Szolnoki MÁV FC: From Rags To Riches

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November (+ 1st December) 2016
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Another massive month in term of amount of fixtures - its pretty ridiculous!
We did have quite a good month though. Only loses were in the cup which i really, really do not care about.

Pretty much every key attacking player had a good month which is good to see, even 16 year old Robin Risa got his first senior goal so I was pleased to see that.

Another player who's been impressing is 20 year old Geremy Lombardi who over the past 3 months has really been doing a great job as our rotational left winger and occasional right winger. He didn't develop the way I wanted him to in his first year but he's now in his second year and he's really kicked on.

And you've probably seen that we pulled off the impossible and beat Fenerbahce away! An amazing win and kept a clean sheet, I was on the edge of my chair for the whole game after we scored. They had something like 68% possession or something stupid like that, but the important thing is we won. May be the best win in Szolnoki history for a while...

We also beat Braga for a second time and again I don't know how. You can see below where we finished in the Group Stage!

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Wow, this is close! There's a solid 6 teams fighting for 3rd and it's such a great battle. It's making this season very entertaining, can't wait to see how it pans out! Fixture congestion should be less of an occurrence after the winter break so we should hopefully press on and get that 3rd or 4th place.

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So close! We don't progress due to goal difference - that 6-2 loss to Fenerbahce in our first group game comes back to haunt us! It's all good though, we did very well in our first taste of continental football and I'm sure we'll come back better. This was a learning experience.

So in the last update I showed you all my affiliates. After reading the details I noticed none of them for actually me loaning there players, so I asked the board for another. This time they came back with four options. Shakhtar; Zenit; Locomotiv and CSKA. All 3 Russian teams don't seem to have produced many regens therefore decreasing my ability to loan any of there players so I chose Shakhtar. They have plenty of first team quality (Szolnoki first team) players that definitely be loaned here - one inparticular who I will show if I do get him on loan (I will definitely eventually buy him anyways).

The only reason I wanted to do this was because I noticed that Újpest are overachieving and when I checked out their squad they had a legion of about 8 players on loan from Standard Liege. Most of whom are valued in the millions.

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Also I thought i'd show how the performances of Rotson Kabaza have caught the eye of the Zambian National team and he gets his first senior call up.

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He went on to get a 9.00 rating and 2 assists in a 3-0 win.​
 
Those are some impressive Parent clubs you have there, definitely need to take advantage of the loan market. So unlucky in Europe, to get 10 points and not qualify is almost unheard of! Can I see a screenshot of your youth squad? KIU!
 
cps100 said:
Those are some impressive Parent clubs you have there, definitely need to take advantage of the loan market. So unlucky in Europe, to get 10 points and not qualify is almost unheard of! Can I see a screenshot of your youth squad? KIU!
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Yeah it's quite annoying but it is a positive to take from the experience!

And sure mate here they are:

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I assume you only wanted to see the players with the highest potential? Anyways, We did used to have quite a few five star potential players like Hegedus, Horvath, Kallai and Lazar but most of them barely develp because of the facilities. Hopefully when the new facilities are done we'll see more improvement from them. Also I'm absolutely buzzing for new youth intake because my recruitment and coaching are pretty high now!
 
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Winter Break 2016/17
Least busiest transfer window I've had for a while...

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We sold arguably our best player to Saint-Etienne for a nice £4.8mil as it was simply to good to turn down. The good news is that we get him back on loan for the rest of the season, like when we sold Novothny to GENK. Bence Kiss also leaves after never achieving his potential and we got a lot for him. We also loan out 2 prospects and back-up striker Mirosavljev. Because Mirosavljev is now gone, Robin Risa has been promoted from the youth team to become the first team back-up striker.

Matousek's deal also includes a 45% percentage of next sale.

In terms of ins, we only have two this season.

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Two years after agreeing a deal Caceres has finally joined the team. A very good player and a well established international at the age of 18 - he really improves the defence. Did i mention he cost us £475? (the same price as the Xbox one when it came out...)

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I wanted to use my affiliations to get some loans in but apparently none of their players were up for loan so I looked around and happened to click on Metalist and find this guy! An absolute unit physically, he comes in as s starting centre back with a view to a permanent deal at the end of the loan.

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Pretty decent results! The Sturm Graz result is disappointing but they are actually a really strong team. We continued to travel through Eastern Europe and stopped off in Serbia to beat Red Star in a comfortable 1-0 fashion.
We then traveled to Croatia and got a good draw against a Champions League caliber Dinamo.
We finished the friendlies off in Romania as we beat Slovenian reigning champions Maribor in a comfortable 2-0 win.

