What a season it has been. Against all the odds, we survived our first season in the Championship and managed an 11th placed finish.
Our loan signings in particular were a success this season, with all 5 averaging over 7.00
The best of the bunch was Ollie Fraser. His performances earned him player of the year in the Championship.
He had the highest average rating in the league, had the most player of the matches in the league and made 150 key passes… the next best was 106.
I don’t even know what constitutes a key pass but those numbers are ridiculous!
Tim Roberts also excelled at centre back and the fact that he won the most headers and interceptions in the league has persuaded me to extend his loan.
And striker Rio Corbett ended the season with 17 league goals which was the 4th highest in the league. However, I’ve decided against extending his loan because of the options we have coming through.
Elsewhere, a few squad players will be leaving when their contract expires, the msot significant of which is backup keeper Vitezslav Jaros.
He was first choice in the National League and League Two and performed well in the cups in the past 2 seasons. He will always be remembered for his contribution to get us where we are today.
Finally, the board sprung a surprise in announcing that a new stadium will be built.
To be honest we don’t really have the money for it and it does not seem worth building a stadium that holds less than 15,000 when the current one holds 7,000
But there’s nothing we can do. For now we have to see how we can spend our transfer kitty of £1.1m…
It’s the start of the 2025/26 season, our second in the Championship and we’ve probably had our quietest transfer window yet. For some reason we were unable to ask the board to increase the transfer budget so we have to be prudent with our dealings.
Firstly, Neil Farrugia has gone to Dundee United for £500,000.
He spent one season at the club as backup after coming in on a free so when Dundee offered half a million I
had to accept.
As mentioned previously, Mamadou Bamba joins us on a free from ASEC Mimosas and is already worth £1.8m.
We’ve also made our most expensive signing in Brandon Cooper for £575,000.
He’s on a lot of money (which is still a pittance compared to other Championship clubs) but we needed a centre back and so triggered his relegation release clause to sign him from Sheffield Wednesday after they were relegated to League One last season.
Then we signed another centre back, John Peacock.
£180,000 for him was a no brainer, even if we didn’t necessarily need him. He’s young, English and if someone wants to trigger his £12m release clause then they can be my guest.
Finally, I decided to extend the loan of Abdullahi Ikechukwu from Liverpool as I couldnt find a decent right winger in our price range. It means we have 3 players on loan at the club for the second season in a row
Rather than have a complete overhaul, we had a number of players in the squad who have been on loan at clubs in the lower divisions but are good enough to be back up.
That means that we still have the lowest wage expenditure in the division, we’re spending £90,000 a week whereas Bournemouth are spending £1m.
And our squad is good enough to be predicted to finish 12th in the league.
If we keep people fit and start well then I think we could make a playoff push this season.
7 games into the Championship season, we sit 6th in the table.
But we’re only 3 points off 19th position because the league is so close. Our form has been a bit erratic with home losses at the start and end of the month and we’re yet to keep a clean sheet.
Yet we thrashed the favourites for the league Bournemouth 4-1 away.
Christian Norton scored a hattrick in that game and is the top scorer in the division with 6 in 7 games. But the number of chances he gets each game is ridiculous and he should have at least double the number of goals he has already.
We also knocked out Premier League side Leeds in the League Cup. They put out a strong side but we scored all our penalties in the shoot out.
That set us up for a third round match away against Manchester United. It’ll be the first time we’ve played them in the save.
So the next few months will be interesting. If we manage to sort ourselves at defensively then we could consolidate a place in the playoffs.
We have played a third of our league games and the Championship table is ridiculously close. We sit in 9th position and are just 2 points off the playoffs but also only 2 points ahead of Nottingham Forest in 14th.
At the moment we can’t string a run of results together which would see us enter the playoff places. We also lost 5-2 to a strong Man United side at Old Trafford in the League Cup.
And we’re also conceding far too many goals. We have just 2 clean sheets in 15 matches and have conceded the joint-most amount in the division with 28 (level with bottom club Bolton).
The leaky defence is not too big of an issue when we have the 2 most in-form players in the league in Ollie Fraser and Abdullahi Ikechukwu.
Ikechukwu, who is in his second season at the club on loan from Liverpool, has 6 goals and 8 assists in his 14 league matches.
