepping up in difficulty level, the fringe players will see less game time as we aim to get the main squad ready.

In Week 2 we'll take on Aarau, a second tier side who the media predict will finish 3rd, so they're a fairly decent standard of opponent at this stage.

After some less-than-impressive performances in the first two friendlies, I'll be looking to make some changes to try and make us a little less...stale in possession. As I mentioned in the previous post, I want us to control possession, but not at the expense of creating chances. We have to always play with attacking intent.

So ahead of this fixture I've bumped up our mentality to Positive, asked players to Pass Into Space and increased the tempo of our play.

5-2 win vs Aarau - much, much better and I was particularly impressed by how we built play from the back. We were able to draw them into pressing our back line and on a number of occasions were able to play around them and create some good chances, including the below goal. This was helped by Aarau trying to push higher up, though.

It does feel like things are starting to take shape nicely, now, and I'm beginning to get more of an idea of what is/isn't working well at this point. I'm a little concerned at how we'll do against teams who are good at deploying the high press, as I think we've definitely got vulnerabilities in terms of playing out under pressure. But I'm also worried about how we'll cope against teams who sit deep and counter, as I'm not yet convinced by how we defend counter-attacking situations.

Week 3

More of the same as we build up to the new season and this will likely be our last week with so much focus on physical training. I also had a little tinker with our set piece routines this week, as I aim to make use of the aerial prowess of Matej Maglica.

Our opponent in Week 3 will be Thun, another 2nd tier side. Their media prediction of a 4th place finish indicates they'll be a fairly similar level to Aarau.

6-1 win vs Thun - another good step forward, as we produced a dominant performance and scored plenty of goals - including a header for Matej Maglica from one of our tweaked corner routines! Thun looked to press us a bit more than Aarau did, and were more adept at keeping the ball so possession stats were more balanced, but we carried such a big counter-attacking threat.

Week 4

The final week of pre-season and, as ever, the focus is on physical/tactical stuff. Our Team Cohesion and Managerial Support have seen a slight improvement, and our Tactical Familiarity is probably at around 75% at this point. I'm pretty happy with the tactical style so far, but there will be much bigger tests to come so I wanted to end pre-season against an opponent of a pretty similar level to our team...

Our final opponent of pre-season will be Austrian Bundesliga side, FK Austria Vienna.

3-2 vs Austria Vienna - a good overall performance to wrap up pre-season. Vienna sat off quite a lot and allowed us to dominate possession. I do think we'll come unstuck at points this season if teams set up in a low block, but I'm not sure that will happen a great deal - at least not early on in the season. If we're performing well we might face that issue in the second half of the season.

Summary

Overall I'd say I'm pretty happy with how pre-season went. Morale is good after some positive results, the players are looking fit and ready for the start of the season and our Team Cohesion & Tactical Familiarity have improved to a point where I think we can make an impact early on in the season.

It can be difficult to judge your level during pre-season. You can find yourself fielding a weakened squad against an opponent who has fielded their strongest XI, and vice versa. Also, in most of my games, I fielded one XI and changed it almost entirely after 60 minutes. But on the whole I'm pleased with how the performances looked.

We're building play patiently from the back and trying to bait opponents into breaking their structure and pressing us. When this has happened, we've quickened the play and looked very dangerous. I do worry about our ability to break down a well-organised and disciplined low block, but we'll try and cross that bridge when we come to it. Out of possession we've pressed aggressively and not allowed opponents much time on the ball.

Join me next time as I discuss my tactical setup for this season, and analyse our opening day match vs FC Basel.