Preben Elkjær - A Hellas Goodfella

[Benjoe]

My old, o' so very old laptop has pretty much given up on it's existence and as such I was forced to buy a new computer. I decided to build my own desktop and it's all up and running and plays most games like a dream. Especially going from a slow laptop with a weak ass processor to a mid-range desktop with a solid processor is a huge difference and it's so much better to play now!

That has, however, also meant that I've flown through since changing that I am now past the previous season where we were 3rd with just 8 games to go and all the way into january the next season.

I have lost a lot of the screenshots I took from the last months of last season are gone sadly. So we'll make some brief walkthroughs of these and get you guys up to date so I can talk about the PPMs I want to learn our players to get the most out of them!

 

[Benjoe]

First let's get an idea of what happened through last season:

iMario retired and became a scout with 0 CA. Neat.

On 26/04/2019 at 18:56, Benjoe said:

A Legend retires.

Aaaaaaand, he became the worst scout in history.

 

How fitting.

What I love the most, however, is his '18' Discipline. 

 

The usual FM-shenanigans of FM17 happens.

On 27/04/2019 at 01:41, Benjoe said:

A little montage to build up excitement for the coming season:

 

We're always the yellow shirted lads.

 

Refer to the post below to get an overview of the squad we had.

On 27/04/2019 at 19:50, Benjoe said:

Now, onto the squad following the summer!

Looking very good if you ask me. I like it highly and feel we've come out on top.

A lot of sales and some opportunistic picks for us the other way. 
One player especially caught my eye and I picked him up for a massive £25.5M fee! But I'd do it again.

I've pondered greatly on what formation to use this season. Without revealing too much up front we tried the 4-2-3-1 that I ended the season with.
It didn't work nearly as prolific the first few games, although we completely trashed Napoli as per tradition.

Recently another system peaked my interest though, and I think that formation suits our players even better.
All I'll say for now is it'll be a 3-5-2 of some sort. 
The specific roles and setup will hopefully surprise you!

 

Goalkeeper

I only signed one keeper this summer despite losing both Virginia and our backup. I am going to promote a youth keeper - atm this guy is Segato but I forgot to screenshot him. 

Randy is a solid guy who was relatively cheap and decent in quality. We didn't have much money or time to find the right guy, so hopefully he'll be able to put in a shift.

 

Central Defenders

Mansueto and Bianchetti are still here, but other than that I'll be moving Mathieu, Brinkman and Sampiri down to this role to accomodate the extra defender and have some rotation available.

Mathieu and Brinkman easily have the abilities to be considered here and Bianchetti needs to watch out for his position.

  

  

 

Right Wing

Romeo Tonon OA was going to be benched if we kept Brinkman on the flank but he'll still be getting a challenge worth his salt from new hire Quattrocchi who is a very good - and similar - option on the flank.

 

 

Left Wing

We have a new face on our left and I think we're going to love him. Ferdinando is his name - that alone is gold.

 

 

Central Midfielders

We have so much quality here. We got 2 of them on free transfers! Massive. I think the midfield we have could reasonably be a top 3 worthy. We're honestly up there.

I think the starters will be KariKari, Simoncini and Moran, but Mariani is very close behind them. Anyone not performing or injured and he's ready to step in. Really good depth behind the main 4 as well.

  

  

 

Strikers

So, we have Capuani and Stoyle as our main men in attack, with Pitocchi the super sub to disrupt the opponent late in the game.

Sounds very efficient to me.

 

  

 

Yes, I would prefer more OA talents in the squad, but they're just not there yet. We sold a lot of the scrap to collect some money now and made some good buy back clauses and future sales deals but other than that, there's not happening much on this account. We'll see in a couple of years. For now, being able to keep Romeo Tonon OA close to the first team and regularly starting is all we have.

 

And then we had the league table before the laptop meltdown. We were doing quite well. We had been leading the pack even. 

On 04/07/2019 at 18:59, Benjoe said:

Great question! 

I suppose we can refer to the goals conceded to get a picture of this....

Normal standings:

Conceded:

That's bad.

Scored:

We're first!

 

Looking into the specifics for the 3-5-2:

It's a bit of an all-in approach I guess.

 

I am slightly considering why exactly, we changed away from the 4-2-3-1

Those are some pretty impressive numbers.

Although it is also a strong factor, that Simoncini who was running the league prior to his injury which iirc happened shortly after the change to the 3-5-2.

 

That will definitely have had an impact. 

 

 

 

But all of this would come crashing down in the end of the season.

