FM10 - From the Bottom Up

[Radii]

Midfielders

Name	Age	$/Wk	Apps	GL	AST	MoM	Yel	Red	Tck	Pass	Avg
Bryan Bennett	22	LOAN	39(3)	6	14	5	5	0	3.73	72%	7.35
Gordon Donnelly	23	$36500	46	7	17	2	4	0	3.04	65%	7.23
Jordan Ford	22	LOAN	5(4)	2	0	0	0	0	2.99	71%	7.01
Paulo	20	LOAN	42(3)	5	4	2	2	0	2.70	81%	6.95
Steve Mills	17	LOAN	15(6)	2	6	1	0	0	1.84	65%	6.94
Neil Gordon	22	$14000	33(3)	10	11	1	0	0	1.83	71%	6.86
Paul Coutts	29	$13750	11(16)	0	0	0	0	0	2.80	81%	6.69
Josh Walker	29	$16500	2(19)	0	0	0	1	0	3.91	75%	6.66

**GL = Goals | TCK = Tackles/game


Coutts and Walker are clearly a step below the rest here, also, four loaners... this is a huge area of focus/concern going into next season.




Attackers

Name	Age	$/Wk	Apps	GL	AST	MoM	Yel	Red	Drb	Pass	Avg
Constantino	23	$17000	42	36	12	12	3	0	6.67	62%	7.56
Matthew Khan	23	$34500	37(3)	18	6	8	0	0	6.46	70%	7.36
Rob Lewis	20	$2300	13(3)	3	4	0	0	0	3.56	74%	6.74
Danny Graham	32	$12000	4(7)	1	0	0	0	0	2.86	60%	6.61

** GL = Goals | Drb = Dribbles/Game


Constantino and Khan will be interesting going into the EPL.

[Radii]

Ipswich 2017/18 History/Leaders

Team History

Woking

2009/10 - BS South - 1st - 24 W - 12 D - 6 L - 62 for - 39 ag - +23 GD - 84 pts
2010/11 - BS Premier - 17th - 14 W - 10 D - 22 L - 60 for - 65 ag - -5 GD - 52 pts
2011/12 - BS Premier - 4th - 26 W - 12 D - 8 L - 87 for - 51 ag - +36 GD - 90 pts
2012/13 - BS Premier - 1st - 26 W - 11 D - 9 L - 88 for - 56 ag - 89 pts
2013/14 - League 2 - 18th - 12 W - 17 D - 17 L - 50 for - 54 ag - 53 pts
2014/15 - League 2 - 9th - 20 W - 9 D - 17 L - 57 for - 58 ag - 69 pts
2015/16 - League 2 - 1st - 30 W - 8 D - 8 L - 102 for - 50 ag - 98 pts
2016/17 - League 1 - 1st - 24 W - 14 D - 7 L - 103 for - 61 ag - 89 pts

Ipswich

2017/18 - Championship - 1st - 28 W - 12 D - 6 L - 91 for - 42 ag - 96 pts

This year:

Top Goalscorer - Constantino - 36 goals
Top League Goalscorer - Constantino - 34 goals
Most Assists - Gordon Donnelly - 17 assists
Highest Average Rating - Constantino - 7.56
Most Man of the Match - Constantino - 12

[Radii]

Championship Playoff Semifinals

Leg 1

Watford 3 : 0 Burnley
QPR 3 : 0 Stoke

Leg 2

Burnley (1) 1 : 1 (4) Watford - Watford advances
Stoke (2) 2 : 1 (4) QPR - QPR Advances



Championship Playoff Finals

Watford 3 : 2 QPR


Watford will move up to the EPL with us!

[Radii]

-- We have two contract clauses that cause us to pay out additional money upon promotion. We pay Burnley $700,000 as part of Matthew Khan's transfer and $12,000 to Brighton for Michael McKerr's transfer.

-- We also pay out $2.4 Million in squad bonuses.

-- Constantino wins the top goalscorer award for the Championship.

-- I am named Manager of the Year in the Championship!

-- Constantino and Bryan Bennett are named in the Players team of the year for the league. Khan and Donnelly are both selected as backups.



-- The financial outlay listed above hurts pretty bad, but we've still turned a profit of over $4 million on the season to this point.

-- Rio Ferdinand went into coaching after retiring from Man U in the 2014/15 season. He announces that he'd love to come coach for me and have a shot as a coach in the EPL. He's actually got some damn fine ratings, 19 mental/17 tactical/15 technical/16 defending in addition to 13 determination and 14 motivating. I go ahead and make him an offer and would love to have him working with young defenders like Stuart Kirkland.

