Are You Ready For The Big Time?

Warning: Minimal tactics. Or detail, for that matter.

Per my previous update, I'm trying to give a reasonable overview of the time elapsed in game, whilst bringing the blog up to date to match my current game state.

So, after achieving promotion via the Ligue 2 title, it was time to think about...

REBUILDING, AGAIN.

Whilst I did give a couple of lesser lights a final 45 minutes, what the last game of the 2015/16 season did demonstrate was just how much strengthening we'd realistically need to do. What I had to be careful with was not just going out and blowing all of our cash though, I knew that our first top-flight season would be tough to say the least, and that we were not going to be expected to do anything. I needed to get my own mind into that same head-space, and build slowly. 

I was reading this blog post from Paul Cook (Twitter: @cook1e_Mr) and got into a discussion with him. He’d mentioned how he’d like to improve upon his central defensive pairing in the third tier of the German game, and I pointed out that my comparable partnership were on the verge of helping us go up to the French top flight. I’m not sure whether that’s good news for him, or a bit of a wake-up call for me!

BUILDING FROM THE BACK

Whilst Bauer and Dembele had been solid, I had to think that we’d struggle next season without some work in this department – Bauer had room to develop, Dembele didn’t, and I’d be on the lookout for a proper defensive rock. I’d be holding onto Dembele though, his performance in our promotion season – as evidenced in the League Stats in the last update, had been immense; I was hopeful that he could do a job as our back-up choice.

Though I had no dreams of grandeur for the coming season I desperately wanted us to stay up, and the only way to achieve that would be with solid foundations.

Our selection of Keepers all showed potential, but they were going to have to kick on in their development. Realistically I was probably going to look to move N’Tima on as he was going to struggle to get regular slots, when opportunities did arise there were always young prospects in our Youth setup.

In fact our Under 19s were bursting with talent, and I was trying to find a way to get a lot of them seeing competitive action. I’d already agreed with the Board that we needed to find a feeder club*, but I also expected to see large number of our youth prospects in the lower French leagues during the season.

*(Ultimately, though the Board agreed to the move to find a feeder club, they decided that no suitable outfit was available!)

As for fullbacks, my gut feeling was that Donzelot was going to struggle with the step up, but I was optimistic that Durwael, wearing the captain’s armband, would cope as well as anyone in our back line. Ndema had been patient, and looked to have reasonable potential, so I expected to see him as our main backup option with Donzelot fading into the background over time.

On the opposite flank Sabo had already started to lose out to younger faces, although his versatility and experience helped him. I was going to have to see about renegotiating that contract though, ideally to a ‘pay and play’ type of deal.

Munch had come on leaps and bounds, thanks to plenty of first team action, but my plans for him involved a move towards a defensive option on the left of our midfield – something we would probably have to employ more in the coming season. Mayoukou actually looked promising, and had been getting good game time. Initially I expected to see him and Munch sharing the spot, although the youngster would switch between the DL and ML slots. 

MIDFIELD OPTIONS

Depending on the situation all of these players might find themselves playing in the central midfield area, with the exception of Grimm - the specialist DM. We lost him for much of the '15/'16 season, but I suspected that a man in front of the back four could be a priority for the top flight so he definitely figured in our plans.

Big Brian Amofa was another who'd been patient, and had started to get his rewards. Although listed primarily as a Ball Winning Midfielder, he’d done a good job filling in for Barton in the Box-to-Box role too; I’d been pushing his training more in that direction, but the coming season would probably see him revert to a true defensive role.

Ferri shaped up nicely as exactly the sort of Playmaker that I wanted him to be, and would continue to stake a claim for that slot. The only issue being that we tended to have to make a ‘two from three’ choice between a Playmaker, a Defensive Mid, and Coco who had excelled as the man behind the lone striker...

...and I just didn’t foresee a situation where we wouldn’t play Coco, assuming he was fit. Fortunately he could sit either in MC or AMC slots (I’d not played him out wide much, except early in the campaign). I intended to use Barton plenty again this season, his contribution from set pieces alone has been worth around 10 goals. That said, there was a clause in his contract that would trigger a further year – and I wasn't keen on that – so there was a balancing act right there.

Effectively what we were seeing here was five decent options competing for three spots on the roster; entirely manageable, although we would probably find that we'd need to look at a step up in quality in the longer term. I planned to leave it until the winter break before considering that if I could though.

