Chris, your team is rising up the world rankings. How much do you think your unusual 4231 formation is helping to improve your team’s fortunes?
CG I'd like to think it has played a fairly significant part. We had seemed to hit a bit of a wall with what we were playing before so I decided to play to what I thought would best accommodate my best players.
How did you decide upon your current formation? Did you look at the players at your disposal and build a formation around that, or did you start with a formation and recruit a team around it?
CG It was a mixture of both to be honest. I could see that I just wasn't creating enough goals with my old formation, and it was clear to be that my wingers we my weak link. I was also inspired by Liverpool's current formation, but I knew that I had to narrow it as I knew that my players weren't quite of the caliber of Torres and Gerrard and so I wouldn't score enough goals with the level of width Liverpool play with. As a Benitez style tactic, it's been a far more successful attempt to recreate his work that anything I've managed in any of the offline versions of the game. And when I saw that El-Hadji Diouf was available, it swung my decision to change my tactics as I felt he was likely to be a perfect fit!
As a Liverpool fan you must have been pleased to bag a former Anfield player. As your record signing, how is El-Hadji Diouf, is he faring at the The Warren?
CG Diouf has been a great signing for me. He's averaged over 7 for me in all games and his 6 competitive matches have resulted in an average rating of 7.36. I've not had a lot of opportunity to play him where I've wanted to yet as he filled in at AMC while my first choice was injured for a week and since he's gone up front he's suffered from injury himself. He's due back later this evening though and I'm looking forward to trying him out with my other off-season signings.
El-Hadji Diouf - stylish
Without wanting you to divulge your tactical secrets, playing two midfielders in a defensive position and three in an attacking position, how do you cope with a lack of wide players?
CG Most of the time, we cope okay. Having two defensive midfielders allows my fullbacks the freedom to get forward without leaving me too exposed at the back.
CG Most of the time, we cope okay. Having two defensive midfielders allows my fullbacks the freedom to get forward without leaving me too exposed at the back.
With most of the top teams playing a form of 451, how do your tactics deal with that formation? And are you confident of breaking into the higher reaches of the gameworld rankings?
CG I haven't come across a lot of teams that play 451, it has to be said, although I suspect that this is because I'm not high enough in the rankings yet. At home, I have narrowed my pitch in an attempt to stifle teams that play with a lot of width and away there are a few tweaks to be made to help us to cope. I'd like to think that we are capable to reaching the upper regions of the ranking eventually. I'm confident that the tactics are fully capable of it, but I'm well aware that with my current squad of players we are still a long way off the pace.
Before you settled on your 4231, what previous formations did you try? How successful were these attempts?
CG I've only really played with one other formation. I only had one decent forward in my initial squad so I played a 4-5-1 with a DM, an ML a MR and two AMCs. It worked well, up to a point. We were solid defensively but just couldn't score enough goals to progress beyond a certain level. I was very proud to win the mover of the week award in my first week, gaining 533 places but we levelled off after this and the lack of goals really began to hit home in the league. We ended up finishing 5th but with the second best defensive record conceding just 29 goals in my 38 matches but I was frustrated by numerous 1-0 defeats in matches that I ought to be winning! Changing to my new tactic late in the season brought me 8 wins, a draw and a defeat to the champion's CarTOON United in my last 10 matches, which was very satisfying.
Having completed a successful first season in StJohn, had you played in other FML gameworlds before, or just Football Manager before that?
CG This was my first ever look at FML and I'm still getting to grips with some of its nuances. I lost my best defender in a wage auction yesterday as I hadn't fully appreciated quite how it worked, but I'm learning from my mistakes and I'm fully enjoying the experience. I've been with Football Manager since it's reincarnation and the first football management game I owned was CM97/98.
Having joined an older gameworld in its fourth season, what tips do you have to managers considering a move to StJohn?
CG The best tip I can give is to get involved. There is far more to get gained from the game if you're friendly, chatty and sociable. From what I've heard about v1.2 this is going to become a bigger part of the game anyway and I think it's a great decision by SI. I think the blog is a great idea to keep people up to date with GW information and I've enjoyed contributing to it both now and with the AFA articles last season. Another think I can advise is to be honest. There's no substitution for a good reputation and of course, if you get a bad rep it's nigh on impossible to shake, no matter how much you might insist you've reformed.
What can we expect from Beggarwood Athletic in season five?
CG I'm hoping for a rather boring top half finish in the league this season. There are still some changes that I want to make to my squad and I'm not sure how long it's going to take me to plug these gaps. Last season we showed ourselves to be a bit of a cup team and if I get a good draw I'd like to challenge for the Non-Premiership Cup and hopefully get a couple of wins in the AEFA cup too.
Chris, thanks for the interview and best luck in season five!
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