Welcome back to Bulgaria where two time First League champions CSKA Sofia begin the defence of their title, while also looking to go one step further on last year in their campaign for a first League Cup win under Frank's leadership.
I'll also discuss my approach to squad rotation as the games continue to come think and fast, and every player wants a slice of the action.
Save Update
What a performance! I'm so pleased for the lad, and yet I also know that the sharks will now be circling. We'll just have to enjoy him in a CSKA Sofia shirt while we can.
An extract from the diary of Frank M. Athlete, 18th April 2029
With such a young side that are still improving, Frank struggled to identify where best to strengthen as he planned for the 2028/29. Full back is one position that could probably be improved but finding players better than what we have has proved impossible.
Instead, the only two signings he made were Bulgarian, Lachezar Georgiev, a 20yo DC who could be rotated in and keep our back line strong, plus a long term investment in Maikon, an 18yo winger who we can develop for the future.
Elsewhere, academy starlet Borislav Velev cements his place in our 25-man squad after impressive form on loan last season, while Ivan Peychev returns from his own loan spell to provide cover in central midfield.
As was becoming an annual tradition, our first fixture was the Superkupa where we were comfortable winners against Lokomotiv Plovdiv and guaranteed our first piece of silverware for the season.
As is also becoming something of a tradition, we then lost our opening league game to Botev Plovdiv, letting a 2-1 lead slip in the process. A run of 8 league games followed where we racked up 6 wins and two draws, the latter results coming against the newly promoted sides where they seemed to play without fear against us, and we didn't know how to respond.
This year's Champions League group pitted us against Borussia Dortmund, Chelsea and Juventus, otherwise known as the Group of Death! Dortmund were up first and our now famous 4-1-4-1 Cautious tactic saw us soak up oodles of pressure, while hitting them on the break. A scrappy 1-0 away win was a our reward in this game before playing the same trick on Juventus at the end of the month. We struggled to create but a 0-0 home draw was still a good result as far as Frank was concerned.
In between our two Champions League encounters, we secured two more league wins against mid-table regulars Septemvri Sofia and Etar, with our only other September fixture coming in the first round of the Kupa Bulgariya. No upsets for us this year as we despatched Hebar in 2-0 win.
As we rolled into October, CSKA Sofia had now not conceded a goal in 6 games across all competitions. Perhaps evidence that Frank's decision not to bring in too many new faces was paying off.
The natural order of things was restored in the next tie though, as local rival Slavia Sofia beat us on our own patch 1-0, which led us into the next game against Chelsea in the CL, where we were overpowered 3-2 by a much stronger side.
A win in the next round of the league cup saw us through to the Quarter Finals next month, while we managed a win and a draw in our other two league games for the month. Top of the table in the league at the end of October, and holding our own in the Champions League as well.
On the 1st November we travelled to Chelsea and our trusty cautious approach paid dividends again with another 1-0 win against much stronger opposition. Unfortunately this would prove the only high of the month, as despite a scrappy 1-0 win against newly promoted Tsarko selo, we were trumped 3-0 at home to Ludogorets, lost to Dortmund at home in the Champions League and then had to rescue a draw against Beroe.
We even made our league cup Quarter Final as difficult as possible, taking it all the way to penalties against Tsarko selo, where we eventually won to go through to the final four.
December would see us recapture some of our league form, collecting seven from a possible nine points, but defeat at Juventus saw us thrown out of the Champions League as we finished bottom of the group, level on points with Juventus and a point shy of 2nd placed Dortmund. Could we take solace in the fact we were attained the most points of any side that finished bottom of their group? Not really.
As the league split and we took up our familiar place in the Champions Group, confidence of securing another league title was high in Frank's camp. They say that overconfidence leads to complacency and we didn't disappoint with consecutive losses to Arda and then Ludogorets, seeing the chasing pack catch up with us in the league.
With the first leg of the League Cup semi-final to follow, we went ahead and made it three losses from three, making things twice as tough when we'd meet up with Botev Plovdiv in a couple of weeks time.
Before that, we got back on form with a handy 2-0 defeat of our rivals CSKA 1948, which stood us in good stead as we lined up for the second leg of the Semi-Final in the cup. What followed is quite simply the best individual performance I've witnessed in a competitive game on Football Manager, EVER!
You may recognise Velev from my Youth Development experiment in the last post. He's a player that has gone from strength to strength, now pinning down a starting place in our first XI.
In this game, Velev almost single handedly recovered our 1 goal deficit in the first leg with a masterclass in the reverse fixture. 5 goals, 87% shots on target and a stunning perfect 10 rating. What a player!
With a place in the cup final assured, we just had the small matter of the league run-in to contend with.
Botev Plovdiv were our opponents in the next game as well, this time keeping us at bay with a 2-2 draw. Two wins and two draws in our next four league matches was enough to see us stay top of the table, and put us within touching distance of a third successive title with just one more win needed.
Before that, we had a League Cup final to contest. Having been defeated in last year's final, Frank had every intention of winning this one. Our opponents would be long-time rivals Ludogorets and they started the game with the intensity we expected as we headed in at half time with the score tied at 0-0.
