Tranmere Rovers 2014-15... Sky Bet League 2 Champions and FA Cup WINNERS

[liquefry]

Back office stats

We are now a "rich" club, with lots of money in the bank
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The difference between Championship and Premier League is enormous - 60m increase in TV revenue, 20m in prize money. Our gate receipts were down on last season, but we sold four times more season tickets so net spectator income is twice what it was.

Europe will bring in massive amounts of money next year too.

Stats from the season:

Tranmere average attendance was 100% - not a seat was empty the whole season.
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We were 15th in net transfer spend, shelling out 7m. Spurs actually made money on the transfer market.
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Our total salary costs were 20th by some margin. We paid less than 10% of the Man City salary
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[liquefry]

Team stats:

We were 6th in average possession at 52%. We also had the second highest yellow cards... our players not scared of going in hard.
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Individually our players did very well. Key passes were a particularly dominant stat - Da Silva had almost twice as much as any non-Tranmere player.
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[Tracz]

Congratulations on finishing 3rd!!! Im sure your wage bill is going to rise very quickly now, atleast i hope it does or you may struggle with all the comps, fingers crossed you can keep hold of gabriel, but atleast youve got him tied to long term deal now if city or who ever do come in, has his value sky rocketed?

 

[liquefry]

Yeah he is worth 21.5M on the books.

Comparing his stats now to the start of the year:
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His finishing is now an incredible 19, and his composure and work rate have gone up a lot (had him on composure training for quite a while this year). He's also gotten faster, more agile and stronger... basically getting better and better.

 

[liquefry]

Another analysis for transfer dealings. Here's a snapshot of my players sorted by book value, with age, contract details, potential and current ability shown.
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Players that have not yet reached their potential, and are less than 25 - these guys will still go up in value with more game time:
- Gabriel, Torrano, Kent, Di Gennaro, Barbosa, Schatzschneider, Gibson, Skokic, Knudsen (and some more in the reserves/U18s)

Players that have reached their max potential, and played a lot this year so have a high value:
- Macleod, Da Silva, Towell, Sweeney, Galloway, Teixeira, Haroyan, Daniels, Stockton (his value went up to 6m from 2 in January, I only played him a few times!), Figueiras, Fabio. fon Williams didnt play much so he's already going down in value.

I could probably sell all these players and replace them with someone of equal or better current skill, with growth potential. Da Silva and Sweeney have a particularly high value. Note that if I wanted to sell any of these guys, I'd probably get 1.5-2 times their book price since they're still young. To avoid upheaval in the team though it would be wise to keep a few.

For example Sweeney is valued at around 10m, Jonathan Tah at Hamburg at 11m
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Would be a good trade if we can manage it - Tah is still growing too. Just a random example, there will be other options too. Basically my guys are all overvalued because they're part of a winning lineup, which masks the fact that many of them are actually fairly average. This puts us in a good position to strengthen up the squad.

 

[liquefry]

Update January 2019:

It's been a rollercoaster ride through 2018, but we've ended on a high.

July transfers did not go entirely according to plan. I listed Richie Towell, Pierce Sweeney and Donervon Daniels, but while they were all "wanted" by clubs we didnt get any serious offers. I did need to bolster the squad though, as we lost our loanees Nathan Ake, Ryan Kent, Brendan Galloway and Ruben Barbosa. Everton and Liverpool were not keen to let Kent and Galloway play for us again. Ake was available for transfer, but asked for a 4million signing fee and a very high salary - not really worth it. Barbosa was available but his club (Heerenveen) wanted a monthly fee of 250k... no way! So we needed to plug gaps in the AML and MC positions in particular. My first choice AML is Joao Teixeira, so we need a good backup or starter that can allow Teixeira to shift into MC. DL was also a bit of a problem but we have a youngster that is fairly capable coming through the ranks (Skokic) and Fabio as a starter for now. On the plus side, we picked up Billing for free so we had two good options for DM in Da Silva and Billing.

We did successfully sell Oshilaja and Chafer for 2m total, and let some players leave on frees to free up the salary budget. The board had given me 30M to play with... is it enough to pick up some starting XI players?

I hit the transfer market with what I had to play with.

For AML the best recommendations from my scouts were Josh Murphy at Norwich, and Vaclav Cerny or Kevin Doyle at Ajax. All players are young with growth potential, but ready for first team game time now, and all valued at less than 10M.

