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Originally Posted by Tellistto
Nice work. Hope you parlayed this into a bigger club to manage!
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Thanks, and well ... I did try ...
OFFSEASON
The big question is of course this: with our finances, how in the world do we compete in Premier Division? We don't even have a respectable First Division fanbase ... It didn't help that a local planning commission blocked the move to a larger ground for a new stadium a couple days after the season ended, so we're in limbo on that. One change in the Premier is that three foreigners are allowed, so some out-of-country scouting was authorized.
Meanwhile, we retained a total of seven youth players, the most notable of which are three DMCs -- we don't use a DMC, but that could always change if these guys pan out -- and
AMC Muhammad Triyono who my reports list as having more raw talent than anyone currently on the senior roster. They say he could someday not just play at the Premier level but be a legitimate star there.
Beginning on June 7, the US participated in the Gold Cup. They started with a 1-0 win over Honduras, early optimism tempered by a shocking 2-1 defeat to Surinam despite conrolling most of the match and a draw against El Salvador as a late concession led to a 1-1 final. A disappointing win, loss and draw in group play but it was just enough to make the quarterfinals ... where Mexico drilled them 3-0, all the goals coming in the first half hour. Embarassing, and
Garza got himself sent off later in the match just to round off the digusting display. Mexico would later win the Gold Cup for the third consecutive time, while
Arema flattned
Persija 4-0 to take their second Indonsian Cup in three years.
BUDGETS
We'll take in another 100M from sponsorships this year as opposed to last, a nice boost, but I was still surprised to see a 67.5M payroll baselilne(well up from 41M last year). A good part of this will be eaten up in automatic promotion raises, but there will be room to improve the squad as well. Interestingly,
Persinab(who I was impressed with last year and promoted from our First Division group) was relegated back down which shows the difficultly of making it at the higher competition. They had 26 pts ... safety required just 28 so it was a tight battle all the way but they couldn't stay up.
We must find a way to succeed where they failed. The salary we've been given works out to 3.5B a year, which would have been exactly at the midpoint of Premier Division clubs this year. Persinab spent 3.1B not making it, with the top spenders at over 11.5B.
The board has done their part, it's a respectable financial commitment they are making. It's up to me now.
JOB OPPORTUNITIES
Two interesting options came up, big Premier club
Persidafon who has been yo-yoing between the Super League and Premier and just missed out on going back up last year. When that didn't work out, I try at
PSBL(First Division) whose coach they hired. Both laugh off my interest as absurd. It's pretty obvious what is going on here -- the Persigubin board are refusing to negotiate as they have a position of strength: despite our fantastic year, I've not yet earned enough respect to convince anyone else I'm worth taking a chance on. Therefore, why should they give me any security and limit their options -- I'm not going anywhere else, because there's nowhere to go, nobody who will take me.
So I'm here for, in all likelihood, at least another couple of years. Time to focus in on staying up in the Premier Division. The board releases a statement of disappointment that I continue to look for other jobs. You could always offer me a contract ... which I suggested, again, before I started to apply. So basically, shut up guys.
JULY
Back to trying to make Persigubin better. I estimate we have about 10M/wk. available. Board hasn't told me I can't hire any new staff: what they have done is limit contracts to between half and a third of what any decent candidates will accept. Which is basically the same thing. However, I am left wondering what would happen if any of my current staff left ... I don't see how I'd be able to replace them.
Either way, I see our biggest need as clearly being a better keeper. Neither of ours have Premier potential, and we definitely need a player or two in midfield and/or attack as well with the departing players(Oropka, Ningmabin, Adie). I don't find anyone who is a quantam leap, but do manage to sign
T.M. Syarif, a moderate improvement with the potential to grow into a good Premier-level keeper, for 2.75M. Of the next round of offers, we got only one commitment, Cambodian
MC Chhun Kirivutharo for 2.2M -- but he wouldn't be able to join us until his current contract ends in January. This is the club's first foreign signing, and as such a historic moment. We don't have the money to significantly remake the roster, and so I spring for just one more .. 3M for youing striker
Iwan Akbar after a number of other options fall through for various reasons. Akbar came up through the youth program at none less than
Persib, then was eventually released. One man's trash ...
July 11 -- We announce a loss of 1.7B, a shocking 47% of turnover, by far our worst yet. The board is optimistic that increased 'commercial opportunities' from being in the Premier will improve this number for the coming season.
August
We are named Overachievers of the Year for the First Division last season, with
Yogi's performances named a key and
Imam Bayhaqi considered one of the year's top signings. A nice shot in the arm for us, and it's hard to disagree.
Yogi is named Fan Player of the Year for the second year in a row, no surprise there.
Ningmabin moved on to Persiss in the First Division, the other three released players are still out there.
I'm listed as the only name now under Favored Personnel, ditto for Yogi under Legends.
The board says in order to increase our payroll we'd need a top-half guarantee, which is a laugh so we'll stay at 'Consolidate', i.e. 'be competitive'. I'm not sure what they mean by that. We also receive 872M in TV Rights. There's a new one.
Interestingly enough the Premier Division has split into four groups this year instead of three. We'll once again be in Group D. Top team makes the Second Phase, bottom two are relegated. They have also shrunk the season from 30 to 22 games, so it will be the same length as last year as they seem to have just copied the First Division format. Oh, and we've been picked dead last -- but after being taken 9th(finished 11th) and 11th(1st) the last two years I'm not sure how much that really means.
With the automatic promotion raises we are now up to about 63M in payroll, 4M left in the kitty. I'd like to keep as much of that there as I can as a hedge against raises when we do our contract renewals in a few months, but I also am going to try to bring in two people: an inexpensive emergency backup in midfield, and some kind of coach for the U21s to help with training. We can't develop those players without someone, even if they completely suck, to work with them. I couldn't find a midfielder for the price I wanted that would be useful enough, so I just decided that we'd give one of the youngsters a pro contract if it comes to that -- which it will if we have any midfield injuries before the end of the year.
He may not know any more about it than I do, but Bob is of the opinion that some of our players can hang at this level to some degree. It's about a 50-50 split, which isn't that bad. My hope will be to not embarass ourselves, stay up, and then next year to try and bring in a few more players to upgrade what we have to work with.
Also new this year is that a couple of clubs were willing to accept friendlies, meaning we can play against actual opposition not our U21s. The real benefit here is financial, as we can start to get some appearance fees to supplement club income. Long-term we need to start moving the club towards solvency: that's the only way I'm ever going to get a real staff, better facilities, all the things we will need to improve.
On that front, I ask the board to work on a parent club again. They tried a couple of years ago and got nowhere, but maybe someone would be willing be our affiliate now that we are in the Premier. Later in the month, I find out that -- nope, not gonna happen.
Indonesia beat
Malaysia on penalties after a 2-1 home win followed a defeat on the road by the same score. 4-3 in the shootout to narrowly advance to the second round, where a strong win at home in the second leg made it 7-4 over Kryzgstan. They've been drawn in Group 4 of the Third Round, with the top two nations qualifying for Final Stage.
Australia(55),
Kuwait(113), and
Bahrain(130) are the others: this is already further than Indonesia made it last time around. Australia you can pretty much pencil in with the other three fighting for the second spot.