[sabotai]

We'll see. I hope the German Cup win and the draw with Nürnberg will give my guys a decent morale boost.

Decided to start talking with Wannenwetsch's agent on a new deal. The guy wants what Stark makes (he started at $28k per week). Stark is the star of our team, Stahl is the starting over Wannenwetsch (Stahl has played much better). He's not getting $28k a week.

Me and his agent got nowhere close to each other and I walked away for now.

I do add two more years to Stoppelkamp's contract. His contract was up in June, so I decided to get this out of the way (maybe he gets a morale boost from having his contract situation dealt with.

His new deal: $400k loyalty bonus, $35k per week (the max my board would allow), $6k appearance, $4k goal, and a match highest earner clause.

I have an issue, though. Lauth has a "match highest earner" clause as well. His contract is due up at the end of this year too (in June). His not the same player he was, even last year. The bump in opposition talent was too much, I think. He could use his technical ability to out perform more physically gifted players in 2.Bundesliga. In Bundesliga, however, they are just as technically skilled as he is, but also much better physically. 13 appearances, 6.65 av.rating, 1 goal, 1 assist...not worth the money. I'll have to swallow the wage hike for the rest of the year, but I'm thinking, unless he takes a pay cut...he'll be gone.

12/13/2014: Division (H): Draw 3-3 vs. Mainz. We jumped out ahead, they tied it up 2-2 in the 75th minute, we get another goal right away, they tie it up again. Mainz is the team directly ahead of us in the standings. We need to win these games.

12/20/2014: Division (A): Draw 2-2 vs. HSV. Up 2-0, they score in the 84th minute, and then scored the tying goal at 93:43 (even though only 2 minutes of injury time was added, grrrrr).

Bülow picked up an injury that will keep him out for 3 weeks, but we are hitting the mid season break so he'll be back by the time division games start up again.

12/29/2014: Friendly (H): Win 4-0 vs. Markt Schwaben.

I did some researching (googling) on some tactics. I have a very fast, not very strong, striker in Osako, so with his role still as Poacher - Attack, I've also given him the instructions "Move Into Channels" and "Hold Position". The other role, my Complete Forward role which I had on Support I changed to Attack, but also gave the player instruction "Roam From Position".

I also took off the team instructions "Deep Defensive Line" (because of the talent disparity, I'm always in Counter these days) and "Shorter Passing" and added in "Drill Crosses" because I have no big men to win in the air (on offense), and I want them to drill the pass to Osako so he can out run his opponents, and also "Play Wider" to encourage play to my two AM wingers and to stretch the field wider to hopefully open up more 1 on 1 chances for Osako.

I offer Gábor Király a contract that will keep him on the team until 2016 at $20k per week. He's 38 so this will probably be his last extension. A few of his attributes have started to decline.

Vitus Eicher also gets extended until 2017 at $8.25k per week.

Maierhofer is now officially gone.

A Turkish team is offering me $1.2M for 15 year old prospect Metehan Subasi. At the beginning of the year, he was a 4.5(silver) player and 4 gold star prospect. Now, he's 5(silver) and 4.5 gold star prospect. Volker Kersting is my best evaluator or talent, and he says Sabusi is a 1 gold star player right now and a 4.5 start prospect. A few others on my staff put him at 5 stars.

At this point, $1.2M won't boost my team enough for me to get another star to add to my squad and win right now. And Sabusi is progressing quickly, although at 15 there's no guarantees. I'm going to roll the dice and keep Sabusi.

So far, the board is still satisfied with me as their head coach. I hope they still feel that way after we get booted back to 2.Bundesliga.



We still had a good deal of budget available, so I adjusted it to give me some transfer money. I threw out a $850k offer to a team for a 3.5 star D(R) (but can play on the left side too) to help me bolster my defensive line. He's an Italian player named Mattia Cassani. He's 31 years old so he's not a long term acquisition, I'm just going to get the best player I can afford that my scouts say can be gotten to help stop the bleeding that's going on with my defense. We are tied with Bochum for worst team in goals allowed (36).

Cassani agrees to a $19.75k per week contract.

And nevermind. I gave myself a $100k cushion in the transfer budget and it still wasn't enough. I need $1.1M and have $950k, and the board won't let me change it so I'll have to cancel the transfer.....