deltablue

Two places that don't usually go together

That's an impressively tiny wage bill!

Good start.

I imagine Derby is the ultimate goal.

Nice to see more female managers.

Good work getting out of the Bananarama.

Oh that is close!

Good luck with this.

Wow, two narrow climaxes in a row!

Summer 2035 This summer was always set to be part 2 of the overhaul. Every player earning over 5kpw was sold or released, with Shilton as the exception (and he was only on 6kpw), with a slashing of the initial wage budget making sucha policy more importantTthat left a few holes to fill even before we got to the areas I really wanted to improve, like a new first choice goalkeeper. Just like last year, Reading gave us our big sale though it wasn't as much as before, especially as it mainly installment-based. Still, it was hopefully enough for now. Shilton would have followed if we had gotten enough but we were already low on central defenders as it was and I wasn't sure getting rid of another key player was a good idea. We retained a strong central defence but with no backups left, meaning that was the priority. We were pretty much left rumaging in the free agent bin anyway but I wanted to be careful on wages as well to give us that depth for as little as possible. Once those signings were secured, I could really go to town on ticking off my wishlist. With the exception of the two defenders and the last signing, every new player represented an upgrade (even if the bar wasn't that high), the on-loan Oakley up front (though that was a low-priority position), Mulcahy as a playmaker, Stoyanov out wide, Dias at left back (where we badly needed another player anyway) and Milic to hopefully be a more reliable keeper than Perkins. I also really wanted to invest properly in a good young player after that (with a couple of players having caught my eye when looking for earlier signings) and finally Basic seemed to fit the bill perfectly, even down to the expected country of origin. I think that's actually the first non-compensation fee I've paid this career! This makes 18 signings since the start of last summer, and budgetary room for a couple more who might catch my eye, like last year's autumn free agent signings. However the bar for new signings is much higher now for most positions which means that the hopefully I can slow down considerably on that front and wait for this team to gel and develop as I feel I have laid down some very strong foundations. This has been the overhaul I really needed to make, improving the team considerably while also raising money through sales and slashing the wage bill, now standing at just 90kpw as the third lowest in the division. We're still not going to compete with the stronger teams in this division (and their insane wage budgets of up to 500kpw!) but this is definitely a team that can make some big steps in the right direction. Basic Bernard Delic Dias Milic Mulcahy Oakley Stoyanov

May 2035 The season ended on a strong note, though not without a few little blips. If we hadn't thrown away a 1-0 lead to lose against Rotherham we would have even snuck a top-half spot, making this only the second time in the entire career (and the first in 20 years) that I have finished in the bottom half over a full season!. Aside from the terrible start, this was roughly as I expected this season to go, maybe a little better in the end. We can take heart from a strong second half of the season, getting almost double the points than we did in the first half (41, compared to 21), and this despite a big overhaul. It's now 16 years since Everton were last in the Premier League and while I don't see that changing in the next couple of seasons, we might be able to make better short-term progress than expected. We still need to sign a bunch of players this summer both to fill the gaps and improve on a few areas, so we won't enjoy a more settled squad next season, but I like to think that this year was at least a good first step. Star Player: The defender Shilton gets this on merit, earning him the right to be one of two players I exempted from my 'max 5kpw wage' policy. As both players were my top rated players this year I felt it was a good compromise to make, especially as I could sell at least one of them in the summer. Squad Stats

Interesting idea.

Congrats on promotion.

It's interesting seeing all the African second nationalities.

I always read 'Svenska Cupen' in the Swedish chef's voice

I am not a fan of the expansion or 3-team groups myself. Maybe it's just because it's what I am used to but 32 teams (and 16 for the Euros) seems right to me, and I think 3 games for each team sounds about right to make it worthwhile. Having a bunch of 3rd placed teams go through would be the lesser of two evils for me.

Hopefully you can go up again.

Great stuff with Palermo so far.

Still looking good in the league.

It's good to see you bounce back from a poor end to last season.

You are probably the worst poster on these forums, which is quite an achievement, and posts like this are why. On this very thread you boasted about being right as if you always were (like when you go "Call me Nostradamus"), yet that is conveniently overlooking all the times you got it badly wrong. You called Salah and Verstappen one-season wonders, you said Chiellini and Bonucci were too old and slow at last year's Euro's, you made similar comments about a lot of Spain's players before they beat Costa Rica 7-0... you are so full of it with your terrible 'hot' takes and you get it wrong so often that you are in no position to try and dare claim that you are some sort of genius who always calls it right. Whenever you get it wrong you often move the goalposts to suit your agenda, like when everyone pointed out that you were attacking an Irishman as an example of a 'typical Englishman's response' to the Denmark semi, or England haven't beaten a big team in years, and somehow Germany didn't count because they had a single poor World Cup a few years before. It didn't fit in with your argument so you decided to dismiss it and think that you could get away with it. You're the last person in the world to accuse anyone of terrible takes, as well as not being objective when you treat any joke or legitimate viewpoint as bait or trolling just because you don't agree with it, ironically being the most irrationally tribal and least objective person on here and incapable of debating in good faith. That's bad enough, but as I pointed out above, the fact that you are that delusional that you keep thinking that you're the one always in the right and it's everyone else that's the problem. Maybe it's about time you developed some self-awareness.

Yep, that's small!

I once had the opposite, being France manager and getting a question about how hard it would be to deal with the vastly different climate and conditions of... Germany.

Good luck with this Cheez3y.

Looking good for promotion.