Whereas Fraser is on course to become the Player of the Year in the Championship for the second season in a row.
We’ve lost 1 in our last 6 and our next 3 games are against teams below us so I’m hoping that by Christmas we are in a real shout of making the playoffs.
Since the last post we’ve played all of our November and December matches and results have gone well for us.
7 wins in the last 10 matches mean that we are seriously pushing for a playoff spot.
The Championship is so weird! Sides like Derby and West Brom are really struggling at the bottom of the table whereas Oxford, who are managed by Paulo Ferreira, cannot stop winning and could be in the Premier League next season.
We were also hit with the news that striker Paul McVeigh has a broken leg and will probably miss the rest of the season.
He only has one league goal because of the form of Norton but I was hoping he would be a striker that was with us for the long haul. He cost just £20,000 from Glentoran.
He is just one of 7 teenagers in the first team picture, all of which are contracted to the club.
Right back Richie Belcher, signed for £13,000 from TNS, recently got his first England under 21 cap.
John Peacock has established himself in the side as well. He was just £180,000 from Chelsea in the last transfer window.
And Shane Ryan has recently won his first cap for the Northern Ireland national team. He’s the only one of our youngsters who is wanted by Premier League clubs and I may be tempted to sell if a hefty fee comes in for him. He cost just £10,000 from Dungannon Swifts 2 years ago.
Finally, there is Felix Baker. He’s probably our best player but has just two assists and no goals in 20 Championship appearances.
I also have a decision to make on whether I want to give him a contract with a £28m release clause. I managed to get an extension clause in his original contract so he’s with us for the next 4 years but he’s the lowest paid player at the club so has been asking for a pay rise.
I don’t plan to make any transfers in January, only if we are forced to sell a first team player. For now we have a playoff push as well as an FA Cup 3rd round game against Bradford to look forward to.
The furthest we’ve got in the FA Cup is the 4th round so it would be nice to go on a run this season.
In the last post, I mentioned how Shane Ryan was attracting attention. I didn’t want him to leave but then Villa came in with an offer of £8m… so I negotiated the terms a bit.
Shane Ryan has joined Villa for £10m plus we get 50% of the next sale. The highest previous fee we have received is £575,000. £10 million, they paid TEN MILLION POUNDS for him!
I get that he’s only 19 and a Northern Ireland international but he only started 6 league games for us and didn’t get a goal or an assist. There’s also the fact that we spent £10,000 to bring him to the club 18 months ago so I make that a 1,000% profit!
That wasn’t even the craziest deal of the transfer window. Let me introduce to you Shane Ryan’s replacement.
Yup, Miralem Pjanic is an Altrincham player! He had no club and is retiring at the end of the season and with no obvious replacements available (that didn’t want ridiculously high wages) having him at the club for 6 months made sense. Plus, it’s Miralem Pjanic… playing for Altrincham!
But it got more hectic. Our right back Mamadou Bamba had a release clause I forgot about…
So he’s gone as well. £9.25m. We’re becoming quite the money makers!
He literally spent 6 months at the club and we made a £9m profit so I can’t really complain.
His unexpected departure meant that I didn’t have long to get a replacement. In the end, we signed Thomas Bak from Crystal Palace for £500,000 and he’ll do for now.
But there’s more!
Cardiff came in with a £3m bid for our striker Christian Norton. He’s top scorer in the league...
...but I still decided to accept.
He’s another one we’ve made a big profit on in a short space of time.
I know it may seem like a bizarre thing to sell the top scorer in the league, but I was never comfortable with Norton having 10 for finishing and that is reflected by the fact he has had far more shots on target than any other striker in the division.
I just can’t see him being a Premier League striker for us. Plus, I had already brought in a Russian striker called Pavel Kirilenko from Krasnodar. He was only £650,000 and is one of 3 strikers at the club who I all believe will be useful for us in the Premier League. I like his physical stats and the fact there is room for improvement. For that price, the move made sense.
So those massive transfer fees mean that we have a lot of money in the bank. No matter what happens this season, it will be spent on improving the squad in the summer, I just didn’t want to make any rash signings in January.
January was a month of madness not only off the pitch but on the pitch too. Somehow, we beat Crystal Palace 6-0 at home.