Robin Risa was very impressive in the Winter Break.

I also added the League Cup results as I treated them as friendlies because Ajka are a pretty bad team. We got two good wins over them even with Xaba and Aryee away on African International duty.

Next update is the long anticipated youth intake...



​
 
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TractorBoy7 said:
Yeah it's quite annoying but it is a positive to take from the experience!

And sure mate here they are:

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I assume you only wanted to see the players with the highest potential? Anyways, We did used to have quite a few five star potential players like Hegedus, Horvath, Kallai and Lazar but most of them barely develp because of the facilities. Hopefully when the new facilities are done we'll see more improvement from them. Also I'm absolutely buzzing for new youth intake because my recruitment and coaching are pretty high now!
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That is some serious potential! Xaba looks immense already. I always enjoy bringing in young players, either through youth intake or for nominal fees. Do you spend a lot of time looking for youngsters? Any places you'd recommend to look at? Loving the story!
 
cps100 said:
That is some serious potential! Xaba looks immense already. I always enjoy bringing in young players, either through youth intake or for nominal fees. Do you spend a lot of time looking for youngsters? Any places you'd recommend to look at? Loving the story!
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Xaba is actually in the first team I don't know why he was in the U21s, also Robin Risa should've been there but he's been promoted to first team now, he's got the most potential!

I spend hours looking for youth to be honest mate but only after the second intake has happened in the game as then there's loads of regens there.

When looking for them it really depends what team you are to be honest! Reputation of your team and the league affects which youngsters will actually move. My reputation is very similar to a sort of Aberdeen like team so I generally don't bother looking at the intakes of the top clubs. I like looking at Olympiakos, Dinamo, Hajduk, Mladost (VO), Atheltic Bilbao and most of the time all scandinavian regens from september and october (Robin Risa and Anmar Hussein were signed that way).

If you're a small club its worth taking the time to look through all the african players in september and october as, all though most of them are useless, you can find a gem and they are always willing to leave africa. (I found Aryee and Kabaza that way).

To look through Hungarian regens I do it a different way. I go on the transfer search and use the filter for Hungarians only and maximum age 17 and turn off the filter for unrealistic transfers as sometimes your assistant can get it wrong (Andros Novothny back in the day was an unrealistic transfer and look where he is now).

Hope this helps mate, cheers for following :)
 
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Youth Intake 2017
So I was hoping for big things this year after we heavily invested in the youth set up, let's see what happened...

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This is officially the worst intake I've had on this save... With all the hype I had for this intake, this was very disappointing. Only one stand out player and he won't even reach that potential because of the facilities... Bit embarrassed that I was hyping this up so much now haha.

Did do a bit of snooping around the other teams in Hungary though and it seems everyone had a dry spell this year so maybe next year will be amazing to make up for it? Anyway I doubt we'll be hearing from most of these players and I'll probably barely sign any of them as the youth team is already like 45 players strong.

We'll probably be looking to by talent from elsewhere again, which is a massive shame as I really want to build a Hungarian legacy here but doubt that'll happen for a bit, at least until I improve the youth facilities and/or the youth recruitment network.

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I can tell you now as I've just finished March as I'm writing this that he has made his professional debut already and played about 3 games. His potential dropped to 4 stars when he signed so I by the time he starts developing his potential will probably drop to around 2 stars as was the case with the promising Bence Kiss who never got anywhere. Hopefully he'll prove wrong, although right now he's behind young centre midfielders such as Tomas Barna, Balazs Kallaí, Zoltan Lazar and David Erdelyi.​
 
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March 2017
So will this month make up for the awful intake?

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What a good month, show hows fixture congestion really devastated our squad a couple of months ago and now we're doing fine now that we get 7 days between games (aside from the two cup fixtures).

Lots of different goalscorers this month, contributions from all areas of the pitch! Young centre mindfielder Tamás Barna really impressed this month as he stood in for Aryee and Xaba when they went of for international duty.

Another good month for Hussein and Brychta as they both seem to score very consistently.

As always Kabaza is grabbing a ton of assists.

Undefeated this month and going into a semi-final, so I'm feeling pretty good. Shame that this isn't the cup competition that gets you into Europe :(

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Sitting in 4th and if we keep this up we'll get into Europe. The rise of Újpest has really put this league on its head with about 5 title contenders now! Really, really enjoying Hungary.

