Muttley84 Posted January 12, 2023 Author Share Posted January 12, 2023 Might have spoken a bit to fast about our good performances in the league, as we were terrible in December. We won just the first game with Reading, and then we managed two draws with Brighton and Wednesday, but also three heavy defeats with Bournemouth, Luton and Crystal Palace. As a consequence of our losing form we dropped down to 10th in the league when 25 gameweeks have passed. Silver lining we are pretty much safe from relegation with the number of points we got so far, and we are also tied for points with the last playoff place. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 12, 2023 Author Share Posted January 12, 2023 We made two new signings in the January transfer window, as we brought for a combined grand total of under 150k two players with a little experience on their records which hopefully can help us. We are talking about Andre Wisdom who can play both centre back and right back and the striker Sam Cosgrove. Yet another small step towards having a squad full of Yorkshire born players. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 13, 2023 Author Share Posted January 13, 2023 This is the first offer I got since taking over, and its from a struggling mid-table recently relegate Crystal Palace. Thanks, but no thanks, I think I wanna continue the Yorkshire project. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 13, 2023 Author Share Posted January 13, 2023 We managed to bounce back a bit in the league after the previous poor form. We won games with Coventry, Blackpool and Hull, while also drawing to Huddersfield and Sheffield United. We are now sitting in 8th when 30 stages have passed from the league. We are just one point behind the playoff places and I think it's safe to say we cannot get relegated this season. Unfortunately we are out of the FA cup in the 4th round as we were paired away at Newcastle, and despite them battling relegation in PL they proved to strong for us. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 13, 2023 Author Share Posted January 13, 2023 Premier League remains the biggest spenders among the big leagues even in the winter transfer window.. and out of them its Man Utd who spent the most ... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 13, 2023 Author Share Posted January 13, 2023 A mixed month with two wins (Swansea and Millwall), three draws (Cardiff, Boro and Watford) and one loss (Derby). We are sitting in 7th, tied with the last playoff place occupied by Sheffield United, but they have a better goal difference. Just 10 more games left in the league and we are actually in the playoffs race (something I did not expect at the beginning of the season). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 13, 2023 Author Share Posted January 13, 2023 Mathematically secured survival in the Championship for next season and we still are in the playoff race. Tight end of the season keeping things interesting. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 13, 2023 Author Share Posted January 13, 2023 Another four games played in the leagues, just six more left and we jumped into the playoff places. By taking 10 points out of this month games we are now sitting 5th in the league, 5 points behind direct promotion but also 5 points front of the first non-playoff place. This is turning from a dream into a real possibility that we might get involved in the promotion battle this season. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 14, 2023 Author Share Posted January 14, 2023 We have reached 100 games in charge of Doncaster Rovers. Things have gone better than I ever expected, with promotion from League One last season and battling at the playoffs in Championship this season while slowly building a squad of Yorkshire players. I have yet to reach any of the objectives set at the beginning of the career, but there is still time for that. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 14, 2023 Author Share Posted January 14, 2023 This year's Youth Intake looks a bit better than the previous one. Some nice spread of nationalities (although that doesn't matter much for our type of career) and at least four of them look like they might represent something meaningful to the club, with Rouzbeh Ahmadi being the pick of the crop. Signed the firs five and put them in reserves. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 14, 2023 Author Share Posted January 14, 2023 We did not end the season on a high note - in April we draw four games in a row (including three boring 0-0 draws). It is true that we had a hard schedule as we met teams in 1st and 2nd place (Bournemouth and Brighton who in the end slipped down) and others fighting for the playoff places (Stoke). Somehow, despite this end of the season we managed to finish in 5th place, which is the best in all of the club's history. Bournemouth and Derby go directly up, while in the playoffs we will met Middlesborrough and Brighton will met Sheffield United. Just three more games standing between us and a dream season of promotion to Premier League. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 15, 2023 Author Share Posted January 15, 2023 Two hard fought battles in the semifinals which saw us eliminating Middlesbrough and booking out tickets for the final in Wembley. Our opponent there? Brighton who was relegated last season from Premier League and has arguably the best overall squad in our league. Fingers crossed! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 16, 2023 Author Share Posted January 16, 2023 Uhm, totally undeserved way to finish the season as Brighton was in total control of the match and missed some sitters. We could not compete and were reduced to laying back and trying to reject their attacks, but were lucky enough to score a break-away goal. In the end, it was enough to see us promote to Premier League. The board already gave us a hefty budget to spend. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidBeckham Posted January 17, 2023 Share Posted January 17, 2023 Congrats on the Play-Offs Final mate! Best way to go up! Let the spending begin! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 17, 2023 Author Share Posted January 17, 2023 One explanation to our successful season is the high number of players currently on loan with us, nine of them making their way into the team of the season. Just Robbie Gotts and Jon Taylor from our own players were included in the team of the season. The best player of the season was Tyreece John-Jules who scored a combined total of 27 goals this season. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 17, 2023 Author Share Posted January 17, 2023 What happened in the Game World Premier League: Liverpool won the trophy on goal difference against Man City (both finished with 90). Man Utd and Chelsea join them in CL. Spurs and Aston Villa go to EL, Arsenal to Conference. Blackburn, Newcastle and West Brom relegated. Championship: Bournemouth won it, Derby second and we won the playoffs. FA Cup: Aston Villa won it (1-0 against West Ham). League Cup: Chelsea won (2-1 against Man Utd). UEFA Champions League: PSG won (2-1 in E.T. with Man City). UEFA Europa League: Arsenal won (3-0 in final with AC Milan). UEFA Conference League: Spurs won (3-0 in final with Lazio). Yorkshire watch: Leeds finished 10th in the Premier League and await us to have another Yorkshire derby. In the Championship Boro finished 4th, Sheffield Utd 6th, Huddersfield 10th, Hull 17th, Sheffield Wed 18th, Barnsley 19th - all of them retaining their status. They will be joined next season by Rotherham who won League One. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 17, 2023 Author Share Posted January 17, 2023 Club objectives:C1. Full team of Yorkshire born and Academy players - WiP C2. Have a positive record against Yorkshire clubs - WiPC3. Promote to Premier League - Achieved May 2022C4. Qualify for an European Competition - WiP C5. Win a national trophy (PL, FA or League Cup) - WiPPlayers objectives:P1. Have a player play for the England NT - WiP P2. Have a player score more than 180 league goals - WiP P3. Have a player with more than 614 league appearances - WiP P4. Broke the record transfer fee paid: £1,150,000 (Billy Sharp) - WiP P5. Broke the record transfer fee received: £2,000,000 (Matt Mills) - WiP Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 17, 2023 Author Share Posted January 17, 2023 Some mixed messages about our facilities, as some are improving and others are decaying. I think we need to be smart on how we spend the Premier League money, especially as we are considered favorites to, and most likely will, drown down back to Championship. That is why I am not asking for any investments from the board (everything done its their decision) and trying to attract younger players with a resale value. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 17, 2023 Author Share Posted January 17, 2023 Just to see the difference in levels of financial power, a comparison between matchday and ticket revenues. It is true that us, Bournemouth and Derby are coming with Championship numbers into this. And another aspect, what important it is to have a new and modern stadium for generating revenus, Spurs have the biggest ones (and to my knowledge is the newest PL stadium built from scratch), followed by Arsenal. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 18, 2023 Author Share Posted January 18, 2023 Wow. I knew they were a lot of money in the Premier League, but by having not played in the league for some years I did not know there were so much. For a newly promoted team to get almost 100M from the TV rights in the first season is really crazy. No wonder then PL clubs have so much spending power in real life. As said before, we will need to be wise about our spending though as I am afraid we will get right away back to the Championship. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 18, 2023 Author Share Posted January 18, 2023 A lot of transfer activity this summer. This has two causes: firstly the large amount of money we got after the promotion to Premier League, and the second is the limit of long transfer loans we can have in PL. Not being able to rely on loans that much as we did in our Championship promotion process, now we had to build the squad also to make the quality jump for first tier football. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 19, 2023 Author Share Posted January 19, 2023 This is our squad going in to the first games in our Premier League campaign. Well balanced and with depth across the field. My only concern is that we are not for the most of the players experienced in Premier League level, so we might be facing the shock of playing with the big boys. Also, we only have two players in the squad who are not Yorkshire-born (Cameron John and John Bostock) so we are pretty close on achieving that target also. Even if we underperform there is not much room for bringing new faces in the winter transfer window, as we pretty much spent all of our transfer and wage budget by now. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 23, 2023 Author Share Posted January 23, 2023 That is what I call a perfect debut of a season. In front of a packed stadium we had the Yorkshire derby with Leeds, and we actually managed to win it. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 24, 2023 Author Share Posted January 24, 2023 Club objectives:C1. Full team of Yorkshire born and Academy players - WiP C2. Have a positive record against Yorkshire clubs - WiPC3. Promote to Premier League - Achieved May 2022C4. Qualify for an European Competition - WiP C5. Win a national trophy (PL, FA or League Cup) - WiPPlayers objectives:P1. Have a player play for the England NT - WiP P2. Have a player score more than 180 league goals - WiP P3. Have a player with more than 614 league appearances - WiPP4. Broke the record transfer fee paid: Mallik Wilks - 5.5M €P5. Broke the record transfer fee received: £2,000,000 (Matt Mills) - WiP Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 25, 2023 Author Share Posted January 25, 2023 What we are up against this season - the financial power is just absurd in the top teams of Premier league, while we are a minnow by all definition. From commercial activities we bring in 13x times less than the worse club on the list (Bournemouth) and 267x times less than the leader (Manchester United). Will be hard to be competitive in this conditions, but miracles have been seen before in football. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 25, 2023 Author Share Posted January 25, 2023 After the Leeds win we managed to get another one away at Burnley. We then also won in the League Cup away at Championship team Newcastle. It was downhill from there, 0-2 loss with Wolves, 0-3 loss at Manchester United and only a 1-1 draw with Fulham. Still, getting 7 points out of the first 5 games is more than we could have dreamed for. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 25, 2023 Author Share Posted January 25, 2023 As usual Premier League is the highest spending league in Europe, in this summer having spend 1.5 Billion Euro on players. That is 3 times more than Ligue 1, 4 times more than La Liga and 6 times more than Serie A and English Championship (who believe it or not spent more on players than the Bundesliga). Ligue 1 only came second cause PSG spent the most out of all European clubs (317 Million), almost double than Barcelona or Manchester City (the highest spending team in England). We are noticed on the list just for the number of players we brought in, with no less than 15. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 26, 2023 Author Share Posted January 26, 2023 I guess it's back to the drawing board then, this is the shock of the Premier League and the players need to step up. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 27, 2023 Author Share Posted January 27, 2023 Not the best of months in September. But at least we progressed in the League Cup and we bounced back from the demolition at Liverpool by winning against Arsenal at home. We are sitting mid-table after 8 games and I would pretty much like for the league to end right now and we survive. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
deltablue Posted January 27, 2023 Share Posted January 27, 2023 Decent start in the Premier League. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
phnompenhandy Posted January 28, 2023 Share Posted January 28, 2023 Good start. How's your team cohesion with all the comings and goings? 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 28, 2023 Author Share Posted January 28, 2023 12 hours ago, phnompenhandy said: Good start. How's your team cohesion with all the comings and goings? Not great, not terrible would be the way to describe it. Of course we are not having any strong green lines across the field with all of this transfer activity, but we are pretty much using a standard first 11 and training also for teamwork. I think being on Touch 21 helps a bit with this, as we don't have extensive social grouping and micro-management of emotions as in the newer full fat version, a lo of that happens (if any) under the hood. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 28, 2023 Author Share Posted January 28, 2023 As expected we are performing below average statistically, which at some point might affect our results also. We need to improve a lot of chapters, but considering this is pretty much entirely a new team I am confident we can do it. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 30, 2023 Author Share Posted January 30, 2023 Before the break caused by the world cup 2022 we have a rough patch of results. We only won two games in the period, both 2-0 wins at home to Aston Villa and Norwich. We are out of the League cup after we lost away to Manchester United. We are sitting 12th in the league and now have more than a month to prepare for the season. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 31, 2023 Author Share Posted January 31, 2023 To bad, would have been fun to have a takeover, although not very much to complain about the current owner (asides from his reluctance to invest in facilities). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted January 31, 2023 Author Share Posted January 31, 2023 Yeah I get it, our Academy sucks, no need to rub it in our face anymore. It seems that all we gonna get from this year intake is a good goalkeeper. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 1, 2023 Author Share Posted February 1, 2023 It seems that the game made a good prediction for the world cup 22, as in real life Argentina won it (after a 2-1 final against Italy). England was so bad they got out in the knockouts after losing at penalties against the Czech Republic. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 2, 2023 Author Share Posted February 2, 2023 Some friendlies in December to get back into game shape, but that did not helped much as we were destroyed in the first official game at Leicester. We did managed to progress in the cup and looking forward for a very busy January. