Sat. July 10, 2021
Preseason Friendly
Dover vs. Stade Malherbe Caen
Crabble Athletic Ground, Dover, UK
We host French Ligue 1 side Stade Malherbe Caen. Our team is woefully unfit so hopefully we escape without any injuries. We'll start our normal starting eleven but they'll likely only play for 45 minutes. Stud newcomer
Paul Moses is travelling for an international U21 game with England and won't be playing today for us.
Dover: 4-4-2 Control
GK - I. Wilke
D - R. Gaucho, C. Contreras, P. Tjiuoro, S. Loucif
M - A. Bamba, N. Cairney, A. Rocca, G. Bolis
S - G. Gesios, Z. Bardi
Dover 1 - 2 Stade Malherbe Caen
Goals - Giorgos Gesios (8.3)
Assists - Claudio Contreras (6.8)
Man of the Match - Giorgos Gesios
Other Dover Notables - Renato Gaucho (7.0)
Attendance - 7224
It was 1-1 at halftime and I brought on most of the second team around the 50 minute mark. Stade scored a 90th minute goal off a header to steal the win. We played poorly, holding only 48% of possession but outshot them 13-10 (6-7 on target).
--
Claudio Contreras got hurt during the game and needed to be substituted early. He's okay but "needs to be nurtured back to fitness in order to be ready for the start of the season". Great - we have some time with him, as he's still got two games to serve on a suspension picked up at the end of last season.
Transfer IN
-- We welcome Dutch international Shanon Andrea to Dover in a £5.5 million deal with FC Bayern!
Andrea fell out of favour at Bayern after being bought for the princely sum of £14.5 million in 2019 from Serie A club Ascoli. He was a demon in Italy, scoring 64 goals in 106 games over a three year period but never could crack the loaded Bayern starting lineup. He only played 6 senior team games for Bayern, scoring 4 goals and adding two assists. He spent last year on loan in Italy with Napoli, scoring 7 goals in 13 games. He's part of the Dutch setup and has 8 goals in 9 international appearances. He will step into the "Gerardo Escobar" role as essentially our fourth striker but he should get close to 20 games with our first team. Fellow newcomer
Paul Moses will be brought on more slowly - I see him stepping into
Petr Simek's role as our main man off the bench but I'm sure I'll get him a bunch of starts too.
-- As a follow up to Andrea's arrival, I transfer list
Petr Simek, as he's surplus to requirements now. My four top strikers will be Gesios, Bardi, Andrea and Moses. I still have some other young strikers hanging around too and I'll have to decide whether we put them on loan, sell them or keep them around.
Season Ticket Update
-- We're up to 2257 season ticket packages sold and the board still expects us to sell around 4400 in total.
-- Sheffield Wednesday and Dutch club sc Heerenveen join the race to sign
Gerardo Escobar. Both bids are different and include clauses - I accept both and will let Escobar choose where he'd like to go.
-- Gimnastic in Spain make a bid for our other transfer listed striker,
Petr Simek. Gimnastic is the club that took
Aitor Zubizarreta on loan the last two seasons. I accept their bid as well.
Dover Star Denies Wanting Out
--
Neil Cairney felt it necessary to talk to that trash mag the Daily Mirror to clarify that he hasn't asked to leave Dover to move to Aston Villa (?!), is under contract with us and will continue to work hard for the club and his teammates. Damn straight. Villa doesn't have the money to get him anyway.
Transfer Bids
-- I have a crapload of bids accepted for a variety of players, mostly depth but a couple of good looking kids and two or three interesting veterans that I hope can come in and help tutor our young team. I'd strongly prefer to keep a lot of my transfer budget just in case I decide to sign
Paul Moses and take advantage of that buy out clause I negotiated as part of his loan deal.