I optimistically offered the asking price to Norwich for Josh Murphy - they wanted 150M. Yikes! Ajax was similarly unreasonable with the other youngsters. In desparation I asked Steve Coppell, the Director of Football, to recommend targets for the AML position.

The best of his suggestions was Luca Garritano, a 24 year old from Cesena in Serie A. He had been a first team regular for Cesena for 3 years, and averaged in the mid 7s for performance. I asked Steve to pick him up, and he signed a deal for 4M - bargain.

Here's Garritano in January 2019:
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We had similar trouble with the MC position, but managed to pick up Wilfrid Kaptoum on loan from Barca. He is a solid performer and will work as a good first choice with Macleod or Teixeira, and youngster Mezzetti maturing as a backup.
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While looking for DLs I found a particularly enticing DC. I was thinking that if I sell Sweeney and Daniels I'll need another youngster coming through, so picked him up from Utrecht. Cost me almost 10M though. I have to admit that I was swayed by his awesome name: Jelle Schaken. My young kids enjoy a song called "wibble wobble Jelly on a plate"... every time I see him I am reminded of that song with jelly shakin'!

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Another U20s world cup player joined us in July as well for a low fee, Abubakar Oliseh of Nigeria. He is a future DM/MC star but not yet ready for the first team. I farmed him out to a loan club in Europe as I wasnt able to get a work permit immediately, but managed to get one on the second go in October or so.
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[liquefry]

August-September 2018 review:

The season started off so-so, at the Community Shield. We were playing Man Utd, and took them the distance - the game finished 1-1. Unfortunately we lost (easily) in penalties.

After this disappointment, we won our first match at home to Liverpool 3-0. A bright start to the season! We then fell into an immediate slump: lost 2-4 away to Newcastle, then drew with Chelsea, West Brom and Atletico (in the Champions League). This left us in 11th place on the table. We rounded off September with narrow wins against Norwich and Swansea in the Premier League, bringing us back up to 7th position, and a massive 4-0 win against Brighton in the Capital One Cup.

 

[liquefry]

October-December 2018 review:

October was a successful month for us:
- Wins in the Champions League against Gelsenkirchen (2-1) and Malmo (2-1)
- Won 2-0 against West Ham in the EPL, followed by a hard fought 0-0 draw against Man City, and a win against Tottenham (2-1)
- Won in the Capital Cup 4th round against Stoke (2-0).

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However, it wasn't all good news - Gabriel, our star player and the focus of much of our attacking play, suffered a 2 month injury after dislocating his shoulder against West Ham. This made Stockton our first choice striker, but my assistant rates him only as "leading player for Championship sides" - not Premier League material. While Stockton played all the following games, he didnt score once and rated in the low 6s each time.

We started to suffer from Gabriel's loss in November. Scoring from the midfield dried up, and our performance went patchy:

The month started well with wins against Malmo and Villa at Prenton Park. Then we lost away to Everton 2-0, and to Atletico at home 2-1. We drew with Middlesborough 1-1 and were officially in a slump. Our forwards were not capable of scoring, and the team was suffering, morale dropping - bad signs all round!

This is when Gabriel returned from injury, and rather than ease him into the team, I dropped him right into it. We won the next game against Southamption 2-1, and slaughtered Sunderland 6-2 at home, with Gabriel scoring a return hat-trick and Teixeira back in scoring form as well.

A return to winning ways then? Not quite.

Gelsenkirchen beat us 1-0 in the Champs League to take the top spot in the group and put us into the unseeded group for the second round draw. Then we lost to Arsenal (3-4), Man Utd in the Capital Cup QF (1-2) and Charlton (3-4). Four losses in a row, including two with 4 goals scored against us! Gabriel's return had made a difference of sorts - those 3-4 scorelines both featured hat-tricks from him - but the defence had fallen apart. Not a great present for Christmas!

Somehow despite this lengthy period of poor results, we were still in 5th position in the Premier League, and through to the Champions League knockout stages.

We rounded out the year with a couple of morale boosting wins - 3-2 at home to Man Utd, and 5-1 away to struggling QPR. Against United Gabriel scored the winner in the 90th minute to send the crowd into raptures. He followed up with yet another hat trick in the game against QPR.

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[notsogoodmanager]

wow. what a performance from you. how do u do that? i mean from the scratch. how do u manage to win against all big clubs and be in premier league with such young squad? well done my friend well done. i wish i can do the same as you did.