6 games left. 8 points to first place. Top 3 finish would mean Champions League next season. 

[Benjoe]

Neither was relevant anyways. 

Ouch.

****ing devastating. 

We allowed 70(!) goals! 

Only Torino were worse than us. 

Seeing as I am far past the end of the season I can't show any screenshots of player performances so feel free to ask for anything related to that and I'll provide some screenshots from the players own pages. 

We can still celebrate some things though.

Simoncini had a great season himself.

 

And then of course. The league couldn't avoid giving great Prébi some credit as well.

[Benjoe]

Preben watched on from the sideline as Pietro Marziani, the 19 year old Italian loanee from Lazio, equalized for Pisa.
Verona's home, Marcantanio Bentegodi, soon turned against it's own players. 

Boos and flares aimed at them. 

Mayhem. Chaos. 

And to think, that at the start of the month they had been hailing the same players as mythical beings following a convincing 4-2 victory over league leader Juventus.

Admiration is oh so fragile.

The biggest cause for the uproar seemed to be due to a certain player being pushed to the bench more often than not. 
A talent from the clubs own academy, who had been a regular starter the past 3 seasons. 
Romeo Tonon. 

You are taught by your parents not to judge a book on it's cover, but with dear Romeo you wouldn't be mistaken if you thought he'd be a bit of a character given his mohawk. 
His dad was a major figure in the Verona Ultras fraction called Brigate Gialloblu (Yellow and Blue Brigade).
The most infamous ultras group of Verona. 
Seeing his son vacated to the bench, and seeing a span of poor results, Prébi had lost a lot of favour from the ultras who had been hailing him for what had seemed an eternity. 

Romeo himself was little more than a shadow of his dad, Equicio Magiccho Tonon. 
Among ultras known as EquiMagic.  
EquiMagic was big, fierce, brutal. Leading the ultras into battle against polizia, ultras and other scum.
Romeo, however, was short and frail. 

He'd always been determined to make his dad proud, but failing to do so by joining the ranks of the Brigate he had been playing football in the streets of Verona. 
An obvious talent was spotted by youth coaches and eventually an only 18 year old Romeo debuted for Verona under Preben's nurture.
Romeo impressed an quickly became a fan favorite and a culture figure - especially for the ultras.

Verona's rise in the league meant that higher quality talent joined the team, and Romeo struggled to perform on the pitch. 
A bench position was inevitable, likewise was the wrath of EquiMagic. 

 

As the players left the pitch to the boos a banner was visible in yellow and blue, "Preben, play Romeo or worse will come."

 

[Benjoe]

Let's also catch up on some of the transfers for the season as we are, as seen above, quite far into the season. 

Lots of activity! 

And the most frustrating thing - actually the most frustrating things? 

First; Signing two non-EU players who are extremely talented, but I am not allowed to register them. I know about the rules of Serie A and non-EU players and the limits. But with players I usually see a warning in red on the transfer page if I would be going above the limit per season like seen below.

Visibly warning me not to break the rule as this would mean he couldn't be registered this season.

However, with the two players below, there were no warnings at all so I happily spent a big portion of my transfer and wage budget on them only to find, that they would be ineligible for the entire season. No club wanted to loan them during the summer transfer window either so I've had to pay their salary of roughly 100k per week without getting anything back....

 

That messed us up quite a bit. Especially seeing as Can was intended to solve a lot of our defensive worries and Espino would be a great option out wide. (This is also the reason why we called back all three of Whitaker, Coulibaly and KariKari from their initial loans) 

We still did some really good business, though.

Let's first address the players who left us. 

Dino Brinkmann, our strong dutch right back left for a big fee and was replaced internally by both KariKari and Coulibaly who returned from loan. Ask if you want to see these guys. 

Capuani, our Italian striker who did really well last season and who we bought 575k for just 2 seasons ago, similarly commanded a large fee. He has yet to command any starts for Nice though.

Mariani, our Italian attacking midfielder who never really performed too well for us and who we picked up on a free the season before left for a really decent fee to Atalanta. He did his achilles tendon shortly after and is yet to return. Ouch.

And then we have the second thing I want to complain about. I have absolutely no idea, why the **** Dylan Paccagnella ended up being bought by Barcelona. I rejected their offers 1500 times and even set it to automatically REJECT any offers they would come with, and yet, when the window is now closed I suddenly realize, they did a Barcelona and got their man anyway. I've checked through my mails and can see they continuously bid for him along with Sevilla and all appear to have been rejected yet the next message is a confirmation that he got sold. Bleh. Probably the most talented fella we had coming through our own academy bar maybe Aversano, but Dylan here is just far more ready than Aversano. 