A couple days later, Ferdinand accepts our offer and will be coaching for Ipswich next year.


June Update

We're into June now, the board is delighted with me, but we did lose $4.7 million last month in payouts and such.



-- I dunno if this is a mistake or not but I'm really not planning on doing anything in the transfer market until the season rolls over, I'm sure we're giving a few guys some very very nice promotion raises, I have no idea what to expect from our wage budget, etc. So June is gonna go by pretty quick.

[Barkeep49]

Congrats! I got some good advice in the FM11 thread about making the promotion that might be of interest to you.

[Radii]

Wow, defender loanee Gudmundsson sure earned himself some attention with his play for us last year. He's a reserve with PSV valued at $4 Million. Utrecht in the Dutch League just offered PSV $8 million for him!

-- The English U19 squad has been playing a lot lately and Stuart Kirkland is starting every match for them and doing quite well. He's played in 4 matches this month putting up ratings of 6.9, 7.1, 8.5 and 7.9!


European Club Rankings

Fun numbers to track! I'm informed that our European Club Ranking went up by 1 this year. I didn't think about the fact that we might be listed anywhere. We're currently rated the 115th best club in Europe, mixed in with a bunch of other teams in the Championship right now. It'll be fun to watch that go up if we can hang on in the EPL.

The top of the rankings:

1. Chelsea - 173.559
2. Barcelona - 156.597
3. Liverpool - 151.559
4. Olympique Lyonnais - 150.353
5. Athletico Madrid - 145.597
...
Man U is 12th, Man City 15th, Tottenham 16th, Arsenal 24th, Aston Villa 25th, Newcastle 30th.


-- We accept a number of friendly proposals, mostly with teams we're affiliated with, and notably we'll be playing Real Salt Lake, I think over in the US, in mid july.


The World Cup has started so we'll chronicle that as it goes along as well.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

Congrats! I got some good advice in the FM11 thread about making the promotion that might be of interest to you.

Thanks, I keep up with that thread and just went back and re-read it, the counterattacking idea sounds like a really good one that I'll be using here.

[Radii]

-- Constantino is named the Ipswich fans Player of the Year this year.

Ipswich Best Eleven

Couple surprises here imo.

GK: Murphy
D: Kirkland/Bruce/Gudmundsson/Berthet
DMC: Paulo
MC: Bennett/Donnelly
AMC: Mills
ST: Khan/Constantino

I thought Gordon and Brown should have been on the team over Mills and Gudmundsson.


Ipswich All Time Best Eleven

GK: Brian Murphy (373 apps/6.80 rating)
DL: Danny Mathijssen (121 apps/2 goals/6.59 rating)
DC: Steven Caldwell (120 apps/1 goal/7.03 rating)
DC: Troy Brown (240 apps/2 goals/6.79 rating)
DR: David Wright (166 apps/2 goals/7.11 rating)
ML: Mario Licka (115 apps/8 goals/7.23 rating)
MC: Gordon Donnelly (170 apps/28 goals/6.89 rating)
MC: Owen Garvan (263 apps/18 goals/6.82 rating)
MR: Sylvain Berthet (136 apps/3 goals/6.95 rating)
ST: Jon Stead (241 apps/112 goals/7.00 rating)
ST: Achille Webo (152 apps/70 goals/6.91 ratings)

Murphy, Brown, Donnelly and Berthet are active players for us.

Players on the backups list that are still active for us:

Matthew Khan (102 apps/51 goals/7.07 rating)
Alex Bruce (234 apps/4 goals/6.73 rating)


Promotion Raise Clauses

The following players earn a raise due to promotion... Kirkland, Murphy, Constantino, Donnelly, Graham, Bruce, Walker, Johnson, Brown, Berthet, Fryers, McKerr, Gordon, Coutts, Khan, Lewis, Newman and Hughes. Quite a list.

Premier Division Schedule

The schedule comes out. We open with two on the road against West Ham and Nottingham Forest. Our first home match is on August 25th against the #1 ranked team in Europe, Chelsea.


TV Rights

UHHHHHHHHHH. Whoa. Ipswich are given $48,510,000 for Premier Division TV rights over the forthcoming season. 48 million????? Last season all our revenue combined was $43.3 million. I SEE.


Season Expectations

We obviously will just try as hard as possible to avoid relegation this year. Our reward for this is a $19.25 Million transfer budget and a payroll budget of $325,000/wk. Unfortunately with all the promotion clauses we sit at $323,541/wk in salaries currently.