OUT WIDE

This was a tricky one. Laoudihi on the right was a natural fit, and he still had potential to burn, whilst Mata had started to settle (mostly on the left, in Chere’s absence) and was definitely a star in the making. He might prove to be a little on the young side, but I was ready to give him his shot – maybe he’d prove to be my Januzaj (preferably without the dramatic crashes to the ground at the slightest contact). The ‘problem’ was Chere, who was immense for the part of the season that he played, but really looked like he was going to be some way short of top flight quality.

His contract was up and I was working on the basis that he’d be released, but it would be a sad day for the fans. It also meant that we were light on depth on the wings, although that might actually ease the competition in the middle. Potentially I could look at a right side of Laoudihi, with Mata an option, whilst Coco and Munch shared duties on the left.

THE STRIKE ‘FORCE’

Despite his heroics in my first two seasons, and being a dependable (if low-scoring) backup option this time around, Perrin was at his limit in my view. He wouldn’t be getting a new deal in the summer.

Depoitre (or Freddy, as I’d taken to calling him – he reminds me of Mr Flintoff), started the season in great form but a 3 month hamstring injury hit him hard. He was still the best of our trio, and would be first choice initially, as Mustafi really hadn’t delivered consistently. In fact in 45 appearances the Macedonian had notched just 9 goals and 11 assists – that was really not going to cut it in the top flight, and offers were being sought to try and free up his wages.

I was definitely going to be in the market for a new man here, and I expected this to be where any ‘marquee signing’ came – if we could make one. So far the only real target on my radar was a guy from a fellow Ligue 2 side who had been scoring quite a few.

I needed to be careful though, as our expenditure in the last season had been pushing into the red figures on a monthly basis. We had plenty of money in the bank, but expenditure had generally been running somewhere around £200k above income.

Top flight status should see our turnover dramatically increased of course, and I anticipated our current £28k per season sponsorship deal (which was about to expire) would be improved too, but a financially responsible approach was, and is, high on my list of priorities. I needed to see a few months of attendances and gate receipts before I went splashing out the whole of whatever wage budget I might get.

NEW FACES

With the scout network hard at work, and adverts in place to boost our coaching ranks, I was left hitting the ‘Continue’ button whilst I waited for new budgets to be put in place. That’s not to say that there was absolutely nothing going on, in fact I was having a long hard look at our DC options for two reasons.

First up it struck me that one of our two DMC players might be worth a look to retrain as a DC, giving us something of a ball-playing option there. Grimm was effectively at his full potential, and a little low on composure, whereas Amofa had some room to develop but would need to improve in the tackling department. Both were already listed as Competent in the DC spot, but a quick straw poll on Twitter saw Amofa get the nod.

Given his age, and potential for further development, I gave him a few months focused on the DC position and increasing his Tackling attribute. Also essential to the transition would be game time in the DC slot - which would require careful picking of the right games. If he could get his tackling up by a couple of points then I reckoned he had the potential to be a serious option at the back.

Meanwhile I was also pursuing Celtic’s Jackson Irvine, who already looked like he could be the player that I might turn Amofa into. Again he’d need some positional retraining, as he favoured central midfield, but I was confident that he’d adapt and he already had the attributes for the most part; if not then he’d make a great longer term replacement for Barton. 

He was listed, and would cost me under £200k – a bargain if he was half the player that our scouts suggested. There was also a belief that he still had scope for development, and a couple more points in Passing and Anticipation would round him out nicely for me.

It was during the wait that I also got offered my first French job interview, at FC Lorient. Given that we were about to move into the same division as them, where they'd just finished 15^th, I really didn’t see the appeal and the offer was dismissed. The superior condition of our Youth facilities was a good enough reason on its own for me to stay put.

On the subject of youth, whilst we had some really decent prospects join the ranks, so far only Getan Munch had broken into the first team. I was keen to develop them, and it’s something I’ve probably been a little late to do in previous iterations of the game, but I suspected that a first season in the top flight wasn’t really the time. There was always the possibility that a couple may get the odd game here and there, but realistically I was going to be sticking with the senior squad as much as possible.

I have pledged to myself that next season will be the one for youth though. Either we’d go down, and a bit of a clear-out will free up room for the better youngsters to really take over, or we survive and I’ll start to make moves to rotate in two or three to every match-day squad.

It was a big roster that we had, with fierce competition for places, so I planned to be aggressively loaning youngsters out during the campaign and only the cream of the next March’s crop would get offered a deal.

So, with that said, I decided to add one more youngster to the already high numbers; this Dane came very highly rated by my scouts and was snapped up on a free.

