A New Era…

Season 8 was not a bad Season for us. Nor, however, was it a very good one!

With one team promoted from Division 8 (in 2nd) and another team coming 5th in Division 7 to secure a little bit of money, it was our flagship team, Marrouck Villa, who let the side down!

As it stands, Marrouck Villa have the best squad in their league. It also puts them at 45th/768 Division 7 squads total, which is the top 6%.

Despite this, they finished 8th, and narrowly avoided relegation, so something was going wrong!

We thought it was time to make a change so here we go.

The Inspiration

You may have heard about science-based lifters, but I was wondering about whether we should become a ‘science-based Footiumer’! Having been stacking up data, why not use it?

One of the biggest bits of work we have done in Footium was using every single formation:

We Used Every Formation In Footium

This gave us so much data, ideas and knowledge about what works and what doesn’t.

Since Footium launched, Marrouck Villa have been using 4-5-1DM.

Sometimes it’s served us well, sometimes it hasn’t. We’ve hit the heights of Division 6, and the lows of Division 8. But I’d just been using it because I liked it, and because we had the players!

Now it was time to use what we’d learned to play better.

The Ruben Amorim of Footium

Of all the ‘groups’ of formations we used in our quest, it was Back 3’s where we had the most success.

In the 5 matches we used them, we won 2, drew 2 and lost 1. We also only faced a back 3 once across a whole 22 games.

It’s an under-utilised way of playing, and a way of playing that may lead to some success.

So, in a quest to become a more successful, NFT version of Ruben Amorim, we were looking at Back 3’s.

A Smooth Transition

One of the most difficult aspects of moving to a new way of playing, is having to secure new players to play in that formation!

When looking at going from 4-5-1DM to a back 3, there was always going to be a need to buy more players.

Some would require more new positions than others. 3-4-3, for example, would require adding CM’s, a RF and a LF. 3-5-2 would just need the purchase of 3 CM’s.

We opted to go for 3-4-3A, allowing us to make use of most of our existing squad. This meant we only needed to sign RF and LF players to make the squad.

The Transfers

We started off by signing the positions we desperately needed, RF and LF:

We opted for decent starting players, with at least 5+ seasons left in the legs. Making sure, as well, to get two players per position.

But we also wanted to be able to add variety. With this in mind, we added CB’s to allow more CB rotation, and also some CM’s so we could add another formation to the roster (3-4-3).