mikenevo

Few signings and a few out of the door in January. Most notably out of the door were... Jamaal Lascelles (£2.4mil) Martin Dubravka (£17.25mil) Sean Longstaff (£1.4mil) Both Lascelles and Longstaff were complaining about game time and had to be moved on. I would have preferred to get more for Longstaff due to his potential, but ultimately I need players who want to be here. Martin Dubravka was moved on despite his good form after he returned from injury for two reasons. One being that we signed a new goalkeeper and two being that he's 33 years old. I feel we got an amazing offer considering his age. The players in were... André Onana (£7.5mil) Rodrigo Ribeiro (£5.5mil) Christian Mosquera (Loan to buy for £17mil) For whatever reason Andre Onana was on the transfer list due to a dispute with Ajax. We had a goalkeeper who only had a couple of seasons left really and with the price tag of Onana it was a complete no-brainer! I've also been searching for quality prospects to play as backup for the team since November when players started asking for moves away. I found two players at Sporting, but due to financial restraints, I was only able to bring in Rodrigo Ribeiro. The other lad is still 16, so I wasn't able to get him on loan to buy. Then I found Christian Mosquera at Valencia who has been doing well for the B team and with Lascelles out of the door, we needed a backup center back.

Our best performance all season and our most important game to date! Liverpool were just 1 point behind us and we've just blown them away! Look at those Liverpool match ratings! Robertson has the 2nd best average rating in the league and we've just made him look like a Sunday league player... Our average positions were also impressive compared to Liverpool, it's as if they were parking the bus!

Having a great start as Newcastle United! Got a lot to fine tune over the coming seasons, but I've made a start on staff, I'm working on training schedules, keeping a close eye on the way my players train, getting really good performances from the players, not spending beyond FFP and just generally having a good time. Callum Wilson is an absolute beast with 16 goals in 16 games and we are sitting top of the table, although I'm under no elusions that things get harder after December due to fatigue and such things, but I'm hoping my training schedules can negate some of that. A few things I still need to implement are scouting and youth production. I have several players in the first team complaining about lack of game time, so hopefully next season I can have those replaced with potential talent, which means I need to get that scouting department overhauled!

But if you feel like its a cheat of some sort, then why do it in the first place? The game isn't forcing you to make those decisions. In this scenario you appear to be your own enemy really.

Well it seems like most of you are enjoying the save with Newcastle United, so I've decided to have a bit of fun myself and who knows where it will take me... I have finalised my squad for the summer transfer window, with a few outgoing deals to go through. I've put some emphasis on defenders for this window as I feel going forward, Newcastle aren't a bad side, but at the back they aren't so good. We have signed... Gabriel Paulista Tanguy Nianzou Declan Rice Jamal Musiala Youssoufa Moukoko (Joins in January 2023) Jules Kounde (Loan to buy) Unfortunately due to Kounde having a £68mil buy out clause, I wasn't able to buy him due to our other business which would have put us in peril with FFP. However, I came to a compromise with Sevilla thankfully where I pay them £1.4mil per month to loan and then buy him next season for the £68mil. I just didn't want to go into this season without Kounde, so will happily give up the extra funds to secure him. This means we now have 2 central defenders of good quality in Gabriel Paulista and Jules Kounde, whilst Tanguy Nianzou has good potential and can play as backup for both central defenders and Declan Rice in Defensive Midfield. Jamal Musiala signing speaks for itself really, not much to say except I'm excited to see how he performs. Youssoufa Moukoko is worth waiting on and will hopefully get some game time with Dortmund before he arrives as an improved player and our star striker of the future.