Players Promoted

DR Clive Jackson, ST Ian Taylor, and DLC Jack Hughes are promoted up from the U18 squad to the reserves. These were the 3 noteworthy youth players we had last year when I took over. Ian Taylor seems to have fallen out of favor and likely isn't going to make it. Jackson and Hughes however both have very high marks from our coaching staff. Jackson is valued at $2 Million, Hughes at $1.1 Million.


Youth Player Intake

Nothing exciting this year. The best according to our coaches is ST John Weatherstone who has just 2* potential, a "useful" player.

The only "potential star" on our U18 squad right now is GK Chris Mason. "Mason has the potential to far exceed Brian Murphy's current level of ability". He'll turn 17 at the end of June.

[Radii]

EPL Odds

Man City are the favorites to win the title this year at 7:4. Behind them are Chelsea (5:1), Man U (5:1), Arsenal (10:1), Newcastle (20:1) and Tottenham (25:1).

We're just slightly worse than that. A bet of $1 on Ipswich to win the title would yield $2000, yup, 2000:1 odds!

New Sponsorships

Whoa, huge bump here. We get a new main shirt sponsor. The old one paid us $773,000 per year. This new one is going to pay $2,700,000/yr!! Nearly 4 times more, that's massive. This is a 5 year sponsorship and presumably carries on even if we demote back down.

We also get a new stadium sponsor. This one pays us $55k/yr instead of $28k/yr.


We've got one player in the world cup, go Wales! Troy Brown plays all 90 minutes, earning a 6.9 rating as Wales beats Tunisia 3-2. Next he puts up a 7.1 rating in 1-0 victory over Peru. In their final match Wales ties France 1:1. Brown again plays 90 minutes and earns a 6.8 rating.


-- I'm offered a new contract that's going to pay me $13,500/wk. I was making something like $3500/wk before! Hey, that's $700k/yr!

[Radii]

World Cup Group Stage Results

Group A

Wales 2-1-0
France 2-1-0
Tunisia 0-1-2
Peru 0-1-2

Wales scores one more goal than france to win the group.


Group B

Spain 2-0-1
USA 2-0-1
Uruguay 1-1-1
Australia 0-1-2

The USA beats Spain 4:3 in the opener, thanks to 2 goals from a 23 year old striker Sergio Curtin, a kid valued at $6.5M with Stuttgart in the German First Division. He scored 14 goals for them last season. Freddy Adu got a goal as well. Adu is 29 now, valued at $11.25M. He plays for Real Murcia in La Liga in Spain!

The US then went on to beat Australia 2-0 before losing to Uruguay, but they're through!

Group C

Portugal 2-1-0
Brazil 1-1-1
South Korea 0-2-1
Honduras 0-2-1

Brazil and Portugal are through.


Group D

Holland 1-2-0
Czech Republic 1-2-0
Colombia 1-1-1
Morocco 0-1-2

Holland and the Czech Republic are through.


Group E

UAE 2-1-0
Turkey 1-1-1
Poland 1-1-1
South Africa 0-1-2

The weakest group by far but still, who expected the United Arab Emirates to advance?

Group F

Ivory Coast 3-0-0
England 2-0-1
Italy 0-1-2
Japan 0-1-2

England lost to Ivory Coast in the opener and had all the pressure on them. A 1-0 win over Italy on the last day saw them through.


Group G

Argentina 2-1-0
Mexico 1-2-0
Greece 1-1-1
Iraq 0-0-3

Group H

Ghana 3-0-0
Belgium 2-0-1
Germany 0-1-2
Jamaica 0-1-2

Another big surprise here as Germany fail to advance.

[Radii]

July Update

As we hit July, Danny Graham and Josh Walker leave the club.

With that we have a payroll of $315,029/wk. Our allotted amount is $335,456/wk. So we're about 20k/wk under.

I should note though, that's with the max transfer budget allowed. We really have zero salary worries at all. I have a $19 million transfer budget. I can lower that to $15 million and our salary allotment goes up to $425,000/wk. So we are really in a position to make a splash if we want. I'll follow another trick I noticed in the FM11 thread of making sure anyone I sign has a big relegation salary clause and won't sign anyone that I wouldn't be able to keep if we fall back to the Championship.


Staff Hiring

I only lost one staff member last year, a physio that I didn't feel the need to re-sign. However, one thing I never really mentioned last year is that I only had one scout. This was due to the fact that I was so over budget for so long that I simply couldn't afford to hire one. So this year I go out and hire a number of scouts (5 total I believe, I really dunno how many I should try to have here, I'm "allowed" up to 13...).


