Barclays Premier League Awards
-- Enrique once again wins the English Footballer of the Year award, with fellow City teammate Bruno coming in second and United's Yaya Sanogo finishing in third.
-- City midfielder Gylfi Sigurosson is named at the Players' Player of the Year winner. United's Omar Hernandez comes in second and Romelu Lukaku comes in third.
-- And a wonderful honour comes for our club, as we SWEEP the Players' Young Player of the Year voting!
Andrea Rocca is the winner for the second consecutive year. Just to put that into perspective, this award has been presented since the 1973 season and Rocca is only the fifth player in history to win it in consecutive years. The other four, you ask? Ryan Giggs, Robbie Fowler, Wayne Rooney and Andrea Poli. Incredible company for Rocca!
Giorgos Gesios finishes in second place and strike partner
Zoltan Bardi finishes in third.
-- We continue to add to our trophy case and this time, it's yours truly with the honour, as I'm named as the Barclays Premier League Manager of the Year! Carlo Ancelotti from City is the runner up and United's Jurgen Klinsmann finishes third. Awesome!
-- Barclays Premier League Players' Team of the Year
GK - Joe Hart, Manchester City
DL - Danny Wilson, Manchester City
DC - Brian Reekers, Liverpool
DC - Nchimunya Munyao, Arsenal
DR - Luiz Carlos, Manchester United
ML - Gylfi Sigurosson, Manchester City
MC - Omar Hernandez, Manchester United
MC - Enrique, Manchester City
ST - Yaya Sanogo, Manchester United
ST - Romelu Lukaku, Chelsea
We have FOUR players named to the team as substitutes!
Zoltan Bardi,
Arsene Bamba,
Giorgos Gesios and
Andrea Rocca get that honour! Fantastic!
Yearly Dover Training Summary
-- I get positive reports on
Zoltan Bardi,
Giorgos Gesios and
Renato Gaucho. My assistant also gives special mention to
Gianluca Bolis and
Claudio Contreras, who he says both improved "significantly".
-- Negative reports come in for veterans
Darren Pratley,
Emir Faccioli,
Lukasz Fabianski,
Liam Craig and
Laurent Koscielny. No surprises there - the only one of those five that is currently scheduled to return is Faccioli, as the rest are on expiring deals.
-- On the youth side,
Carlo Cerbone,
Abdallaye Kokaina and
Johnny Mardenborough get positive reports and GK
Garry Doyle gets the extra mention for his significant improvements made in training.
Stadium Expansion
-- For a second consecutive season, without any prompting, our board announce yet another stadium expansion! We will be enlarging Crabble Athletic Ground by 7,250 seats, which will bring us up to 23,000! Keep in mind, we had only 1000 (!!!) seats three years ago upon entering the Premier League and a maximum capacity of 6,500. Another positive development at Dover and this should help increase our ticket sales by close to 50% based on the additional seats alone. The expansion will cost us approximately £8.75 million.
-- In the same press conference, the board confirm that plans to improve our Youth Recruitment Network are a go and that we should have the new system in place within a month. Brilliant!
-- Two of our players are named to the final Barclays Premier League Team of the Week. GK
Lukasz Fabianski and MC
Andrea Rocca get the honour.
International Duty
--
Neil Cairney suits up for Scotland and plays well in a scoreless draw against Wales in the Four Associations Tournament.
FA Cup Final
-- Reading defeat Tottenham 2-0 off goals from Hani Megahed and Adam Lallana. Reading qualifies for the Europa League as a result.
-- We pay out £98,000 in bonuses to our squad for our semi-final FA Cup run.
-- As an aside, I keep getting notes about qualifying for the EUROPA LEAGUE - now, as the fourth placed team in the Premier League, I was under the impression that I enter the qualifying stages for the CHAMPIONS LEAGUE…am I wrong here? Also, on the EPL table, I now have a "UEL" designation instead of "CL". I don't get it…can anyone shed light on this for a Continental play rookie?
Champions League Final
-- Man City does it again, defeating Real Madrid 3-0 behind two Enrique goals. That's two Champions League titles in a row for City and completes a QUADRUPLE this year (Premier League, Champions League, Club World Championship and the Euro Super Cup.
-- Enrique is named the competitions Best Player. OM's Vasily Tkachenko wins the Golden Boot competition for the event.
-- Next year's Champions League finals will be played at the Artemio Franchi in Italy.
--
Zoltan Bardi is once again expressing his dissatisfaction with his contract and I finally relent, telling him that I'll address his concerns. He is making a ridiculously low salary but he's looking for money equivalent to Cairney and Gesios and there's no way he's getting that. I'll look into this next week.
-- Our board announce that our shareholders are being paid dividends approaching £700,000. Good for them.
International Call-Ups
-- Eight players get called up by their respective countries:
Gregoire Lambert (France U19),
Carlo Cerbone (Italy U19),
Renato Gaucho (Brazil U20),
Claudio Contreras (Argentina U20),
Paulus Tjiuoro (Namibia),
Giorgos Gesios (Greece),
Salim Loucif (Algeria) and
Zoltan Bardi (Hungary).
Dover Contracts Expiring
-- Seven senior team players are on expiring contracts: GK
Lukasz Fabianski, DC
Laurent Koscielny, MR
Petr Kostal, DC
Oliver Nicholas, DC
Gareth Mace, ML
Steve Ingram and DC
Andy Brown. I may look into Kostal as a spare part and MAYBE Nicholas due to his significant tenure here at Dover. The other players aren't likely to see extensions.
Johnny Mardenborough from the U18 squad is also on an expiring deal and I'll likely give him a token extension.
-- I still have nine staff members with expiring contracts and I'll have to get to those in short order.