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-- We're up to 9805 season tickets sold, still estimating that we'll hit 18,000 or thereabouts in the end.
Transfers Out
DL Billy Jones has signed with QPR. We make $1,300,000 on this deal.
AMR Gabriel Torje signs with Bristol City in the EPL(they just promoted up last year). We made $2,300,000 on this deal.
-- We've now made $5,526,681 from the 3 player sales we've completed. This is $600,000 more than Ipswich made last year from transfers. Last year Ipswich also bought $4.8M worth in players, and we won't be anywhere close to that this year.
-- We now sit at a $282,179/wk wage budget. The goal is $275,000... so we've still got $7,000/wk to cut.
-- Lastly, 15% of the money we make from selling off players we're allowed to spend. So we now have a transfer budget of ~$635,000. Sadly, I cannot edit the budget and promise not to spend any of that money to get our weekly payroll to go up... so, if we can get under budget we'll look to spend the money. I won't spend just to spend, but I'll use it if it'll help the team.
Current Depth Chart
I've brought in one loaner and can bring in 3 more young guys for the full season. Lets look at our depth chart to see what we need to do:
GK: Murphy/(nothing)
-- The only other GK on the team anywhere is our 15 year old youth pull. Signing someone "extremely affordable" will be our first goal once we get under our wage budget and can afford to give someone a contract.
DL: Kirkland/Fryers
-- We're a little weak here after selling off Jones. Kirkland is a young guy who should develop into a very good player and he's serviceable now.
DC: Brown/Bruce/Fryers/McKerr
-- Brown and Bruce are solid optoins. We could in theory use one more player here as Fryers is our backup DL and McKerr our starting DR.
DR: McKerr/Berthet/Bruce
-- The backups here start at other positions. Again not as much depth as it appears.
ML: Rossi/Walters
-- This is ugly. Neither are great, both are old. Loaning in someone here should be a priority.
MC: Donnelly/Paulo/Coutts/Walker
-- We're pretty strong here after loaning in Paulo.
MR: Berthet/Walters/Gordon
-- Berthet should be one of our best players, perhaps our best. Walters covers backup duty on the left and right side. Gordon starts at AMC.
AMC: Gordon/Coutts
-- Hopefully we're ok here, Coutts will be a backup at MC and here, but Gordon is our super exciting young guy ready to take off.
ST: Khan/Lewis/Graham/Walters
-- Assuming we stay 4-4-1-1 we're more than fine here and in fact Danny Graham seems our next obvious salary cut.
Biggest Needs: Defender Depth (too much cross coverage of our backups, one extra defender that can play more than one position back there would probably clear this up). ML, DL, backup GK. ML and DL are our weakest starting spots. Giving our young DL Kirkland playing time to develop is fine, so ML is the main spot I'm keying on to try to find an upgrade.
Friendly #1
We travel to BS Premier side Wrexham. Troy Brown came back from the offseason hurt, otherwise our lineup looks just like its shown in our depth chart above. we get a 3rd minute goal as Gordon finds Berthet in the area for an easy one. A freak own goal gives us a 2:0 lead in the 40th minute. In the 44th, Khan finds Gordon with a lot of open space and he strikes to give us a 3:0 lead. That ends up being the final score.
Wrexham 0 : 3 Ipswich
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