Welcome back to Fuller FM. I’ll be starting a new Football Manager 2024 story in the coming weeks – but in the meantime, I’ve got something a bit different to tide you over.
Breaking FM is my occasional mini-series where I take Football Manager to the extreme and see how the game handles ridiculous scenarios. I ran my first experiment on FM23 last spring, when I took an all-star Dagenham & Redbridge team through the longest season possible in English football – 100 matches in barely 11 months. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 to see how that unfolded.
Only about seven people read the first Breaking FM, but I enjoyed making it, and I always wanted to come back to it on FM24 with another cunning plan.
So now it’s time for some anger management… literally. Today, I will channel my inner José Mourinho – and become the angriest, harshest, intolerant, most violent and most downright dislikeable manager football has ever seen! How far can I go before I lose the dressing room?
INTRODUCTION
What exactly do I mean by Anger Management? No, this has nothing to do with the 2003 film starring Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson…
In this experiment, my manager is going to do EVERYTHING he can to upset his players, the board, the media, and everyone else for that matter. He will never praise his players, and he will always criticise them for training or match performances of 6.6 or lower. He also has a low anger threshold, so it won’t take much for him to start kicking chairs or banging tables… or throwing water bottles.
The goal is to see how long my manager’s dictatorship can survive. Can he last a full season and bully his team to glory, or will there be a full-blown dressing-room or boardroom revolt.
For this, I will be starting a new ‘Real World’ save with Serie A giants Roma, who fired Mourinho after he tried to fight Anthony Taylor in a Budapest car park. What the Giallorossi don’t realise, however, is that their new head coach will make José look like a pussycat…
Say hello once again to Mr Black – or Signor Nero, if you prefer. His last 100-game job in Dagenham turned him into an anger-fuelled psychopath with all the patience of a Watford chairman. This man has lost any regard he has for other people’s emotions and won’t think twice about upsetting them.
Or, to quote his ex-partner Caroline, “You’re so hot you’re hurting my feelings.”
He also doesn’t care about walking out of press conferences when they ask him silly questions about why he no speak Italiano. He likes the media as much as Walter Mazzarri on FM19.
JULY TO SEPTEMBER 2023
Though Mr Black cannot fine players for playing badly, he is determined to use the stick as much as possible. Miss training – you get fined two weeks’ wages. Go AWOL – two weeks. Get sent off – two weeks. Get caught listening to Barenaked Ladies – one week.
It’s fair to say Tammy Abraham isn’t a fan of the new hardline Code of Conduct…
Tt didn’t take long for Roma to feel the full brunt of their new coach’s wrath. The first water bottle was thrown in just their second pre-season friendly, after they went 1-0 down at half-time against Ternana from Serie B. They responded so brightly that they… er, lost 1-0.
Roma had a few more defensive clangers later in pre-season, testing Black’s patience even further. After a 5-3 defeat to Sevilla, he sent them off to a boot camp for a week. Would they now buckle up and start the season strongly?
Not really. After a draw with Torino and a narrow loss to Juventus, Roma made it third time lucky by taking maximum points against Frosinone. New loan signing Romelu Lukaku scored twice on his debut but also had a third disallowed for offside, prompting Black to declare vendetta on VAR.
Lukaku’s instant impact was perhaps bad news for another forward. The new coach had made a habit of criticising any player for posting a training rating of below 6.6 – and Paulo Dybala was the first slacker to bite back. Big mistake, Paulo.
The next match brought a brief smile to the coach’s face, as an impressive Roma performance saw them leading 2-1 at champions Napoli going deep into second-half stoppage time. What could poss-
Despite winning their next two games, a 3-1 defeat at Udinese left the Giallorossi in 9th at the end of September. Black once again refused to blame himself for these erratic results – instead pointing fingers at the referees and his own players. He had already fallen out with nine players, whose relationships with him had become ‘Distant’.
OCTOBER TO NOVEMBER 2023
It was only a matter of time before all this anger started to spill over onto the pitch. Just three minutes into an away defeat at Bologna, midfield skipper Lorenzo Pellegrini was sent off for a reckless two-footed lunge on Alexis Saelemaekers. Pellegrini was fined a fortnight’s wages, and stripped of the captaincy.
That could have been the moment where it all came crashing down. When Pellegrini demanded an explanation about why Mr Black had given his armband to Bryan Cristante, he was told that he was becoming a negative influence on the team – and threatened with the wood-chipper if he didn’t back down.
Fearing for his life, Pellegrini backed down, and a mutiny was avoided…
…until the following week, when Black had a huge bust-up with another midfielder.
The constant criticism had got too much for anchor man Leandro Paredes, and things reached a head when he told that he was no longer a regular starter. Half the squad sided with Paredes and called an urgent meeting, which ended with Black kicking a couple of chairs and punching Pellegrini’s jaw out of joint.
Then it all fell to pieces. A shock defeat to FC København in the Europa League was followed by a crushing 2-0 reverse against eternal rivals Lazio – and then another team meeting. It went about as well as you might expect.
That culminated in the Giallorossi’s most brutal defeat yet, as they fell 4-0 down at home to Milan after 54 minutes. Though right-back Zeki Çelik and Lukaku halved the deficit later on, there were few positives to take from this. Just like the Emperor Nero, Mr Black fiddled (with water bottles) while Roma burned.
