Hello and welcome to my blog! This time out I will be covering the first half of the 2018/19 season in charge of F.C Europa after we secured promotion to Ligue 2 last season. I expect a long slog against relegation but, for financial reasons, I need to stay in this league at all costs!
Catch up on the previous parts here.
Personal Development
To kick things off for the 2019/20 season the board offered me a new contract. Unfortunately, it was still going to expire at the end of the current season, however, a pay rise up to £1k p/w was nice. I just have to hope I perform well enough to be offered another new contract at some point during this season.
Also pleasing to see was my own growth in the game as a number of my attributes had improved after just one season (and one manager of the year award).
Anyway, enough of blowing my own trumpet it’s time to move on to the rest of the clubs pre-season!
Pre Season
It’s fair to say this season looked like it was going to be some slog. With a young squad that was only predicted to finish inside the top 7 last season, a higher division would be a huge ask of my existing players. The French media agreed with this assessment too as we were heavy favourites to finish bottom and had huge odds to get promoted… I can’t quite see the back to back promotions happening. Still, only the bottom two teams were automatically relegated in this league so we only had to finish 18th to give ourselves a chance of staying up through the playoffs!
With a small budget to work with in terms of transfer fees but about £30k p/w excess wage budget, we would have to improve the squad exclusively through free transfers. Bring on the trial offers!
In an effort to free up some more transfer and wage budget for the upcoming season I also offered several fringe and reserve players out but many of them didn’t attract any bids. I could do with offloading one of my non-European players so that I have the opportunity to sign a better player within my quota. My transfer kitty was also boosted with the news of a new sponsorship deal!
Staff
With an increase in finances for this season our coaching staff also increased significantly. I was also pleased to welcome Kenny Miller back to the club as a coach after initially resisting my contract offers.
Transfers
Over the course of preseason, we managed to sell 4 players (De Girolamo, Davies, Edmundsson and Mata) giving us some increased options for new signings in the transfer market. 12 new players were brought into the club without spending a single penny.
There are three players, in particular, that should significantly boost the team in the coming league campaign;
A young winger stolen from Midtylland on a free transfer he is on a par with existing RW’s in the squad and can become a top player in this position. Definitely one for the future
Both players boost our midfield as well as adding some experience. Finally, we have more than three players capable of playing in central midfield to give us some depth. Leborgne was also made the new club captain after Kenny Miller retired at the end of last season as he was our best leader in the first team squad.
These additions to the squad gave us the following lineup of nations for the season;
We welcomed countries such as Poland, Turkey and Germany into the club through our new signings to progress a little closer to completing tiers 1 and 2 of my challenge but there is still some way to go. In addition to these nations, our other players would be;
Non-UEFA Players
- Bilel El Hamzaoui (Morocco)
- Jordan Leborgne (Guadeloupe)
U-23 Academy Players
- Loic Verriele
- Yanis Zairi
- Raphael Breem
- Hugo Berthe
Our preseason schedule saw us have a similar list of fixtures to last year as we were up against a couple of lower league clubs from northern Europe with Everton thrown in at the end thanks to the transfer which saw Antonio Marin join them in January last season.
We equipped ourselves well and hammered the opposition in our first four games only conceding from penalties. Our friendly against Everton was something of a good performance despite the final score. With the first choice keeper Bennedetini injured, youngster Hein was in goal and made two significant errors to make the scoreline a lot more one-sided than Everton perhaps deserved.
Despite positive signs from pre-season, our squad was badly affected by injuries going into the league. Our midfield had lost two of its better players for the opening game and our starting goalie wasn’t quite back to full fitness. Pleasing to see was Dadasov being close to fitness after nearly 10 months out on the sidelines. If we want to stay in the league we need better luck with injuries through the season.
Ligue 2
As our default 4-1-4-1 from last season was drilled into most of the squad by now I decided to keep with it for the league campaign. Just half an hour into the season I was already curing our luck. Against a potential top 10 team Sochaux we had lost both of our starting wingers through injury so I was left with no choice but to throw Isaksen and Parkhouse into the fray. Managing to put this setback behind them we managed to salvage a respectable 1-1 draw thanks to a late equaliser from Simms on his debut!