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 2, 2023 Author Share Posted February 2, 2023 That is the first upgrade we are getting for our facilities, so a nice thing that we start investing in the youths. Hopefully we can produce some decent players in the future. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 4, 2023 Author Share Posted February 4, 2023 Nice to get some recognition of the good job I am doing at Doncaster, but despite both of them being much bigger clubs than us I have no intention of abandoning the project here. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 4, 2023 Author Share Posted February 4, 2023 This is probably the worst month since taking charge of things two and a half years back. We only managed two draws and then lost 5 games in the league. We are also out of the Cup. I cannot even complain it was undeserved, as our playing performance has been a lot subpar. We scored a goal each in the 8 games but it was not enough to pick up more points. We therefore drop to the relegation spots, sitting 18h in the league with just 19 points and some games more than clubs around us. We need to change something and change it fast, otherwise we are going to fall in this downwards spiral... 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 4, 2023 Author Share Posted February 4, 2023 Our finances are rising as our league performance is failing down. I guess the large amounts of money floating around the Premier League and the scarcity of our boardroom in investing (I could also add me keeping under the wage and transfer budget) resulted in us having currently a Secure financial status. Curious what will happen in the summer with the transfer and wage budget (but I guess that is still open to debate if we manage to survive in PL or relegate back to the Championship). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 4, 2023 Author Share Posted February 4, 2023 We continued our terrible run of results also in February by losing another 4 games in a row. Somehow we managed to pick a win (totally undeserved by the game) in the last round against Brentford. We finish the month still 18th in the league, with 22 points. We are tied with Southampton and Fulham ahead of us, but they do have game in hands so things are not looking great for us. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 4, 2023 Author Share Posted February 4, 2023 Not much to pick from the Youth Intake this year. Rich Lester seems to be the best of the bunch and even him is pretty crap. Guess we will need to replace the HoYD pretty soon... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 6, 2023 Author Share Posted February 6, 2023 A bit better performance in March, as we got 5 points out of the three matches (draws at Aston Villa and Norwich, as well at a win at Southampton). We jumped from the relegation spots with a three points cushion over West Ham, as we both have 30 games passed from the season. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 6, 2023 Author Share Posted February 6, 2023 Our tight grip on the finances helped us be in the upper part of clubs according to their profits in the Premier League. Not sure how helpful that would be if we end up relegating in the end, but at least I have the satisfaction that we have built the club on solid grounds. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 6, 2023 Author Share Posted February 6, 2023 Two wins in April - the most important one at fellow relegation battler West Ham and the other at home with high flying Everton (who would have seen that phrase said again). We have lost the other three games against the big boys of the league (Chelsea, Manchester City or Spurs), but those six points were enough to push up the table a bit. We have 5 points ahead of Fulham (but they do have a game in hand, if they win it we still have 4 points ahead of Burnely). With just three more games to go in the league I guess survival is a real possibility at the moment. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 7, 2023 Author Share Posted February 7, 2023 Losing the firs two matches of the month gave us some emotions as Burnley pulled back to being 2 points behind us. But in the end we won the last game at home against already relegated Derby to secure our survival in Premier League. 36 points in the end for our first experience is not to bad, and it gives us a platform to build on for the summer. I figure we need 3-4 players and not more, who should be really step up in quality. Next season our aim should be the same survival - but without emotions - basically mid-table mediocrity. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 7, 2023 Author Share Posted February 7, 2023 This is how we mostly lined up for our first season in Premier League. The season awards go to George Hirst (top goalscorer with 9), Brandon Fleming (most assists with 6) and especially the player/signing of the season and one of the main reason we survived, the man with the highest average rating and the only one over 7.0 - Cameron Dawson. Charlie Cresswell was voted young player of the season and I would like to buy him or at least extend his loan with us. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttley84 Posted February 7, 2023 Author Share Posted February 7, 2023 Some nice information about finances going into the season, that transfer and wage budget should be enough to improve the squad a bit in the summer. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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