-- So I go look at Bryan Bennett since he was so good for me last year and MC is a huge huge hole for us and I see how this is gonna work now. Arsenal is willing to loan him to us for the year even though we're in the same league, but now they expect a fee of $1.4M and expect us to pay his salary in full of $24k/wk.

I'm going to go ahead and call it a night here, 4am, and this is the spot where I really want to be focused and take my time to decide what kind of player moves I want to consider going into the new season.

[Portiere]

For what its worth, I'd try to plug your immediate holes (two midfielders and a defender) by signing vets who are on frees to one year contracts (or two w/ big relegation clauses) and take your transfer money and buy a player or two who can help you for a long term. I'm sure you can get players. I would only loan Bennett if they will give you an option to buy, otherwise for 1.4M I bet you could buy a vet outright who could give you something similar for more than 1 season.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Portiere

For what its worth, I'd try to plug your immediate holes (two midfielders and a defender) by signing vets who are on frees to one year contracts (or two w/ big relegation clauses) and take your transfer money and buy a player or two who can help you for a long term. I'm sure you can get players. I would only loan Bennett if they will give you an option to buy, otherwise for 1.4M I bet you could buy a vet outright who could give you something similar for more than 1 season.

yeah this sounds like very good advice. I spent a ton of time scouting midfielders and defenders a few hours ago and finally pressed continue. I should have more scouts signed too and will get them assigned, I'm only likely gonna sign a couple free transfers quickly though and maybe will get a big signing late july/august.

[Radii]

The board is pleased with my leadership going into July. Our increase in stature is a positive, no negatives yet. We made $62K last month.

We have our preseason coaches meeting:

-- We have the youngest squad in the league.
-- We suck at everything else too, literally.


-- Arsenal makes an offer for our young GK Chris Mason. That says something about his value that's for sure. He's our GK of the future hopefully and we aren't letting him go.


Loans Out

I loan DR Clive Jackson to Leeds in the Championship. Jackson is an 18 year old hot prospect. I'm looking forward to seeing how he plays there.


New Signing

We make our first free transfer signing. I have a LOT going on right now but this one was pretty much a no brainer to get more experience out there.

Welcome 34 y/o DMC/MC Hassan Yebda to Ipswich. He was playing for Atalanta in Serie A but had yet to agree to a new contract to keep him there and we were able to sign him away for free. He scouts as a "decent player" despite his age and will be here for one season. He only asked for $13,000/wk which is about the cheapest request I have seen.

He's lost it physically and we'll see how he holds up, hopefully it'll be a case where his experience makes up for it. 9 pace/9 accel, 13 off the ball/13 positioning/16 anticipation, all other mental ratings between 11-14 as well, many at 14. 13 marking/14 passing/12 tackling, all his technical ratings are between 10-14.

Not a superstar signing but hopefully a good influence out there in a top league. Yebda can play DMC and MC just fine and could play AMC and anywhere on the defense in a pinch, but we don't want that to happen.

[Radii]

World Cup Round of 16

Wales 2 : 1 USA (Troy Brown put up a solid 7.1 rating here)
Holland 2 : 1 Brazil

Turkey 1 : 0 Ivory Coast
Belgium 1 : 0 Argentina

Spain 3 : 1 France
Portugal 4 : 2 Czech Republic

England 2 : 0 UAE
Mexico 1 : 0 Ghana

These are in proper order for the brackets, each pair of winners plays each other next.

[Radii]

If I was desperate for cash selling off Neil Gordon would be a way to get it. I've gotten offers of $6.5M and $8M for him now from teams in Serie A. I really really like the kid though and have no intention of selling him.


New Signing

We pick up a veteran defender from Liverpool. Welcome DLR Adriano to Ipswich. He wasn't free, but pretty close. We paid $250,000 up front for him, signed him to a one year deal and said we'd pay $300,000 more if he played in 20 matches for us. I'm hoping to stick with Kirkland and Berthet at DL/DR for the most part but if this guy is just better or if his experience is that important for us then he'll be worth the extra $300k.

Adriano is 33 years old and will be making $23,500/wk for us. All his physical skills are in the 9-10 range. He's solid across the board elsewhere though... Off the Ball 17, Positioning 12, Teamwork 14, Work Rate 14, Decisions 15. Crossing 14, Marking 12, Passing 12, Tackling 13, Technique 13. Not a single rating below 10 in the technical or mental areas.

