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Why did we come in and do so well this fast?
1). We had sold three players for a serious amount of cash. In it’s history, Melilla has never sold a player for more then a few hundred thousand at most. This was a big deal. We got a ton of cash from those huge high profile sales. Here’s the players we purchased – Milic – 500k, Ingason – 2.2 mill; Oliver, 1.8 mill; Seung-Gyu – 475k; DR Ragazzi 1.4 mill, ST Van Persie – 1 mill, Jae-Hwan – 3.5 mill; Ouatarra -750k, Ibrahim – 450k, and Ntsume – 300k. Those are mostly all great players or future prospects, all were a part of our successes, and only Ingason stands out as not really worth it (and I stand b that move by the way, it looked really good pre-move). I didn’t chase one or two agents. I grabbed a ton ot players for a total transfer fee of 12.75 mill. We brought in 14.6 mill, plus the initial kitty that I had. Using the extra money, I was able to build my squad with an additional year of investment. Normally, your first year in a top flight would be unable to grab that sort of spending splurge
2). I was willing to pick up multiple quality players on free transfers – Sayed,Bamford, Lanzini, some youth that might play laters (ST Mesa, ST Dong-Hyuk)
3). I pushed my depth hard. In fact, we played more players in the Liga by far than any other players. When we had a game and three players were injure, we were fine. When GK ViIllar had to step in and start all of my January games (4 Cups, and a ton of league games) we were fine. I really pushed my depth early. I’m subbing a player like Oliver most games, for example. We had international call ups, injury coverage, tiredness coverage, and red cards and such. So we had a lot of depth and that’s a valuable commodity
4). Wow February. We had a very good February that really pushed us to the forefront. We defeated top teams and brought them down. I took 4 points from R. Madrid. 3 from Barca. That lucky February was enough. Our record wasn’t amazing – 17 wins, 8 ties, 13 losses. That is a lot of losses. In act, our 13 losses is more all the way down to 10th for Athletic Bilbao with 14 losses, and then Sevilla at 12th just had 11 losses. 17-8-13 isn’t going to win any major accolades. But… Two wins? Turn two losses to wins, give hs6 more points? We oust Valencia for 4th and make Champions League.
Table:
1. A. Madrid – 86 points
2. R Madrid – 83
3. Barca – 71
4. Valencia – 64
5. Celta – 60
6. Melilla – 59
7. Villarreal 59
8. Levante – 54
9. R. Sociedad 53
10. Atletic Bilbao – 52
11. Espanyol – 51
12. Sevilla – 49
13. Malaga – 48
14. Desportivo – 42
15. Granada – 42
16. Cadiz – 39
17. Getafe – 37
18. Osasuna – 32
19. Eibar – 31
20. R. Valladold – 28
The yellow submarine stands! Good job Cadiz. And my goals would have stood – finish with 38 points in 38 games, and you get 17th.
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