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Old 07-14-2011, 08:14 PM   #433
Radii
Head Coach
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Thanks as always for the comments all, its great to know people are enjoying the dynasty


-- Another AMR we tried to sign goes elsewhere, still more offers to be made
though, its July 21st.


Friendly #5

Finally one we are supposed to win, we travel to AFC Telford from the BS North for a friendly. We outplay them like crazy in the first half but cant score, lots of close chances missed. We fall behind 0-1 on a freak goal in the 65th minute after a couple weird bounces. Backup DC Aaron Gough scores off a corner after we make our subs to tie it up at 1. Matthew Paterson gets our second goal in the 89th minute to seal up a win.

AFC Telford 1 : 2 Woking



New Signing

Not our first, or second, or fifth choice, but we find a backup AMR that I hope will be similar to Makhtar N'Diaye, an aging but decent player who can play a few positions and fill a few needs for us.

Welcome 31 y/o AMLR Imad Zatara to Woking. Zatara has actually spent the last 6 years in League 1 as a starter for Brentford, consistantly putting up ratings in the 6.75 range. Heck, 2 years ago he had 10 assists for Brentford. 13 pace/11 accel, he can still run pretty well. Determination 13, Flair 13, Off the Ball 11, but his positioning is only 6, his other mental attributes are all 8-9. He shows the of the most important abilities for a wide midfielder for me, Crossing (12), Dribblign (11), and First Touch (12). His passing is only 8 and the rets of his technical skills are in the 6-7 range.

Zatara is actually a member of the Palestinian national team currently going through Asian World Cup Qualifying. He has 29 international appearances and 3 goals.

I'm happy that Zatara can play AMR and AML. He'll make $2200/wk for the next 2 seasons. He'll clearly be a backup but if he can back up both Colin and N'Guessan effectively he'll see a lot of time on the field.


Friendly #6

We host Sheffield United in our last friendly on July 28th, a bit over a week before League 1 play begins. We trade goals a couple times, they score one real early, reserve ML Alan Leonard gets it back in the 22nd minute. They go up 2-1 early in the second half, Constantino gets it back in the 70th minute. After we bring all our backups in though, they get a goal in the 85th minute and another goal in the 93rd.

Woking 2 : 4 Sheffield Utd

Colin and Upson both picked up injuries in this match, that's the big concern...

... but its not a big deal. Upson is fine and Colin is out 5-7 days, he should be ok for the start of the season.



Our new AM Imad Zatara is playing for Palestine in the "Challenge Cup" (more info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFC_Challenge_Cup). He's scored 2 goals in Palestine's last 3 matches and has led them to the top of their group.


-- I'm asked to select our captains. No changes here for the last few years. Kevin Lynch is our captain and Ed Upson is vice captain.

August Update

-- The first couple months are always busy. We play on the 6th, 10th, 13th, 16th, 20th, and 27th. Additional games may be played if we can find a win in the League Cup.

-- The board is pleased with my leadership. Getting Mickael Colin back on the team is a highlight. The 7-1 loss to EPL side Watford is a lowlight. We made $641k last month! This is mainly due to our season ticket revenue. It's all downhill from here.

-- I hadn't updated it since the first mention. We've now sold a whopping 2049 season tickets, with another 200 expected to be sold.




-- We're ready for the season now. I had an offer for a free transfer striker w/ 18 pace fail as the guy chose to go to Plymouth instead. So the team I've got now is the one we're taking into the season. I don't know if I've done enough. We haven't made any big signings, we've basically signed depth and brought in high quality loaners. Will it be enough to avoid relegation? I hope so.

We actually had the chance along the way to sign a couple guys that would have been deemed big splashes. Guys that wanted $4500-$5000/wk contracts. To me, I just didnt' see how they were going to blow the doors off my current starters, so I held on to my money. The end result is that we have a ton of money we can spend on salaries if we want, but I'm not seeing obvious places to do it.

We are $14k/wk under our allotted wage budget. I go and play with the slider and I see that I should have done that awhile ago. If i lower my wage allotment from $50k/wk to $47.5k/wk our transfer budget goes up to $150,000. Its actually a massive, massive error on my part most likely that I haven't played with this yet.

So anyway, I do exactly that. If I want to try to go buy a player or two I totally have the funds to do so for the first time in team history, and we have the payroll to basically max out their deals as well. I will work on this during the early part of the season.

Last edited by Radii : 07-14-2011 at 08:15 PM.
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