 

Now that that outburst is over I am ready to go through the rest of the incoming transfers.

Let's start with a killer of a striker.

This guy is a really solid guy and signed for just 7.75M too. He's been a bit hit and miss this season but still scored 12 and assisted 5 in 20 games in the league.

 

We also signed Bassini on a free to provide more tactical flexibility by having an out-and-out winger who could stretch the defence more than we previously could. He's yet to make a real impact but expectations - and price - was almost non existent so all is good.

To address our deficiency in midfield in terms of defensive minded players we picked up Denis Zakaria who just turned 30 recently. Really solid player to have and he has been making a really good show of himself so far.

 

The next 4 lads are free transfer punts. No expectations but hopes for something decent.

 

We also decided to just say "What the hell" and signed Ederson on a free.

Old as **** but still really good and fits the description of past keepers we've been going for. There's no other decent keepers of that mold around anyway.

 

Last transfer we finished up was that of Allmeier. A very interesting striker who we might also play on the wing occasionally. Solid combination of stats and he could be a very good player to have. 

 

We also called back a lot of our loaned players so we have some more coverage.

Apparently we have the next Kaká running among us!

I don't see it myself though..

 

 

[Benjoe]

Finally. Since week 3 of this season I've been getting the same message before every game that he could break the record any minute now.

 

 

Higham is now a wonderkid and no wonder! Massive talent we got here. My main issue is, that I am finding it hard to locate the perfect spot for him, as he is very versatile skill wise.

His size, physique and bravery makes me want him to be using this to be a superior target man in the build of Drogba, so I might just try to mold him into something like that if possible. Would love that kind of striker for us. 

[Benjoe]

We are the worst team in the world. 

[Benjoe]

In reality we're a pretty decent team actually. 

The games against Sampdoria and Inter were very frustrating though. 

We were controlling Inter completely and almost scored to 3-0 just before we conceded a clumsy penalty. From then they scored on 3 out of 5 shots. Pitiful. 

Allmeier has proven to be a shrewd signing though. 

[Benjoe]

[Benjoe]

Oh wow. Guess my FM couldn't handle the result either. 

It crashed right after the game when I tried to continue. 

I have a sneaky suspicion that it has little to do with the game though and more to do with the 1k (roughly) players I had just sent my scouts out to scout. 

Going to be a headache to set up the scouts again.... 

[Benjoe]

The replay against Lazio ended with a 1-1 draw. 

 

And we bottled incredible chances against Olympiakos at home and only drew 2-2. We're still through, but only because we crushed them in Greece.

 

[Benjoe]

Finally that time of season again. 

Let-Down-Day.

 

Major Meh. 

 

They're ok, but not really anything too exciting. Especially seeing as what I really wanted was some promising defenders.

[kidthekid]

Higham is really good and at just 19, he will end up having zero weaknesses for a striker.

[Benjoe]

33 minutes ago, kidthekid said:

Higham is really good and at just 19, he will end up having zero weaknesses for a striker.

Agree, you could even say he doesn't have any weaknesses now either. No real stand out strengths either though.

 

Oh, and btw. @kidthekid I am trying once again to find a Nigerian lad to become a starter for us!

Seeing as Kingsley Lawal snubbed us to go to mighty Arsenal I had to do some digging. A lot of decent Nigerian talent in this save actually! But they were all either too expensive or just the right fit. 

 

Nzube here however. Young enough to be molded. Seemingly loads of potential. Great base to work from. Not sure if I want him as a bombarding right back, a winger or maybe a wide midfielder with license to go narrow. Probably one of the first two. He is 193cm tall as well. His 6 Heading is ridiculous though..

 

[Benjoe]

And we are in the Quarter Finals of the Europa League facing a beasty Man United side.

Just looking at some of their players:

 

And not to forget, Creamer.

[Benjoe]

 

Sigh.. We deserved so much more than that, especially in the first game. 

[Benjoe]

Seeing as I was getting tired of the shenanigans we were experiencing and I struggled to find any rhythm with constant tweaking of formations I've ended up going back to something that was quite interesting at that I feel fits our team well.
The Fraudenhal save (what a **** show that thread was ) I had going had a few interesting strikerless tactics and as such I decided to bring one of those in for the last 3 games of the season. 

AC Milan on 4th, Juventus on 1st, and Roma on 2nd were our last 3 games, so I figured how bad could it go?

