Third time’s the charm? Let’s hope so, as my third season as Arsenal manager kicks off in earnest.
There has been quite the rebuild over the summer, with over £200million spent on new players who will hopefully fix the defensive issues we had last term. I’ve also brought two more Hale End Boys into the fold, with centre-back Daniel Ballard and striker Folarin Balogun both joining the first-team. You can read more about our summer business in the previous chapter.
Today’s chapter takes us through the first half of the 2023/2024 Premier League season. This includes the group stage of the Europa League (cue the obnoxious theme music), while we also start our defence of the EFL Cup.
And it all starts with an away game against the league champions. Nice and easy…
RESULTS: AUGUST TO DECEMBER 2023
PREMIER LEAGUE
What an incredible first half to the season! And to think it started with two weeks from ‘L’!
An opening-day trip to Anfield was always going to be difficult, but even I didn’t expect Liverpool to be this ruthless – scoring SIX goals from 10 shots on target! Eddie Nketiah and Reiss Nelson did get three goals back, but then drew blanks in a shock home defeat to Leeds. To make matters worse, United played almost the entire second half with 10 men after Kalvin Phillips was sent off, and we STILL couldn’t fight back from 1-0 down.
Those results left us down in 17th, but Nketiah spared us an unwanted ‘L’ hat-trick by beating Leicester. After the first international break, we went on an incredible run of form – blowing Blackburn, Aston Villa, Southampton AND Brentford away by 18 goals to nil!
And just look at Nketiah’s form – 13 goals in 7 league games! Even Manchester United’s new Norwegian beast Erling Haaland couldn’t manage that!
With Dortmund suddenly taking a keen interest in our star striker, I thought it was time to tie Eddie down for the long haul – and give him the pay rise his scoring record deserved.
Of course, after signing his new contract, Eddie did not score another goal for two months.
But even with Nketiah’s purple patch coming to an end, we kept on winning – just less convincingly than before. Even so, we have started to grind out wins in matches that we might have drawn or even lost in previous seasons – and that’s a good sign of a genuine title contender.
One such example came in mid-December at West Ham, who at that point were in 3rd place and still undefeated. After a tense first half, Scott McTominay and Martin Ødegaard broke the Hammers’ resistance to give us the points, though the hosts did grab a very late consolation goal.
In fact, our only dropped points since August have come in three away games against our fellow ‘Big Six’ rivals – Tottenham, Manchester United, and Manchester City.
Drawing 1-1 at Old Trafford was especially satisfying. Maurizio Sarri went on some kind of weird pre-game rant about my developing homegrown players. Naturally, it was one of our Hale End boys – 22-year-old backup striker Folarin Balogun – who scored our equaliser after Haaland (obviously) gave United the lead.
I was also delighted with our Boxing Day draw on the other side of Manchester. Despite going 2-0 down after 18 minutes, we managed to hold our nerve as City’s attackers tired themselves out. We then upped the tempo for some late counter-attacks that won us a couple of corners, which centre-backs Fikayo Tomori and Daniel Ballard headed home to give us a point. That was Ballard’s first ever Arsenal goal, by the way!
With 2023 drawing to a close, we have leapfrogged West Ham into 3rd spot – and are just three points behind leaders Liverpool. Nketiah’s return to scoring ways against Wolves means he is now on 14 PL goals, putting him joint-top of the Golden Boot race alongside Haaland, who’s gradually clawed back his lead over recent months.
While Bournemouth’s watertight defence has turned them into shock European contenders, some of the traditional big teams are struggling. Chelsea are 8th and have already ditched Zinedine Zidane, which means this is the FOURTH year in a row they’ve changed manager mid-season! Joachim Löw at Tottenham and Luis Enrique at Man City are also under huge pressure to take their teams back into the top six, or they’ll be in the job centre soon.
And just look at Wolves! Despite finishing 5th last season AND topping their Europa League group, Wanderers haven’t won a single league game yet! In fact, things are going so horribly that they’ve replaced Bruno Lage with Ruud Gullit, who last managed in the Premier League in 1999! If he suddenly gives Raúl Jiménez the Shearer treatment, they’re doomed.
EUROPA LEAGUE
As expected, we made light work of our Europa League group, cruising through our six matches without conceding a goal. Neither Crvena Zvezda nor Rosenborg really stood a chance, even playing against our second XI – and Balogun even hit a hat-trick in Belgrade.
The only blip came in Berlin, where Hertha’s defence brilliantly shut us out. But even after that, we still managed to blow the Germans away 4-0 at the Emirates – a result that practically ensured we would go through as group winners.
In the Europa League, the group winners are given a straight pass to the second knockout round (effectively the Round of 16). This means we won’t know who our next opponents are until the first knockout round is played in February.
As the top scorers in the group phase, we’ll be among the favourites when the competition kicks off again, although Juventus, Napoli and Valencia also qualified unbeaten. With regards to teams dropping down from the Champions League, our biggest threats will probably come from Barcelona, Benfica… and Manchester United.
EFL CUP
We’ve also made serene progress through the EFL Cup. Three successive shutout wins against Midlands opposition – with Balogun scoring in all three games – leave us in a very strong position to defend our title.
But who do we face in the Semi Finals?
Yep. Chelsea again. They were the last team to knock us out of this competition (also at the Semi Final stage), although that was two seasons and about four managers ago.
The question is – who will be in the home dugout when we go to Stamford Bridge for the first leg? Pep Guardiola? Sean Dyche? Jiří Jarošík?
TACTICS & stats: WHAT’S GOING… RIGHT?!