Neato: Adriano Correia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. IRL he went from Sevilla to Barcelona and currently plays there.

In the game, he stayed with Sevilla until the 12/13 season when Liverpool paid $16.25 Million for him. In 5 seasons for Liverpool he averaged > 7.0 rating every season playing primarily as a left midfielder. He's equally adept at least in the game in defense and since we don't run wide midfielders will obviously be playing defense for us.

[Radii]

World Cup Quarterfinals

Holland 2 : 0 Wales (Both goals were in the second half of extra time, a 111th and 118th minute goal for Holland. Troy Brown must have taken the blame for one or both as he played all 120 minutes and ended up with a 5.4 rating)

Turkey 2 : 1 Belgium

Portugal 2 : 1 Spain
England 3 : 2 Mexico (Also went to extra time, tied 2:2, England's Jordan Spence scored in the 114th minute. Spence is a 28 y/o Defender for Aston Villa)



World Cup Semifinals

Holland 3 : 1 Turkey
England 2 : 0 Portugal


France won in 2014, so regardless of who wins here it will be the first time a European team has won since 1934 and 1938 when Italy won twice in a row (remember that Paraguay won in 2010 in this universe).

[Radii]

We're working on our midfield, and we have two signings in place that rely on work permits. One is for a young Korean kid that is playing in France currently, hopefully that one goes through? The other is for an older Ukranian, no idea there. Well really no idea on either as I have little idea how this works in practice. I assumed if you were cleared to play in France you were cleared to play in England.

We should find out in a week or so. The problem with that is I have a Man U midfielder I might consider buying and might lose out on if I put it off til after the decisions on these work permits. The Man U midfielder is rated as better than Donnelly but would cost me $2M or so for a guy in his 30s.

Oh well, press Continue and see how it shakes out...


New Signing

This is my first, and perhaps my biggest "splash" to be had in the transfer market. We pay OM (that's Olympique de Marseille), a top 5 team in the French league throughout the course of this dynasty, $4 Million and welcome Korean 22 y/o MC/AMC Kang Soo-Jin to Ipswich!

Soo-Jin has one of my favorite attributes, he's a speed demon out there. 17 pace/17 acceleration. 14 agility/14 stamina too. He's very solid mentally, 14 off the ball/14 flair/12 decisions/12 creativity, Composure is 7 so it'll be interesting to see how that manifests.

He's damn talented too. 15 dribbling/15 passing/10 tackling/12 finishing/13 first touch.

Our scouts say that Soo-Jin is "twice the Attacking Midfielder of Neil Gordon" and on the same level with Gordon Donnelly.


We're not done in the midfield for sure. We filled our midfield with loaners last year so two signings won't finish the job for us, but I'm pretty damn excited about this one.


-- After this signing... "a leading financial newspaper has praised Ipswich's wisdom in purchasing Kang Soo-Jin. They believe that this transfer will cause a surge of merchandise sales to soccer fans in South Korea" Hell yea!

And indeed, Soo-Jin *is* a star in South Korea. At age 22 he's got 33 caps and 10 goals for South Korea!

-- I almost forgot to mention it... he's going to get a raise each year for the next 3 years but he's signed at only $18,250/wk for now.

[Radii]

Current Depth Chart

It's July 14th and we're about to play our first friendly and have brought a few players in. We've made so many offers of so many different types that it's a little overwhelming. When I signed Adriano I actually canceled a couple other offers to defenders that I had outstanding as a result. So lets take a quick break and see how the team looks:

GK: Murphy/(couple kids)

-- just fine with backup youngster Dominic Johnson playing for the reserves and ready to go in case he's needed and of course Chris Mason training as hard as he can to take over for Murphy.

DL: Kirkland/Adriano/Fryers
DC: Brown/Bruce/Fryers/McKerr
DR: Berthet/Adriano/McKerr

-- Could I maybe use another veteran DC?

DMC: Yebda/Coutts
MC: Donnelly/Soo-Jin/Coutts/Yebda
AMC: Gordon/Soo-Jin/Coutts

waaaay too much cross coverage here. We clearly must bring on one or two more midfielders. Yebda is the oldest guy we've signed, I can't imagine he's in shape to start many matches in a row at DMC either.

ST: Constantino/Khan/Lewis

We're actually a little thinner than we'd like to be here as well. I saw some veteran striker names go by in my flurry of scouting, I'll look for something cheap here.


