Vitória SC - Youth to Gold (Rebirth)

[misterioBean]

Hello again everyone.
After a couple months since I last played FM due to lack of time and problems with save games crashing that made me not want to play I decided to restart this challenge with the same team. I actually waited some time for the new game update so we could start with everything updated. I was very sad to know SI didn't change players ability for Portugal's teams out of the "main 3" so I use pr0's files and changed some CA/PAs for the other teams, Vitória included (both for better and for worse).

First Thing's First - Staff

If you followed the last thread, I did basically everything the same way. Starting with a staff overhaul. The only difference was I didn't set João Aroso as a Fitness Coach and Moreno as my assistant. This time Aroso will be our assistant and Moreno just left the club. Everyone else was fired and replaced with exception of maybe 3 members who will remain at the club. The youth Staff was also filled as was the B Team.

The Squad

For those who don't know yet, Vitória is the team I support in real life so I'm very familiarized with the squad which makes it easier for me to decide who to keep, who to play and who to let go. This first update is being posted already in October so some transfers were already made.

So the first team squad for the first season looks like this. We have a good squad and some depth so we shouldn't have to worry much if someone gets injured.

Goalkeepers: Bruno Varela (27) will be our main option with Celton Biai (21) being a worthy backup who will most likely be getting game time in the cup games in order to get some experience and develop faster. We also have Matous Trmal loaned to Maritimo with an option to buy.

Left FB: Afonso Freitas (22) will be our main guy here. Ryoya Ogawa is a loaned player from Tokyo FC who has a 1M€ buy clause but with him being 24 years old he won't be an option for next seasons. Hélder Sá (19) was loaned out to Dijon to get game time.

Center-back - André Amaro (19) and Ibrahima Bamba (20) will play most games. They have a lot of quality and still a lot of potential in them. Villanueva is our 3rd option but he is already 29. Tounkara (20) is our 2nd backup but I'm trying to give him more time than Villanueva so he can develop more. Jorge Fernandes (24) would not play and was loaned out to Bristol City. We also have Borevkovic who is loaned to Hadjuk Split but he will leave on a permanent after the season ends.

Right FB: Miguel Maga (19) is our first option here. Bruno Gaspar (29) will be his backup for this season. Falaye Sacko is loaned at Montpellier and will be joining them on a permanent at the end of the season.

Defensive Midfielder: Zé Carlos (20) is loaned in player from Varzim but will be joining us in the end of the season for 800k. Manú Silva (21) is his backup and is showing very good signs of quality. Matheus Indio (22) will stay at the club as a 3rd option for depth.

Midfield: As for the other 2 midfield roles, André André (32) and Tiago Silva (29) will be our main guys. Their backups are Dani (22) and Tomás Handel (21), both very quality players with some potential.

Wingers: Jota Silva (22) and André Silva (25) will be picking up the wing spots for us. As their backups we have Nelson da Luz (24), Ruben Lameiras (27), Mikey Johnstone (23 loaned in from Celtic) and Yerson Chacón (19) who came from Deportivo Tachira for 600k. He will be Jota's main backup.

Strikers: As for our strikers, we have 3 decent ones. Safira (27) is our first choice striker and Anderson (24) will be his backup. If needed André Silva can play there as well.

The Tactic

I decided to keep the 4-3-3 system I used last time cause it showed good results and it's the tactic the best suits our team. Not much to say other than I intend to play a fast paced offensive style against every team we come across, even against better teams. I'm trying to create a club's DNA that will stick for the entire save.

Transfers

Some of the business made were already mentioned and there wasn't much more.

Yerson Chacón (19) was the only player brought for the first team. I used him on FM22 and really enjoyed him so when my scouts recommended him I decided to give him another chance. Jostin Ángel (19) was brought for the B team and according to my scouts has a lot of potential.

As for the players who left us only Janvier was sold. Was able to get 600k for him as he went to Fulham. Like I said, Helder Sá and Jorge Fernandes were loaned out. The others are some players from the B team who have some potential. Our B team plays in Portugal's 3rd division and every player loaned out went to teams from divisions above. Special attention to Gonçalo Nogueira who is the best youngster at our academy, at least for now.

The next update will be at the beginning of the World Cup and I'll post the league table and talk about how our team has been playing having in mind our DNA vision.

 

[DanielSommerville]

Good luck with your journey .

 

[misterioBean]

Good luck with your journey .

Thanks!

 

[DanielSommerville]

Planning on managing in Portugal myself saw a few interesting teams in the lower leagues.

 

[misterioBean]

Planning on managing in Portugal myself saw a few interesting teams in the lower leagues.

There are definitely some teams that offer interesting saves. For instance Belenenses (the real Beleneses not Belenenses SAD), Estrela da Amadora, Leixões, Trofense, Varzim, Académica de Coimbra, Leiria and Vitória de Setúbal, all teams that already played in the top league but for a reason or another saw themselves relegated to lower leagues. And this is just teams playing in the 2nd/3rd tier, you can go even deeper to Campeonato Nacional which offers a very different league system and also has some teams worth a shot like Beira-mar or Olhanense.

I definitely feel Portugal is a fun country to manage in. The rules are not very strict, there isn't that much money as in other leagues which is already a bigger challenge. I might be a bit biased for being portuguese but I always enjoy managing here.

 

[DanielSommerville]

There are definitely some teams that offer interesting saves. For instance Belenenses (the real Beleneses not Belenenses SAD), Estrela da Amadora, Leixões, Trofense, Varzim, Académica de Coimbra, Leiria and Vitória de Setúbal, all teams that already played in the top league but for a reason or another saw themselves relegated to lower leagues. And this is just teams playing in the 2nd/3rd tier, you can go even deeper to Campeonato Nacional which offers a very different league system and also has some teams worth a shot like Beira-mar or Olhanense.

I definitely feel Portugal is a fun country to manage in. The rules are not very strict, there isn't that much money as in other leagues which is already a bigger challenge. I might be a bit biased for being portuguese but I always enjoy managing here.

Any team would you suggest kind of looking to build a team up

 

[misterioBean]

Any team would you suggest kind of looking to build a team up

Depends on what you mean by building a team up.

Every team outside Porto, Benfica and Sporting will be a good challenge. Vitória and Braga probably are the only other teams that may be less of a real challenge at least internally. Other than that you can go for any team. If you want to take one in the lower leagues you can pick any of the ones I mentioned.

I think Estrela da Amadora has good finances if I'm not mistaken. Also Portimonense has good finances.