In the second half we blew them away, going 2-0 up before they pinched one back. With minutes left we put it beyond them with Morales grabbing our third and securing our first cup win under Frank's tenure.
Back to the league where we were one win from bagging the title. Ludogorets were our opponents again and we expected a response having beaten them in the cup. We left it late but broke the deadlock on 76 minutes with a converted penalty, and doubled our lead on 84 minutes. No response from Ludogorets, and we closed out the game to clinch the title.
A domestic treble is no mean feat, especially given how competitive Bulgaria's First League is, and Frank was still smiling at the success of the side in the Champions League.
A tremendous season, all things considered. We were not as convincing in the league as in previous championships but we did enough and grabbing all three was a fantastic achievement.
In addition to Frank's induction into Bulgaria's Hall of Fame, our success coupled with Ludogoret's and Levski's performances in Europe also saw the Bulgarian First League rise to 9th place in the European rankings, quite an achievement when you consider how competitive many of the other leagues are.
Having won it all domestically this season, Frank will be trying to do it all again next year with the added incentive of trying to go beyond the group stages in the Champions League. Tune in next time and see how he fared.
Squad Rotation
In FM20, the way we manage a player's game time got a huge upgrade, with individual players now expecting a certain amount of minutes on the pitch as part of their contractual negotiations and their squad status.
If I'm honest, I've almost completely ignored what squad status players are signing as when I bring them in, but so far in this save I haven't had to worry too much.
At Farul Constanta, we had a relatively small squad to begin with and I managed to keep it small by only replacing outgoing players, or selling who we had when I could upgrade with better quality. This meant that managing playing time was relatively straightforward, since most of our players outside of the first eleven were young backups with low expectations anyway, and so there was no pressure to keep swapping my first team around.
Fast forward to CSKA Sofia and it's a different story. Firstly, we're participating in three competitions each year, and depending on how well we do in the league cup, and in Europe, we can end up playing anywhere north of 50 games a season.
Squad rotation has been crucial to our success in Bulgaria, particularly as some of the shambolic scheduling has had us play 4 games within an 8 day period on a couple of occasions over the years.
My way to combat this still doesn't really take into consideration the new structure to playing time, at least not directly. What I've tried to do with the side is what I imagine most FMers try and do. I've identified a few key positions where i'm likely to want to rotate, and then looked for solid backups in those roles who can come in and do a job for the first team. I then populate the other backup positions with either raw youngsters who are just starting out, or a more seasoned professional who doesn't have the same physical attributes he used to.
As an example, my Advanced Playmaker and Advanced Forward are essential to our creative play and tend to stay fit throughout the season, therefore their understudies are unlikely to feature more than a few times. Meanwhile, our wingers and our BBM do so much running that having good options that can come in with fresh legs is really important.
In fact I've been using around 22-25 players each season in order to get through all the games so I've come unstuck with the above approach on a few occasions, since many of our backups aren't up to standard.
I've also had a to deal with a few disgruntled players that aren't getting the time they're expecting and so I've ended up promising them a few more games when what I really want to do is stick with the players that are winning. I can't be dealing with the tantrums though and so more often than not, I'll just agree to give them a run in the side.
The solution here is simple. It's time to start paying closer attention to who's been promised what playing time. Going forward, I'll be trying to be more selective with my signings and contract renewals, and will be considering what role I expect them to play in the squad in the short term.
It's worth noting that I could take a much longer view of this, and look to bolster our youth setup with future stars that I can bring through in my own time. However, since this is intended to be a journeyman save, in which Frank attempts to reach the top of Europe's footballing elite, I won't be staying with any club for long enough to see this through.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on squad rotation. Do you ignore the playing time feature of player contracts, or are you a stickler for only recruiting the exact players you need?
Content Corner
In this section I've highlighted some of the content I've been consuming of late. There are some excellent content creators out there, some old and some new, and the vast majority of which are all on Slack so I strongly advise you join that community and check them out here.
Best Save Update Blog: Another week of great content, but I wanted to highlight FM Eadster's latest post from his series, The Rebuilders of Pripyat. Another great update and a nice little crossover with another creator. I love the story telling element, you can't help but get sucked in!
Best Advice Blog/Article: This week I ended up down a rabbit warren of posts on SI's forum for FM. One piece I did read in detail was Llama3's article on Pairs & Combinations - The Ultimate Guide which was released earlier this year. Of course, Llama's thoughts on building a team are very interesting, but in fact I think the most useful aspect of this piece is simply having all the information in one place, as opposed to navigating to each individual tactical element and reading the tool tip. Worth a read if you haven't already.
And that's it for another update from me. Thanks so much for reading down this far, I hope you enjoyed it. As ever your feedback is always welcome either here in the comments, on Twitter or on my Slack channel. If you're not already on Slack then you're missing out. It's free to join, there's no pressure to post anything, and you'll find there are some excellent people who you can chat to if you want.
I'll be back as soon as I can with another update from Frank as he continues to take us Down the Danube.