Oddly enough I did a quite a bit of transfer activity this month.
After investigating the Finish U21s after Hussein was selected for them instead of the senior squad I saw this guy...

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A very good player who will become my No. 1 when he joins in the next window. He signed for a around £275k and I'm sure that'll turn out to be a bargain and maybe get in to the National Team alongside Hussein.

Another signing was when I noticed one of my long term targets was actually a free agent

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Joining the team straight away I hope he can make an impact. A natural AMR but I will be playing him on the left as Stojanovic currently has the right wing on lock down and has it firmly as his position. Current our Captain Zivanovic sits on the left; and although he is a solid player, he's very slow and is getting on abit and is taking up one of our foreign spots on the match day squad (for some reason Serbia aren't part of the EU) which could be filled by a much better player (such as Mora).

​
 
TractorBoy7 said:
Xaba is actually in the first team I don't know why he was in the U21s, also Robin Risa should've been there but he's been promoted to first team now, he's got the most potential!

I spend hours looking for youth to be honest mate but only after the second intake has happened in the game as then there's loads of regens there.

When looking for them it really depends what team you are to be honest! Reputation of your team and the league affects which youngsters will actually move. My reputation is very similar to a sort of Aberdeen like team so I generally don't bother looking at the intakes of the top clubs. I like looking at Olympiakos, Dinamo, Hajduk, Mladost (VO), Atheltic Bilbao and most of the time all scandinavian regens from september and october (Robin Risa and Anmar Hussein were signed that way).

If you're a small club its worth taking the time to look through all the african players in september and october as, all though most of them are useless, you can find a gem and they are always willing to leave africa. (I found Aryee and Kabaza that way).

To look through Hungarian regens I do it a different way. I go on the transfer search and use the filter for Hungarians only and maximum age 17 and turn off the filter for unrealistic transfers as sometimes your assistant can get it wrong (Andros Novothny back in the day was an unrealistic transfer and look where he is now).

Hope this helps mate, cheers for following :)
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Appreciate the detailed response man! I love looking for good young players on my save. You've found a few more gems hopefully. :)
 
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April 2017
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Amazing month again as we win all games in the league, which as you'll see in a bit, gave us a huge boost.

It was nice to see new signing Erick Mora come in and make a massive impact straight away having already bagged 2 goals and 3 assists. The wing play is a lot better with him because even though Zivanovic is a great player, he's not a traditional winger.

Key results would be the massive 6-1 thumping of Haladás away from home. A great performance from the lads despite not playing our strongest back line.

The Gyor win was massive (as you'll see in the league), this is also the first time we've beaten them in the league and it was fairly comfortable. They gave is scares in the first half but after half time we settled it down and got 3 goals in 6 minutes and killed off the game. There was an injury scare in that game too as Brychta was forced off after 11 minutes. Luckily he's only out for a maximum of 10 days and will be able to play in the League Cup Final!

Also worth noting we haven't lost a game since our first friendly game of the winter break against Sturm Graz, which is over 2 months and about 20 odd games.


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So we could either win the league or not qualify for Europe (5th place) and anywhere in between. Realistically I want that 2nd spot. After finishing 3rd last year I really feel that with this vastly improved squad we owe it to the fans to make an improvement. Plus the extra prize money would help fund the stadium extension and the facility upgrades!



Last month of the season coming up next, including the League Cup Final against Gyor....
​
 
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May 2017
The finale...

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We ended the league strong really wanting to get that second place. Luckily Videoton played Gyor meaning if one of them lost and won our next game we would be in second with the same amount of games played!

Surely enough top placed Videoton beat Gyor in a 5-4 thriller! We then went on to ****** a late win at Kaposvár and then get a comfortable (despite the scoreline) win over Kecskemét away from home.

We concluded the league with the easiest game of the season at home against an awful Dunaujvaros side. The team wasn't complacent at all and showed their deadly touch.

P.S At all times during this month it was possible for us to win the league... ;)

Now I left out the cup final on purpose from the fixture list so I could do it seperately :P

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We won!!! For the second time in 3 years we've won the League Cup!

This year was the rematch for the 2015 League Cup final where we played Gyor before and beat them.

It was a pretty close game as it always is between us and Gyor. They went ahead first, so for us to come back in the second half to win it was special. Brychta was unavailable due to Gyor injuring him a few weeks back in the league but Hussein stepped up well and bagged us the winning goal!

