Petr Blazek made it 3-0 on 57 minutes. Chepiga looked around the stadium, fans weren’t singing his players names, they were calling to their Russian hero, Chepiga, to acknowledge their adoration with a wave. Fresh in their minds, a title win from last season that ended the Moscovite dominance of recent times. Further cemented by a crushing 4-0 defeat of CSKA Moscow in the SuperKubok Rossii, just a couple of weeks previously. At that moment Chepiga, standing in the Anzhi Arena, 3-0 up against Dinamo Moscow, allowed himself to relax. Taking in his surroundings, and the veneration of the fans, he waved back, kissing the badge of his beloved Anzhi.
40 minutes later Chepiga stood in the changing room questioning the cojones of every single player. He paced back and forth, staring each of them straight in the eye, he did not like what he saw.
“Too many millennial snowflakes in this fucking dressing room, where is the passion lads? Where are your balls!”
There were two weeks left in the transfer window, changes would have to be made. The signs were actually there in the proceeding 1-0 defeat to Arsenal Tuna, but Ruslan had chosen to ignore them. That night Chepiga assessed every player and cursed himself, and his scouts, as he realised the midfield had become completely out of balance.
In the 4141DM that I use, I have a defensive midfielder and two central midfielders. The defensive midfielder has recently become a deep-lying playmaker with two central midfielders ahead of him, a box to box midfielder, and a vanilla central midfielder on attack duty. It was during the recruitment of a new deep-lying playmaker that errors were made. With two already fairly attacking midfielders ahead of the deep-lying playmaker, I could really ill afford another ‘luxury’ player here. But, blinded by green attributes in vision, passing and decisions, as well as a smattering of physical attributes, Demidov was signed for £2.9m from Spartak Moscow. We now had six players to call upon to play in these three positions. As you can see below, the combative attributes such as Tackling, Aggression, Bravery, Teamwork and Determination were severely lacking. Only Chaykovskyi possessed some ‘fight’ but he has a player trait of gets forward whenever possible, hardly ideal for a defensive midfielder.
Demidov started the season playing as a deep-lying playmaker and everything seemed fine. That was until club captain, leader, and general big bastard centre-back Bondarenko was injured. Removing his presence and aggressive nature left us woefully exposed. Dinamo Moscow took advantage of this in the most brutal fashion, scoring three goals in the final 27 minutes to secure a draw in a game Anzhi should’ve won comfortably. This prompted a re-think by Chepiga who turned to two experienced bloggers for help. Firstly a re-read of FM Grasshoppers “the engine room” post from FM17 and secondly FM Samo’s post on his 4-4-2 from FM18 were he discusses his deep-lying ‘destroyer’. It was this role that Ruslan set about emulating.
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- “The Engine Room” by FMGrasshopper
- FM18 Tactics: 4-4-2 by FMSamo
The Solution
Julian Baumgartlinger, an FM favourite, agreed to join us on a free transfer after his Bayer Leverkusen contract ended. Unfortunately, he had announced his intention to retire at the start of November. But, at £4k / week it was still a worthwhile deal for us. Agents could be dispatched in the interim months to find a longer-term solution.
The effect was immediate, prior to his arrival we played four league matches, winning two, drawing one and losing one. We scored six and conceded five.
After Baumgartlinger’s arrival, we became virtually impenetrable. Over the next two and a half months, eight league games were played which yielded seven wins and one draw, and twenty goals scored. It was, however, the defensive performance that pleased Chepiga the most, only three goals were conceded.
The reason for this was clear when you compare our performance in the five games since Baumgartlinger retired. In these five games, we won three and lost two, scoring ten goals and conceding nine. Including another three against Dinamo Moscow. By the time Baumgartlinger left, he averaged just short of four tackles per game with a 92% pass success rate; exactly what I was looking for.
All of which leaves us sitting pretty well in the league. We are third, with games in hand on second. Retaining a title is always harder than winning it, but with a good second half to the season, we could potentially match last seasons achievement.
