MUC72 - Le Mans FC - It's Not All About The Motorsport

[FM_TNSSO]

Monday 1st July 2019

Monday 1st July 2019

View attachment 12913

The commercial summary for the past year shows everything on the up!

View attachment 12912

Our stature in France has increased after last year's solid campaign! However, we are still well outside of the top 40 clubs in the country!

View attachment 12911

We will kick off our Domino's Ligue 2 campaign with tough games against two sides that will be vying to get back to the top division, FC Metz and FC Lorient!

View attachment 12910

But before that, we have 6 friendlies to get out of the way against mixed level opposition!

View attachment 12909

Financially, the club is in a bit of **** with £1.2 million in the red! However, we are due to earn nearly £3.5 million in TV rights this season and with higher attendances expected, we could easily make up this deficit!

View attachment 12908

A few players left the club this Summer and a couple of them I am very sad to see go! Racing CFF snapped up no less than 6 of our players that were allowed to leave on a free!

View attachment 12907

My first signing of the Summer is Randi Goteni and he will join the club on a free transfer from Troyes! Randi spent the past season on loan with USL Dunkerque in the National division and turned in a good campaign playing for a lower league club! This makes me believe he can make the step up to Ligue 2 with us this year as playing in a better side he should come on!

View attachment 12906

The next player signed up on a free is centre back, Gautier Lloris, who will join from our senior affiliaite OGC Nice. I have a couple of centre backs leaving the club this Summer (loan ending and contract expiring) so it was an area I definitely needed to bolster numbers and Lloris is a perfect squad player to bring in. He is French, only 23 years old, and has some decent stats and can definitely do a job for us in Ligue 2!

View attachment 12905

Taking advantage of the affiliation with Nice, I bring in 20 year old Cameroonian striker, Ignatius Ganago on loan for the upcoming season! Ganago is a tasty looking striker to Ligue 2 and can definitely bag us some goals and I'll be looking to him after losing top goalscorer Vincent Crehin this Summer!

View attachment 12904

I quickly took on another of Nice's young prospects for the season on loan. Jean Victor-Makengo comes in and is likely to be a big part of our midfield for the upcoming season and can really make a name for himself in Ligue 2!

View attachment 12903

I had a number of players here on loan last season and have only decided to retain one of them. Goalkeeper, Nicolas Kocik is happy to play backup to our main man between the sticks and didn't kick up a fuss at his lack of game time at all last season, so we'll keep him here to play 2nd fiddle for another year!


​

 

[FM_TNSSO]

Thursday 1st August 2019

Thursday 1st August 2019

View attachment 12840

Virtually all my wide midfielders left the club in the Summer either on free transfers or loanees returning to their parent clubs! So it was an area of the squad that desperately needed some attention and the first new signing for the left wing role is Steeve Beusnard, who was released by Ligue 2 side, A.S Beziers, after only making 4 appearances for them last season! He'll have a chip on his shoulder for that and a point to prove and I'm willing to give him that shot!

View attachment 12839

Rayane Aabid also joins us from A.S Beziers and he will play down the opposite wing. In contrast to Beusnard, he did play 27 games for Beziers last season, although it wasn't one of his best as he recorded an average rating of only 6.55 and bagged only 4 assists...so he's a bit of a risk. But we haven't got much cash and the quality of players available within our scouting zones is minimal, so we're working with what we can get for now! To be honest, he'll likely serve as a backup to Thibault Vialla for majority of the season anyway!

View attachment 12838

Playing around with the budgets, I was able to free up some money from the massive wage budget we had to give me some transfer funds to play with. With that money, I have forked out £220k to bring 21 year old Peruvian winger, Pervis Estupinan, to the club from Watford. He looks like a good player for our left wing position and at 21, he can still improve a lot over the next couple of years too!

View attachment 12837

I rejected a £250k bid from Amiens SC for winger, Thibault Vialla! He is one of my best players and it would take a significantly higher bid than this for me to allow him to leave!

View attachment 12836

We'll have an extra competition to play in this season due to our Ligue 2 status. In the Coupe de la Ligue, we will take on LB Chateauroux in the first round!