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Here's the final league table including who qualifies for Europe next year.

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So we finish in our desired 2nd and I'm very pleased!

In terms of European places it was the usual suspects really, I'm glad we got into them for the second time in a row. Not sure where we qualify from though, I think it might be first round again :( Újpest could've have got that last European place but they lost in the Hungarian Cup Final to Gyor meaning the spot goes to the 4th finished team.

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Final stats for the league and Gyor were definitely firing on all cylinders this season... not sure how they didn't win the league with all those goals!

We have a few players up there with the best mainly Kabaza with his assists and player of the matches although it's interesting to see that my keeper won the most games... perhaps a sign that without the fixture congestion and squad rotation we'd have won the league? Interesting.

Just wanted to thank all of you reading so far, I'm sure I've got a ton of silent readers, it'd be nice to hear from you lot!

Next update will be the Season Review.​
 
Pretty good season there mate. 2nd place and a cup is always nice, guessing the target next season is the league? Like the layout and detail in the updates btw (H)
 
cps100 said:
Pretty good season there mate. 2nd place and a cup is always nice, guessing the target next season is the league? Like the layout and detail in the updates btw (H)
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Cheers mate! Well as you'll see in the next update the Hungarian league has been granted another Champions League Qualification spot meaning we have two. Therefore my target next season will be top two finish in the league and getting past Europa League group stage. Although I've managed to keep the squad together so who knows :) Need more depth to get 1st place.
 
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Season Review 2016/17
Fans Players of the Year - Rotson Kabaza

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Overall Best XI

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Season Best XI

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Squad In order of appearance

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Club information after 2016/17 season

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Facilities after 2016/17 season

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Mananger of the Year

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Player of the Season

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Young Player of the Season
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Hungarian Division I Rises in Reputation

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Szolnoki Rise in Club Rankings

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Hungary granted another Champions League Qualification place

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Board expectations for next season: EURO Cup Qualification (Top 4)​
 
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Pre-season 2017/18
First off, I was dedicated to keeping the team together this year. Yes, there were lots of youth players departing but none were any good. The only senior team player leaving is Mirosavljev who leaves on a free after not fulfilling potential. Of course we already know that Matousek has gone off to Saint-Etienne now and hopefully one day he can come back.

In terms of ins I also wanted to keep the two boys that were on loan and I did just that

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A bargain of a player as we're only paying 50% wage and no monthly fee.

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Arguably the best player at the club when he was on loan last season and so I brought him back. His contract runs out this season so I hope his time here sways him to sign a permanent deal.

Ofcourse I can't say we didn't need to buy. Our squad was not good enough to win the league so therefore I've dropped in the pools of the transfer market and bought two players.

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The long awaited arrival of Hakola after a fee being agreed several months ago. Our new No. 1. £275k from HJK in Finland.

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I believe this our first Hungarian signing since András Novothny? He looks a good player. I wanted him to maintain the whole home grown players rule in Europe and he fills the criteria. He's come in as a rotation player behind Fans' Player of the Year - Rotson Kabaza. £725k from Debrecen.


Speaking of Novothny, he's joined Hungarian Champions Videoton from GENK for a staggering £3.4 million. We get 50% of the profit made because of our transfer agreement with GENK which is around £300k. Note -- Novothny is now regarded as currently the 3rd best Hungarian in the world...


Other transfer related news would be that 17 year old Robin Risa is wanted by a staggering 18 clubs...

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As you can see it's a bit ridiculous. I have managed to sway all the big clubs that want him permanently to swap it to a loan deal. I'm hoping young Robin will go to Inter on loan as they have the best facilities but he probably wouldn't play... Sparta Prague would be good too as they have great facilities and they wont him as a valuable first team player. We'll see, but the future is looking bright for him.

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Really good pre-season. The Zagrab loss was understandable after all, it was our first game back and it wasn't theirs. We actually went on tour in Croatia hoping for a boost in our finances and it probably worked with those exciting games! New signing Haloka and Dajka were really good throughout and that was very pleasing.

EURO Cup was a walk in the park for is and we completely dominated both games despite playing a fully rotated team for the reverse fixture. Dajka getting his first competitive goal and two clean sheets for Haloka in goal :)

We've still got £1.4mil in the tank for transfers so I doubt that's all the activity we'll see. I still need to replace Matousek...​
 
Enjoying this story. It's always sweet watching these leagues rise in Europe. Doing something similar with Viking in Norway bringing all the homegrown players through my academy.
 
chaidawg said:
Enjoying this story. It's always sweet watching these leagues rise in Europe. Doing something similar with Viking in Norway bringing all the homegrown players through my academy.
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Yeah, it's lots of fun. Norway is interesting, always wanted to do a Scandinavian save, perhaps an idea for FM15 maybe?
 
