2022-23 Season Recap -
Preseason: Manager and Team Status, Yearly Budgets, Board and Media Expectations
Another promotion gives my reputation a boost up to "Okay" from "Decent" and that was obviously enough to entice Middlesbrough to bring me in. My stats continue to progress in the right direction but the biggest change here is in my salary, as I make the stratospheric leap from £1,600 per week to £14,000.
Simply put, managing Middlesbrough is a major step up from leading Morecambe, even though they are in the same division. Boro is a massive club for the Championship level and the differences seen in every category above is substantial. Just as an example, Morecambe were prepared to give me a £1 million transfer budget (versus £4.5 million with Boro) and a £60,000/week wage budget versus the £560,000/week budget I currently have with my new club.
Middlesbrough play their games at Riverside Stadium, a 34,746 all-seater that was built in 1995. Another massive step up from the cozy Globe Arena at Morecambe but still much smaller than Hampden Park in Scotland where our Queen's Park team played. Middlesbrough has a wonderful training setup - this is a club with a Premier League quality infrastructure and I couldn't be more excited about our facilities, which are uniformly excellent as you can see. I can see from the talent on our U18 team (and a couple of senior team youngsters) that the club is very good at developing from within.
Before I make any changes to the squad, media pundits predict a 7th place finish (out of 24 teams) in the Championship. That would place us just outside the playoffs.
My board are hoping for a mid-table finish, which is pretty surprising...I wonder if they lack ambition. It doesn't seem like it with the budgets I've been given...I'll certainly be expecting more out of our team but as usual, I elect to side with the board and keep official expectations in check.
Here is the budget that the board provides based on their expectations of a mid-table finish:
2022/23 SCOUTING BUDGET - £611,000 (Last year: £?)
2022/23 TRANSFER BUDGET - £4,500,000 (Last year: £?)
2022/23 WAGE BUDGET - £560,000/week (Last year: £?/week)
Very healthy numbers by the looks of it. Now, I'll need to take a look at our roster and see what we have to work with here at Middlesbrough...