Spirits were dampened from this result as we would be without Ylatupa for 2-3 months and without Kristinsson for 5-6 weeks. Not the start we wanted as we now had an incredible 7 first team players injured (Pedrelli and Startsev also picked up minor injuries in the opening game).
Despite these issues, we picked up our first win at this level against Paris FC in the next game. Joveljic was in lethal form, picking up two counter-attacking goals in a 3-1 win against Paris FC. Our tactics worked pretty well here as we put in a much more controlled performance than in the previous outing. Very encouraging.
Coup De La Ligue
Having gained promotion to the second tier we were now eligible for entry into the top cup competition in France so this could be another valuable source of prize money for us. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be as we conceded a last-minute equaliser against Ajaccio and were then knocked out on penalties. Hey ho, at least we could now concentrate on the league!
Despite this disappointing result in the cup our league form continued to defy the preseason critics as we strung together an impressive run of form. In the opening two months of the season, we only suffered one defeat against Troyes where every shot they took seemed to hit the back of the net. Perhaps the sweetest part of this run were the two tight wins against QRM and Bourg, the two promoted sides from last season.
Our formation from last season was operating very effectively, despite the improvement in opposition as we were still able to control possession to nullify the opposition threat with Benedettini and Muscat proving to be crucial players again this season. Despite this great run our main striker Joveljic was in the midst of a 2-month goal drought so it was finally time for Dadasov so start games for the club after a nightmare start thanks to injuries.
He repaid my good faith as he scored the second goal in a shock 2-0 win against Lille who had Manchester City flop Loic Remy up top. Hopefully, performances like these could kick Joveljic into some sort of form, I don’t want him to spend too long on the bench in case he becomes unhappy. Joveljic is, after all, by far and away our best striker.
Unfortunately, this didn’t quite happen.
After the initial promise of a solid 2-0 win, the whole team went without a single goal in the next five league matches as we started a worrying slide down the table. Our normally reliable formation had suddenly hit a brick wall as we were dominating possession as normal but barely registering a shot on target in any of these five matches.
Fortunately, the French Cup provided us with the chance to set things right against 4th tier opposition and this was a chance that we took. Despite a below-par performance we comfortably won 2-0 which, for some reason shocked some in the media.
I’m not sure what we’ve done to upset so many people in the media with them predicting us to finish rock bottom in the league and to be knocked out of the cup by a team two leagues below us but I was happy to repeatedly prove them wrong. Maybe it was those three consecutive 0-0 draws?
Our winless streak was finally ended against lowly Gazelec Ajaccio as our backup strikers stepped up in the second half to win us the game with some composed finishing and build up play. This was despite a controversial penalty late on that so very nearly robbed us of the win and almost had me banging my head on the wall with frustration.
It was a tight win but with our first league goals in almost a month, I felt like we could finally start moving forward again. I tried to ignore the fact that our leading goal scorer (Joveljic) now hadn’t scored in the league since the 19th of August! If history teaches us anything its that strikers on huge goal droughts always work out for the best in the end……
Despite Joveljic’s ongoing struggles we actually managed to round off the first half of the season with two more strong wins against Niort and Paris FC, keeping our noses well away from trouble. Indeed, the league table going into the winter break saw us sitting up in 7th, only three points away from the playoffs. I would be staggered if we actually managed to qualify for the playoffs as we hadn’t even scored a single goal against any of the top 5 teams apart from against FCSM on the opening day of the season.
Similarly, I couldn’t see us flirting with relegation any time soon either even if we had another dramatic slump in form after the winter break as we were sitting an impressive 14 points above Ajaccio in 18th place.
Thanks again for reading and following this save. I shall be on holiday in the land of Zach Muscat shortly after posting this part of the story so I shall post again sometime after I get back!
Alex
StratMan Gaming 