View attachment 12835

It's no surprise to see us as one of the favourites to go down this year and according to the bookies, A.S Beziers and ourselves are miles behind the rest of the teams in this division!

View attachment 12834

Pierre Lemonnier keeps the captain's armband again this season!

View attachment 12833

Our pre season campaign starter with a major stutter as we were thrashed by Chambly-Oise, but then we strung together 5 awesome wins, including big results over PSG reserves and our parent club, OGC Nice! We scored an incredible 21 goals in 6 games and managed to keep 3 clean sheets as well! We couldn't be better prepared for the new season!

View attachment 12832

One player that really stood out in pre season was striker, Ryan Spaulding! Ryan, a 20 year old American, was a player that was brought in by my Director of Football during the Summer on a free transfer from Stade Briochin, and I hadn't profiled him as a new signing on this story as I thought he would only ever be a reserve player! However, after scoring 4 goals in 6 appearances, I'm going to have to considering him a shot in the competitive games!

View attachment 12831

A final reminder from the board of their expectations for the upcoming season! Avoiding relegation from Ligue 2 is the overall priority!
​

 

[FM_TNSSO]

Sunday 1st September 2019

Sunday 1st September 2019

View attachment 12818

Metz are one of the best teams in this league, so to beat them on the opening day of the season is a fantastic start for us! And we were ****** good value for the win too, as we created twice as many chances as our opponents! Ryan Spaulding, who impressed during pre season, was rewarded with a start and repaid my faith in him by scoring a debut goal!

View attachment 12817

We followed up the Metz win with another great result against another of the top teams in the division here! And it was that man, Ryan Spaulding that got us on our way again with the opener!

View attachment 12816

Our biggest win of the season comes against a side that had already lost their opening two games and look geared up for a tough campaign! We're absolutely flying early on in our Ligue 2 adventure and this perfect start is more than I could have possibly hoped for!

View attachment 12815

Our first dropped points came away at Havre! Pierre Lemmonier had a mixed game as he scored the opener before later getting sent off for a second bookable offence. Ultimately, it was that sending off that probably cost us the win as Havre piled on the pressure after that and earned themselves a draw with a late goal!

View attachment 12814

An amazing start to our Ligue 2 campaign sees us sitting 3rd ater 4 games and still unbeaten despite playing some of the better sides in the league already!

View attachment 12813

I made a few changes for my first venture into the Coupe de la Ligue and we managed to squeak by our fellow Ligue 2 opposition in the first round! It was a bit of a risk to make so many changes, but I plan to use the opening rounds of this competition for some rotation and give playing time to some of my other players that won't be regulars in the league competition!

View attachment 12812

The second round draw had pitted us against Ligue 2 opposition again, and we cruised through to the 3rd round with a pretty comfortable victory away from home! Again, I rotated a few players and again the players that came in gave me a good performance!

View attachment 12811

We sold nearly 1000 more season tickets this season after our promotion last year!

View attachment 12810

Amiens SC seem determined to land Thibault Vialla and came back with an increased bid, which was swiftly rejected again! It would take close to a million for me to actually sell him!

View attachment 12809

First choice right back and vice captain, Alexandre Vardin, injured his hip in training and will now miss up to 5 months of football!

​

 

[FM_TNSSO]

Wednesday 30th October 2019

Wednesday 30th October 2019

View attachment 12782

We kept up our unbeaten start to the season with a narrow win here! However, we were let off the hook by Clermont who didn't have the best day in front of goal, missing two glaring opportunities to equalize late on!

View attachment 12781

During the Clermont game, Pervis Estupinan came off injured and will miss 3-4 weeks of action!

View attachment 12780

Having already beaten this lot in the cup with a weaker team, I felt confident we would win here! But we were actually pretty lacklustre and didn't really turn up and disappointingly had to settle for a point!

View attachment 12779

A nice performance away from home! We were solid and took our chances well and their late consolation was a bit lucky as a cross hit Yanis and deflected in.