 

[DanielSommerville]

Depends on what you mean by building a team up.

Every team outside Porto, Benfica and Sporting will be a good challenge. Vitória and Braga probably are the only other teams that may be less of a real challenge at least internally. Other than that you can go for any team. If you want to take one in the lower leagues you can pick any of the ones I mentioned.

I think Estrela da Amadora has good finances if I'm not mistaken. Also Portimonense has good finances.

Will take a peak of them

 

[misterioBean]

January Update

Hello again everyone.
In the last post I said this update was coming at the beginning of the World Cup. However, I forgot that the portuguese Allianz Cup starts while the World Cup is still on, so I decided to postpone the update until February and this way it will already include the winter transfer window.

League Games + Table

So I guess the tactic is working better than I was expecting. In 19 games we have 16 wins, 1 loss and 2 draws, one of those being against Benfica. We also won 3-1 away against Sporting and 2-1 against our eternal rivals Braga. We have been playing fantastic football just like I wanted my team to, playing fast paced football and pressing when we lose the ball. We had games in which we completely dominated the opposition. I must say tho, we didn't deserve them all:

All of us FM players know the feeling of getting FM'd, but when it happens to the AI it hits different. Sporting absolutelly deserved the win here, but we took all the chances we created and they didn't. I mean only 2 shots on target out of 16 is a clear indicator that their shooting was awful.

So, with all of this, we currently sit in the 1st position, scored 43 goals and conceded 8 with a goal difference of 35, the best in the league. Sporting has been ahead of us the entire season and we are basically in 2nd as they are 1 game behind and will play against Chaves who are last in the league with only 5 points. However, being 2nd in the league 6 points ahead of Porto and 10 of Benfica is still an awesome permormance so far.

Cups + UECL

The scenery is not very different here. For those who don't know the portuguese competitions very well, there are 2 cup competitions: Taça Placard (better know as Taça de Portugal or Portuguese Cup) and Allianz Cup (aka Taça da Liga). The latter one consists of a group stage followed by quarter finals, semi finals and the finals. We managed to win our group and beat Marítimo in the quarter finals, but Sporting got their revenge at us winning on penalties and ending our dreams of winning this competition.

We still have good chances on the Taça de Portugal. We will play against Boavista in the sixth round (basically the quarter finals). I'm hoping we can reach the finals. In fact, Vitória only has 2 trophies on their cabine, one of them being the Taça de Portugal, won against Benfica in 2013. It would be great to win it again 10 years later.

In the UECL it looks pretty much the same. Only AZ Alkmaar were able to beat us once. We went through the group stages in 1st place with 0 losses and 14 points, 3 points ahead of Basel.

January Transfer Window

This winter brought a lot more movement than the summer transfer window to Guimarães. Let's start with who left us:

3 players left Guimarães. The first one was Rúben Lameiras. He was unhappy, barelly played the entire season and was our worst winger so I decided to let him go for 400k, the most I could get for him. He was earning 20k monthly and our best wingers were only earning half that so letting him go was the best. Tiago Silva also left to West Ham. This one was forced by the player. He wanted to leave and with him being highly influential I didn't want him to get the team's moral down. We got 4.5M€ for him but Olympiakos got 50% of it. He also had a salary of around 20k so we freed more wage budget. The last one cost me a lot. Flamengo came in with a bid of 9M + objectives and my board accepted it becuase they said it was too good to refuse. He only had a 7M€ evaluation so at least we got them to overpay. He wasn't our best striker so he shouldn't be unreplaceble.

As for the players who joined us, we had 2 youngsters joining immediatelly and 2 other who will join us in July.

Matthew Craig was the first to join us for 275k from Tottenham. With 18 determination and a decent work rate I'm expecting him to grow a lot. The physical stats are not that good but I'm hoping he can develop and become a decent team player. He is already worth more than we paid for him so that's a good sign.

After seeing that Anderson was most likely leaving, I had to go look for a replacement and this guy showed up. With a price tag of only 550k I couldn't let him pass. He is 18 years onld and seems pretty decent already. His determination is a bit under what I was looking for but with some mentoring I'm certain it will go up. He is also earning less than Anderson was so that's another plus.

With those deals done, we went ahead and secured Samuel Giovane and Diogo Spencer for the next season. I won't show them yet but they both look great and will most likely be a part of the first team once they join us.

A lot of our young players got new contract deals as well to reduce the interest from other clubs. Ibrahima Bamba, André Amaro, Tomás Handel, Dani Silva, Miguel Maga, Afonso Freitas and Gonçalo Nogueira.

Youth Intake

Our first youth intake looks promising, but I learned the hard way not to get much excitement out of this first report. I will show the best ones in the next update.

Board requests

With our mission of using the youth system to the best of it's capabilities I requested to increase both the junior coaching budget and the youth recruitment, both of which required further talks with the board to get them on board with the idea. They also agreed to improve the training facilities which is very nice. We didn't have an option to improve the youth facilities but I'm hoping we will be able to do it soon.

So this update ended up being a lot bigger than antecipated.
For those who read it this far, thanks and I'll see you in June.

 

[misterioBean]

End of First Season

The first season of our Youth to Gold challenge has come to an end and I must say, I didn't see it ending this way.

Schedule + Table

After a very good first half of the season, we ended it very poorly with some of the worst performances we played the entire year. After us and Sporting being ahead of everyone, Porto and Benfica came back in the last games and got over the league table. In fact, after the loss in our last game of the season we moved 2 places down the league table. As you can see, we weren't good enough on the other competitions too, losing to Boavista and Real Betis on both the Taça de Portugal and UECL quarter finals. What we thought was going to be a season to remember turned out to be a heartbreaking one. Next year, we come back stronger.

The Squad and Initial Plans

Throughout the season our starting 11 didn't change that much. Tomás Handel and Dani Silva took over the midfield after Tiago Silva left but every other position remained basically the same. Varela demanded a new contract and when I refused he put the squad against me so I had to give it up to him, even having to move the budgets around. Celton Biai decided not to renew his contract and will be leaving next season.

As for the players I intend to sell, there are some: Ogawa and Johnstone are leaving to their respective clubs after their loan spells; Celton Biai will be sold so we don't lose him for free; Bruno Gaspar will be sold as he is not good enough to be a part of the team from now on; Matheus Indio saw very little gaming time and is not up to the rest of the team so he will be also leaving. Other than that I'm not expecting to sell anyone unless the release clauses are met.

