Simondo2k8 Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 Welcome to Vladivostok The name Vladivostok loosely translates from Russian as "the ruler of the East" Vladivostok is a city and the center of Primorsky Krai, Russia, located at the head of the Golden Horn Bay, not far from Russia's borders with China and North Korea. The city is the home port of the Russian Pacific Fleet and the largest Russian port on the Pacific Ocean. The Club Luch (Vladivostok) The Manager Andriy Voronin Our Home 10,000 seater stadium (Dinamo) ____________ Here we are in Vladivostok, Russia on the borders of Asia, home of Luch who currently play in the 2nd division of Russian Football. Based in the far east of the country, their location poses a significant problem for away teams. 9 Hours by flight from Moscow. When playing Zenit St Petersberg at home, a trio of Zenit fans drove 15,000 km across the country only for their car to break down when in Vladivostok, leaving them unable to drive home. These fans thus took the Trans Siberian Railway back to St Petersberg. Upon which the club rewarded them with a new car on October 1, 2006. There has been much controversy about whether the Russian league should be split into two leagues, An East & West division, however this is yet to happen. Igor Akinfeev, the CSKA Moscow goalkeeper, said that "they should play in the Japanese League", when his team lost 4-0 after a seven hour flight. Former Ukrainian International AndriyVoronin has been offered his first role in management after a stint of coaching and his first step is to take Luch to the top flight of Russian football. As we are so close to the like of Korea, China & Japan I'm hoping we can attract a few talents from those country's. I'd also like to see how we fare in European competition one day with how far we are from the rest of Europe. So that's how far out east we are from everyone else, but still counted as a european football team. Before we need to worry about any of that though we have a big challenge in getting out of the Russian 2nd division. Looking forward to this challenge and getting to know the club! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simondo2k8 Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 Season 1 We have a fairly decent value and balance, also a decent sized stadium for a second division but with the media putting us in 12th for the end of the season were not predicted to be puling any trees down this time around. Looking at the squad it's very average with not many stand out players for this division so it's going to be a very tough season. With what i have seen on day one i have put the squad together as below but with hardly any quality about in any of the positions i'll be straight into the free transfer market. This 60k budget isn't going to stretch very far.. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simondo2k8 Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 Finding it difficult to get a pre-season going. My board won't even sanction any away trips to other Russian sides and most of them want massive fee's more than we will make back to travel to us. I wonder if any Chinese or Korean teams will visit us. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simondo2k8 Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 Season 1 - 29/6/14 After struggling with getting any sort of domestic friendlies going, the club arranged a tour of Turkey which would also look to bring in some income with me arranging games against tough teams, but which would bring in at least 60k per game. With the friendlies sorted i stepped up the fitness training and made sure we drilled on defending and attacking. All whilst our chairman worked to get the players i wanted signed for the new season. Not the best results, and maybe not the best decision playing against some difficult teams but it's some much needed minutes under the belt for our squad. With contract talks still on-going i didn't manage to get any new signings in for these games either. In just 7 days time we travel to Volga for my first game in charge at Luch. Preperation nearly complete Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simondo2k8 Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 Season 1 - 4/7/14 ''Voronin looks to homeland for reinforcements'' A veteran of a keeper coming in for some quality between the sticks and i was made up to find Azatskyi was happy to join us on loan from Kiev for no cost at all, a step above my current Russian centre backs. Also happy to join us on loan from Kiev was Diego Suarez who again is a level above anything we have up top at the moment. All three are labelled as key players for our division, the only issue I'm going to have is getting them all in the team at once. With only a few more days until our first game i needed to push on with the last few signings. Just a few more contracts to print off Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simondo2k8 Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 Season 1 - 6/7/14 Finally it's here, the first day of the new season. We have worked hard on fitness and tactics in the pre season so hopefully it can pay off today. A great start! From the first minute we were all over them and every attack looked like it could be a goal. We pushed on the second half but i wanted to rest a few key players so took them off just after half time. Really happy we have come away with a win and the 3 goals, i thought it was going to be a much tighter game before kick off. Another new signing Goore looked great at left back and did a job in the 2nd half on the left wing. If we can play how we did today for the rest of the season i see no problem in us going straight up but let's just take it one game at a time. