The Recreation Control version has now had its real Premier League examination, and this is probably the most important season of the project so far.

The objective with this version was different from the original Meta Adaptation. I still wanted a tactic capable of producing strong FM26 output, but the direction was increasingly toward control, structure and a more Spalletti-inspired identity rather than simply pushing the engine as hard as possible.

And this season went much further than expected.

🏆 Season Results

🥇 Premier League Champions📈 78 points✅ 25 wins🤝 3 draws❌ 10 defeats⚽ 85 goals scored🧱 47 goals conceded💥 +38 goal difference

🏆 Carabao Cup Runners-Up❌ FA Cup Quarter Final, eliminated by Chelsea⭐ Champions League Semi Final, eliminated by Real Madrid

This was not just a good Premier League season.

We won it.

And we did it with a squad that is still fundamentally built around the young-player project rather than a collection of finished elite players.

📊 Premier League Data

The underlying numbers are what make the season particularly interesting.

Swansea finished:

🥇 1st in the actual table🥇 1st for xPTS📊 80.90 xG🧱 44.93 xGA📈 70.81 xPTS

The team scored 85 league goals, only slightly above the 80.90 xG generated.

So this wasn't a season built around some enormous finishing overperformance.

The attacking process itself was strong.

Defensively, the 44.93 xGA against 47 actual goals conceded tells a similar story. There is very little separation between the underlying defensive performance and the final output.

That's important for me because it gives much more context than simply looking at the league table.

🧠 Control Without Killing the Attack

This is probably the part I like most about the tactic.

📊 58% average possession, 3rd in the Premier League🎯 89% pass completion⚽ 2.2 goals per game🔥 17.9 shots per game📈 2.0 non-penalty xG per 90🧱 1.2 xGA per game🧼 9 clean sheets

This is much closer to what I wanted when I called the tactic Recreation Control.

We still attack.

We still create a lot.

But we are not sacrificing the entire structure simply to generate more shots.

The team had enough of the ball to control games, completed passes at a very good rate and still generated almost 18 shots per match.

That balance is the key difference between this project and simply creating another aggressive FM26 meta tactic.

🏆 Winning the League Wasn't the Only Achievement

The cup runs add another layer to the season.

Champions League

We reached the semi-final.

Eintracht Frankfurt were eliminated in the quarter-final after:

❌ Swansea 1-2 Frankfurt✅ Frankfurt 0-2 Swansea

Real Madrid were simply too much in the semi-final.

❌ Real Madrid 6-0 Swansea❌ Swansea 2-3 Real Madrid

And I actually like having results like this in the save.

I'm not interested in pretending that the tactic makes the quality of the players irrelevant.

Sometimes you run into a team that is simply better, and Real Madrid completely punished us.

Domestic Cups

🏆 Carabao Cup Runners-Up

And in the FA Cup:

❌ Quarter Final vs Chelsea

So across four competitions we had:

Premier League winners + Carabao final + Champions League semi-final + FA Cup quarter-final.

That's a serious season.

👥 Player Output

This continues to be one of the most interesting parts of the entire Swansea project.

These players are developing, but this is still not a squad built by buying established elite stars.

And several of them are now producing elite-level numbers.

Ilyas Ansah

⚽ 32 goals🎯 8 assists

Still the main goalscorer.

Mohamed Ali Zoma

⚽ 15 goals🎯 16 assists📊 7.20 average rating

31 direct goal contributions.

Excellent season.

Tommaso Berti

⚽ 11 goals🎯 10 assists📊 7.23 average rating

A central midfielder giving you 21 goal contributions is a huge part of why this structure works.

Kacper Urbański

⚽ 13 goals🎯 11 assists

Another 24 contributions from the central attacking unit.

Cole Campbell

⚽ 12 goals🎯 11 assists

Campbell continues to produce.

He isn't carrying the team alone anymore, which is actually a good sign. The attacking output is becoming much more distributed throughout the structure.

🚀 The Wing-Back Output Is Massive

This may be the most eye-catching positional output in the squad.

Zachary Athekame

⚽ 8 goals🎯 17 assists📊 7.26

25 goal contributions.

Max Finkgräfe

⚽ 18 goals🎯 20 assists📊 7.13

38 goal contributions from a wing-back.

That is enormous.

And it also tells us something important about how this shape is creating its attacking superiority.

The front four are not responsible for everything.

The width and additional attacking presence generated from deeper positions are contributing heavily to the final output.

The Bigger Wonderkids Experiment

This is why I keep saying that this save isn't simply a tactic demonstration.

The tactic obviously matters.

But the player experiment matters just as much.

We started this project with young players selected around useful attributes and development potential rather than buying ready-made elite footballers.

Now those same players have:

🏆 won the Premier League🏆 reached a domestic cup final⭐ reached a Champions League semi-final

And that's where the discussion around base attributes becomes interesting.

You don't necessarily need a squad filled with the highest CA players in the database.

A young player with the correct physical and technical foundations can already give you enormous value before becoming a completely developed player.

Then development starts adding another layer.

Recreation Control vs Meta Adaptation

The distinction between the two versions is becoming much clearer.

Meta Adaptation was the first prototype.

Its priority was extracting strong FM26 performance from the basic Spalletti idea.

Recreation Control is where I'm trying to move the project closer toward the football I actually want to reproduce.

More control.

More possession.

More structural responsibility.

Still enough aggression to remain competitive inside FM26.

And winning the Premier League while averaging 58% possession, generating 80.90 xG and finishing 1st for xPTS is a very encouraging sign that we don't necessarily need to choose between control and performance.

That's exactly what I wanted to investigate.

Career Checkpoint

After 153 matches with Swansea:

🎮 153 games✅ 105 wins🤝 18 draws❌ 30 defeats⚽ 398 goals scored🧱 191 conceded💥 +207 goal difference📈 68% win rate

And now the project has reached another stage.

The Championship was one thing.

Surviving in the Premier League was another.

Winning the Premier League and reaching a Champions League semi-final changes the expectations completely.

The next question is how far I can push the recreation side without losing the level of control and performance we've reached here.