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Dover Fans' Player of the Year
-- Justice is served: I suppose a case could have been made for Chiquinho, considering he set a club record for goals scored in a season but there was no question in my mind who our top player was this year and the supporters agreed. Our Fans’ Player of the Year winner is midfielder Neil Cairney!!! 15 goals and 25 assists from the midfielder last season - simply spectacular numbers!
Dover Best Eleven for 2022-23
-- A couple of slight surprises here but we all know how important average rating is in this game:
GK - Manuel Perez - 15 apps 0g 7.17 avg
DL - Renato Gaucho - 50 apps 0g 7.18 avg
DC - Rayane Hamon - 35 apps 0g 7.21 avg
DC - Claudio Contreras - 46 apps 5g 7.15 avg
DR - Salim Loucif - 52 apps 0g 7.20 avg
MC - Andrea Rocca - 35 apps 5g 7.23 avg
MC - Neil Cairney - 52 apps 15g 7.51 avg
ML - Arsene Bamba - 44 apps 6g 7.19 avg
MR - Graham Allan - 32 apps 8g 7.27 avg
ST - Shanon Andrea - 34 apps 21g 7.55 avg
ST - Chiquinho - 49 apps 32g 7.39 avg
Other notables: GK Ingo Wilke 45 apps 0g 7.10; DC Mohamed Lamine Yilmaz 14 apps 0g 7.09; DC Daniel Traore 19 apps 2g 7.02; DC Mwemere Mutesa 1 apps 0g 5.40; MC Gian Marco Fanfoni 33 apps 6g 7.19; ST Zoltan Bardi 18 apps 4g 7.18; ST Wayne Rooney 3 apps 0g 6.70
No Gianluca Bolis, Paul Moses or Kostas Zagos at all? Not even on the “substitutes” list? What a terrible list this is!
Let's take a look at our overall Best Eleven since I took over management of the franchise:
Dover Best Eleven - Overall
GK - Ingo Wilke - 296 apps 0g 7.02 avg
DL - Renato Gaucho - 155 apps 2g 7.10 avg
DC - Olly Schulz - 120 apps 18g 7.32 avg
DC - Oliver Nicholas - 316 apps 28g 7.14 avg
DR - Salim Loucif - 130 apps 1g 7.15 avg
ML - Arsene Bamba - 236 apps 42g 7.22 avg
MC - Neil Cairney - 142 apps 25g 7.26 avg
MC - Andrea Rocca - 225 apps 40g 7.26 avg
MR - Abdeltareck Sakali - 176 apps 50g 7.14 avg
ST - Alexander Rattke - 125 apps 55g 7.13 avg
ST - Aaron Green - 141 apps 65g 7.18 avg
Renato Gaucho, Salim Loucif and Neil Cairney all vault onto our overall best eleven!
Substitutes:
GK - Liam O'Brien - 219 apps 0g 6.84 avg
DC - Rayane Hamon - 114 apps 4g 7.10 avg
DR - Conor Morrissey - 230 apps 1g 6.98 avg
ML - Ismael Fofana - 206 apps 38g 6.98 avg
MR - Gianluca Bolis - 160 apps 39g 7.11 avg
ST - Ben Hunt - 156 apps 70g 7.12 avg
ST - Zoltan Bardi - 218 apps 74g 7.05 avg
Rayane Hamon gets onto the list for the first time as a substitute.
2023-24 Barclays Premier League Fixture List Announced
-- For a second consecutive year, we open our season against Everton but this year, we’re at home to start. Our first away match will be at Craven Cottage against newly-promoted Fulham. We’ll play another promoted club, Blackpool, on Boxing Day and our final match of the year will be at home versus Aston Villa.
-- As usual, we are given £40,000,000 spread over 12 months for Premier League television rights.
Start of Season Expectations
-- The board’s minimum expectation is that we qualify for Europe again. I want to win a title but I won’t make any promises at this point so I’ll go with the board for now. For that they'll offer the following:
2023/24 TRANSFER BUDGET - £23,500,000 (Last Year: £38,000,000)
2023/24 WAGE BUDGET - £950,000 (Last Year: £700,000/week)
Pretty weak. Part of the problem is that Chelsea is paying the £21 million they owe us for former fullback Kostas Zagos over 30 months. If we had that all now, I’m guessing we’d have another 15 million pounds for our transfer budget, which would put us in line with last year. Not a worry either way. I can manage with this budget for now.
Youth Intake - U18 Club
-- We continue to improve our youth facilities but our academy continues to produce absolutely no good players. We have perhaps our worst class of prospects yet, with most of the players only 0.5 star prospects. Terrible!
Transfer Talk
-- Sheffield Wednesday had our MR Kostas Kalfas on loan all year and the youngster performed quite well for their club. We had negotiated a buyout clause and Sheffield have just activated it, offering us £8.5 million for his services on a permanent basis. It’s obviously auto-accepted by our board and we’ll wait to see if Kalfas signs a contract. He’s a surplus to requirements so I’m okay with getting the money.
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