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simondo2k8 Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 Season 1 - 1/12/14 Apart from the 3 players i posted up earlier not much more business was done other than a few fringe Russian players on free transfers to help with the foreigner rule. I also found that this league allows 4 subs in a match which has been helpful and player wage is capped at a max of £675 p/w. Just before the window shut my Chief Scout did mention a striker available and after a week's trial he was offered a contract, looks great quality for the league and is rated as a good player for the premier division. _________________ Now at the winter break where we finish for 3 months until March, we sit in 6th position no too far off the play-offs. We found it very difficult to get things going in our first 10 matches or so. Apart from the odd win here and there we weren't scoring at all and were looking terrible at the back. I focussed on ramping training up on defending and also switching the philosophy to structured which seemed to turn us around and put us on a good little run. In most matches we are dominating possession but the lack of quality in the team still comes through at some points. I hoped we could have a decent go at the cup but after losing 2 players to injury in extra time and having to carry on with 9 men we were put out by a poor side in our division, this may be a blessing in disguise which gives us a chance to fully focus on promotion. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simondo2k8 Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 Season 1 - 8/3/15 After a long winter break i knew i had to get another mini pre-season on the go again and get it right this time. So i arranged matches with local amateur sides to get fitness back up and a bit of morale heading into the 2nd half of the season. In terms of the transfer window we didn't have much money to spend, 11k to be exact. So it was off to the free transfer market to check if any better players are interested in joining us this time around. Although another foreigner, surprisingly there was one. Former CSKA Moscow, Juventus & Fenerbahce man Milos Krasic was happy to sign for just £675 p/w. Still only at the age of 30 i feel he can do a decent job for us. Another bonus, making it an all round fantastic signing for us. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simondo2k8 Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 Season 1 - 5/4/15 After a good mini pre-season before the 2nd half of the schedule i was expecting us to make a real push for the promotion spots. Although we got a few points on the board the losses really knocked us down and put us back a few steps sitting in 9th place. After telling the board at the start of the season we would be looking to push for promotion it didn't seem like they were too impressed after viewing this weeks league table standings. I asked them what i need to do to stay on for the rest of the season and they put a target of 10 points from the next 5 games in front of me. I needed to have a real look at the team and tactics if we were going to make any sort of push in the next few weeks. Back to the drawing board Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simondo2k8 Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 Season 1 - 30/6/15 After a much needed re-shuffle and a tweak of our tactics we went on quite the run, a run which took the promotion race down to the final day. 7 wins out of 8 games was a fantastic achievement for our squad, still we would of like to take a win against T. Moscow which could of gave us more control on the final day. This fantastic run meant i satisfied the board and their target which I'm sure they thought i would fail, they seemed to think they underestimated me and offered me a new deal. Being in the position we were in, i was happy to accept. 2 points behind 4th needing a win we did our job beating 6th place Shinnik convincingly, in order to gain that final play-off spot we needed an SKA loss. After our result was in i kept an eye on the other game, leading from the 1st minute SKA looked to have 4th in the bad but Volgar knocked a goal back on the 81st minute. After seeing it at 1-1 i resided myself and the team to another season in the second division until some-one pointed out the goal difference! We were actually leading when level and Volgar holding on managed to scrape us through into the final play-off spot! We did it! We had been drawn against Mordovia Saransk, after a quick look at their squad they looked to have a decent side with noticeable players in ex Sporting Lisbon player Yannick Djalo and ex Dortmund man Damien Le Tallec but both would be sat out the play-offs through injury which was music to our ears. Just two more matches and we could be a Premier Division side Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simondo2k8 Posted September 10, 2015 Author Share Posted September 10, 2015 Season 1 5/6/15 Going into these play-off matches we would be away first and one of my biggest thoughts was grabbing that away goal to take back to Asia. Mordovia have had a torrid season which has left them in this relegation play-off spot so i knew obviously morale would be down whilst our's was quite good after narrowly making the play-offs. I thought this would be a major factor if we were going to come away with an away goal or even a win. As i prepared to submit my squad sheet i noticed that the rules on the amount of foreign players we could field had changed, this was due to Mordovia playing in the Premier League were the rules were much more relaxed. This meant we could field up to 7 foreign players, allowing me to start with a much more quality in the side than usual. Leg 1 After we went 1-0 down early on i feared the worst, we needed that away goal so i pushed the back line up and went attacking. Mordovia caved and by half time we were 3-2 up! I knew we had to take this lead back or at least take a score draw and we managed to take the win back to Vladivostok. Leg 2 I set out to be attacking from the off hoping a few early goals would kill off Mordovia, unfortunately an injury to key man Krasic forced him out the game and halted a focal point of our attacks. At half time i knew if we held on it would see us through but it was also at the back of my mind another would would put us out and i really couldn't see us scoring. I set out more defensively to see the game through and we just about managed to pull it off. We did it! Against the odds we managed to return to the Premier League to haunt the likes of the top Moscow teams & Zenit who will have to endure nightmare travel times all the way to Asia and back at least once a season, so did we.. but we were used to it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