This time last season, when my team was leaking goals like a sieve, I asked for some tactical advice on the 4-3-3. Herne79 – one of the tactical gurus on the official Sports Interactive forums – got in touch and offered some helpful suggestions.
Herne is a big West Ham fan, and his first suggestion was to play Declan Rice as a plain-old Defensive Midfielder rather than as a Half-Back. By this time, I’d almost finished the season and had already made this change. I noticed an immediate improvement, not just in conceding fewer goals but also in conceding fewer chances, and Rice is also getting slightly higher match ratings.
It’s odd, because the Half-Back should be exactly the type of role I want for Rice – quickly recycling possession, and dropping deep to protect the centre-halves while the full-backs push up. For some reason, this role doesn’t seem to work too well on FM22. Again, I’m no tactical expert, so if anyone can explain what is happening (and why), that would be appreciated.
I also changed up the other midfield roles. The mezzala is now just a Central Midfielder on Attack, accompanied by a supporting Advanced Playmaker (not a Deep-Lying Playmaker). I don’t know why I took so long to switch Ødegaard to a playmaking role, but the results have been sensational – 17 games, 13 goal contributions, 7.48 average rating. And I feel he’s just warming up!
Herne’s other suggestion was to push up our line of engagement, which seemed to contradict our aggressive mentality. Engaging with the opposition a little further upfield has certainly helped our attacking threat, while not hurting our defensive shape as much as I feared it might.
Herne also expressed some concerns about using an Advanced Forward in a 4-3-3, and suggested that a Complete Forward or a Deep-Lying Forward might help draw defenders out and create space for an onrushing midfielder or wide forward. While I am happy enough playing Nketiah as an AF right now, I have experimented with using him as a DLF from time to time, and early results are encouraging.
I’ve also made some changes to the 4-2-3-1, and now have two slight variations which I use for different scenarios.
The first variant is a high-intensity tactic, for games where we expect to dominate our opponents and put them on the back foot from the first minute. It’s not quite a full-on gegenpress – I like my tactics to have at least some defensive solidity – but when used right, the results can be devastating. Just ask Brentford.
The second is (as the name suggests) for when we have to ‘break the bus’. Whenever our opponents are playing with three centre-backs and/or a low block, I’ll bring out this system. It’s designed to open up space for quick and constant attacks, giving the opposition defenders as little time as possible to get in position.
So those are the tactics I’m now using. Let’s see just what impact they’ve had on our statistical performances…
What a difference 12 months make! Our defence has gone from one of the leakiest in the division to one of the meanest. Our opposition shot conversion rate has dropped to just over 8%, and our average xGA per game is down to 0.96. That’s not as low as Liverpool or the Manchester clubs, but at least we’re not giving our opponents too many easy chances.
At the other end, we’re averaging 2.5 goals from 2.08 xG per game. Only Liverpool have been more clinical in front of goal. We’re only getting 39% of our shots on target – which puts us rock-bottom on that stat – but that doesn’t really matter when over a third of those SoTs are finding the net.
And here are our homegrown players’ match stats. So far this season, I’ve given gametime to 15 Hale End boys, of which eight are first-team regulars – and all of them have average ratings above 7.00.
The obvious standout is Nketiah, who despite his two-month drought has scored 16 goals in just 18 games. He only netted 15 times in the whole of last season! Eddie has been absolutely ruthless so far, massively outscoring his xG and getting nearly two-thirds of his shots on target. Unsurprisingly, his form earned him an overdue England call-up.
Also note that Balogun has scored 9 goals in 12 matches (not 9 goals in 5 starts, as certain FM YouTubers might say). Most of those have come against minnows like Red Star Belgrade and West Brom, but he’s certainly been prolific enough to deserve more opportunities in the new year. Gabriel Martinelli‘s Arsenal days might be numbered…
Out wide, Nelson is once again getting goals and assists aplenty, while last season’s top scorer Bukayo Saka has gone back to supplying the ammunition rather than firing it. Emile Smith Rowe is not quite back to his best after a leg break, but he’s making steady progress.
Ballard also deserves a mention at centre-half. My coaches still don’t think Dan is anything more than a decent PL defender, but he’s been very solid whenever I’ve called on him – his high consistency and 16 Heading probably play a big part in that. I’m also pleasantly surprised that he hasn’t made any kamikaze challenges… yet.
From the Under-23s, right-winger Omari Hutchinson got two surprise assists off the bench in that opening defeat at Anfield, but hasn’t really kicked on since. 18-year-old Jeremie Labuthie started the EFL Cup Quarter Final win over Leicester when we had an injury crisis at right-back, and posted an impressive 7.4 rating. I’ll be looking to send Labuthie out on loan in January, along with left-back Sean Fallon, who also turned 18 recently.
AND FINALLY…
After our strong start to the season, the board offered me a new contract – and a big pay rise, from £72,000 per week to £115,000. I’ll now be staying at the Emirates Stadium until June 2027.
I play FM at a pretty steady pace, and it generally takes me about three weeks to complete a season. By my calculations, I reckon I can fit in three more seasons after this one until the FM23 beta comes out. That will take me up to the 2026/2027 season… which just happens to be the final season of my new contract.
So I am now setting an official time limit on this challenge. I must win the Premier League or the Champions League with a mostly homegrown team by the end of 2026/2027. No pressure, Christopher…
Not a bad first half to the season, eh?
We’ll pick up the story again later in the week. I bet you can’t wait to read about my spectacular meltdown when it all falls apart in January!
Fuller FM 
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