Here is the formation and instructions:

A straight up copy as I remember it as working quite well for the most part at Fraudenhal, so took a punt on it.

 

 

Booom! What just happened there!

 We were really dominant against AC Milan and very ruthless. Creating 3ccc and 2 half chances on our 9 shots. They had 1ccc in total. 

Juventus were a different beast, no doubt. Missed penalty and a couple other ccc's, but still we came out on top being vicious on the counter. 

 

Now we have Roma left. They've pushed to first after we beat Juventus. Meanwhile we are 3 points behind AC Milan who are +3 ahead of us in GD. They face Atalanta who's 11th in the league. 

If we can somehow get to 4th we'll be in the qualifiers for CL football, but the chances are looking very slim. I think the risk of seeing Lazio overtake us are non-existent at least. 

[Benjoe]

15 seconds into the game against Roma. Conti misses this ccc...

 

[Benjoe]

10 minutes into the game and it's us creating again. 

But another miss!

[Benjoe]

25 minutes into the game and Roma are biting back.

But crossbar denial and clearance and the score is still 0-0.

[Benjoe]

Eh. Roma took over in second half, and killed the game. We did well to hold them off - 16 of their shots were long shots after all. But they were as dangerous as us so it was a fair result with the draw in the end. Atalanta beat AC Milan 3-2 so we actually had a chance to take 4th! But Roma were too much to beat. 

In the end, a very respectable finish. Could've been much, much worse if we hadn't beaten both Milan and Juve first though. But we did, so let's be happy and look forward to next season. 
We have a good squad, but it's blatantly obvious, that we are still far, far off the best teams - in Italy and especially the rest of Europe. 

A couple of good seasons more could change that as we have very interesting players who are still developing, namely Higham and Satskihs. We need to look at rebuilding our squad a bit perhaps though. But with the two non-europeans we have out on loan joining our squad next season we'll already then be a much better side and we should have some money to spend on fixing some other areas. A goalkeeper is top of mind seeing as Ederson has been a travesty. Speaking of him, I am giving up on the experiment on having a sweeper keeper. I've literally seen him do any sweeping 0 times. Even on SK(a) he's done nothing like it. He's got 17 in rushing out, yet he never does. We were playing with a high line, off side trap, and him set to SK(a) and he stayed AT THE GOAL LINE. The striker easily sprinted into the box with the ball and placed it past Ederson. If that's the way it works, then what's the purpose of playing a high line and having looked for a sweeper keeper?

Phew. Rant off. So, I'll look to offload all our keeper basically for any price. Just want their pay check off our books. Need to find something solid instead. 

More on this season at a later point. 

[Benjoe]

Recap season 2026/27

So, we dropped the ball slightly and lost out on Champions League, that's not so bad is it? 

Well, we did have a few players who wanted to leave if we didn't secure CL football. So, sort of bad.

 

We didn't do too bad in Europa League this season.

We got defeated by Man Utd, but they did get to the final (were they got beaten by Barcelona - crazy EL final), so we did a good showing for the most part against them.

A quick summary on the squad: Inconsistent.

Best performers were Morán by a mile followed by Conti, Simoncini and Stoyle. Del Sole and Zakaria did well too. 

KariKari was strong too but he was one of the "CL or bust" boys, so lets not talk too much about him.

Our main 4 defenders all have good avg. ratings, but don't let that fool you, they had a lot of meltdowns and brainfarts.

That is something that has been happening for most of FM17 for me though, so no surprise really.

Conti and Morán made it to the team of the year. Nice. Need to pay them bonuses now. ****.

 

Let us not mention the Italian cup.

 

Embarrassing that we are still not on this list.

 

Next up will be a complete overview of our transfers this season as we just passed the winter window and I might as well give them both in one. 

 

 

And furthermore, when that is out of the way I will show you a cascade of gifs from the season. 
A lot of them portraying stupid **** that the FM17 match engine is throwing at me, and a few really lovely moments too.

 

[Benjoe]

Transfers 2027/28

Oh boy, what two windows it has been!

We've sold for a big sum, and bought for an almost big amount. It wasn't planned to be like that. We were planning on selling a few, and buying even fewer. But to sign some of the players we did, on the wages we did, and ahead of the clubs we fought with, well, we had to give some sometimes ridiculous release clauses. It was a non-negotiable demand from the players from the get go in all cases so seeing how contract negotiations work in FM17 my hands were tied if I wanted them. 

The main guys who left on release clause deals are:

  

 

What hurts even more is that three of them was snapped up by league competitors.
Filthy pigs.