withnail316 Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 This looks fun. I've always fancied a crack in the lower leagues of Russia, but not quite got round to it. Best of luck in the RPL. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
davehibb Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 Good stuff! Will be keeping tabs on this one. It was Anthony Le Tallec who played for LFC though mate, not Damien. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dllu Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 Good start and love the premise of going to the extreme outskirts of European football. I can't wait for the day when you draw Madeira in a European tournament... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalemlyco Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 Looking forward to this. Keep up the good work! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simondo2k8 Posted September 11, 2015 Author Share Posted September 11, 2015 Good stuff! Will be keeping tabs on this one. It was Anthony Le Tallec who played for LFC though mate, not Damien. My bad, got confused between the two when it came to typing it up! Amended Good start and love the premise of going to the extreme outskirts of European football. I can't wait for the day when you draw Madeira in a European tournament... Certainly will be interesting if we manage to qualify for Europe! Hopefully we can make a push in the cup this season. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simondo2k8 Posted September 11, 2015 Author Share Posted September 11, 2015 Season 2 25/6/15 Apologies for the large update, will go back to half season updates after this one. Last season we managed to gain promotion to the Russian Premier League and one of the big worries was the real lack of quality we had in our side. If we were to cement ourselves in the top division i needed to bring in a few seasoned top flight players but one big lifeline that we have is the fact we can now field up to 7 foreign players rather than the 3 we could last season. This will be a huge lift considering the real lack of Russian talent available. Considering we had barely anything to spend last season i wasn't expecting much going into this transfer window but it seemed the promotion treated our bank balance well and i was handed a £1.5M kitty, most of which i'd be putting into the wages and looking to the free transfer market. ''Luch re-enforce ready the Premier League'' Vyacheslav Lukhtanov After extended Azatskyi's loan from Kiev i looked to see who else i could grab from them and Lukhtanov was a perfect fit to slot in beside Azatskyi at centre back. Shota Bibilov With not much quality on the wings bar Krasic i snapped up Bibilov who was transfer listed at Kazan for just £125k. Erik Zenga Zenga looked to be a steal coming in on loan just for 50% wages from 3rd division German side Munster. He'll be an instant starter in our midfield. Joao Pedro My scout managed to mention this player to me and he looked to be a potential gem on a free transfer. Im sure he'll be a key player in the season ahead. We were quite active in the transfer window this season with a effort made in shipping out most of last seasons team who lacked any real quality at all. I also managed to complete the transfers of a few exciting players who would only join us in january due to age/loan commitments. Martin Boumsong A steal at just 44k coming in from Cameroon side Coton Sport. Im sure he'll be making the DM spot his own within a season or two. Cristian Bonilla Again another bargain at just 200k, this was our goalkeeper problem solved for quite a few seasons now. _______________ We seemed to have the same issue as last pre-season in being unable to find any good teams to play due to our location. In the end we managed a few with 3rd division Russian sides & a 2nd division Chinese side. After a 5-1 drubbing away to Spartak on the first day i knew we would be in for a hard season and our only goal was just to survive the drop. The next game we dominated Anzhi but just fell short after conceding a late goal. We seemed to take points in one game then lose the next through an up an down first half of a season but there were some great wins and performances which had me thinking we were far too good to go back down to Div 2. Our 3-1 win at home to D. Moscow was a particular highlight. Im sure they won't be looking forward to their next 9 hour flight here. In our yearly mini pre-season to prepare for the 2nd half i managed to arrange some much better games with a few Korean Premier Division sides, this meant we couldn't manage to string any wins together but it was a better test than our usual 3rd division semi-pro Russian sides. It was more of the same in this 2nd half of the season, picking up a win or draw then going straight into a loss or two. This would usually frustrate me but these odd points we grabbed every fortnight or so kept us safely 2 or 3 spots from the drop which was fine by me. We also managed a decent cup run until we met Zenit who as you can see were far superior to ourselves. Next season if we can avoid the big sides hopefully we can make it further. Another highlight, and we had officially made ourselves Dinamo's new bogey team Overall a successful season, we managed to escape the drop and an even though we finished just 3 points of the relegation play-offs i felt we had really played well throughout. Our 11th place finish awarded us £1.8M which I'm sure will help a lot with strengthening for next season and making a push for them european places. It seemed i had made an impression with my time in Russia so far, although tempting it was an easy decision to decline. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lenzar Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 Good Luch with this one. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dllu Posted October 6, 2015 Share Posted October 6, 2015 Good Luch with this one. Here all week, are you? I really liked this premise and hope the save isn't dead... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ColinZeal Posted November 22, 2015 Share Posted November 22, 2015 Taking Vladivostok to the Champion's League must be the ultimate challenge? With the travel distances it sounds like real hell. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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