transfers and in particular, loan signings

as a short introduction i am currently managing real oviedo. having started off in the lowest playable division in spain i was not expected to gain promotion however i managed this in the third season.

overall i feel these developments were possible due to some transfers i was able to get into my club, some of which i think were quite unrealistic for a club of my size.

as you can see from the above i signed a lot of players. please also bear in mind in 10/11 and 11/12 that i was in segunda division B ( third tier of spanish football ) and 12/13 i had just been promoted to liga adelante ( second tier of spanish football ).

i know it is probably unusual for a manager to post about something that is probably going in his favour, but i think it is a good point to show that sometimes things happen that should maybe not happen. if you look above there are certain examples that highlight my issue with the transfer i have been able to acheive, and in particular some of the loan deals.

i personally find it quite odd that richie de laet would be willing to join a thrid tier spanish club after playing for utd. that just doesnt make any sense to me at all. i am sure, and his attributes suggest that he could easily get a better club than mine. similarly if you look at the loans for that season i find it a little strange that players from clubs such as tottenham arsenal and chelsea are willing to join both a foreign club that isnt highly reputable and is also in the third tier. once again it makes no sense to me at all.

the 11/12 season only heightens this strange feeling towards my transfer activity. once again i was able to find loan deals from clubs that were similar to those in the first season which is odd for me. i just couldnt see how i could be drawing these players to my club. i have no idea why a liverpool player would want to join such a lowly club, even if it is in his country of birth ! the transfers this season are what concerned me most though, as i was able to bring in kapo, de ridder and counago on free transfers, all of whom were good enough for a team in the premiership at the time in my opinion, or at the very least the championship. once again i am unsure why they were drawn to my lowly team.

i think its relevant to add at this stage that i was on a very tight wage budget with no transfer budget and i was often unable to offer anything near the wages the player wanted. this increases my strange thoughts towards it all, as i wasnt able to buy them over ith lots of money.

despite getting promoted in the next season my transfers still left me feeling quite odd inside. rodriguez, mogotsi and bonnet are all valued at over £3.5m and despite only being on loan i find it weird that they are willing to join a team who are thought to be strugglers in the division, as once again they are from big clubs in different countries.

overall i think it is too easy to get players who are of too high quality for a particular league. i think it has accelerated my progress through the leagues, as i have not had to do much with my tactics to get my promotion and become established in the league above. im not sure why i have been able to attract such players, but maybe i am a better manager than i give my self credit for! overall though i think the high rate of good players bring in show this isnt an isolated example and that it is slightly exaggerated in the sense that players dont discriminate well enough between clubs and certain factors.

I encountered this for the first time in the past couple of days. I took over at Sheffield Wednesday on the 7.1.2010, they were 2nd bottom. I managed to survive and went into the next season.

Also on a small budget, I managed to bring in 4 players in the first transfer window and brought in a further 6 players on loan in the second window. My team was so strong because of the players I managed to get that I went up with a total of 97 points.