After the Danes turned his team into bacon again, the coach was called to a board meeting, where he convinced Il Presidente not to fire him just yet. To be fair, he couldn’t really be blamed for an injury crisis up front. Lukaku tore his achilles on Belgium duty, becoming the FOURTH Roma forward to suffer a long-term injury after Abraham, Andrea Belotti and Stephan El Shaarawy.
At least they still had Dybala, who after a three-month drought had opened his account in a much-needed home victory over bottom side Genoa. Rui Patrício also managed to keep a clean sheet – their first in Serie A this season. Having lifted Roma up from 14th place to 12th, surely Black would have reason to smile?
Nope. He was his usual grumpy self – even more so after another Europa League defeat against Lugano from Switzerland relegated his team to the Europa Conference League. And people thought they would walk their group!
DECEMBER 2023
Things didn’t get any better when Roma meekly went down 3-0 to Atalanta. Tbe Giallorossi were so awful, even Ademola Lookman scored against them!
Mr Black was once again called into the boardroom – and once again, he survived, convinced that a favourable festive run-in would get his team back in form. It also helped that the president had suddenly turned into a parrot.
To be fair, the players were now thinking there was another Polly in need of a cracker.
Victory over Monza only brought brief respite, and after a 6-0 spanking by Union SG in Belgium, Black was back on the brink. He was told that he had to win 10 points in his next five league games, or he would finally be dispensed with.
Of course, Roma responded by going on a winning run, quickly picking up 9 of the points their coach needed. Was he delighted? You bet he wasn’t.
This streak propelled Roma up from 14th place to 5th. They now just needed to take one more point off either Internazionale or Juventus – and Black would earn another stay of execution.
JANUARY TO FEBRUARY 2024
New year, new transfer window, new problems. Chris Smalling might be a ‘Model Citizen’, but even he was fed up and requested a transfer to Tottenham. When Black said no, Mike called in some of his best mates to have a word with him.
A chair fight between manager and players was EXACTLY what Roma needed before a big game at the San Siro.
And even more furniture was flying afterwards.
Black’s future would now be decided on this next match. If they lost at home to Juventus (and their returning manager Antonio Conte), his reign of tyranny would be over.
I’m not sure whether the Roma players wanted to laugh or cry at full-time. Their suffering would go on.
The winning run ended with Torino, though two late goals from Renato Sanches salvaged a draw. Black was so angry with the result that he refused to allow centre-back Gianluca Mancini to sign for Manchester City, driving another wedge between himself and his stars.
After losing a seven-goal thriller to Frosinone, Roma faced back-to-back meetings – in the Coppa Italia, then in Serie A – with Napoli. The champions were 8th and unable to defend their scudetto, but the Partenopei hoped for a late turnaround under their calm and cerebral new manager.
José Mourinho masterminded a couple of victories over his Roma successor, whose relationship with the Giallorossi squad had hit rock-bottom. Smalling had been singled out for especially harsh treatment, and Black threw a plate of chicken wings at the former England defender, the rest of the dressing room erupted in anger.
There was no turning back. Roma were thrashed 4-1 by Empoli for a fourth consecutive defeat, dropping them down to 11th.
It was then that the board finally decided enough was enough. Black crowed that they could not bring in a better manager than him – but the president had other ideas.
After seven months in charge, and 15 defeats in 32 games, Mr Black had thrown his last water bottle.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Tammy sums it up pretty well. You cannot bully your players into becoming a better team anymore – at least not consistently.
Some FMers complain a lot about how morale is apparently overpowered – but as I’ve said before, a happy team is a winning team. If your players trust you and enjoy their performances, the results will come. If they don’t… well…
Roma did string a few victories together here and there, but the wins were never emphatic, mostly consisting of 1-0 or 2-1 grinds at home. Things could get especially ugly on the road, where they barely put in any effort and got spanked 4-0 by København and 6-0 by Union SG.
With the performance-related fines now removed from FM24, my manager didn’t have many opportunities to penalise players. Pellegrini’s red card was the only one Roma got during his reign, and he accepted the two-week fine.
While players can generally accept being criticised for poor performances in matches or training, they won’t be so tolerant if you berate them every single week. That can feel like victimisation. It’s why I typically won’t make the same praise or criticism to the same player more than twice in a month.
Reactions also depend a lot on the players’ personalities. It took quite a lot of effort to upset players with professional attitudes like Smalling and Cristante. More volatile or fragile players like Mancini and Sanches had much shorter fuses. In addition, setting targets for your players simply won’t work if they already dislike you.
As the months rolled on, I saw more players become nervous or apprehensive, which was clear when watching the highlights. Players would be more hesitant on the ball, passing got less fluent, and more sitters were missed. It may not surprise you that Roma had one of the lowest shot conversion rates in Serie A.
Misuse of the fabled water bottles will only make things worse. As I stated in another post last year, you should ONLY throw bottles to combat complacency – NOT to upset your quivering wrecks even more. When your team is losing heavily and morale is low, you have to give them more encouragement… or at least criticise them more gently and constructively.
In an era where people management has become an even more important part of the job, there is a reason Paolo Di Canio’s managerial career never really took off. You can’t just use the stick all the time; you have to use the carrot as well.
That was fun, wasn’t it? If you have any ideas for future editions of Breaking FM, please leave a comment below or tweet me @Fuller_FM.
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