Friendly #1

We travel to QPR. We weren't really much better than them last year, they made the playoffs in the Championship. Are we a lot better than them now? Probably not. We're playing at QPR today. Its scoreless by the half, though we missed one clear cut chance. I make all the subs I can (including reserves) at halftime. They score in the 66th minute after a lucky bounce off a cross. They score again in the 73rd minute on a great shot from 20 yards out.

QPR 2 : 0 Ipswich


Awesomely we hit injury issues right away, albeit small ones. backup DLC Zeki Fryers will miss a week.

[Radii]

World Cup Final

Holland 2 : 1 England

Dutch youngster Wim Groen, a 21 y/o striker with Real Madrid who looks simply amazing, scores in the 4th minute to give the Dutch the lead. He scores again in the 34th minute and its 2:0 at the half. 30 y/o Man U defender Ryan Shawcross scores in the 49th minute to make it interesting and to give England the rest of the second half to tie things up, but they can't make it happen and the Dutch win their first ever world cup.

World Cup 3rd Place Game

Turkey 1 : 0 Portugal

Portugese keeper, 25 y/o Zacarias Ferreira de Sousa, currently the goalkeeper for tottenham, takes a hit with an own goal in the 25th minute of this one. Its the only goal of the match. Luckily it was just for 3rd and wasn't the final!

[Radii]

-- International jobs all over the world open up. I think I would really only be interested into diving into the USA job? I dunno I'm worried at this point that I've put so much effort into my club teams that I would either just get overwhelmed or would not take it seriously enough and fail.


We have a coaches meeting:

-- Stuart Kirkland has made improvements in training over the last 6 months. I see Passing (11), Anticipation (10), Composure (11), Off the Ball (8), Strength (13) all up on his player sheet. I came into Ipswich most excited about Neil Gordon but Kirkland is the real up and comer here I think.

-- Constantino has made improvements in his anticipation. I see Finishing (14), Long Shots(7), and Creativity (10) rising. Go go go!

-- Young DLC Jack Hughes has made improvements in his Marking. Marking (9), Influence (3).




With two contract offers for midfielders hung up and likely to be rejected (ie already rejected but I'm appealing), one that surprises me for a Kenyan who has spent a good bit of time in the German First Division, I go ahead and push a deal through that is going to cost me some coin but is one that I think could be a really critical one for me.

New Signing

We pay Man U $1.6 Million for the rights to pay DMC/MC Fredy Guarin $35,000/wk for the next two years. Guarin just turned 32. Guarin is rated to be a little better than Gordon Donnelly at both MC/DMC.

Physical: Everything is between 11-15. Pace 12/Accel 11, Sta 15/Str 15, he's holding up ok here it seems.

Mental: All ratings between 12-16 except Flair is 11. Solid everywhere. The only 16 is Composure. Lots of 12-15 numbers mainly.

Technical: Only finishing and Penalty taking are below 13. 13 marking/15 passing/13 tackling/15 first touch/13 heading/12 dribbling. The guy can play.

Guarin was the only aging guy I seriously considered paying this kind of amount for. He got one of those "would be a quality signing" rave reviews from our scouts and assistants. I actually tried to delay the transfer on him twice and the second time it cancelled, thinking I might land another experienced guy just as good, but work permits... I went ahead and made the offer again and decided to take it this time.

When this dynasty started Guarin had bounced around France and Portugal a little. In the 10/11 season he was sold to Cagliari in Serie A and spent 6 full seasons there putting up 6.8-6.95 level ratings. Man U bought him for $3.4 million and he spent 2 years there, putting up a 6.91 rating in 24 matches his first season, but not playing much last year.

This will be the 4th time he's been sold for more than $1 million in his career.


Financial Update

I'd dropped the transfer budget down to $10 million awhile back, which gives me a $500,000/wk wage budget. I don't intend to get too close to that. I started this at $313,000/wk though. I've used half my transfer budget, I have $4.8M remaining, and my wage budget sits at $399,606/wk.

$37,000/wk of that sits with Adriano and Yebda, pretty clear one year guys.


I'm still looking to bring in one more midfielder and one more striker. I think I'm done after that though, at least for now.

[Radii]

Friendly #2

We travel to Braintree, one of our feeder clubs. We're 1:20 favorites.

We get a goal from Neil Gordon in the 6th minute and get complacent. We allow goals in injury time in the 1st half and in the 47th minute and fall behind 2:1. That wakes us up though, Constantino scores in the 52nd, and Khan in the 55th to pull back ahead. After making our subs, reserve midfielder Dave Newman scores in the 79th minute to finish it off.