Under-19's and Youth Intake

Our Under-19's squad has some very good prospects in them. I forgot to take a screenshot of this at the beginning of the season so there's not really a way for you to compare it but all I need to say is most of the players with 3.5 PA and above are from the youth intake. Here are screenshots of the best 6:



On another topic, our B team were promoted from the 3rd division to the 2nd so next year the best players will be kept unless there are offers from 1st division teams.

Next Season Budget

The board gave us 7M€ to start the next season with which was what he had left from this one. Even tho we qualified to the UCL I wasn't expecting any investment because Vitória is not really a club that sees money injections at all.

I guess this is everything for now, we will be back at July to talk about the initial preparations for the upcoming season.

 

[misterioBean]

The Start of the 2nd Season

We're currently on the 9th of July, 6 days into the pre-season of the new season.
Last season we had a tremendous season, even though we eventually lost the title on the final gameday. This year I really hope we can go ahead and do the same, but I know it won't be easy, we can't rely only on the other teams not performing, we need to worry about how we perform in order to get there and stay there.

Like I said in the last post, I wasn't expecting much movement in the beginning of the new transfer window, but we did have some moves both in and out the club.

Transfers

Let's start by having a look at who already left us this summer:

Most of the players here weren't even mentioned before. Roka, Astaldi and Saviolo were all in our U19's. None of them had enough potential so I decided to sell them. I was really impressed when Vizela offered 190k fo Saviolo, I was expecting to sell them all for basically nothing.

Falaye Sacko and Toni Borevkovic were both out on loan last season and had their buy clauses triggered by their teams. Since this were already pre-established the 3M we would eventually get for them didn't actually get paid.

Jorge Fernandes came back from his loan and I decided to sell him, we only got 350k because Porto had 50% of the next sale, but still money is money. Matheus Indio didn't play enough last year and didn't have the quality needed to be here so 275k + objectives is not that bad.

This are players who were in the B team and were sold, the transfers don't show as 1st team transfers.
Once again, most of them weren't mentioned before. Only Celton Biai who was our 2nd GK last year but refused to renew his contract, so he moved to Austria for 1.1M€. The other players didn't have enough potential and had repectable salaries, we got 400k for them all.
Bruno Gaspar was also sold in June for 140k.

Now let's take a look at who joined us.

Like mentioned before, Zé Carlos was an already established transfer.
Diogo Spencer and Giovane both signed pre-contracts in January. Jefferson was a player loaned in to our B team last year who had a 30k buy clause, I activated it as soon as he accepted to discuss contract negotiations because he turned 20 in March.
I think a lot of people already know Ryste, I never used him before but he looks very good. He cost us almost 2M though so I'm expecting him to develop a lot.
Segura showed up on a scout report and he seemed cheap for his stats. Aimar Pena was a similar case but he was without a club so this was more of a oportunistic sign. Last but hopefully not least, Mycael was recommended by our scouts and was very cheap.

I will post their profiles now so you guys can have a look.

Diogo Spencer

Spencer was the first player confirmed for this new season. With 19 years old he already looks decent. Definitelly better than Bruno Gaspar was. Lacks a bit when deffending but we will work harder on that to improve his marking and positioning. Offensivelly he looks pretty decent though.

Samuel Giovane

The only other player to agree to join us in January. Giovane is already 20 but was 19 when he signed the contract. Very much like Spencer, he looks decent already. He will be training the B2B position and hopefully take it once Dani leaves.

Jefferson

Not much to say about this one. He had a 30k buy clause and was worth 200k so I decided to buy him for profit later.

Hartveit Ryste

18 years old, 16 determination, resolute personality and already good stats with a lot of potential. 1.9M seemed like a good price to pay for this gem.

Aimar Pena

I had some worries about this one. Mainly the fact he only has 8 finishing as a striker and doesn't play any other position. But with 16 determination, 14 acceleration + pace, 13 composure and 12 off ball as base stats I took a chance on him. Hopefully he will develop well. But even if he doesn't, his transfer value already starts at 1.7M so he will give us money.

Luís Segura

Good technical and physical attributes with 15 determination and a decent personality. Lacks mental attributes but I'm hoping to get them up rather sooner than later. Also only 18 years but can have problems with injuries...hopefully not.

Mycael

19 year old goalkeeper who joined for basically no money. I'm putting faith in him even though he doesn't look nothing great. Even if he doesn't, he was cheap and can be sold for profit.

The squad Overview

With all this additions, I decided to call them all up to the 1st team and make them available to the B team. The reason for this is I included basically every young player on a mentoring group.

Goalkeeper: Varela (28) will be the first choice once again. This time his backup will be Trmal (24), who came back from loan. Mycael (19) will be the 3rd choice.

Right-back: Maga (20) will also stay as the first choice. I think the star rating is low because Zé Carlos is considered a RB instead of a DM so I don't care about that. Spencer (19) will be his backup and Mutombo (20) will be the 3rd option.

Center-back: Nothing new here. Same 4 players we had last season. Amaro (20) and Bamba (21) are by far our best players. Tounkara (21) is still developing and Villanueva (30) gives us experience.

Left-Back: Afonso Freitas (23) will keep the spot and Hélder Sá (20) will be his backup for the season.

Defensive Midfielder: Zé Carlos (21) and Manú Silva (22) are the main choices with Craig (20) as the 3rd option.

B2B: Dani Silva (23) will take André André's (33) spot for the season with the latter as his backup. Giovane (20) will be another choice.

Advanced Playmaker: Tomás Handel (22) will be the main guy and Gonçalo Nogueira (19) is his backup. Angel (20) was called from the B team to be the 3rd option.

Wingers: Jota Silva (23) and André Silva (26) will still be our main guys. After the season both of them had it couldn't be in any other way. Yerson Chacon (20) and Nelson da Luz (25) are still their backups and now they will be joined by another call up from the academy, Jota (20) and the new reinforcement Seguro (18). Herculano Nabian (19) also came back from his loan in Italy and will be training to be a winger instead of a striker.

Striker: With Anderson out of the picture Safira (28) emerges as the only realistic option as our main man. However, with Caraballo (19), Ryste (18) and Pena (19) he will have a lot more competition for this spot.

I will post some screenshots of the younger players so you can see how they are developping. I know I forgot to share them at the beginning of the save but nothing I can do about that now. But I can show you how they are now.

 

[misterioBean]

Player Develpment

We have a lot of players to cover here, basically because our team's average age is very young so most of the players are still developing.
Let's do this by position. We don't have any goalkeepers worth showing. Varela is already 28 and Biai left us, Trmal is already 24 and won't be playing a lot so I'm not expecting a lot of development here.