We ended up with buying both some replacements for the players who left as well as some players who were just available for too cheap to ignore.

 

Nzube is a huge talent as well as Nigerian ( @kidthekid ), although it seems the Italian NT is going to snap him up ahead of Nigeria... He is rotation at the moment but I expect him to develop and become our trusted first choice.

Orrica was picked up super cheap as a replacement to Coulibaly leaving. Pretty much the same type. Completely intentional. I want a player who can retain possesion and defend behind our aggressive right winger. 

Pasquale was quite expensive, maybe too expensive? Well, he's Italian, very young and very talented. Solid defender with attacking prowess, just lacks the pace to really set himself aside. He's been performing well for us in the cameos he's gotten. With his skillset, and given his lack of pace, he might be more fitting as a centre back or defensive mid eventually. We'll see. I do like his defensive qualities as a left back behind our Raumdeuter though for the formation I'm going with at the moment. 

 

Nardecchia was available very cheaply and I decided to snap him up. Seeing the way Conti performed last season, and the way Higham is doing this season, I figured we risked losing a striker and having a backup internally would be handy. Not sure he really has much to offer seeing how we're rapidly elevating our game above anywhere he can be a valuable kog. Will probably be loaned or sold next season.

Figueroa was a free transfer, and what a free transfer! Either footed, incredible combination of Passing-Vision-Technique. Love it. He played for Bayern before coming through Real Madrid's academy. He never featured for Madrid though before Bayern got him on a free as well. 7 games, 4 assists and 7.5 rating so far. Lovely.

Super cheap. Quite interesting potential. Could become something really nice in the future.

Tam is looking like a serious baller. I can't use him this season due to the non-european rules, but I can't wait to use him next season. Mainly bought as cover for Morán as he is likely to getting snapped up at some point. 

Miguel was bought because he was relatively cheap in terms of both transfer fee and wage. There's no immediate need for him tbh. Silly transfer to some extent, but he almost doubled his value after the transfer so we should be able to flip him for a profit in worst case.

Ajer was a last minute panic grab as Can was snapped up by Roma in the very last second. We might've paid a bit much for him given he was at Celtic, but he is a huge player to get in for us. We're building a team of giants too. Love it. Preben style football. Power and physique with finese!

 

[Benjoe]

 

Bah. How does that even happen. I subbed him before he had any injury and suddenly after the game he is injured...

 

No way I'm letting him leave for anything under his 50M release clause - which is way too low in any case!

[Benjoe]

And as promised, a galore of stupid **** in gif format.

We start with our right back running back like he had 1 pace, 1 acceleration. Yes. We concede.

 

I have no words for this.

 

Can ****ed up sure. But if Ederson was being a Sweeper Keeper on Attack like he should, he'd gotten to that one first. Embarrassing.

 

I don't even... THE CONTACT IS FROM THEIR OWN PLAYER FFS!

 

I wish I had an explanation for this coverage. I really do. 

 

We're not the only team that gets weird red cards.

 

Can't really argue against this one I guess.

 

Let's take a break from the horrible stuff and look at Stoyle's first touch!

 

Again. Stupid error from a defender, but if Ederson wasn't glued to the little box he'd be out to stop this nonsense.

 

Ederson..........

 

Mansueto does weird defending again. And Ederson. I... Eh...

 

Double coverage for no reason. And still failing to stop the cross. They score of course.

 

....

 

????????? IT GOES THROUGH HM?

 

I need a break.

[Benjoe]

Another one.... 

[Benjoe]

2 minutes ago, Benjoe said:

Another one.... 

Same game.

 

Against Bologna. Who's in the middle of the league. We are behind 2-1 now. 
After a run like this.

And Higham just went off the pitch injured. 

[Benjoe]

Another day. 

Guess what.

 

Yes. Welcome to another episode of the "EDERSON IS ****ING ***** MATE" show.

[Benjoe]

There is some positives at least.

Let's look at Higham for instance!

He's been unreal so far this season which really took me by surprise evident by the surplus of strikers we have as I didn't think we had enough options. But oh my has he been a monster. Hopefully he can develop his technical stats a bit more even though he is a brilliantly complete forward at the moment. 

[Benjoe]

**** right off.

[noikeee]

Ace thread Ben, just went through it from the beginning to the end. 

Maybe time to bench Ederson? 

Why so many formation changes through the thread, it looked like all of them were working perfectly fine? Just for the lolz and for the sake of experimenting and seeing what happens? I mean if that's what happened I can't argue against it, I've done it too. 