Assits from Soo-jin, Gordon, Constantino and Ian Taylor (Reserve ST).

Braintree 2 : 4 Ipswich


New Signing

We get some really really good news as one of the two work permits I had outstanding were approved on appeal! Its the one I expected:

Welcome 31 y/o MC McDonald Mariga to Ipswich. Hm I may have gotten a bit excited here and given him the 2 year contract he wanted for $36,500/wk. Its got a relegation clause. He turned 31 in April so hopefully he's got two good years left in him.

Mariga spent the last 5 years with Rostock in Germany, bouncing between the First and Second division literally every other year. Dominant in the 2nd division and putting up solid 6.8 type ratings in the first for teams that always got relegated. He came to Rostock from Parma for $10.5 Million, but they can't afford to keep him and he came to Ipswich on a free transfer.

Enough of that... my scouts swear this guy is an instant "important first team player" and I can't disagree. He could be the most talented guy on the team.

Physical: No dropoff here. 14 pace/15 accel. 16 balance/17 jumping/18 stamina/19 strength, strongest guy on the team for sure.

Mental: 18 aggression/19 bravery/16 work rate/15 teamwork/15 positioning/15 anticipation. Most other ratings in the 13-14 range. Influence 10, Composure 11, his two lowest ratings here.

Technical:: 14 marking/16 tackling/14 passing/15 heading/13 finishing/11 first touch/15 long shots. 11 technique, just 7 dribbling so he won't be running through defenses.

He's valued at $5.5 Million. We'll keep an eye on his regression but the dude looks like an absolute stud.


Friendly #3

We travel to feeder club Shrewsbury in League 1 for this one. Soo-jin hits Constantino for the first goal in the 26th minute. After making our subs Rob Lewis finds Yebda for a 76th minute goal.

Shrewsbury 0 : 2 Ipswich

I see two names I recognize on Shrewsbury. GK Lee Butcher just came over from Walsall. Butcher isn't a name you guys would know. He was on loan to Woking in my first season. He's the only starting keeper I ever had at Woking other than Kevin Lynch.

AMR Charlie Kenny went on loan to Woking in the 14/15 season. He played 34 matches for me that year, putting up 10 assists and earning a 7.06 rating. He was really young then. Now he's still only 21 y/o, still owned by West Ham in the EPL but has gone out on loan each of the last 4 years to League One of the Championship.

Its fun seeing recognizable names like that.


-- The Striker I was hoping to sign on the cheap decided to go to Belgium instead.


Found Money

In the 2010/11 season Ipswich sold a very, very, very young keeper by the name of Dean Stone to Aston Villa for $725,000 + a percentage of his next sale. Stone must have been 16 then. He's just 24 years old now. After never really making it with Aston Villa (they have a stud keeper that's been starting for them for the last 8 years who is 28 now, Stone never had a chance), but clearly developing really nicely, Stone was just sold to Juventus for $8.75 Million.

We had a clause to get 15% of the profit off his next transfer. We receive $130,000 now and over the next two years will receive an additional $925,000. Free Million!!

[Radii]

Friendly #4

We travel to Brighton from League 1 for this one.

We score in the 23rd minute, an injured Donnelly passes to our new signing Mariga who scores from over 20 yards away. In the 30th minute we score a counter attacking goal as Constantino hits Khan for an easy one. They get one back on a counter attack in the 40th minute. Donnelly is out at the half. No scoring in the second half.

Brighton 1 : 2 Ipswich


Injury Update

MC Gordon Donnelly turns his ankle badly in this one and he's going to miss a month. Its july 28th now. He'll miss at least one League Cup match and 2 or 3 league matches.


Ticket Sales

As we end July we've sold 19,200 season tickets and hope to sell 4000 more. That would bring our total up to 23,200, over 2/3 of stadium capacity!


Injury Update #2

Starting DR Sylvain Berthet suffers a groin strain in training... he's going to miss 3 weeks.

[Radii]

August Update

The season is almost here!! Are we ready for it? I doubt it. But I'm pretty damn excited anyway.

-- We play on the 18th, 21st and 25th in league matches. The League Cup starts on the 15th and round 2 is on the 29th. I'm not sure when EPL sides get into the mix there.

-- The board is pleased with my leadership. Stature increase, etc. We made $9.17M last month in profit. We made $18.8 Million from season ticket sales. This dwarfs the $13M we made last year. Also it appears the TV Revenue is going to be a static $4.6M/month in revenue. We spent ~$6 Million in transfer fees and signing bonuses.