Plenty of room for development, and I see this lad as a potential successor for Coco’s AMC slot. For all of the strength in depth that our U19s have, the AMC slot was noticeably under-represented. The Dribbling and Finishing jumped out at me immediately, and if I can tutor him up well then I’m expecting big things.

SIGNINGS

The two pixelated names would join later, and will be covered in the next update.

So apart from a 16-year-old prospect, who else arrived?

The big gamble (possibly) turned out to be Jackson Irvine. We got our man, although he cost us a little more than intended after a SNAFU over budgets – long story short, we were short on the £190k fee and I was given the option of delaying for a week. I didn’t realise how close we were to the new budgets being announced, so gave up on the idea and cancelled the deal only for the wallet to be opened three days later – by which point Celtic wouldn’t accept less than £375k.

That sort of money would be a snip, if he performed as I hoped, but the bigger gamble were the wages needed to bring him in. At just over £11,000 a week he’d out-earn our highest paid player (Joey Barton) by nearly £5,000. In anticipation that this might make waves, I reviewed squad statuses such that only Irvine and three others (Coco, Mata, Ferri) were considered Key Players. 

Also added was a Rotation option out wide, who could also play through the middle. With such a versatile player I didn’t feel that adding one more face to our midfield was an issue, and I’m sure that @Cleon81 will be interested to see him on our books...

By contrast to Irvine, Scougall looked a relatively safe bet, on wages of £2,500 per week – about as low as I could push him. There was development to be done, but I was happy that he would fit in fine as the kind of wide player I wanted to be using. Hopefully he should develop physically, and I looked forward to see him running at defenders and spraying passes around.

With the exception of my pursuit of a striker, I decided to call it a day there - at least until we saw how the first half of the season went. I avoided the temptation of the usual agent offers of 30+ stars, including Arjen Robben(!), and concentrated on pursuing a couple of options for front men with more of a long-term view.

Sylla was the Ligue 2 striker mentioned earlier, who I’d been monitoring for a while. There was tons of potential to improve his game, and already he was of a similar quality to Depoitre in attacking terms. He came pretty cheap, at £1m, and accepted a nice low basic wage. There was a sizeable appearance fee though, so careful management of his time would come into play – initially he would be a Rotation option.

Here’s where paying careful attention to detail comes in handy, or rather – in my case – a lack of it hurt...

I had to take a hit on transfer budget, to push the salary pot up, as most players had a 30% ‘Top Division’ pay-rise clause. Overall it wasn't a huge issue, as I wasn't expecting to pay out much more in fees, but it could have been financially disastrous even before we’d kicked a ball in the top flight. 

There were still a couple of players I was aiming to offload, which would help, but time would tell whether I would be able to force anything through on that front. 

SQUAD (LACK OF?) DEPTH

Overall our squad was hardly showing massive strength in depth, but we were going to need a season or two to settle in and start to grow a bank balance before I could start to push the boat out properly. 

The coaching staff were most concerned about our Keeper lineup, which I could appreciate as Saussez seemed to have taken a dive in potential for development by the time we moved into pre-season. The way things looked I planned on using Kehi as our number one, but it was definitely the one area where I might consider pushing the boat out for a veteran looking for one last hurrah. 

So, with that *cough* huge *cough* investment in strengthening the squad, it was time to take a deep breath, assume the brace position, and head into our first season in the top flight.

Post script: 

Just before we dive into the fun and games of 2016/17, I thought this might be an interesting point at which to list the interviews which I’ve been offered since starting the save. For the first few I forgot to make full notes, but hopefully this is pretty self explanatory.

• Crystal Palace (Champ, 21^st place)
• Sheff Wed (L1, ?)
• Hearts (Scottish Championship, ?)
• Hibernian (SPL, 7)
• Blackburn Rovers (Prem, 16)
• Sunderland (Champ, 13)
• Hull (Champ, 16)
• Preston North End (L1, 11)
• Blackpool (Champ, 14)
• Bristol City (L1, 18)
• QPR (Champ, 23)
• Notts Co (L1, 6)
• Leeds (L1, 2)
• Nottm Forest (Champ, 19)
• West Ham (Champ, 21)
• Sheff Wed (Champ, 20)
• Burnley (L1, 3)
• Leicester (Prem, 15)
• Sheff Utd (L1, 18)
• Motherwell (SPL, 12)
• Birmingham (Champ, 4)
• Derby Co (Champ, 19)
• Derby Co (Champ, 18)
• Everton (Prem, 17)

All British teams, perhaps no surprise as I set my game profile up as English, but as noted above the first offer of a French club did arrive during this pre-season.