View attachment 12778

Eight games into the season and still undefeated! Another win chalked up here and we are absolutely flying, completely defying the bookies pre season odds! We're not dominating games quite as much as last season, but we are still consistently the better side and our defence is holding strong, whilst our attack seems to still be doing the business at this higher level!

View attachment 12777

Funny how things work out...I was saying after our last game that we haven't been as dominant in games this year but are still winning, then we play Sochaux and we were completely dominant and totally in control of the whole game, but have to settle for a draw!! Disappointing after racing into a 2 goal lead inside the opening quarter of the game!

View attachment 12776

A bit of a ding dong battle this one, but in the end we managed to hold on for another win! Ignatius Ganago scored his 8th and 9th goals of the season in just 10 games and the loanee is proving to be a great signing for us from Nice!

View attachment 12774

A.S Beziers are the only team in this league that were predicted to finish below us this season, and after our unbeaten start to the campaign I'd have been gutted if we hadn't won this one! However, apart from the penalty which they missed, they never threatened our goal at all and it was always a matter of how many we'd win by! In the end, it was only two, but could have been a **** of a lot more but our strikers squandered a few good chances! Still, it's another win on the board and that's now 11 games into the season without loss!

View attachment 12775

I expected a tougher game than we got from RC Lens if I'm honest! I mean, this is a club that I associate with Ligue 1 and are a club that probably deserve to be back there, although you wouldn't say that based on their performance against us here! They simply didn't look like they wanted it and were 2nd best for most of the game!

View attachment 12773

Well I have to be honest - I really didn't expect us to be unbeaten and top of the league 12 games into the season, but that's where we find ourselves after a near perfect start!! We even have a four point gap already at the top too!

View attachment 12772

We've been handed a tough draw in the Coupe de la Ligue away at Lille!
​

 

[FM_TNSSO]

Le Mans Stun Lille In Coupe de la Ligue

A stunning away performance from Ligue 2 side Le Mans will see them through to the 4th round of the competition as they knocked out Ligue 1 side, Lille!

Le Mans looked right up for the game from the off and in the first half they looked the more likely side to score, creating the better chances in a pretty tight 45 minutes of football! Despite that, the teams went into the break at 0-0, but the away fans sensed an upset could be on the cards!

It wasn't long into the 2nd half when the Ligue 2 side took the lead through their top goalscorer, Ignatius Gangano, who fired a powerful shot low into the bottom corner from about 10 yards out!

On the hour mark, Samir Benmeziane doubled Le Mans lead as he tucked home an effort from just inside the box. His curling effort found the back of the net through a whole host of players in the Lille penalty area!

The away fans were in heaven when their team went 3-0 up and was Gangano who doubled his tally, this time with a headed effort as a cross came into the box from deep on the right side! The young striker, on loan from Nice, is proving to be a great piece of business from manager, Chris Ball!

With the away side cruising, Lille finally seemed to kick into life and on 76 minutes, Yassine Benzia gave them a lifeline as he made it 3-1! Benzia then hammered home a penalty 6 minutes later to make it 3-2 and give Le Mans a nervey final few minutes to play out!

However, the Ligue 2 side held on, defending for their lives in the dying minutes of the game and pulled off the upset to knock Lille out of the cup! Even better for Le Mans, this was the first defeat of the season for Lille in all competitions!

View attachment 12771
​

 

[FM_TNSSO]

Hi guys, I'm not sure I'm going to continue with this as it's absolute **** easy! With stats of a 77% win ratio and averaging 3 goals per game, and the fact I am walking the league at 1000/1 odds after winning the league below easily last season, there is just no challenge at all! I'm even knocking out top teams out of the cup with relative ease and dominating them in the games too! It's just not realistic at all - don't know if its just that the French league system is too easy or not, but I've lost all motivation for this....I have not had to tinker with tactics at all and the game has simply become clicking through without 'being a manager' at all!

View attachment 12759


Now when I ran the original poll for this, it was Le Mans that were ahead when I started the save! However, the poll continued to run after I started this and it was actually Hartlepool United that went on to win the overall poll. This should be much more challenging to move up the English leagues, so I will be running with that as my next save! Hopefully, it will provide more of a challenge and keep me interested!