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August 2017

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Wow!!! What a long month but we won every game! This is one of my bst FM moments ever to be honest. Considering we played all these games within 33 days is ridiculous. Shows what depth can do as we had 2 players for each position and rotated the squad round depending on which upcoming fixture was more important.

Hussein and Brychta supplied the goals this month. Kabaza is yet to find his passing touch and hasn't racked up many assists as I'd but Stojanovic is actually teeing them up for everyone, he already has lie 8 assists in all competitions - decent!

Young Dajka has come in and really impressed me. It's extra satisfying that he's Hungarian. Hopefully our academy will produce players like him soon!

The highlight here, despite heroically beating Besiktas in both legs, is actually the home win against Vaduz. I played a considerably weaker team considering we were already 1-0 up and they were a team from Lichtenstein for God's sake. I payed for my ignorance as they had us at 1-1 on aggregate. If they had scored one more it would have basically been over. Then came Brychta coming on as a sub in the 87th minute and bagging 2 goals quicker than you can say Szolnoki MÁV FC.

Anyway, we're through to the Europa League group stages. You can see our group below...

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So we're top of the league as you would have probably guessed by now considering we haven't lost. I'm a bit ****** that Kecskemet are moving into contention as it's really hard to type their name without having to slow down a ton ahaha. But they are surprising despite having a pretty weak squad they're up there at the top after the first month. I doub they'll stick though.

Újpest are continuing their rise and also continuing their loaning as they have a baffling 16 players on loan. 7 in the starting XI, which is completely ridiculous. Got to say kudos to them though as they've found a loophole ;)

If anyone other than us are going to win the league though, it'll be Gyor. After having a solid transfer window they have the best team in Hungary right now aswell as some massive potential which they bought from far and wide. Write this down now - Gyor or Szolnoki will win the Hungarian Division I this season.

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When I saw this i thought that it won't be as hard as it looks but it's actually harder. Leverkusen and Sevilla are both top 4 teams in Germany and Spain respectively. I thought "oh good, an easy team" but as I looked at the Swiss top flight i found out that Luzern have won that league twice in a row so it might be a lot harder than I thought :/ Oh well, my board are already delighted I've reached the group stage so I might as well sit back and enjoy the ride as attendances will sky rocket.

So i did more transfers and stuff in august than I did before the season started which is a bit stupid but I seemed to have gotten away with it.

In terms of outs it's just loans here.


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Obviously Robin Risa has a big future so I did the smart thing and loaned him out to a team which top notch facilities. Inter will develop him even if he doesn't play a single game, so that should be good for when he comes back as he could easily surpass Hussein in the pecking order.

The others could be role players if they fulfill their potential. Kallai and Lengyel are the closest to bench players right. It does look like Lengyel has a future here though as he seems to be the only one developing. Hopefully these loans will help all of them :)


Now the exciting part, the ins!

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One for the future! He joins in two years as he's not allowed to sign abroad until he's 18. He looks like he could be world class though! I got him for £600k a bit steep for his listed value but I'm sure I'll be able to sell him for big profit or keep him for big success!

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He's only here because Risa's role of backup was empty and needed someone to fill it. This guy is decent, plus he can be a winger too which is helpful. I doubt he'll make any big noise though despite that 16 finishing. A bargain at £140p/w.

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In hindsight, this is a brilliant signing. Only £80k from IBV in Iceland, he looks a proper bargain as he's already an international. Decent stats means that we are stacked at CB for years to come :) He's already played a few games and he's been very impressive averaging a 7.71 in like 3 or 4 games.

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A cheap signing at £180k he fills the back up centre mid position. He will rarely see game time for now, but when the Frican boys go off on internation duty in February/March he'll be in the starting XI, he's certainly good enough! It's just a shame that Bosnia & Herzegovina counts as outside the EU therefore meaning he does take up one of those very precious 5 non-EU player spots in the match day squad.​
 
Norway isnt too bad, prize money is higher than most of the other leagues and 9 foreign players is pretty decent. Theres only 2 comps running through the season so not a huge amount of games.
 
What a month!! And more quality youngsters, things are looking good.
 
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