2015/16
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So in my first full season in charge of Celta my aim was to finish somewhere in the top 8, however I was really hoping to secure some kind of European football for next season to give us more financial power so I could attract some better players. I still managed to sign a few players in the summer though
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Romero and David jumped straight into my team while the other 3 are good youngsters for the future, Victor Andrade could potentially be a star but I don't think I have much chance of getting him permanently from Benfica unfortunately. Romagna came in because we desperately needed CB cover. I signed Borja because I only had 3 FBs in the entire squad and although Jonny can play both sides naturally I felt a bit of depth was necessary in case he or Hugo Mallo got injured during the season.
Obviously a few players left too:
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Although Augusto was our club captain I didn't feel he would be good enough in the long haul for us and having already agreed deals for Romero and David I needed the money. It's a similar story for Fabián, I prefer Daniel Wass as our RW and I simply needed the money so when Monaco came asking I happily sold. Nothing really to say on the other 2, they just weren't good enough for us.
So with these signings I wasn't expecting too much in the first season however a bit of the Valderrama family magic seemed to rub off on the squad and we were superb!
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Only 1 defeat until the start of February! We shouldn't have lost that game either as Villarreal were in terrible form at the time so realistically we could have gone half the season unbeaten which would have been well beyond my wildest expectations. Our defence led by Andreu Fontas was amazing, all 3 FBs were impeccable and our front 3 of Nolito, Iago aspas and Daniel Wass were scoring a lot of goals for us so everything seemed brilliant at this point however the January transfer window brought some blows in terms of outgoings:
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We lost our second club captain in the space of half a season as Gustavo asked to return home to Argentina, he was battling with Sergi Gomez to be first choice CB alongside Andreu and was losing the battle to Sergi to be fair but it's still a blow as we are a young squad and his experience and leadership helped in the dressing room.
Guidetti was just a moaning machine, every week he complained to me and by January I was sick of it so I just wanted to get rid, Leverkusen quickly came in and because we got him on a free I nearly tore their hand off when they offered £7M! All profit and he was barely playing, you can't get much better than that.
The big one was Andreu though, we had just negotiated a new contract with a £60M release clause in as I was planning on making him my defensive cornerstone for years to come when Lazio came in, offered him much more money than we could and he chose them over us. This is a major problem we seem to have as a club as many of our players are on very low release clauses, Nolito our star player being one however he wants £100k a week for a new contract and that'd be more than a quarter of our total budget! I'm amazed noone came in for him but I'm sure he'll go in the summer.
With a little bit of money to play with I made 3 signings:
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Zach Clough is our future, I play with a false 9 and this kid will be the best in the world at that soon enough, he's already a good player and backing up Iago for a season or two will only do him good long term, he's our backup striker with Guidetti gone and I plan on giving him much much more game time than John ever got.
When Andreu departed I had to act quick and young Jairo at Ajax looks a brilliant prospect in a similar Ball-Playing Defender role to what Andreu did. He cost a fair bit, breaking our transfer record but to get the best you have to pay the money.
During January we lost both of my DMs to long term injury so just to shore things up I snapped up José on a quick 6 month loan, he has great potential but AC wanted over £30M for him! So a loan deal will have to do for now.
In the second half of the season things were a bit tougher, over December and January we had a lot of cup fixtures and we did quite well actually:
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We didn't deserve to lose to Barca, we were far superior to them in both legs but their quality in front of goal ended up telling as Suarez netted a hat trick to bring them from 2-0 down in the second leg to 3-2 up and into the final, a disappointment but since we only ever expected to reach the 5th round we outperformed ourselves and I am happy with that.
We did the same in the league:
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Again we didn't deserve to lose to Barca but we had 3 games against them in a 2 week period to start February with Sevilla in the middle so I'll accept that. The one game we deserved to lose was at the Bernabeu, we got absolutely hammered and 5-2 does not do them justice, it could have been 50! Some great results including beating Atletico away on the final day meant we had an unbelievable season and surely we had European football?
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We had! Not just European football but Champions League too!! Our final day win against Atletico means we don't even have to go through a dreaded play off to get into the group stage too. With the least defeats in the league and an attack rivaling that of the big 2 I can only applaud my players who were almost all magnificent all season long:
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Some incredible performances from the lads all year round, our front 3 of Nolito, Aspas and Wass combined for an amazing 45 goals and 39 assists and of our first choice back 4 Hugo, Jonny and Sergi all got stunning average ratings.
However there can only be 1 player of the year:
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For me Nolito has been an absolute star, his goals, assists and average rating speak for themselves but he has also had one of the highest pass completions on the team despite being a major creator and scorer. Such a shame as in all likelihood we won't be able to hold onto him due to his £12.75M release clause and refusal to even discuss a contract under 100k a week..
I think we're also going to lose Iago and Hugo too as Real Madrid want Iago and everyone seems to want Hugo.
Our young player of the year from me goes to:
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Jonny, the boy wonder, I'm hoping he'll stay here forever but rumours of Manchester City being interested keep persistently popping up unfortunately, I won't accept less than £20M for him though.
I also won Manager of the Year!
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This is a huge honour for me as I never expected things to go so well so quickly but that's football!
As a club we were named the most improved in the country and the end of season awards and review also happened:
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From the team of the season one name stands out to me, Pino, he's a young Advanced Playmaker who came on so strongly in the second half of the season and figures to be a key player for us going forward, especially since he's a local lad. And although I can agree with the choice of Hugo as player of the year I still think Nolito was a cut above the rest of our team.
So that's that for the first season, I'll get onto regular updates from tomorrow!