Center-back however is a different story. Out of our 4 options 3 of them are still improving every day.



André Amaro looks amazing. Still 20 years old and has potential in him, he will be a huge player for us if we are able to keep him. Unfortunately, we had to renew his contract and his agent demanded a release clause reduction from 50M to 27M. I think he could go for even more but I couldn't get the release clause out of the deal.

His partner, Ibrahima Bamba. A different type of center-back but still looks crazy. I think this pairing was crucial for the amount of goals we suffered last year. Amaro is a stronger CB while Bamba gives us the speed to catch up to the strikers. His release clause went from 30M to 45M so I'm not very worried about him leaving.

Tounkara is solid but nowhere near the other 2. His main flaws are definitely his mentals. If he could develop those he would be a very good backup.

Now for both the full-back positions we have 5 options and all of them are young:



Afonso Freitas is a right footed left-back. Don't ask me why but he really is. The thing is he plays very comfortably with both feet, which is not really reflected in the game. In fact, he plays mostly with his left foot. Anyway, he developed really well. Initially he wasn't very good defense wise but with some focused training he got there. His mentals also saw big improvments since last year.

Hélder Sá was loaned out last season because we had Ogawa but this year he will have to step up. During his loan he didn't develop as much as I wished. I did lower his stats though so now he is basically how he looks in a non-modified database I guess. I definitelly noticed he developed defensively because I'm pretty sure he didn't have 12 marking. Not that that's good but still, development is development.



On the other side we have Maga. He didn't develop nearly as much as he should, having in mind he played almost every single game last season. He is not bad at all but he should look a lot better by now.

I already showed Spencer and now Mutombo will be fighting with him for the backup spot. As you can see Spencer is clearly better. But now that I'm looking at him more closely his finishing is crazy for a full back. I may start training him as a inverted winger or even as a striker.

We have a lot of players in our midfield still developing, so here they are:



Zé Carlos is obviously a player we should build the team around. The guy can play in every midfield role effectivelly and can still play as a RB if needed in which he is supposedly our best option. His mentals are what makes him for me. No crazy technicals or physicals but when you have mentals as balanced as him you will play for me.

Manu silva has taken every chance he could to develop and he absolutely did. He may not have a lot of potential still in him but he is already a very solid option for us.

Lastly for the DM position we have Craig, whi sgned last season in January. He developed a bit but nothing crazy. I think he wasn't getting any game time last season because I didn't register him so my bad I guess.



Our midfield is closed with this gems. Dani completely wiped André André from the B2B role. He developed so much it's not even funny, specially mentally. He was getting mentoring from both André André and Tiago Silva and it definitely shows here.

Handel has been a very good player for at least 3 FM editions now. I don't know what it is but SI seem to like him a lot even with him being injured for over a year recently. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it, when he came back he showed no signs of getting worse. When Tiago left, he absolutely killed it in a position and role that weren't his bests but he still developed a lot and now looks insane as a creative midfielder.

Angel suffered from the same misfortune as Craig since I forgot to register him so he got no playing time all season. It may have killed his potential cause he doesn't look anything special and being already 20 years his development margin is not that big anymore.

Gonçalo Nogueira is perhaps the best young player we have at the moment outside the first 11. He was loaned out for the first half of last season and was recalled when Tiago left. With only 19 years he looks amazing. He just needs a bit more mentals and physicals and he will jump straight into the main 11.



Jota Silva had 28 goal contributions last season, with 19 goals and 9 assists. He's pacy and has decent dribbling so it's not hard to imagine how he got those numbers. Easily our main choice for the wing.

I was kind of hoping to see Chacon better at this point. He did develop but not as much as I wished. He only played 13 games last season though due to injury so I'm hoping to see more of him this year.

The last player in the wing is Jota Pereira. It's clear he needs more time to develop as his mentals are what's bringing him down. Hoping his determination goes up. Sad to see because I really enjoy watching him play IRL.



Finally we reached the strikers. Firstly, we have Caraballo. He developed a bit since he joined in January but he needs more game time.
And lastly, we have Herculano who came back from a loan in which he only played 2 official games. I couldn't bring him back so he was literally stuck in Italy. He is't anything special and I doubt he will develop a lot but I will try to retrain him as a winger instead to take advantage of his pace.

With all the players we brought in, the squad has an average age of only 22 years old. The average for the league is 25 so we are definitely on a very good way in this challenge. Now we just need to win some trophies.

I will post a new update in September will all the news from the summer transfer window and the first games of the season.

 

[misterioBean]

September 1st Update

The transfer window is finally over and I say "finally" because it was chaotic in terms of offers.
But before talking about that let's take a look at the less interesting stuff, like our schedule and UCL journey, which may have come to an end (or not).

The League

We only had 2 league games so far and we got a win in both of them, including a win at D.Afonso Henriques (our stadium for context) against Porto. This game was interesting to say the least:

As you can see, we scored in the 2nd minute, Porto had 2 red carded players and Safira failed a penalty. All in the first half of the game. The second half was super boring with no relevant plays. But let's take a second to appreciate the demolishing they suffered. 31 shots for us against 6 of them, 10 on target for us against their 0 and 66% possession. Could this be a good sign for the rest of the season? Honestly I would like to get a season like the last one but keeping the 1st place, or even the 2nd... Let's hope and see.

The table looks like this, it's obviously still too soon to say anything but a win against Arouca on our next game could see us rise to the 1st place already.

The Champions League

Finishing in 3rd in Portugal sent us to the UCL qualifying rounds, where we faced AEK for a place in the playoffs. We had a confortable lead at home so I had the second team play the second leg and we still won. After that easy(ish) round, we went against Celtic and, much for my surprise, we won the first game 2-0. So I decided to do the same as I did against AEK and played my second team (mostly) and that almost cost us a place in the group stage, but in the end the 1st leg win made us go through and Vitória are in the UCL group stage for the 1st time in their history.

However, we may not be getting further, and here's why:

I can't see us beating any of this teams, at least not yet. But this is football and everything can happen, could we be lucky enough to beat at least Monaco in Guimarães? Let's wait and see!

Transfers out

Now that's taken cared of, let's see who left us this Summer.



After all the other transfers we already saw, we had only 2 "important" sales.

