What does a good recruitment model look like? This is a rather difficult question to answer. In truth, there are many different, styles, models, and beliefs that all have their own merits and flaws. I want to use this blog post to set out my intended recruitment philosophy for my time at Lechia Gdańsk.
Soccernomics
This recruitment model is inspired by a book – I’m talking about the wonderful Soccernomics by Simon Kuper. If you haven’t read this book, I thoroughly recommend that you do. It’s not so much about looking at money in football but about interpreting the data and looking at it in new ways to understand why certain teams, leagues and countries are more successful than others.
Using Soccernomics, I plan to set myself a set of guidelines to abide by with Lechia Gdańsk when venturing into the transfer market. Why do I want to do this? Honestly, I feel this is something I need to do to keep myself interested. I would like to avoid signing players that I have signed previously and want to ensure this save provides me with a unique experience recruitment-wise.
Ideally, these guidance points will allow me to make more informed decisions in the transfer market, therefore increasing the likelihood of said transfers being successful. Of course, we have to consider that there are always external factors which affect the success of transfers, these are factors that we don’t necessarily have to contend with in Football Manager but are worth a mention nonetheless.
How a player adapts to the relocation plays a big role in whether the transfer can be deemed successful. Players can struggle with moving away from their family, learning a new language and new culture all the while trying to fit in with their new teammates and coaching staff.
In FM of course, we have the luxury of sending players on language courses at the click of a button and don’t have to worry ourselves with kitting them out with houses, cars and finding schools for the kids etc.
Rules to live by at Lechia Gdańsk
In this section, I will set out the transfer philosophy and explain the whys and the hows. Without wasting any more time, let’s get into it.
New managers waste money… don’t fall into the trap!
It’s all too easy to load up an FM save and then immediately go out spending before you’ve even got to know the players that are currently at the club. We see this in real life all too often, a new manager comes into the club and seemingly decides he/she simply has to sell on some of their predecessor’s signings, often at a discount price.
An example Kuper gives in the book is when Tottenham manager George Graham shelled out a then-club record fee of £11 million to bring Sergei Rebrov to the club in May 2000. Nine months later, Graham was sacked and new manager Glenn Hoddle was less than impressed with their star signing. Rebrov was promptly benched and then loaned out before eventually leaving on a free transfer in 2004.
To combat this, I will ensure that the first transfer window is switched off during the save, that way I have plenty of time to assess my squad before venturing into the market.
Certain nationalities are overvalued… avoid buying players from these countries unless the transfer represents exceptional value for money and/or there is likely to be a very high sell-on value.
Ahh the good old English tax! We’ve all experienced this, a few years into an FM save and there are players in the Championship valued at vast sums of money largely due to the fact that they are English. It’s a similar story with Brazil, The Netherlands and France in the game. These countries are considered ‘fashionable’ therefore the value of players based in these countries generally skyrockets.
To combat this, we will be sensible with our scouting. We will look to scout undervalued markets, starting with the countries around us such as Czechia, Hungary, and Slovakia. As we expand our scouting network, we will of course look to scout countries such as Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia. Most importantly though, I will be listening to the scouts and trusting their opinions, they are the experts.
Centre-Forwards are overvalued… try and develop a striker through the youth system if possible or look at the untapped markets to find value for money.
It’s not just certain nationalities that are overvalued, certain positions are also subject to inflated values, none more so than the striker. Why are they overvalued? Well, a good striker is probably the most reputable player in the team, the one who bags the goals is perceived to be the one who wins games.
Haaland has already become synonymous with Manchester City, Benzema with Real Madrid, Shearer with Newcastle, Zlatan with…Zlatan? You get the idea.
Former Lyon owner Jean-Michel Aulas famously refused to spend big on centre-forwards much to the chagrin of former manager Gerard Houllier. The biggest fee Aulas ever shelled out for a centre forward was the €24 million for Lisandro Lopez from Porto – a fee that was offset by the €41 million sale of Benzema. Small change when we consider some of the eyewatering fees of recent years.
Based on this, we will have to be super smart with our striker recruitment. If possible, we will develop our talisman via the youth system. We will of course look in the undervalued markets for potential gems but we won’t be shelling out huge sums of money for our number nine.
Buy and sell at the right time.
This is something that Aulas, Wenger and the legends Clough and Taylor were all masters at; bringing players in at the right age and shipping them out when they began to approach the end of their peak. Wenger especially excelled in this area due to his degree in economics. He believed that clubs overvalued a player’s past performances and would end up overpaying for a player who was just about to enter his decline.
When is the right time to buy? This can be slightly misleading in FM as there is always the belief that we should sign eighteen-year-olds from Brazil. However, in the real world signing an eighteen-year-old is always met with slight trepidation from the club largely due to the potential lack of data and question marks over the adaptability of the player.
In reality, what teenager is playing top-level football week in, week out? The truth is, very few. Young players need to be nurtured into first-team football. Additionally, the data for young players can be slightly skewed. For example, an eighteen-year-old making mostly substitute appearances will register unreliable data in the sense that most of his appearances occur later in games against a fatiguing opposition. Plus there is the obvious factor that he will have played fewer minutes and there is not enough data to ascertain whether his form is sustainable over a longer period.
By scouting players who are in their early twenties it should provide enough data to infer whether they are consistent performers. We will also be able to review data from a longer period thereby making a more informed decision will regard to recruitment.
In terms of selling, we can learn from the master that is Mr Wenger. The former Arsenal manager typically let his defenders stay until their early to mid-thirties whereas midfielders and forwards, he looked to move on before they hit thirty. Patrick Viera, Thierry Henry and Emmanuel Petit all departed Arsenal at the age of twenty-nine while Marc Overmars was sold at twenty-seven.
Bill James, widely regarded as baseball’s father of sabermetrics, found that the belief a player reaches his peak in his early thirties is something of a myth. His mimeographs found that players typically peaked at just twenty-seven years of age.
Sell any player when a club makes an offer superior to his transfer value… no matter what.
Never get sentimental. Easier said than done, right? We’ve all been there in FM, getting too attached to a player and keeping him around longer than we should. Even worse, just signing players because we like them.
In this save, there will be no room for sentiment, we will make informed decisions in the market and if that means we have to show a fan favourite the door, so be it.
We return to Jean-Michel Aulas and Lyon to find excellent examples of this. Aulas spent weeks denying Michael Essien would leave the club in order to drive the price up. Eventually, Chelsea came in with a bid of €38 million (a fee €10 million more than his then market value) and Aulas was only too happy to wave goodbye to his star defensive midfielder.
Aulas commented: “Buying and selling footballers is not an activity to improve performance, it is a trading activity to produce a gross margin”. Dissecting this statement what he essentially means is: the improvement of player performance is largely down to the coaching staff. As the owner, he felt it was his responsibility to always ensure the club was fiscally responsible. Something that required tough decisions at times.
One way Lyon sought to combat the departure of their key players was to replace them before they had even left. For example, in 2007, interest from top European clubs was building in left back Eric Abidal. As a result, Aulas quickly moved to bring in Fabio Grosso as his replacement therefore when Barcelona came calling they could let Abidal go knowing they had a ready-made replacement in the building.
Well, that rounds off this blog. Hopefully, I’ve done a good job of explaining the recruitment model for this save with Lechia Gdańsk. I’m looking forward to putting this into practice and seeing how far we can go using this method.
Thank you for reading!
FM Beth 