LovanoFM

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So what do I mean by recreating their glory? Saint Etienne have won Ligue 1 the most times with 10 trophies. The most notable player I know that played for Saint Etienne was Laurent Blanc who now manages PSG. Also Georges Bereta won 6 league titles whilst playing for Etienne. Also Michel Platini one of the all time greats for Etienne and France


Meet the squad

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A very young squad as the teams average age is just under 24. Looking at the potential of the squad it does look promising but there is also some very bad players in the side.


Hopeful defensive core

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Ruffier - Great goal keeper and also can be sold for quite a bit of money.
Perrin - The captain of the side and brings experience to our other centre back which is Zouma.
Zouma - Zouma as I have seen before turns into one of the best CB in the game.
Guilavogui - 4 1/2 star potential and is a great anchor man.

The next update will go through preseason, transfers and expectations.
 
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St Ettiene is my favourite team in France, so I wish you the best luck mate.
 
Good luck - Ruffier is a great keeper.

By the way a certain Michel Platini also played for them - cant forget about him!
 
Preseason

So I was given a budget of 2 million pounds and a weekly wage of 17 thousand. So I just put all my transfer budget into my wage bill and this had an effect on the signings made.


Kharja - A 29 year old midfield player that is currently at 4 star ability. He is my starting deep lying playmaker in the current tactic I am using.

Macheda - Nothing much to say about him. Signed him on loan from Utd, he is still young and will be a good fill in whenever he is needed.

Perez - Loaned him from Benfica. Plays on the right midfield and he is a very good winger.

Valladeres - A VERY experienced keeper that will act as cover for Ruffier.



A good preseason only losing one game and that was against a very strong Schalke side. Euro Cup 3rd qualifying round dominating Petrolul 8-1 on aggregate.
 
Good luck - Ruffier is a great keeper.

By the way a certain Michel Platini also played for them - cant forget about him!

I actually just read that on their Club legends I was like oops haha!
 
Before I start, this will be a half season update. Please read and then in the comments tell me if you like this style or you want me to make updates every month!

A Half season full of bad starts and inconsistency

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Look at the state of that fixture list. Losing 4 of our 1st 6 league games. When I looked at my opening fixtures I did not expect that to happen that's for sure. But there was some good highlights like the 3-0 win vs Bordeaux.


This was a great game and a much needed win. Our two centre backs scored in this game from corners whilst on loan striker Macheda fired home to score the 2nd goal out of the 3.

Two other important games were the 1-0 win away vs Lyon in the Cup and the 1-0 home victory to Marseille in the league.

A solid performance vs Lyon with Zouma scoring the only goal from a corner.
However, the Marseille game was very scrappy and we was lucky to ****** the win.


So not a very good start to the league campaign. However, we are fighting on to get another spot in Europe what ever competition it may be. One game in hand on 7th spot and 2 games in hand on 8th.


Europa League

So we was placed in Euro League Group F alongside Dnipro, Frankfurt and Spartak Moscow.


We placed 1st in the group only one goal difference. We had to win our last game and hoped that Frankurt could keep Spartak to a draw or loss. We came through beating Dnipro 3-0 away whilst Frankfurt drew 1-1 with Spartak.


Once again Macheda stepped up to the mark and scored two goals against Dnipro. A solid performance overall dominating Ukrainian side Dnipro.


Coupe de la Ligue & French Cup

We was given a tough 1st game in the CDLL against Lyon. Thankfully, we won the game 1-0 away which is shown further up the post.
Quarter finals - We played OM here and like the Lyon game it was a 1-0 victory and is also showed higher up in the post.
Semi Finals - The semi finals saw us playing away at Stade Rennais.



We entered into the French Cup in the 9th round and have to play AC Ajaccio. Going to be a tough game but I believe if we perform on the day we can progress through.


Guilavogui, Macheda and Zouma have been the key players so far this season.

Macheda scoring the most goals, Zouma being a rock at the back and Guilavogui being an excellent holding midfielder.
 
All those clean sheets!!!!!! Told you Ruffier was a good keeper lol

Need a bit more firepower though................

For a 6 month update that worked well I must say
 
January

The only option for this month was to win as many games in the League as possible because we need to climb up the table.


So here are the games for this month. I included the game from Lyon because I forgot to play it in the last update of the story. We only dropped 2 points in the 4 league games we played this month.

We won our Coupe de la Ligue semi final vs Stade Rennais with Cohade and Aleksic scoring the goals.


Coupe de la Ligue final

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So here it is! The final of the Coupe de la Ligue vs Bordeaux. Last game we played against these we beat them 3-0 away so hoping for the same in this final.


Ligue 1 table

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Ligue 1 table looks better. We are in 3rd place and the plus side is that we have a game in hand against 2nd place PSG. If we win that game we go 2nd we were belong. Loanee Macheda has helped us so much during this campaign lets hope he keeps on firing them in.


Europa League

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So this was the Europa League draw for the 1st and 2nd knockout rounds. And its a very tough draw aswell just like every European campaign I enter. 1st game vs Swansea and then the 2nd game against Basel or fellow rivals Lyon.
 
All those clean sheets!!!!!! Told you Ruffier was a good keeper lol

Need a bit more firepower though................

For a 6 month update that worked well I must say

Yeah I just couldn't get anything with the small amount of money I was given. Hoping if we do well this season we will be given more money to get this squad sorted
 
February, March and April

Overall, we lost 6 out of 20 games in these 3 months. Our campaign in the League hasn't gone as good as it could so far but in the Cups we are showing signs of great skill and potential as a side.