[Benjoe]

On 16/08/2019 at 01:31, noikeee said:

Ace thread Ben, just went through it from the beginning to the end. 

Maybe time to bench Ederson? 

Why so many formation changes through the thread, it looked like all of them were working perfectly fine? Just for the lolz and for the sake of experimenting and seeing what happens? I mean if that's what happened I can't argue against it, I've done it too. 

Cheers man! Appreciate it.

Ha! Time to feed him to the wolves man. 

Erh.. I got issues. Many of them has worked, but then for some reason I feel the urge to change "just one thing" and then suddenly a 3-5-2 went to a 4-2-1-3-0 and so on.. We need to start a support group for people like us man.. But mainly it is for the lolz and experiments as the ME in 17 (at least in all my saves on it) is completely ********. Can't be bothered really going into the analytics of the setup because the times I've tried it, and see a pattern for a couple of games and we get some momentum then suddenly it goes up in smoke and nothing works like it used to anymore for no apparent reason. Frustrating as hell.

[Benjoe]

Spoiler: As always in this thread apparently I've finished the thread season and forgotten to update for a while. Oh well.

Youth Intake 2027/28

Big meh.

 

Uhhh wait. This might be something. Look at those stats - and we desperately need some Central defenders from our own academy! Wait a minute... 8 jumping reach? That's odd, but ... oh for **** sake! 173cm tall?!

 

Okay, back to what this thread is really about. Us sabotaging ourselves.

 

 

And a season wrap up!

 

Okay, so hopefully that created some suspense. Did we make it to top 3 which would give us a chance at Champions League next season? 

Spoiler

Nah.

 

But it's all good. Italy loves Prébi.

And Prébi loves Italy.

 

 

[Benjoe]

Season 2027/28

We've gone through a bit of a mixed window. We lost Kevin Stoyle which hurt, but we got some good players in and we will be pushing a lot of our academy lads into the rotation now. Can't take seeing us miss list after list regarding academy production. 

 

Well, it was a decent enough price, but it hurt us that we had a clause for Champions League team for 14M as Tottenham offered 20M for him. He chose Nice instead - good choice lad - which costed us crucial money.

 

Leading to the new season I looked at our player material and decided to take a chance on our youth. This also means looking at what kind of players we got coming and what type of football we want to play. We still want to be playing progressive football and having a decent amount of freedom for all players. And seeing as Ederson is FINALLY history we might become more stable in defence too. Especially seeing as we bought 2 new defenders as well. 

New system in theory: (yes, yes, I know @noikeee)

 

The squad for 2028/29

7 Academy lads in the squad! I know, I know. None are starters on paper, and 7 isn't really that many. Still. With the talent - or lack thereof it's not exactly because I've neglected them. 

 

Goalkeepers

 

Right Complete Wingback - Support

 

Left Full Back - Attack

 

Centre Back duo

 

Half Back

 

Advanced Playmaker - Attack

 

Central Midfield - Support

 

Left Wide Playmaker - Attack

 

Attacking Midfielder Duo - Shadow Strikers

 

Jokers

 

Notes

So, we have some interesting players here. 

Our central area with our CMs and AMs is where we have our main strength. Amazing starters, solid bench options. Nzube on right back has already become a Wonderkid with barely any game time and he'll be a starter now on our important right flank. Expecting him to have some trouble early on and hopefully grow into a strong performer at the end.

Tonon and Giovannini will be thrown around in the starting lineup as they can cover multiple roles. Tonon is not going to cut it as a starter I'm afraid but a very decent bench choice no doubt. Giovannini has been a very wanted man as Juventus, Man Utd, Liverpool, FC Bayern etc etc have all tried to poach him. Well, he's still here! And he'll need some game time to keep him happy. 

Of course another important point for me is to see if Alblas is as bugged as Ederson proved to be for us. Thrilled to have kept Morán and Higham in any case as well!

 

[bigmattb28]

Such a great read mate, I do love Italian saves.

On 07/08/2019 at 01:08, Benjoe said:

Oh, and btw. @kidthekid I am trying once again to find a Nigerian lad to become a starter for us!

Seeing as Kingsley Lawal snubbed us to go to mighty Arsenal I had to do some digging. A lot of decent Nigerian talent in this save actually! But they were all either too expensive or just the right fit. 

Also why Nigeria? I do like to find good regens from not so 'popular' countries, I'm yet to find the new Drogba or the like, but I do scout African countries constantly.