[FM21] Benefit of Hindsight

[phnompenhandy]

Dale doesn’t want to waste any time in preparing for next season. He demands the same footballing style as this season but including making the most of set pieces. With Kompany creating a good few goals from his free kicks, I’m not contesting that this time. He wants us to sell players for a profit AND demands we win the Third Division. Hang on, Dale! Further down the road he’s aiming to get Forest Green into the First Division although that would be after my contract is up.

Plans for next season – don’t disrupt the squad harmony and tactical understanding. Make minor adjustments: Kompany at right wingback and add Barragan there too. Vertonghen into first team, Coke to Under 18s. Replace Lewandowski with ‘Sudzak’ in first team squad. Consider switching Suarez for Cavani depending on whether Suarez recovers his form in pre-season. Also, do our darndest best to keep all our players!

Around and About: Leeds United did a double – League and FA Cup with a late winner from Robbie Keane. In the Premier League a ding-dong battle between Liverpool and regular champions Man United went the way of the Scousers, with Newcastle a distant third. Leicester, Southampton and Charlton were relegated.

In the First Division, Man City were champions, and Coventry and Wolves went up. Burnley was relegated. QPR, Swindon and Bury went up from the Second Division with Bournemouth and Brentford among the four due to clash with us next season. York City won the Fourth and our rival Cheltenham Town finished last. MK Dons blew the play-off final, ha ha, and Aldershot will join us.

European champions: Real, Inter, Bayern, Bordeaux, Sporting, PSV, Bruges and Celtic.

Man United beat Juventus in the Champions League final.

 

And that’s it for the 2001/02 season. Now that we know our boys can compete with men, and they’ve has a year to mature, I’ll post more concisely over the next season, with briefer posts giving an overview of progress (or otherwise) and main noteworthy events.

 

[phnompenhandy]

2002/03 Season

As soon as the transfer window opened it was chaos. Ronaldo had his head turned by Man United and our meetings did not go well. I was fending off multiple offers every day. They all have minimum release clauses – clubs could just pay up by every single Premier League side try condescending and bully-boy tactics. The summer was a war of attrition. As much as I needed a break, I couldn’t trust the chairman and director of football not to cash in so I manned the phones 24/7. Asking the boys to give us loyalty wasn’t helped by a number of backroom staff bogging off for higher salaries. That was disappointing.

In the end, Vince accepted offers for Ronaldo and Messi over my head. They were phenomenal offers to be fair, and he did leave the rest of the squad alone once he received the deals for those two. It is a huge loss though. Ronaldo got his move to Man United and we got $1.56 million. Messi will bring us about the same.

[And now I have a mini-break, a weekend on a tropical beach. See ya later!]

[phnompenhandy]

Having resigned myself to losing my two star players, I spent weeks readjusting our squad and tactics to find a formula that would allow us to challenge for Dale’s target of winning League Two regardless. Central to all my plans was Luka Modric, by far our best remaining player. Typical then that Dale ripped up all that planning with the announcement that Modric was off too. Where’s your ambition Dale? Was being the richest club in the division really your plan all along? I felt deceived.

It turns out Vince’s talent at wheeling and dealing over legal details isn’t shared by more illustrious chairmen and directors of football. Ronaldo’s move to Manchester United collapsed due to Brexit. We’d have to wait and see if he’d go anywhere else, and if Messi’s move would fall by the same wayside. However, I left them in the reserves during pre-season while I sorted out a new starting line-up. Therefore, if they were to stay, they wouldn’t be fit to start the season whatever their mental states might be like.

Messi’s work permit application by Chelsea was similarly turned down. I know it’s all about the money with these people, but how daft is it that the clubs were willing to chuck millions at us while failing due to the derisory wages agreed with the players? Italian clubs were now tempting Ronaldo, so whether any of the three stayed or not was still completely up in the air.

By the last week of pre-season, Messi had declared he was happy to stay, so I re-integrated him into the first team squad. Modric still had offers Vince was weighting up, and Ronaldo was still agitating even after two failed work permit applications by United. This was having a worrying effect on the rest of the squad.

On the eve of the season, Modric’s move to Newcastle fell through. Like Messi, he was fine about it. However, with a month to go until the transfer window closed, we were still in a chaotic situation. I decided to begin the season with Messi and Modric (subject to fitness) and just leave Ronaldo out of the squad who, by this time, had handed in a formal transfer request. He didn’t seem to get that we’re not trying to stop him leaving.

With such huge uncertainties likely to spill over into the start of the season, it was a relief to see our opening fixtures schedule. The opening five league matches were due to be against Halifax Town, Rushden & Diamonds, Darlington, Torquay, Southend and Scunthorpe. I felt that even amongst such upheaval, we ought to win most of those games. I identified Bournemouth, Swansea and Hull as our main threats this season.

[phnompenhandy]

Just before transfer deadline day, Ronaldo got a move. Cologne took him for six million up front, add-ons that should bring in a tidy stream, and a 30% profit from his next move. Frankly, that worked for me and the rest of the squad who were doing just fine without him. It was two days later that Dale explained that the transfer would go through at the end of the season and that he was still ours for now. Nice, plus Ron was now happy as are the rest of the squad. I decided though that if we’re flying early doors I’d still ease him out of the squad to develop one or two others.

So just when I thought we were all good, one of the last deals to be struck on deadline day was Messi, work permit and all, going to Southampton for 2.1 million. Saints are only a First Division side – we just dumped them out of the League Cup on penalties. Dale didn’t even put a cut of the next sale into the contract. He’s delighted with the cash, but I was left very disappointed. Six months on, we’d have got far more money from a Premier League club. Mind you, at least Dale finally agreed to my request to improve the training facilities – they will cost nearly all the Messi money.