Europa League

So as you know we had to play Swansea in the first knockout round. The first leg was at away so I was hoping to get at least one away goal to give us a good chance hosting them at home.


As you can see a VERY late goal in the 94th minute away to Swansea gave us the upper hand. And then just to secure the tie we dominated them at home when Aleksic put 2 past Vorm.

2nd knockout round - So this saw us get drawn with Basel and the first leg was to be played in Switzerland. The first leg spoke for itself to be honest us getting dominated in Switzerland.

Then came the second leg with us hosting them in France. And boy I don't think they knew what was in store for them.



Yes, you saw it correctly. We totally went to town against them putting 6 past them which ensured we was put into the next round to play Betis.

Enough about the Europa League now we beat Betis on away goals as we beat them 1-0 at home and lost 2-1 away. Which put us into the semi finals vs Dortmund.


Fixture list

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Some good fixtures here. We beat Bordeaux 2-1 to WIN the Coupe de la Ligue. This cup win enabled us to qualify for the Europa League no matter what our final league position is.


League Table

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So there it is, the next update will be tomorrow and will show the rest of the season including how we got on in the Europa League and the rest of the league campaign.
 
good luck mate.

my first season with st etienne and we finished 2nd to lille by 4 points after losing to them on the last day of the season.

My advice, invest in some young defenders to build around zouma and ghoulam (who is a gun, hold onto him).
 
good luck mate.

my first season with st etienne and we finished 2nd to lille by 4 points after losing to them on the last day of the season.

My advice, invest in some young defenders to build around zouma and ghoulam (who is a gun, hold onto him).

Defence is good enough at the moment, I need strikers and wingers before anything else.

Thanks though
 
End of season

The ending was not what I was hoping for. Just made me see how bad most of the players I had were. A season full of mistakes. The team was like ' every 1 win we get why not lose about 5 in a row for the manager '.

So here is the last fixtures which include the Europa League semi finals 2nd leg and the last league games.



Knocked out in the Europa League semis losing 2-1 on aggregate to Dortmund. Didn't expect anything else really considering Dortmund should be in the Champions League latter stages. But after this game the teams heads just dropped and we just couldn't turn up the heat to end the season well. These last few games saw us go down the table to 6th place but we had Europa League football secured anyway from the Coupe de la Ligue win.


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Player reviews

Ghoulam was named in the stars of the season team of the year.

Ruffier came second in the Goalkeeper of the year.

Macheda won the most promising player award however he is only a loanee.

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Ruffier had a good season despite having such a poor outfield team to go with him. Keeping 18 clean sheets in 38 league games is very good. Most of the goals he conceded were stupid penalties that shouldn't have been given away.

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As you can see our fire power wasn't very good this season so this is one area I will be looking to drastically improve.



We didn't spend no money this season on transfers and it payed off as we have been making profits for most of the year. Hopefully this will help with the transfer budget for next season.
 
Preseason

Firstly, lets take a look at the signings we made for my second season in charge. I tried to buy for the future hence why the signings I made are young and expensive.



Most of these signings had money up front and money over the course of 48 months.

Digne is a very young LB that will become our 1st choice in the years to come.

Imbula - A good CM that has 4 start potential, lets hope he lives up to the price tag I signed him for.

Fierro - Speaks for himself really most people know that he turns out to be a very good player.

Batshuayi - Similar to Fierro a young striker that will be very very good in a few seasons.

Dibon - 22 year old defender that can play CB and RB. Quite cheap and has 4 star potential so a bargain in my opinion.

Sciglio & Pitroipa - Signed these two players on loan just to give me some depth in the squad.

Overall, I spent 41.5 million and received 5.75 million letting go of Kharja, Corgnet and Hamouma.


Friendlies

So as far as friendlies go we done pretty well. These games also including the Euro Cup 3rd qualifying round vs Dinamo Moscow. Promising signs shown here as we didn't lose a single game in the seven we played.



Batshuayi showing how good he is scoring 5 goals in 7 games.

Lets hope this form can carry on into the domestic season!
 
New youth facilities

I asked the board to build new youth facilities and they granted my request.


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After beating Dinamo we had to play Molde to get a place in the Europa League group stages. We comfortably went past them winning 3-0 on aggregate.

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Batshuayi playing well again in both legs getting one goal in each game. Aleksic just secured the 2nd leg win.

This left us getting put up against my favourite team Tottenham, TPS and Zilina.

A good first two months to be honest. We have started picking up some form and the squad are looking good. We drew are first 3 league games which got me quite annoyed as we couldn't keep a goal lead. But the 2-0 away victory at Molde was the turning point as from then on we have been doing pretty well in the league. We also opened our group stage of the Europa League by smashing TPS 4-0 away.


So the league looks pretty good so far however we have played two more games than 2nd and 3rd place.


The star player has definetly been Batshuayi. He has scored lots of goals and important goals aswell.

 
October & December

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Now were finally starting to pick up the results that I wanted. 9 wins out of 11 games, no draws in two months I actually cant believe my eyes. Only getting beat by PSG and Spurs. They were both away games and only narrow losses so I wasn't to fussed.


This is the SS of the Spurs game, were we scored our 2nd goal in the 93rd minute to get the 3 points!


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Star of the month Carlos Fierro.

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So this is how the league is fairing up. Pretty good 2 games in hand on 1st place which can move us 3 points below them.


Joint 1st with Spurs them just beating us on goal difference. We only have games against Zilina and TPS now so lets hope Spurs can slip up.
 
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