I find it difficult to get excited about new releases of Football Manager. Generally it is the same game in a new frock, with mostly insignificant tweaks. I felt the same way with FM22, but there was one big difference:
I bought a new laptop and new laptops deserve new games.
On FM21 I had settled on a high scoring 4-1-5 tactic consisting of a two central defenders, two inverted wing backs, a deep lying playmaker, two wingers, an attacking midfielder and two advanced forwards.
The details of this tactic can be found here –
On FM22 the first thing I did was recreate this tactic. I took over Liverpool and the scores were just as high as on FM21, if not higher. Social media then alerted me to people scoring high numbers of goals with a particular Norwegian centre forward.
My final FM21 save was supposed to project Mason Greenwood at Real Madrid, to see how many goals he could net for Spanish giants. However, this morphed and became about how many league goals we could score and how many goals Erling Haaland could score. In one season the team scored over 240 league goals and Haaland around 110 goals in all competition.
Now on FM22 the beast has even had an upgrade.
I could have signed Haaland for anyone but decided to take the direct route. In Paris a group of players including Messi, Neymar and Mbappe waited, with a league ripe for the picking. Sure, other leagues would be more challenging but this was a different challenge, just to see what could be achieved.
Tactically changes would be required. The 4-1-5 scored spectacularly but the goals were shared out much more in FM22 than on FM21. On 21 the left sided striker scored far more than the right sided. In my brief FM22 dalliance this did not seem to be the case.
I decided to adapt the formation, withdrawing one of the strikers into an advanced playmaker position. Where possible I encouraged players to cross centrally, into Haaland. The main job of everyone in the team was to feed Erling Haaland, no matter who they were.
Lionel Messi? Give it to Erling.
Kylian Mbappe? Give it to Erling.
Neymar Jr? Give it to Erling.
(It is worth noting that if you want to recreate the tactic the roles are the pre-sets but with mark tighter, tackle harder on all positions, with cross centre for the wingers)
The season started explosively. Haaland scored a hat trick in his first game. He would start the season with five hat tricks in a row.
In the Champions League he netted a treble against Atletico Madrid, showing that it would not just be the minnows he could pile in the goals against.
Haaland was consistent but then came real kick start in the new year. Against Brest Haaland struck five times.
The very next game the team won 15-0 against Reims. Haaland striking eight times.
Thirteen goals in two games propelled the season forward. As the big games came in Europe the hat tricks still came.
Come the final reckoning Haaland had completed twenty-two hat tricks. His final season total was 122 goals in all competitions, 89 in the league and 22 in the Champions League.
Haaland’s team mates scored goals, with three players reaching 20 for the season, but their job was to create. Four players had over 20 assists, they certainly played their part in Erling’s monster season.
It was key to keep Haaland as fit as possible. In the whole of the season he missed a total of two games, one through injury and the other because I needed to rest him. I did play him at times when the medical team advised that I rest him, but I made sure he played a maximum of 70 minutes at these times, even if he had two goals and was on for yet another hat-trick. The extra goal was not missing a game, as each game was an opportunity for another two goals (on average). Similarly if he had a hat-trick I would take him off. FM is a predictable game, the majority of the time if a player has scored three the player stops scoring. If Haaland had a first half hat-trick and scored early in the second half I knew that he was on for a bigger score and would keep him on longer. By four or five enough would be enough. The eight goal haul was different as the flow was constant, but even then his scoring was done by the 60th minute.
I do believe that it could be possible to score even more goals with Haaland at PSG. Firstly in the early stages of this release there is a corner kick exploit/bug that has seen people notch huge totals with Virgil Van Dijk. If applied to Haaland this could be worth an extra 30 or more goals. In this version Haaland scored very few goals from corners. There is also the second season factor, simply, in most versions of FM teams and players perform a notch better in season two. Taking these two factors into account it could be possible to score 150 goals.
I won’t be taking up that challenge.
Will you?