Hello and welcome to part 2 of The Belgian Boom and what is the first proper part of the series as coming up for you today we’ve got the absolute mess that was the transfer window and also the first 2 months of football here at the… *checks notes* Municipal Park Stadium. I also plan on briefly going over the tactic i’ll be starting off with and also a crazy club vision rule! If you haven’t checked it out yet then click here to read part 1 of the series and learn about the club’s link with Romelu Lukaku. Let’s not waste anymore time and get straight into the action!
Tactic
I think I’ve mentioned it before in the beta save but I have very little interest in tactics. I tend to pick a preset, tweak it as and when I see fit and stick with it until it stops working – and even then I’ll probably keep using it until I either get sacked or it starts working again.
So for this series I’m going to be playing a control possession as I did in the beta, at the moment we’re using it straight out the box but I am considering adding on play for set pieces because from what I’ve seen so far we are making good use of any corners and free kicks we are getting.
Transfers
When I arrived at the club there was only 17 players, all under contract until the end of the season so I’ve not moved anybody on as of yet but that may well be a good thing considering we only had £200 spare to spend on wages, so I’m currently £1.3k over my budgets. Oh, and we’ve got a very strange club culture which I still can’t understand…
What?!
If any of you have any idea as to why a club in the third division of Belgian football have a club culture of sign players based in Spain then I’m all ears, I just can’t work it out. It’s especially annoying that I don’t have Spain loaded so I couldn’t find any Spanish based players that I could bring in. Honestly just writing this is making me puzzled! Yeah, answers on a postcard.
Ins
We didn’t have much room in the wage budget but we did manage to make a couple additions to my very small squad, so let’s meet them now!
Kevin Moihedja – free transfer
When I arrived at the club there was no left backs, so that was my number 1 priority. We managed to bring in Moihedja who I think is a good signing, he’s good defensively and looks decent going forward as well which is useful because I’ve noticed playing with width and getting crosses in seems quite effective in FM22. We’ve also called up a LB from the U21s to act as cover at left back.
Jordan Kerstenne – free transfer
To be honest we were pretty light all over the defence when I arrived so with the limited amount of wage budget left I wanted to bring someone in who could play right back but also cover at centre back, and that’s exactly what we have in Kerstenne. You can see he has some decent attributes for this level and 19 determination really stands out, he’s definitely a potential captain in the future.
Sanaa Altama – free transfer
The Chadian international comes in as an older head than the rest of the boys but to be honest I just had to take what I could get and afford. I doubt we’ll extend his contract for next season but he should do a job as the ball winning midfielder for season 1 of the save.
Adrien Saussez – free transfer
the final addition to my squad is the man who will be playing between the sticks this season, he’s not the main target I was going for in goals but he’s by no means the worst goalkeeper I could have brought in. Again another older player but I don’t mind that when it comes to the goalies, although signing these older players is a bit of a problem because in the league I have to start each game with at least 2 U21 players, which is something I cannot do at the moment so we have to have a short bench with only 5 substitutes as our punishment but it’s something I will be trying to fix next summer, I want to bring a lot more youth into the squad.
Now, finally, it’s time to get on with the results!
August/September
We started the campaign off with the Croky Cup, the main cup competition in Belgium. We made it through the first few rounds with relative ease, the third and fourth round were against lower league opposition and in the fifth round we beat a team newly promoted to our league.
The season preview has us predicted to finish mid table, so I’m pretty happy with that first month of league football. We kicked things off with a 1-0 defeat to Dessel which I wasn’t happy with, I normally like to start the season with a win but we managed to put things right by winning the next 3 games against Patro Eisden, Francs Borains and FCV Dender, conceding only 1 goal in the process. Side note, typing these Belgian names out is going to be a problem!
October
Our good run of form continued as we rose to the top of the league, winning the first 5 league games of the month and again only conceding a single goal. I’ve been impressed with our defence so far!
Next up was our sixth round tie in the Croky Cup and for the first time in the series we will be playing a Jupiler Pro League team in the form of Union SG. However, we encountered a major problem going into the game as our only left back at the club picked up an injury, so we were forced to give a debut to a 16 year old left back from the under 21’s! He did take a while to get into the game and you could argue that he was at fault for their goal but he absolutely made up for it as with 2 minutes to go, he takes the ball from a throw in and moves into the space ahead. Then, he delivers a Kevin De Bruyne like cross to the back post where the substitute striker rose higher than the Union defenders and sent a bullet header flying into the back of the net! We’d done it! We had beaten a top flight team already!
With just 2 minutes until a penalty shootout our 16 year old debutant put a beautiful cross into the box and I’ve not enjoyed a single moment as much as this one in FM in a long time, beating a Pro League side when we are still in the third tier is the first of hopefully many special moments in the save. We did lose the next league game but as it was just 3 days later and our whole team were exhausted, I think it can be forgiven.
League table
We currently sit top of the league after 10 games just one point ahead of Knokke, don’t expect us to stay here long but I’d hope come the end of the season we are around and about the playoffs.
Outro
So that brings us to the end of part 2 of The Belgian Boom, it’s been a long one but that’s to be expected in the first blogs of the season when we’ve got transfers to cover as well. It’s been a much better start to the season than I was expecting and long may it continue! Make sure you are following me on Twitter so you don’t miss out on part 3 which should be coming out in the coming days.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.
Adam/BoxToBoxFM
BoxToBox FM 
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