FM16: Jermain Defoe – Sunderland’s right-wing diamond

Add as preferred source on Google

Sunderland’s Jermain Defoe is hardly the greatest discovery of my hours spent on Football Manager 16, but the success that I had with the former Spurs centre-forward as a right inside forward was, frankly, unprecedented.

Usually, you’d want Memphis Depay or Erik Lamela in this position, but the shambolic quality in my Sunderland squad gave me with little choice than to use Defoe out of position – particularly when Adam Johnson was injured…(this save was all before the revelations of the latest trial, so don’t shoot me for playing him).

Defoe netted 36 goals in 40 games in all competitions, including a couple of stat padding matches in the Capital One Cup. Shot accuracy was well into European star territory, but it was his immense finishing record that made him my hero.

The system I was using was recreating something similar to Jurgen Klopp’s gegenpress, with Fletcher as the deep lying forward and the flying winger on one side. Naturally, this meant I picked up endless injuries and needed to rotate, but Defoe was superb throughout my campaign and helped me guide an ordinary Black Cats squad to the top half.

The weakness of using my beloved Jermain in your team is his ability to protect his full-back, unless you fancy chucking him in as an advanced forward. Defoe also is pretty limited when it comes to creativity, so he has to function as a wide poacher and, although his work-rate isn’t really up to it, temporarily did a job for me as a raumdeuter. Finding space in the channels from wide areas causes all sorts of problems in any system where you have both an attacking midfield player and a striker, as the central overload leaves the central defenders outnumbered.

The former West Ham striker has a personality within FM that makes him nice and easy to manage. Others might criticise your ambition, or demand constant praise (I’m looking at you Adel Taarabt), but Defoe is a level-headed kind of player within the game. The world’s great simulation game has Defoe perfectly represented, as he continues to prove he can cut it as a PL striker with Sunderland.

Most of all, Jermain Defoe seems a likeable sort of bloke, aside from that bite a few years back, and he has made Football Manager 16 all the more enjoyable to me. There were edge of the seat moments where I was saved by Defoe’s appearance at the back post as he poked in a Van Aanholt cross or followed in a through ball from M’Vila.

Grown men idolising other grown men is always a bit weird, but I am not ashamed for the sheer love I held for Defoe during that season. I held him in such high regard that I kept him amongst my squad, despite some awful injuries and a hilariously slow pace attribute of 4, for the remaining 2 seasons just so he could be worshipped by the Stadium of Light faithful.

I didn’t want to mention this, but I’m a Sunderland icon as well now, by the way.