I have again decided to play safe and go with the expectation of avoiding relegation from the Premier League. Seventeenth place in the league would fullful this expectation, and hope that we do acheive this. Before the season starts I dare not to hope for more than this.
It is expected that we also reach the 4th round of the FA Cup and the 5th round of the League Cup.
I have been given a generous £20M transfer budget and a wage budget of £264,419 pw. This gives me about £49K pw. This definitely gives me quite a bit of money to play with, although the wage budget does put some limitations on the wages I can afford. £29K pw is the maximum the club will allow me to offer a key player.
New Affiliate
I was quite surprised to find the chairman has negotiated an affiliation with A.C.Milan as a feeder club. It remains to be seen who if anyone we receive on loan.
Transfer/Loan movements in
After the season finished, I completed the signing of Clement Grenier for £250K, which was considerably less than the agreed £1.8M to sign him at any point during the loan last season. I have to say I was somewhat surprised by this, and doubt such a situation would arise in the real world.
After an huge amount of scouting around for keepers that are better than Jason Steele, but still affordable both in terms of price and wages, I eventually found Silvui Lung Jr at U Craiova from Romania. After some haggling a fee of £3.2M was settled upon and he has duly joined the club. He has good handling skills and likes to come off the line to claim crosses, which I believe will help to stop us conceding quite so many balls that are crossed in the box.
The 13th turned out to be a busy day with 4 signings being completed. Cristain Nasuti, Sebastien Puygrenier and Martin Stranzl are all central defenders better than all our existing centre backs. Martin Stranzl can cover as a left back if the need arises. Dimitri Daeseleire is a right back with better ability than Laure, so should give an improvement. This gives the back line the boost I was looking for. Puygrenier looks like he will become a rock at the centre of our defence.
Alexandre Coeff is a central midfielder who I have signed as a hot prospect for the future. If he improves as much as predicted he will in a couple of seasons become a key player in the first team.
Fatih Yucel is the most exciting signing, but also the riskiest. He is a regen player who at the age of 18 is rated at 4.5 stars. He is rather ambitious and the fans are worried that he will cause problems in the dressing room. In FM09 I had another regen player like this, who turned out to be a key player. Several other players didn't like his attitude, but when he played the team was much better. I hope this proves to be the case here, and he becomes very important to how the team plays.
Transfer/Loan movements out
Seven of the players from the reserve squad have left on free transfers, the only notable ones being Gareth Ainsworth and Mikele Liegertwood. Only the latter even made any first team apperances the previous season, really only notable for making a mistake from which we conceded. The other four rated at half a star at best, and definitely no loss whatsoever.
It is interesting to note that the fans seem to think letting Cerny go is an aberration, even though he is not really good enough for the Premiership and a much worse keeper than both Jason Steele and Silvui Lung Jr. At Birmingham I would expect Radek to act as a bench warmer unless they have a keeping disaster.
Peter Ramage was another player I desperately wanted to get shot of, as he hardly featured in the first team last season, and his abilities are very lacking to be effective in the Premiership. It is therefore intriguing that Reading promoted with us, have bought him.
Attempts to sell Gary Borrowdale failed, but Southend came in with an offer to loan him, so hope he will perform well for them to help attract some interest in the future.
Fitz Hall's ability deteriorated during the last season, and after offering him to clubs on a transfer, even well below his value, I finally managed to find him a place on loan. I am hoping he does well enough on loan to attract some offers for a permanant transfer.
Alexander Kacaniklic is a hot prospect for us, and when Southampton asked to loan him, I felt that he would probably benefit from playing a full season with them in the Championship, rather than sitting in the reserve squad.
Pre-Season Friendlies
On the whole this was a very disappointing series of friendlies. We never really seemed to be quite right during the build-up for the new season. Even in the victories we seemed kind of flat without the sparkle the team seemed to have during the previous season.
The matches against Bristol Rovers, Wolves and Stoke were massively disappointing in how poor we were at finishing. Wolves and Stoke were relegated from the Premier league last season, so I when they proposed friendlies I thought it would be useful to get a guage of how we might fair this season. I am now feeling a lot less confident after these matches about our ability to avoid relegation at the end of the season. They both fully deserved their victories over us, which is the most worrying thing. If we'd lost having much the better of the match, it wouldn't be such an issue.
3 comments:
looks good again mate, lung jr is immense and hopefully i can get him with leeds,
Only thing that Lung Jr isn't quite so good at is coming out for throughballs, but so far watching him, that's not been a real issue. He would be a great addition for Leeds. Hope you can find a way to get him there.
I'm particularly happy with the new central defenders, as we don't look so vulnerable to the ball being crossed into our area.
Nice blog keep up the good work! Puygrenier will be a good signing for you.
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