The first one was the transfer of our backup right winger Nelson da Luz. This sale wasn't easy to decide. We don't really have any player ready to play on his position as well as he did, but he was already 25 and Union Berlin paid 3M€ for only 50% of the player. When I sell players I always try to include a "Percentage of Next Transfer" policy, usually 50%. Getting 3M now and 50% of a future transfer for a player who was only worth around 2.5M seemed like a very nice bid to let go.

The other sale was our backup goalkeeper Matous Trmal, who was loaned out last season. Rennes came with a proposal of 1.2M if I'm not mistaken and I refused, which made Trmal very angry. Being 24, I told him I would sell him if they came back with a 2.5M offer, which they did and, once again, only for 50% of a future transfer. 2.5M was already above his value and I still got 50% of his next trasnfer deal. Can't complain about that.

However, that put us in a bit of a bad situation, since our backup keeper from that moment on was Mycael, who is not even close of being ready for that. The offer for Trmal came on the transfer deadline day, so we had to move fast.

Transfers In

With Trmal leaving us we had to look for a goalkeeper who was good enough to be our backup keeper. with the condition of being no older than 19 years old. Some options came up:

The first player who came up was Diego Callai. Nothing special but a lof of potential. I sent a loan offer with an option to buy of 1.3M€ which was accepted but the player decided not to come. We could sign him on a permanent but he wanted more than what the scout report said so I decided not to sign him.

Besiktas's Emre Bilgin showed up as well and he looked better than Diego so I sent another loan offer with a buy clause of 2M which was accepted but once again the player rejected. I tried signing him on a permanent as well but he was asking for 30k a month so I said no.

With no other options showing up on our scouting reports, I was about to give up, until our reports came back with 2 other options:

This guy was the first one that showed up and I'ma be honest, I went against my scout recommendation on this one. I know his mentals are awful but being only 17 years old and coming on a free transfer I don't know how he only has the potential shown. I think I saw some people talking about this guy, not sure if he got nerfed with the new update but not spending any money on him doesn't make it a risky transfer in any way so I decided to give him a shot.

He is not joining until next season though. He can only leave his club at 18 and I decided to loan him to his club until then. So we still had to find another one, until this one showed up:

I mean he is not a beast in any meaning of the word, but he looks good enough to take the spot in Varela can't play. He is loaned in with an option to buy of 3.3M, which will most likely be activated.

In other transfers, Zach Awe joined us from Arsenal for 550k plus 400k after 50 games played. I could have payed everything up front but whatever. He looks decent enough and will hopefully develop a lot.

Fernando Basante came on a scout report and I immediatelly said "I have to sign him". When I saw he would only cost around 500k I just couldn't help myself. I was even capable of reducing it to 350k. The only problem with him was he was almost turning 20...

As you can see, he agreed to join us in the 20th of july, turning 20 just 6 days after he signed the contract. I was advancing the time hoping he would be quick and he didn't take more than 4 days to agree to the contract. He remained at his club on loan for development.

But the main reason I said this transfer window was chaotic was not anything of the above.
We were getting offers for almost every first team player. Mainly Ibrahima Bamba. We got offers from Man. United for him but I refuse to sell him for under his clause of 45M. But they kept coming every time and it made Bamba impatient, I told him I would sell him if they paid his clause, but they ended up not doing it so he will stay with us at least until January.

Final Thougths

One of the biggest goals of a Youth to Gold challenge is to buy players for cheap and sell them for fortunes, making a lot of money out of the deals. It's still too early to really think about selling the players we just bought, but it's always nice to keep the balance in our favor.

With all the transfers we saw this summer, we made around 6M€ of profit, getting around 10M and only spending 4.1M all summer.

One other thing I forgot to show on our first post was the clubs finances. They look way better now because we got UCL money and everything but it's not that good yet. We also have debts to pay but I guess those will still be here until 2027.

Guess that's everything for now.
See you in January!

 

[Tuttocampista69]

Nice one. You should check B teams of top Spanish clubs for decent talents. The best ones are often much better than most of Liga NOS starters and you can often get them for free.

 

[misterioBean]

Nice one. You should check B teams of top Spanish clubs for decent talents. The best ones are often much better than most of Liga NOS starters and you can often get them for free.

Thanks for the advice.

I have a scout focusing on finding players on Portugal, Spain and France. He should have brought some already but I'll make sure to ask for individual reports.

 

[misterioBean]

Mid Season Update

We reached February after what I have to say was a trully hard transfer window to go through.
I'll show you what I mean in a bit but first let's see how this 2nd season is going so far.

League and Cups

So the league schedule seems very similar to last year, only 2 defeats and 1 draw all season, 2 of which were expected but the other was just terrible.

We are currently 3rd in the league table but we are 2 games back from Benfica and 4 from Porto so if we win them all we could actually equal Porto's current score.

We are also in the semi finals of the Taça de Portugal. We will play against Sporting and try to get our revenge from the league loss back in November.

There is one more cup in Portugal and well, see for yourselves:

For the first time in our history, we are the Taça da Liga's champions. Beating Braga in the finals just gives it a whole different taste as well.

Champions League

As antecipated we were wiped from the UCL, only managing to draw 2 of the 6 games we played. We did hold Real Madrid in our home and only lost 2-1 in the Santiago Bernabeu so at least that's something. We also played quite well in every game, except for maybe the 3-1 loss in Germany but still, a lot of good things were seen here.

Transfers Out

This winter window was undoubtedly the most stressfull since we began this challenge. Literally every player from the starting 11 got bids, most we were able to keep but there were some big losses.

As you can see, we lost 3 of our best players and all of them were in our backline. Amaro got a bid from Milan in the deadline day in which they paid his release clause. Man. City met Bamba's release clause some days before but the deal was only confirmed in the last day. So we basically lost both our starting CB's and if you watch closely you will see we also sold Villanueva earlier in January for 1.6M. To add to this, we also lost our best LB in Afonso Freitas, who literally forced his sale. I mean we sold him for twice what he was worth and still got 50% of a future transfer so at least that was nice.

Fernando Basante came back from loan but went straigh back because he just doesn't have a place in our team and you can also see Ricardo Caraballo, our 2nd striker, was also loaned out. Nathaniel Nwosu officially joined us after turning 18 and was loaned out to his original club for the rest of the season. Alexsander Andresen joined us in the deadline day and was also loaned out to his home club until the end of the season.

Transfers In

So with all the money we made and with only 1 CB left in our squad, this being Tounkara, it was time to go shopping. Unfortunately, the main guy I was after was stolen from Man. City too. I mean they literally bought Bamba and still went and stole his replacement from us. That's just sad. Btw the player I wanted was Maro Katinic, who plays for Dinamo Zagreb.

