An Introduction to PAS Lamia 1964

Welcome back for another year of Football Manager, For FM22 I’m heading to Greece as have taken over as manager of PAS Lamia 1964.
In 1964 PAS Lamia were formed and spent a lot of time in the lower leagues of Greek football until the 2016-17 season where they finally earnt promotion to the Greek Super League.
Since then they have finished 13th, 7th, 10th and 10th. Apart from their second season they have been relegation battlers and that’s where I come in.
I want to help them take the next steps, first to a midtable team then Europe then hopefully a Title or Cup win.
The issue we have is they are still a small club structurally with the 33rd biggest football stadium in the country, the Lamia Municipal Stadium holds only 4,987 seats.
With season tickets only 140 euros and a match ticket 15 Euros income through match days will be an issue.
We start with a balance of 83,000 Euros and a weekly wage bill of 45,367 Euros.
With an ageing squad with the majority on one year deals we don’t really have any sellable assets early on.

PAS Lamia 1964 Squad Introduction

Goalkeepers

Garavelis has started as my number 1 with Saranov as backup.
Tropoulos will be with the U19’s two more years before looking to compete with Pentarakos to take over from Saranov as my back up.

Defenders

I’m playing with a back 3 and the current choices at the moment are Adejo, Golemic and Vyntra and they’re backed up by Mazoulouxis and Tzanstopoulos. 40 year old Vyntra is already a Dan favourite!

In my 352 I’m currently playing with wingbacks Angel is the first choice LWB backed up by Saramantas and Skondras is the RWB backed up by Provydakis.

Midfielders

My 3 in midfield are Nunez, Bejarano (of Bolivia fame) and Gentzoglou.
They are backed up by Eleftheriadis, Tyronne and Tzandaris. Tsoukalos is a player I haven’t found a role for yet, he’s filled in allover LWB, CM and ST. Margaritis isn’t good enough and will likely move on at the end of his deal. Nikolopoulos and Trouboulos are both prospects for the future.

Strikers

Arabuli and Karamanos have been leading the line so far rotating with Manousos. Romanic and Manousakis are offering back up and Vlachomitros is one for the future.

Lineup

As you can see the majority of the squad is 30 years old plus. Its only Nunez and Bejarano who are in their 20’s in the starting XI but with finances being an issue I think I will be leaning on this squad of older heads for the time being.

The save

As always the DOF will be in charge of transfer dealings and contract renewals. I will be taking control in telling him what players contracts I want and adding players as transfer targets to a list for him to work with.
I won’t be using player search any players I sign will be ones that my scouting team have found. The Chief scout will set up majority of scouting but I will add short term assignments if I need a player for a position.
The short term aim is survival but I think we need European football as soon as possible otherwise we will struggle to improve the squad.
Youth set up is terrible so we will focus on improving that too.

I have hired my new DOF….

It was slim pickings with the money I had available but with half decent attributes and knowledge of Greece, Serbia and France.
I took over Lamia as a long term project and believe I can take them to the top, this year I’m going to play on extended now comprehensive in the hope of speeding things up.

The Tactic

Lets be honest that’s all anyone wants to know! Like I said I’ve adopted a 352, I actually built this on FM21 over the summer (so no wide centre backs) and I think it suits us as a squad.

The objective is to be solid defensively whilst retaining the ball and working our way forward. With the age of our squad I don’t think a high tempo counter attacking team suits us for example.

The end

Thanks to all for reading, any questions fire them over on twitter @Dgear86.
Any of my players you like or think I’m over looking let me know.
Will be back soon with a season 1 update.