Connor Stanley had a rare start in that game and scored a hattrick.
He’s not Championship quality but has been with us since the National League North, scoring in every division along the way. I didn't think that he'd be scoring hattricks for us in the Championship when he first joined!
We were also knocked out of the FA Cup by Spurs in the fourth round. It could’ve been different if Norton scored a penalty at 0-0.
We actually only have one win in our last 5 in the league, so things are heating up around us.
6th position and a game in hand is positive. But we are yet to see the impact that those transfers will have on the squad. It’s going to be an interesting end to this season!
Think you made the right choice with your outgoings. Always important to look after your clubs finances with the smaller clubs.
Good luck for the rest of the season.
Some amazing outgoings there that will help the club in the long term financially along with setting you up nicely for bringing in players who's contracts will be expiring at the end of the season or finding more young and exiting players on the cheap.
I've managed to expand our scouting range to worldwide and I'm a sucker for a regen so will be scouting everywhere to find wonderkids to bring in in the summer!
Think you made the right choice with your outgoings. Always important to look after your clubs finances with the smaller clubs.
Good luck for the rest of the season.
Even if we don't go up the season I'm not too concerned as I think getting promoted now would be too soon for us, so I'm glad we've finally got some money in the bank for a rebuild in the summer
We’ve played all our February and March league games and, as it seems to have been throughout the entirety of the season, we are just about holding onto 6th place.
Goal differences is our friend but we’ve had a slight wobble in our most recent games to allow Birmingham City to catch up to us. We also may or may not have lost to Brentford because of a misplaced Pjanic pass...
There’s just 6 games remaining but it looks like our final 2 matches against Oxford (who are still in 2nd place!) and Blues will decide things.
As for the signings, whereas Pjanic was giving away points to Brentford, our Russian striker Kirilenko has scored 2 goals since joining. He hasn’t played that much because moving Zac Fryatt from the left wing to striker has worked a treat and he has 7 goals in his last 7 matches.
And midfielder Chay Cooper has been playing out of his skin all season.
He has 9 goals and 6 assists this season, all from a box to box role.
Also, our 3 big money departures are all back ups at their teams and have managed just 4 appearances between them. You love to see it!
So, 6 games to go...
Even if we don’t get to the playoffs I won’t be disappointed as we were only expected to finish mid-table. But, after spending so long in 5th and 6th position this season, it would be silly of us if we bottled it at the final hurdle.
Good Friday was bad for us as we lost at home to Nottingham Forest 1-0.
It was the 4th game in a row without winning and meant we dropped out of the playoff places for the first time in months.
But we resurrected on Easter Monday, beating Reading 1-0 and moving above Birmingham in the table who lost at home to Barnsley.
But after that win we decided to lose our next game against Bristol City and then give not one, not two, but three penalties away against Swansea in our match after that.
But somehow, despite those 2 losses, we were still in 6th position.
We went into our pivotal, season-defining game against Birmingham with both of us in the worst form we’ve been in all season. A win at St Andrews would confirm our playoff spot.
And so what did we do after losing 5-1 against Swansea?
We scored 4 in the first half and beat Blues 5-2. Of course we did!
A brilliant performance ensured that we made it to the playoffs. We’re alarmingly inconsistent, but beating Blues like that was impressive considering they were in the Premier League last season.
Our last game of the season was at home against Oxford, who needed a win to secure promotion to the Premier League after an incredible season.
We put out our strongest team and I wasn’t too fussed about the result.
Fairplay to Oxford. They came up from League One at the same time as us and were one of the favourites to get relegated this season so I hope they smash it in the Premier League next season.
It does mean that we’ll play Bournemouth in the semi-finals of the playoffs.
They were favourites to win the league and were playing in the Europa League last season, so I can’t say I’m expecting much.
But who knows what will happen. We’re just 3 wins away from the Premier League…
Bournemouth are a team that frankly should never have been relegated from the Premier League. Their salary is almost 10x the size of ours...
However, we did give them the shock of the season by beating them 4-1 in August. Christian Norton, who got a hat-trick in that game, is now warming the bench for Cardiff who face Brentford in the other semi-final.
8 of our starting XI for the first leg were under the age of 23 and we also had 9 English players starting.
The first leg was at home and could not have started any better.
However, that was as good as it got.
Bournemouth were clinical and at the end of the day their quality shone through.
We’re a decent side but Nikola Simonovic is top scorer in the Championship for a reason and there’s no way that Jayden Bogle should be playing in the Championship.
A miracle was needed in the second leg.
But we were abysmal.
5-0. Wow. Well that was the most underwhelming end to the season.
When their third choice striker scores a hat-trick and is on more money than your 4 attacking players who started the match combined you realise just how out of our depth you are.
And when their Brazilian regen right back, who they signed for £15m, scored a world-class solo goal you realise just how much out of luck you are.
We’ll be back for you Bournemouth. And revenge will be oh so sweet.
Sooo nice to see another Altrincham story! Keep it up mate, I'm in the 2022/23 season now with them and in the League One, but only signing U23 players... Let's see if I can catch up with you
They were massive favourites for the final and Bournemouth narrowly managed to beat Brentford to get promoted back to the Premier League.
I’m still disappointed by the way we folded against them, but it was still an incredible achievement to finish 6th in the league.
Our young, predominantly English squad is coming along nicely and it’s still easy to forget that we have the lowest wage expenditure in the division.
Incredibly, Ollie Fraser was named Championship Player Of The Year for the 2nd season in a row. Man Utd want to have a look at him next season so he may not be around for us next year.
He had the highest average rating in the league once again and it seems to be because of all the key passes he makes.
A strong end to the season for Felix Baker meant that he ended with 11 assists in the league. I still haven’t given him a new contract as I’m unable to get rid of the release clause but he is finally starting to play to his ability.
Abdullahi Ikechukwu was another standout for us with 11 goals and 11 assists. Despite that, I’m unsure if i’ll keep him on loan for a third season at the club.
That’s because I have been given £13m by the board to spend on the squad.
And that may become more if a high bid is put in for striker Paul McVeigh. He was limited to 7 appearances all season because of injury but is wanted by a number of Premier League clubs. I sense another Shane Ryan situation!
The main news at the end of the season was that our new stadium is to be completed in 2 years time. It’s named after Altrincham legend Mark Maddox who has been diagnosed with motor neurones disease in real life.
Finally, Miralem Pjanic is retiring in the summer after making 14 appearances in total for us. It means the average age of the squad will dramatically decrease.
Time for us to make the transfers that will enable us to get into the Premier League!
Another transfer window. Another Premier League club willing to pay ridiculous money for a young Northern Irish player we have that has made hardly any first-team appearances.
Paul McVeigh has moved to Watford for £12m.
We signed him for £20,000. It’s actually ridiculous the money that Premier League clubs spend on these players. We’ve made £22m from 2 young Northern Irish players in the last 7 months!
The board still only put half of that money into the transfer budget, but we went and spent it…
First up is record signing Diego Silva from Nacional in Uruguay.
£5.75m is a huge fee for us but we needed a right winger so met his release clause. He was one of the few summer signings who joined us without demanding a minimum release clause in their contract.
Silva also needed a Spanish speaking friend so I signed Miguel Rubiano for £1.9m from Deportivo Cali in Colombia.
His £14m release clause needs to be removed soon or else he’s going to get snapped up.
Next up is Julian Parker from Spurs. He’s young, English, only cost £2.5m and has Premier League potential so it made sense to get him as we needed depth at right-back.
Then I put in a speculative bid for 17 year old Danish striker Jesper Madsen.
And for some reason he decided to join...
… but I didn’t realise it was next summer when he joined! He’s only just turned 17 so to have stats like that is ridiculous but I spent most of my budget on him thinking he’d join us straight away.
So instead I have brought in a familiar face in Rio Corbett.
He was top scorer for us 2 seasons ago but couldn’t get into the Arsenal team so they decided to let him go on the cheap.
Finally, we also have an official wonderkid at the club in Adie Higginson. His growth has been stunted at Man United but he’ll be the main man for us in defence this season after joining on loan.
After all those signings, we’re still predicted to finish mid-table as the Championship is a very strong league.
If the new players gel quickly, then I expect a promotion push but there are so many strong teams in this league. I’m hoping at the very least that we can make it into the playoffs again.