With this disappointment we had to search for alternatives:

I think we were able to use the money we were given quite effectively. I can tell you that out of the 10 players who joined us in January, 3 of them are CB and another 2 can play as CB as well, so we replaced everyone who left us. Let's take a look at them shall we?

Mario Martin

When this guy showed up in my scout reports for a value of around 2M I couldn't say no. The 19 year old DLP already has very good stats and with 19 determination and 15 work rate he has everything to develop even more.

Semih Kiliçsoy

Another striker with amazing potential, already looks better than Caraballo but was a bit more expensive. The deal will reach 8M after 50 matches played. He wasn't the reason Caraballo left though.

Jair

A player my scouts were suggesting ever since they saw him back in season 1 but was too expensive for me to even think about bringing. Amazing stats for a 18 year old CB and 8.5M didn't seem that much for a player like him. There's just one big problem, he already played for 2 different teams this season and can't play for us until next season. At least he will have some more time to develop in our U19's I guess...

Diogo Travassos

I've been watching him since last season as well. There's nothing crazy that pops out from him, but he is very balanced and is for sure a good addition to our squad depth, and he joined for only 2.5M.

Alexsander Andresen

18 years old, perfectionist with 18 determination for only 2M + 1.5M after 50 games. How could I say no to this? Exactly. He was loaned out to his club to develop a bit more since he was an important player there.

Milan Majstorovic

One of the players brought in to replace our backline. Once again, 18 years old, resolute with 15 determination is just too good to say no. 6.5M to bring him in seemed like nothing. I know he lacks a bit physically but I'm really hoping to see big improvments there.

Emir Ortakaya

This guy has been in my shortlist for a long time. He may not have the best potential, but he was the best affordable CB I could find. 13M was more than I wanted and 55k per month is also more than Bamba or Amaro were getting but we needed someone to come and jump straight in the starting 11. Also he is the only left footed CB we have right now.

Mateo Mendoza

He was offered to us in the deadline day for only 800k.We don't really need another RB, we have Maga and Spencer and brought Travassos as well, but he can also play as a CB if needed. Maybe not the best because he lacks mentals and physicals for a CB butit's still ncie to have the versatility.

Felipe Sánchez

The replacement we found for Afonso Freitas at the LB position. He won't be starting because Hélder Sá looks a bit better. The 4 determination scares me a little but we needed someone for LB and he can also play as a CB quite well.

So basically we replaced everyone who left and added a bit more depth to our squad. There was one other player I wanted but he refused the contract I offered, I may restart negotiations soon.

The Reason Caraballo was Loaned Out

Not a new transfer, but he just developed so much since the summer I just had to give him the chance to shine. Altough it says he has 0 games for the 1st team he actually played 5 games so far and scored 3 goals with an average rating of 7.60. Just looks amazing for a 18 year old.

Finances

Our finances obviously look very well after making over 43M in profit. You can think we have less budget than we should, that's because this happened:

Yeah, they only accepted the request after the transfer window was over. (RIP)

We were able to invest a little more money though.

Accepting to improve both the training and the youth facilities was very nice from our board. They just needed a bit of convincing to see how needed this was.

Other news

Our captain André André decided it was time to hang his boots. He was awesome for us last season but lost space this year. mainly staying here to mentor our young players.

Our youth intake looks awful this year. My scout team still have the audacity to say it's an excellent intake. Maybe I should replace everyone in the scouting department lol.

I know this was a huge post once again. I'm thinking about making smaller posts more frequently so maybe the next one will come after the youth intake comes out in March.

Thanks for reading!

 

[misterioBean]

End of Season Update

Hello everyone.
I know I said I would do an update after the youth intake came out but to be honest I forgot about it and just kept playing so we will be looking at how the second half of the season went.

Youth Intake

Since I said I was going to update when this came out let's start with it.
If you remember our youth intake overview wasn't exactly promising so I wasn't expecting much. We still got some nice players so let's take a look at them.



This year we signed 7 players to our U19's. In those 7 only one of them really caught my eye, that being Flávio Lamelas. Right now he already is better than he was when he first showed up and to be honest he would jump to the first team immediately if it wasn't for his physicals. But he is only 15 years old so those will go up in no time.

Schedule and League Table

After our win in the Taça da Liga we went on a 3 game streak without winning. This after saying we could jump to the 1st place if we won all our games. We were able to revert the situation and won our next 6 league games before drawing to Casa Pia followed by another draw against Paços de Ferreira. This draws made our league title race very difficult. We won our next 3 games, one of them against Sporting who was behind us but after this victory we had no chances of becoming champions.

In the middle of this league saga we also lost both our Taça de Portugal's semi finals features against Sporting. In the last 2 games I decided to give playing time to some of our youngsters since we couldn't go up nor down the league table anymore.

As you can see we finished 3rd once again, 4 points behind Porto but Benfica took over and finished 8 points clear. Comparing to last season it wasn't as exciting, I mean last year the 1st and 4th places were separated by only 5 points. If anything we are at least consolidating our position as one of Portugal's best teams. We also need to keep in mind this is just the 2nd season of this challenge and there's still much to come since the ultimate goal is to win the UCL and that is nowhere near becoming true.

One thing I didn't remember is that in 2nd season the 3rd place doesn't give access to the UCL playoffs anymore, granting access to the UEL group stage and the 4th and 5th place grant access to the UECL qualifying rounds. In this first picture you can see that we are only qualified for the UECL along with Sporting and Boavista. This happened because Sporting played against Benfica in the Taça de Portugal's final, which sends the winner to the UEL in case they aren't already qualified for it or the UCL. We needed Benfica to win if we wanted to at least be in the UEL next year...

Thankfully Benfica were able to beat Sporting which sent us directly to the UEL group stage.

You can also see our main striker Safira finished only 2 goals off the portuguese golden boot, but was the player with the most POTM awards this season, finishing with an average rating of 7.47. Also Varela had the 2nd best clean sheet record with 16. We also won Taça da Liga earier in the season so, all things considered, it was still a successful season.

Transfer Activity

With the season ending we need to start thinking about our team and where we need signings. Also who we should let go.

- Agreed Transfers

We already have some players who signed a contract for the next summer.

Diego Callai

We already had our eyes on him last year when Trmal left but decided to go with André Gomes instead. Although André Gomes is definitelly better than him, when we tried to activate the 3.3M clause on his loan deal he was asking to be a star player and way too much money for a player like him. Yes he is good but not good enough to bench Varela.