I said that was ‘one of’ the last deals – with a minute to go to the deadline, Southampton somehow nabbed Modric too (how do these work permit applications work??), for 1.9 million. I learned this as I came into work the next morning, amidst being harangued by half the squad blaming ME for a sudden lack of squad depth. I despaired, but I was honest with them and told them I had only one option – to give chances to the fringe midfield players (The not-at-all fringe but ever versatile Milner proved to be a decent mezzala once I accepted Fabregas was not going to develop as I’d hoped). They accepted that at the time, but within a few days our club captain Akinfeev was grumbling about it and affecting the dressing room. I had to feign deafness for most of the damn season.

Elsewhere, some of the biggest transfers involved Simon Davies going from Spurs to Borussia Dortmund, Titus Bramble moving from Ipswich to Blackburn, and Tommy Smith to Manchester City.

We dominated the Third Division quite comfortably, even with using Ronaldo sparingly. The highlight of the season was drawing Houllier’s Liverpool away in the Third Round of the FA Cup. We were outclassed and lost 4-1 with goals from Danny Murphy, Djimi Traore, Emile Heskey and Jari Litmanen – and Clichy’s red card didn’t help. The million quid in gate receipts added to the 6 million due from the Ronaldo deal at the end of the season meant we absolutely didn’t need to weaken our squad further – if only the chairman would see sense too.

I accepted losing peripheral figures like Schmeichel (to Stockport County in the First Division) and Cavani, getting a Korean kid who didn’t speak a word of English in return. Dale’s convinced this kid Han Jin-Soo is one for the future – he invested more on a language course for him than his transfer fee. A lot of offers were coming in for our top scorer, keeper and captain Akinfeev, and I sensed First Division Bury were creeping toward a sum for Rooney Dale might accept.

We had a chance to get revenge of sorts on Liverpool three weeks later when we hosted their Under 23s in the Papa John. We’d just knocked young Spurs out – Podolski and all, but despite taking Liverpool all the way, we went out on penalties after Stephen Warnock converted the final kick.

So on deadline day Rooney went to Aston Villa for 2.4 million. West Ham thought they’d poached Ramos too but this time two hours wasn’t enough to secure a work permit. Guess this means my vice-captain and, in all likelihood, my captain will leave in the summer.

The league itself was a procession. We led from gameweek 2 and bagged the title with six to spare. We didn’t pick up many points in those final games as I experimented with my line-ups. Benzema, who’d been only 13 when he joined us, needed looking at and I wasn’t sure whether to go forward with him or Suarez, now recovered from his broken leg, as third-choice striker. I switched Lewandowski to the other wing and pushed Khedira further up after he’d shown nothing in central midfield. There are trials I’ll focus on more in pre-season, but there’s nothing like real competitive matches to test their mettle.

[phnompenhandy]

In the summer Dale brought some new prospects to us – at left wingback a Royston Drenthe, and three attacking midfielders in Dries Mertens, Arda Turan and Seb Giovinco. The added depth finally satisfied Akinfeev, who never stopped bleating even after everyone stopped listening. None of them come anywhere close to covering for the loss of Ronaldo, Rooney, Messi and Modric but we have to slog on. No doubt Akinfeev will start up again in pre-season when the chairman sells more key players from under me.

We won the league, Falcao was top scorer with 20 and Milner was our Player of the Year. Behind us Bournemouth, Plymouth and Oxford were promoted. In the Premier League Man United won it with 16 points to spare along with the Champions League, FA Cup and League Cup for a Quadruple (at least their Under 23s lost the Papa Johns final to Liverpool Under 23s, so there is some hope for the future). Chelsea, Newcastle and Liverpool followed them. Derby propped up the table and were relegated with Coventry and Man City. They exchanged places with Charlton, Leicester and Southampton, with Preston, Burnley and York coming up from the Second Division.

Around Europe there were titles for Bayern, Real, Roma, Lyon, Sporting, PSV, Anderlecht and Celtic. Throughout the close of the season and the summer relations between the chairman and myself deteriorated as my contract was up for renewal. We had ten goes at it and every time he was wholly intransigent. He was offering a pay DECREASE on a four-year deal. It would mean if we continued on our trajectory, I’d be a Premier League manager on 1500 quid per week. Ludicrous. I tried to shorten the length or add in a proper percentage rise on promotion but he wasn’t having it. Neither was I. I took up a few invitations to interviews, hoping that would wake Vince up. It didn’t and I ended up on ten times the salary at …. Werder Bremen.

[phnompenhandy]

I’ll never know how this campaign would have turned out, but there were enough hints to suggest the chairman’s greed would have ruined it by selling off the best players every year. What’s more, his proposed new stadium in the works is for a 5000 capacity – no good for the Premier League. To be honest, the experiment was showing worrying signs. I was monitoring the players’ Potential Abilities and with our club, facilities and level, many were dropping sharply. Those leaving us were not going to top-notch clubs, so whether they stayed with us or moved on, I don’t think many would have become the superstars they were at their elite clubs.

 

** Well, that's not completely true.  I went back to my last save intending to try renegotiating the contract by conceding a little bit. My kitten jumped on the mouse and accepted the chairman's rubbish deal. The next thing I knew the press were reporting I'd driven a hard bargain. So the save is still alive; with a month until the window closes, Vince hasn't sold any more players yet. Should I continue the save or not? What do you guys think?