September 2034
Quite a lot of outgoing business, but none of which will be significantly missed, I don’t think. Duro coming in is a bit of a coup as he looks like an outstanding player and an upgrade from Sarue for the role I want him to play. Including the deals for Thiry (£27.5m), Rousseau (£50m), Deconinck (£5m) and Ranieri (£10m) that takes our summer business to £150m making us the most active in the window...which is a first.
in addition to those sold, a lot of players go out on loan getting the chance for first team football.
Get Chelsea out of the way and then our season can actually start.
Chelsea (a) - Duro starts and given their 3 wins from 3 start, we try this one defensive as well but it doesn’t take long for that plan to unravel. And we are woeful, conceding 32 shots on goal, 14 on target and 17 corners with just the one shot on target ourselves and that came in the 80something minute. Utter ****. Duro will want his return ticket based on that.
Mulenda’s lack of pace really showed there and he struggled. After 6 seasons, his time could be coming to an end unfortunately.
We’ve got a long international break to get over that horror start.
Alvarez is out for a month with a pulled calf muscle.
Fulham (h) - Started well, pegged back quickly, poor rest of the first half. Dramatically changed things to all out attack 4-2-3-1 and blitzed Fulham in the second half with Parker dominating the game. Thiry got his first for the club and Duro was a constant menace...at least in the second half.
Norwich (h) - That’s a bit more like it, in front of our own fans. Parker’s prolific week continues, Jansen finally opens his account and Curtis leads the way. Norwich weren’t very good to be fair, but you can only beat who’s in front of you and we needed those 3 points, even this early in the season.
And we’ll see if we can go the same thing at their ground…
Norwich (a) Carabao Cup 3rd Round - Ismael comes in between the sticks and it’s quite a lot of changes to rotate the squad. Only Joshua has played all 7 games so far, but new signing Rousseau is on the bench after recovering from injury and he will come on at some point. The conscious effort to be more aggressive, engage higher up the pitch and sooner pays off as we cut out a lot of attacks before they start, but only manage to win via a penalty, despite being dominant.
The fourth round gives us an away game at Championship Leeds, which is not as tough as it could have been...on paper at least.
Leicester (a) - Leicester sit bottom of the league with 5 straight losses but even so, we make hard work of it. Curtis proves his worth attacking from deep and getting the crucial goals, but we almost end up throwing it away as left-back Gard is repeatedly beaten in the air allowing flick-ons to their striker. We were fortunate they never came to anything, but that was messy.
Other than his lack of aerial ability, the 28 year old has been a pretty reliable servant since signing from Villa for a decent fee back then. He’s wanted by a number of clubs, but it will be a couple of months at least before that is a problem and, in any case, I’m reluctant to let him go.