With him leaving Diego Callai was the only other player I thought about bringing in. He is close to turning 20 so the decision needed to be fast. He will be joining us for a fee of 975k, which is cheaper than André Gomes.

Jakob Napoleon Romsaas

We actually tried to sign him in January but he refused the contract I was offering. He was offered to us by his agent on deadline day for only 160k and that's what we will pay for him. 160k for a player that will probably be our starting RW for next season. His wage is a bit more than I wanted it to be, but I couldn't pass out on him.

And I know he is 20 but he was 19 when he agreed to sign us, as you can see below:

Miguel Constantinescu

This one was a bit different. He wasn't recommeded by our scouts. He showed up on an e-mail with young players portuguese clubs were releasing. I usually scout them all just in case and then I saw his scouting report. You are probably aware I'm a sucker for players with good personalities and high determination, so this shouldn't come as a surprise. He will be joining us for free and his wage will be basically nothing.

- Preparing our Own players

With the last 2 seasons our team had it became obvious we would be getting transfer offers when the transfer window opens again. With this in mind I went into the clauses section to see if we could buy any eventual transfer % and we had some.

I did the math on the players value and the % the other teams would get in case of selling and we would lose much more than we would buying out this clauses. Around 9M spent to ensure we didn't lose around 15M (minimum value).

We also renewed some contracts to try to reduce some of the interest from other clubs, mainly Miguel Maga, Hélder Sá, Diogo Spencer, Samuel Giovane and Herculano.

Other situations we have are Varela who is already on a 100k/m wage which I don't intend to increase, Jota Silva ho has no interest in renewing, Dani Silva who also has no interest renewing, Miguel Maga, despite signing a new contract, and Aimar Pena, who I don't mind letting.

Finances

Our finances look good but unfortunately they won't get much better without the UCL money next season. Let's hope we can at least give a good count of ourselves in the UEL and hopefully fight for a UCL place.

Later today I will do a development update like I did last season so you can see how our youngsters have developed.

See you then!

 

[misterioBean]

Development Update - Part 1

Last season I only showed the promising players but I thought I would show you the whole team this time so you can see what we are working with as a whole (I will split it into 2 different posts because there's more than 35 screenshots).

- Goalkeepers



You already saw in the last post the newest addition to this position, Diego Callai.

Varela is already approaching the 30 year mark and has interest from the Premier League so I may not keep him for next season but he is still very good and by far our best GK.

André Silva is good and has a lot of potential but he doesn't want to sign for us and when he did he was asking for way too much so we will be saying goodbye to him.

Mycael developed a bit and he still has potential so hopefully he can develop even more next year. The last player we have is Nwosu who was loaned out. Mentally he leaves much to be desired but his potential already went up by 1 star so he may still develop a lot since he is only 18.

- Central Defenders



In January we lost our 2 best CD's and still sold another one so we had to go look for replacements.
Since then, Tounkara really stepped up his game. I was thinking of selling him this summer since we signed so many other players for his position but he took his chance and now is our best CD.

Ortakaya came in as the most expensive signing of the club, costing us 13M€. He already developed quite well but he clearly lacked the fitness for our playstyle. I'm hoping he will pick it up with our pre-season schedules since those are really heavy.

Jair came in for 8.5M and didn't play a single game for the first team due to having already played for 2 different teams last season. He has been playing in our U19's which probably delayed his development.

Majstorovic didn't get better at all since he joined, having even declined. He cost us 6.5M so I'm really hoping he will develop a lot next year.

Mendoza is an interesting case. He initially came in for the RB position but after looking closely at him he will do much better as a CD. Just needs to develop his physicals and mentals because technically he is already very decent.

- Wing Backs



Miguel Maga is still our best RB but with interest from the Premier League we may see him leaving us next season. He has a 11M€ release clause for clubs in the UCL but for now only the newly promoted Wolves are interested.
Hélder Sá took over Afonso's place in January but hasn't developed much, which makes me think his potential is not as high as the reports say.
Travassos signed for us in January and just like Jair he didn't play any game for the same reason. He has been playing for the U19's as well and kept getting better every month. He is now our second RB.
Spencer also keeps improving and now I'm thinking about training either him or Travassos to play as a wing back in the left. This becasue our second LB is Jefferson and he is not really up to that challenge. He is probably leaving us this summer.

- Deep Lying Playmaker



Another position with a lot of players.
Zé Carlos is still our best player here and I love how much versatility he offers. He can literally play as a DLP, B2B, AP and even as a RB. I'm really debating if I should start training him as a LB because he is currently our best RB according to our assistant so he would jump straight in the LB position. This would open space for the rest of the guys here.

Martín came in from Real Madrid in January and has developed a bit. If Zé Carlos moves to LB he will be our main guy here.

Manu Silva is another very versatile player who can play in all midfield positions plus CB, which he already has and at a good level. He has interest from otehr clubs but I don't know if I should let him go or not because of his versatility.

Mathew Craig has developed a lot more since he started training as a DLP and just needs gaming time to develop more.

Francisco Fernandes was a player that came through our youth intake last year and he is a monster. 16 years old and is probably our 2nd option for this position already (not counting Zé Carlos and Manu).

This concludes the first part of this update and the second will be posted very soon!

 

[misterioBean]

Development Update - Part 2

- Box to Box



In this position I will only refer this 3 players but Zé Carlos and Manu Silva can easily jump to this position too.

Dani Silva is probably the best player in the whole team right now. He is a crucial member of the starting 11, not for scoring much or gicing many assists but as a midfielder that literally runs from a box to the other. Looking at his profile I would say his only weakness is shooting but I don't really expect him to so I can't say anything bad about him. However, he doesn't want to sign a new contract and will probably be sold to avoid morale issues.

Giovane is on his way to catch Dani. He has been very consistent in his development and with some more gaming time he will get better even faster.

We signed Andresen in January and he has been playing at his club until now. Hasn't develop much but he already looks decent so hopefully he will develop fast.

- Advanced Playmaker



Very much like the last position, we also have 3 players for this one plus Zé Carlos and Manu. Even Dani, Giovane and Andresen can play here so we are definitely good.

Handel has been our main guy and will probably still be here next year.

Gonçalo Nogueira needs a bit more development but it won't be long until he gets better than Handel.

Angel is the only player in the entire squad I don't see improving much from now on. He developed nicely in the last 2 months but has been very stall overall. I may keep him to play for our B team since his wages are not that high.

- Wingers



A lot of options here.
Jota Silva is still our best winger but is attracting a lot of interest from the Premier League and the Serie A so we may lose him.

