Hello my dear readers!
The day of the next Leeds story post has come 
Today I am going to show results of my starting 3 months in Football Manager 2010.
Table and matches
At first I would like to boast with League One table after 14 fixtures:
Well, what I can say… Leeds United is stronger by squad than any other team in the league. My transfers before the season start have only strengthened the squad and added more flexibility. Another important reason of success is efficient tactics choice and its tuning.
Here are results of Leeds matches:
I had problems of the team play quality in the end of August, start of September. Several draws and losses happened during that period. That was caused by my tactical experiments and try-outs – 5-3-2 scheme was unsuccessfully used.
During that period Leeds was knocked out by West Brom in the 2nd round of League Cup. We were winning the game with 1:0 score after the first half and had certain advantage in performance on pitch. But then West Brom players showed very good football enclosing my team during the whole 2nd half. It was a slight shock for us – however I understand that opponent's squad was stronger in almost all positions 
Regarding other matches I would like to say we had always technical and flair advantage over opponents. It resulted in many victories with very low amount of conceded goals!
Johnstone's Paint Trophy
I was glad to have an opportunity of participation in this tournament. Don't understand why but JPT matches turned out very complicated for my team. Look at the 2nd round fight against Tranmere:
Series of penalties were really crazy! All 20 players scored goals apart from goalies. In the end there was some kind of duel between legendary Ian Walker (Leeds GK) and Luke Daniels (Tranmere GK). Walker struck penalty shot quite efficiently as opposed to Daniels
Tactics (new one!)
I think the most important factor of such good start is my new tactics. Starting new story in new Football Manager I decided that's enough of 4-1-4-1 which had been the tactical scheme of Hull (FM 2009 story) and Southampton (FM 2008 story). So work over new tactics started with first friendly matches.
I am happy with quick result:
In my opinion 3-5-2 is a very special formation. I had several failures trying to tune it for different clubs in previous Football Manager versions. I remember I had success only once when this formation was used for Parma in Football Manager 2005. Therefore I was selecting roles for each position and changing individual instructions very carefully.
I will describe my tactics and the way how I use touchline shouts in one of the next posts!
Leeds Players
I would like to single out 4 players I am happy with:
Jermaine Beckford – excellent scorer with 12 goals in 16 matches. I set up Poacher role for him!
Sandrinho – seems like this Brazilian is my best transfer before the season! The most technical player in the squad. Best assister. Playmaker.
Patrick Kisnorbo – confident work in defence.
Sol Campbell – the most slow DC but he compensates this problem with fantastic pitch vision and position choice.
Looking into the future - Championship
As far as I understood I won't have any problems in Championship's promotion. So I have already decided to start thinking about strengthening squad! Leeds squad will changed much before the 2nd season – it's obvious. Obvious because many players either too old and slow like Ivan Campo or merely below level of "average Championship" player.
Now I am very interested in price growth of my players. I am going to sell several guys during the winter transfer window because prices grew highly. In the very beginning Beckford was the most expensive Leeds footballer – $1.4M. At the current moment I have the following players with price about $2M:
Leigh Bromby (will be sold)
Patrick Kisnorbo (he stays, of course)
Gareth Williams (don't know if I should sell him 
)
Luciano Becchio (will be sold)
Jermaine Beckford (he stays)
I have already started to rub my hands with joy of gaining transfer money in winter
Previous posts of Leeds story:
