Bayer Leverkusen 2047-48 – Invincibles – A FM Old Timer

After years of domestic domination with 18 straight Bundesliga titles, Bayer 04 went a step further with an invincible season, their second across that spell.

With 102 goals scored and only 15 conceded, it led to a 94-point season. The invincible season’s biggest threat was when Bayern were 2-1 up going into extra time before Evgeny Ushakov hit a deflected shot through the melee of players from outside the box from a corner to score the equalising goal.

The season could have been even better had they not conceded a 90+1-minute equaliser to former player Dior Psaras in the Champions League final before Emir Nezri deflected a shot into his own goal past helpless Yann Diaby, which saw Arsenal prevent Leverkusen from winning all possible trophies.

This post will look at the tactic that helped to achieve this, as well as the recruitment and squad building that helped to claim the trophy.

Tactic

In terms of the typical set-up, we played a standard 4-3-3, with it morphing into a 4-1-4-1 out of possession, with Calvin remaining higher as an outlet.

Having said that, the tactic was somewhat pragmatic as to who was playing. With Bailey being a right-footed left back, he played as an inverted wing back when deputising for Seidu. If Hibbert and Alfers started rather than Hillman, then they’ll play as wide forwards. Calvin’s stand-in, Caparroz, is a natural winger. As such, those roles change depending upon personnel.

Equally, within a game, tweaks were made depending upon where space was. The channel forward was at times changed to a deep-lying forward in order to better link up play and bring in the on-running attacking midfielder and wide players.

When it comes to in-possession instructions, they’re as below:

Out-of-possession instructions are here:

There are individual player instructions for some positions. For instance:

• Wingback: stay wide, shoot less often, run wide with the ball and dribble more.
• Full back: stay wider, run wide with the ball and shoot less often.
• Defensive midfielder: shoot less often and take more risks when passing
• Midfield playmaker: roam from position to find space.
• Right-sided wide forward: stay wider, roam from position, cut inside, dribble more, shoot more often and take more risks when passing
• Left-sided winger: stay wider, dribble more and make more forward runs

The idea is to be attacking and try to dominate possession while playing high-octane football. Natural fitness, stamina and high work rate are a necessity. Pressing the opponents high up the pitch to encourage long balls towards our aerially dominant central backs.

Building up from the back allows us to potentially bait the press to play through it with our creative and intelligent playmakers, or to simply play out without pressure if the opponents choose not to prevent short goalkeeper distribution.

I also make sure to go to the tactics screen as the match kicks off to enact any of the suggested opposition instructions given by long-serving assistant manager Lars Kornetka.

The Squad

The players that were part of the 29-man squad, excluding the two players that were sold during the season, are shown below:

Goalkeepers

Defenders

Midfielders

Attacking wide players

Forwards

Recruiting to a tactic and remoulding players

In the last two or so seasons, there’s been a change of approach to transfers. Whilst Bayer 04 are still signing young players with a view to developing them into first-team candidates, when older squad members have been sold, they’ve typically been replaced by players aged around the 20-25 age bracket.

As a result, wage expenditure across age brackets looks like this:

In 2044-45, only 12% of total wage expenditure went towards 21-24-year-olds, with 42.39% going towards those aged over 29.

In previous seasons, Navarro, Caparroz, Seidu and Neziri are just such players who fall into that 20-25 age bracket. This season, two players at the top end of this age profile when they were recruited are Francisco Lopes (Leeds United – £94m) and Lars Alfers (1. FC Köln – £70m). Whilst Lopes was a key starter, they’ve primarily been brought into the squad to settle before Anténor Aristide and Andy Hillman are eventually sold.

Whilst Alfers isn’t a natural wide player, it’s hoped that the diminutive German can learn how to ply his trade as a wide forward and replace Hillman’s minutes. He has the pace, flair and skills to be a goal threat from out wide when he cuts into the box. Lopes has slotted in seamlessly as a left-sided attacking midfield player given his left-footedness, as you’ll see from the contribution graphics below.

Beyond that, whenever players are signed, they have typically been brought into the youth team when aged between 16 and 18 and given the chance to play for the U19s (who also did the domestic double).

More care has been taken now to ensure that targetted players are staying at the club for at least three years to qualify as home-grown at the club. When we had Canpolat Darande, Christian Priso and Emre Yüksel come through our youth system, this was less of a concern. Now that the youth players that have more recently come through from our own system aren’t of sufficient quality, the acquisition of young talent has become crucial.

The players with the higher current potential, perhaps unusually, are remaining at the club. Whilst this may mean that they don’t reach their full potential, it does mean that they can become used to our system and have their training closely monitored whilst making use of the mentoring system. This can be seen with two Italian youngsters – Massimo Fanti and Francesco Piancentini, both of whom are being mentored by Emanuele Barbaro. The plan is for them to stay, qualify as homegrown, and then either remain in the squad or go out on loan to develop further should their path be blocked by older, more talented players.

Injuries – lack thereof

The level of rotation that we undertook meant that player availability was generally fantastic. The longest any player missed due to injury was just 4 weeks (3 players), with only Calvin being a first-team player as opposed to a fringe player.

With only first-choice goalkeeper Yann Diaby playing more than 80% of potential minutes and nine others playing more than 50% of potential minutes, players weren’t overloaded despite the fact that we played 58 games across all competitions this season.

By ensuring at least two players per position, there was sufficient capacity to rotate players without too much of a drop in quality given the recruitment standards implemented. When big games came around, we were then able to typically play our first-choice side, who were fresh and able to achieve a positive result.

Distribution of Goal Involvements

Here, you can see that we weren’t dependent on just one player when it came to scoring goals. Evgeny Ushakov was only responsible for 16.47% of all goals across all competitions.

The same is true of assists:

What’s noticeable here is how important our wide players are to create chances. with 82 of the 142 assists (57.75%) coming from those starting on the flanks (the second and fourth grouping in the below graphic). There is the caveat that some of our wide players are also our set-piece takers from corners, but we were by no means prolific from corners this season.

Yet Lopes, Aristide, Fumero and Irurrizaga combined to contribute 37 assists (26.1%), which demonstrates that we created goals from central players, too.

With the average age of the squad at 24.73 (weighted by minutes, this comes out as 24.65), as we move into the 2048-49 season, the squad doesn’t need any incoming transfers given there are no existing gaps. The squad is the right age to go again and retain the Bundesliga for a 19th year in a row and challenge once more for the Champions League.

It is likely that Aristide will leave this year, as he does not want to sign a new deal and a bid has already been accepted for him from Atlético Madrid. The plan is for Fumero to step into his position and become the lead playmaker to reduce his running load as he ages and use Lopes in the attacking midfield position more frequently. Alfers is able to deputise for Lopes, and Irurrizaga can step in for Fumero when needed. Lopes is highly rated globally, as he has won World Player of the Year and GOAL50 all in his first year here.

Can we replicate this going into 2048-49? I’m confident given the ability level of the playing squad and the average age, meaning replacements aren’t needed. There will be no change in playing staff for the sake of player churn. We go again, and hopefully can go one step further and win the Champions League.