Europe
As champions, we did not have any pre-qualifying matches to play for the first time in this save. This allowed us time to sort out our defensive issues, outlined above. I knew we would be 4th seeds so I awaited the draw with trepidation. Turns out my fears were correct as we were lumped in with Sampaoli’s Barcelona, Zidane’s Manchester United and Sporting Lisbon. From the outset, a third-place finish, and Europa League qualification was our target, the games against Sporting would be key.
First, we travelled to Camp Nou to play Barcelona. We’ve played them before in Season Four securing a 1-1 at home after a 2-0 defeat in Spain. In both those games, I had changed our style of play significantly. However, we are Russian champions, it is time for these clubs to worry about us;
isn’t it?
We were completely outplayed, perhaps we should’ve made a few tactical changes. In any case, I hadn’t banked on getting much from Barcelona or United. Up next was Sporting at home, a game I had earmarked for a win if we were to finish third. All was going well when Fabian volleyed home after 68 minutes. Sporting hadn’t threatened at all until an innocuous cross was turned into our net by our captain Bondarenko on 86 minutes; 1-1 it finished!
Manchester United were next to visit the Central Astrakhangazprom Stadium. Easily one of the best results, and performances from the Caspian Lads, in this save, as we defeated the greatest English side in history, 1-0 withstanding considerable pressure in the games closing stages. Youth academy graduate Artem Davydov fired home from 20 yards on the stroke of half-time to give us the lead. Our cause was further helped by Diego Dalot getting sent off in first-half injury time for a second bookable offence. A massive result that sees us move to four points, three ahead of Sporting.
The return game at Old Trafford didn’t go as well as we succumbed 3-0, thankfully only 43 Anzhi supporters bothered to travel. Sporting also lost to Barcelona maintaining our three-point gap to fourth. The mighty Barcelona were our next opponents. I pondered hard about whether to change our approach but eventually decided to stay true to what had brought us success last season. What happened next can only be described as a complete and utter clusterfuck. Three Barcelona goals in the first thirty minutes ended the match. It was the manner of the goals that really vexed me. I even posted them, on twitter, like a little bitch, they were so bad. Below is Coutinho’s opener, and it wasn’t even the worst of them!
The game eventually finished 4-0 and I was left rueing the decision to play with a sweeper-keeper who had been instructed to distribute to centre-backs. Once again Sporting lost so, Europa League qualification would come down to the last game, a one-off match against Sporting would decide it. Avoid defeat, and we’d finish third, anything else and it would be Sporting who finish third on the head to head record.
New boy Ivan Obylakov got us off to a flier after two minutes and we never looked in trouble after that. The second goal eventually came from my favourite FM19 player, so far, Oliver Batista Meier. Sporting did get a goal back on 70 minutes, from the penalty spot, but we never looked like losing. Qualification for the Europa League knockouts was secured, the board and fans were ecstatic. Who did we get?
Porto will have to endure the Russian winter this year. Current weather forecasts have it as -10°, with light snow. Chepiga is sure these invaders from the west will falter in the Russian snow, as so many have before them.
Kubok Rossii
No need to go into any great detail here. I have picked my second eleven for every single game, as have many other ‘top’ sides. We have made the quarter-finals and take a healthy 2-0 first-leg lead back to the Anzhi Arena against minnows Fakel.
If you have made it this far thanks very much for reading. If you haven’t a clue what is going on you can read earlier posts here.
You can find me on twitter here and I will also be providing sporadic updates about the save and various other things on my slack channel #fmeadster.
You can also follow Ruslan Chepiga on twitter.
Over and out
FMEadster!
FMEadster 
Fight is nice, but try getting a DM that’s also good at redistributing and keeping your possession fluid (and is pressing-resistant in the best case). I like either-footedness a lot for a single DM, off the ball is important and composure, too. That plus aggressiveness plus creative passing is the optimum, but you take what you can get 😉
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As you say CQ you take what you can get. Baumgartlinger has now retired so I am on the look out once again. Getting everything we want is always the challenge.
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