A recent comment from Mr Malcolm’s (excellent) review of Division 2 teams regarding squad depth made me think about my squad and so I decided to share my thinking on squad depth and coverage that I have developed over the last two seasons at Die Wolfe.
In Top100 - like several of my other game worlds - I typically find myself only competing in one major competition in any one season: the league. My appearances in Shield and Cup knockouts tends to be short and sweet - and of course Youth and World Club Cups are not impacted by injuries and do not affect fatigue.
This is a technique I have developed across a couple of gameworlds to make sure I have enough coverage in any one position in my preferred formation. As a rule of thumb, I try and have (number x2 +1) players available in any position in that formation; eg for a four-man backline I need five players capable of playing D(C) to cover two players in that position in that formation.
(NB - an exception to this is GK; seems after some game engine changes a few years back nobody has ever suffered a GK injury. So as long as you’ve got two, you’re fine).
Make sense?
The chart below shows my current Wolfsburg squad in its preferred formation of 4-2-3-1B and the “best team” plus the cover for each position. Effectively looking across the green shaded squares shows me how much coverage I have in each position -
A good aspect of this approach is that a quick glance shows me that one of either Arnold M(C),AM(RLC) or Kruse AM,F(RLC) are actually surplus to requirements at the moment and could possible be spared without seriously impacting the coverage in the squad; this is also a function of having many versatile players in the squad who cover multiple positions - eg many players who cover both D and M positions, plus many that cover both AM and F positions.
Anyway, hope this approach might prove useful to some others of you out there when assessing your squads and helping to decide which players you can afford to trade and where you might need to shore up some positions. Of course, in practice you will find this when you keep needing to promote that U21 DC(C) to your starting lineup to cover for injuries!