André Silva is decent but won't develop any further and with his wages being quite high I wouldn't mind losing him.

Chacón is developing quite well and will be picking Jota's place if he leaves (most likely).

Herculano is a very interesting case to say the least. His stats are nothing amazing at all. In fact they are mediocre but everytime he plays he is able to get good ratings. He scored 3 goals, got 1 assist and 1 POTM award in 14 games, 12 of those he started on the bench. I will keep him here for the time being.

Jota Pereira played for our B team all year and had really good stats, 15 goals and 7 assists in 32 games as a winger is not that bad. In the 1st team however he only got a 6.6 rating in 3 games. I will keep him as well and see how he does.

Mutombo is in the same situation as Jota. The only difference is his wage is quite bigger.

Segura on the other hand played well for both the B team and the 1st team whenever he had his chance. 6.97 average rating in 3 games coming out of the bench isn't anything special but I will keep him here as well.

Afonso Martins was in our U19's and didn't have much potential but he showed up in our development center and has quite a good sheet so I called him up recently.

Bahamboula was loaned out the whole season and I'm debating if we should keep him or not since his sheet is not that bad.

Worth mentioning we will have 2 more wingers joining us in July so I really need to try to loan some of them.

- Strikers



Yet again a lot of good options here.

Safira absolutely killed it this year, scoring 37 goals in all competitions. He is 29 already though.

Ryste and Semih are both incredible and are developing very very well which may be a problem because we only play with 1 striker and if Safira doesn't leave one of them will go to waste.

Caraballo and Basante came in as hot prospects but both lost their places and have been playing for other teams which may happen again next season.

Pena is developing well but is till miles behind the others and with Wolves interested in him I won't have any complains with him leaving, specially since he joined us for free.

So this is everything, we have some good youngsters in our U19's but I think I will only show them when they make the first team.

I'll be back in either July or September, whichever I remember first.

 

[misterioBean]

Start of the 3rd Season

After some days off the game we finally got to the end of the summer transfer window once again.
This year we had a lot of movement in the market and some big ones as well. But before looking at that, let's look at how we are doing for now.

League Schedule and Table

We started our campaign with a very disappointing loss against Benfica and I say disappoiting because we scored at the 32th minute, immediatelly conceding 2m after and Benfica then scored at the 82th minute after Varela decided to give the ball to the attacker inside the box. After that mistake he was benched for the next 2 games and we went ahead to beat our rivals at their home and got a couple of good wins at home. In the last game Varela played because our backup, Callai, caught an injury.

So this is the table right now. Doesn't really say anything about what's to come because we are so early in. Let's hope we can reach the 2nd place this time to secure a Champions league spot.

Europa League

We also discovered who we will be facing in the UEL in the first season with the new continental competitions format. Let's take a look:

There's a couple of hard games there, specially Man. United and PSV, Sevilla, Besiktas and Ferencvaros won't be easy as well but I'm expecting wins agains Malmo, Lech and Crvena. If we can I would like to be in the first 24 places.

Transfers Out

We had a lot of players leaving us this summer. Most of them were on loan though.

As you can see there are a lot of known names there: Angel, Awe, Basante, Herculano, Segura, Mycael, Jair, Francisco Fernandes and Travassos all left to other clubs where they will have a lot more playing time. I tried to send them to 1st division clubs to maximize their growth.

Now for the actual sales, Soto was a B player with very little potential so I wasn't expecting to get much.

Jota was a decent player but I didn't see the potential in him so he was sold for 1.1M + 50% of a future transfer. Same as Mutombo.

André Silva had a high wage and wasn't that good compared to what we have in our squad so we got 12M for him, with no other clauses.

Dani Silva was a hard one to swallow. I rejected a bid for him and he turned the whole squad against me so I promised to sell him if we got 15M for him. Real Betis came in with an offer that exceeded that and still gave us a 20% of the profit made on a future transfer (I usually don't add this one but their offer was non-negotiable).

But the main sale I want to talk about is Aimar Pena. If you remember, we got him in our first season for free. He didn't play much for us, in fact he only had 3 appearances for the 1st team and 25 for the B team. Leicester agreed to buy him for 12M€ plus 50% of a next transfer. Looking at his sheet I couldn't refuse this deal.

We also had an interesting offer that got rejected by the player:

Varela decided to refuse playing in the Premier League to stay with us. The deal was a good one for us though since West Ham accpeted to pay 25M for him.

In total, we made 38.5M€ in sales this summer.

Transfers In

In terms of signings we had a lot of players coming our way. The first 3 you already know about so I won't be giving much attention to them. Let's take a look at the others!

- Luca Barani

I won't lie, I may have overpayed for this one. He doesn't look much but he does have the potential so hopefully he will pay off his value.

- Roi Torres

The second player to join us from Real Madrid academy. Once again he doesn't look like much, specially techically but the techincals are the easiest to develop. He only cost us 375k so the investment wasn't that much in case he doesn't pay off.

- Mohamed Cisse

In my opinion this was the best deal we got all summer. For a 18 year old he already looks amazing and only cost us 5.75M. When we bought him I decided to loan him out because I din't think he was going to get much gaming time and Málaga plays in LaLiga so he is getting 1st division experience nontheless.

- Oscar Perea

Looking at him he honestly doesn't look great. We payed 1.2M but he is already wortth at least 5M... Sometimes FM is weird but if he is another Pena I'll happilly hold him for a season or 2 and sell him for good profit.

- Samuel Unsold

600k for this striker? Just seemed too good to pass out. Much like Cisse, he was loaned out to get 1st division football, this time to the Eredivisie.

- Vasilije Adzic

Just another good opportunity, 400k for a decent 18 year old. He was loaned out to his original club.

- Neo Rapoo

I may have bought him just because I liked his name... But I mean 80k is nothing so even if he ends up being a big flop it's whatever.

- Alen Bukovec

Another decent striker for under 1M. Low wage as well. Loaned out to his original club just because he wouldn't get any time here.

- Andrej Petrovic

Decent 18 year old midfielder. Might have payed more than I wanted but I think he is worth the 2.2M.

- Sam Curtis

Very decent RB who is also loaned out to his original club. He was very cheap but his wages are a bit higher than I wanted them to.

Finances

Our finances are gradually improving but since we are making more money than what we are spending it's to be expected.

In the beginning of the summer we got this:

We had the opportunity to see Andre Amaro once again in Milan. But obviously we refused the offer.

See you all in a couple of months.