-- This has us sitting on a profit of $10M so far this year, leaving us with a positive cash balance of $2.5M. We'll see if the TV money is going to be enough to keep up with the extra spending we're doing this year. It seems like it should, I mean, our wage budget is insanely $200k/wk higher right now than last year, but we're talking $4.6 million/month in income. We're fine. I think.


Expiring Contracts

We get our first notice about expiring contracts. 7 reserve/U18 guys that we probably won't keep are on the list so we'll ignore those for now.

Starters expiring this year: MC Donnelly ($52k/wk), ST Khan ($49.5k/wk), DR Berthet ($40k/wk), GK Murphy ($30k/wk), AMC Gordon ($20k/wk), DC Bruce ($10.75k/wk).

Others: DLC Fryers ($23k/wk), DMC/AMC/MC Coutts ($17.25k/wk), ST Lewis ($3300/wk)

Adriano and Yebda who are presumed to be one year signings only are also on the list. Murphy and Bruce are really getting up there in age, Murphy we'll keep around if he wants to stay, Bruce may very well be done after this season. Donnelly/Khan/Berthet/Gordon we want to keep for sure.


Friendly #5

We travel to Spain to play Zaragoza from La Liga. They're a decent but not great team in this league, with a few top 10 finishes but a few slips back down into Spain's second level as well. This'll be our first chance to show the counter-attacking strat we plan on running this year.

Counter-attack my ass. We score 29 seconds in, Mariga blasts one from 25 yards out! They get one back off a corner in injury time.

In the 59th minute Adriano, starting in place of Berthet, is hurt and has to come out immediately. Ugh. Before we bring out our starters Alex Bruce and McDonald Mariga both come down with injuries too. This could be terrible.

We come away with a tie here and are thrilled.

Zaragoza 1 : 1 Ipswich


Injury Update

New Defender Adriano pulls a hamstring today and is out 3-4 weeks.

New Midfielder Mariga bruises a rib and is out 5-7 days.

Reserve Midfielder Dave Newman suffers a thigh strain and is out for 2 weeks.

Only Adriano will miss any league action.


-- A second striker I was going after got countless offers and decides to end his career in France instead of coming to Ipswich. It was Charlie Davies. Shame, he's still solid and would have been a nice player to have here.


We've got one more friendly on August 7th that we're now quite undermanned for, then we get a bit of a rest before opening League play!

[BYU 14]

I think you did good in the midfield. Mariga should be solid and Soo-Jin could become a force, if the lack of composure doesn't get to him on the worlds biggest soccer stage.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by BYU 14

I think you did good in the midfield. Mariga should be solid and Soo-Jin could become a force, if the lack of composure doesn't get to him on the worlds biggest soccer stage.

I'm pretty happy with my offseason, it turned into quite a clusterfuck with so many offers going on at one time and so much scouting going on at once. My only concern is that I made a couple 2 year contracts that I worry will hurt me a little if we get relegated back down. Well, that and the fact that I have no clue how we will fare in league play, no clue at all!

[Radii]

-- We're up to 22,912 season tickets sold. About done there, maybe a few hundred more at most.

-- We stick with Troy Brown as our team captain and Alex Bruce as vice captain.

Friendly #6

Our last friendly is at Porto, one of the best teams in Portugal. They've finished in the top 4 all 9 years of this dynasty, including 3 league titles.

A Yebda turnover in the 11th minute is squarely to blame for Porto's first goal. Their second goal in the 22nd minute isn't the outright fault of anyone but Bruce and Yebda are both taken advantage of as their quicker players burn us badly.

We get one back in the 46th minute on a great counterattack, Khan does most of the work before laying the ball off to Constantino for an easy goal at the last minute. They score in the 58th minute, Yebda passes a ball back to our defenders to restart an attack and one of their forwards just goes in and takes it away and is off to the races. We get a penalty in the 78th minute and Khan makes it a one goal game again.

That ends a pretty fast paced exciting match for our last friendly.

Porto 3 : 2 Ipswich

Hassan Yebda takes the blame for 2 of the 3 goals by himself, and rightfully so. That leads to one of the worst ratings I've ever seen, 3.6.



-- Six of my players are called up for international friendlies. DR McKerr for Northern Ireland, DMC Guarin for Colombia, MC Kang Soo-Jin for South Korea, DC Troy Brown for Wales, MC McDonald Mariga for Kenya, and DMC Hassan Yebda for Algeria. I give orders for Soo-Jin and Brown to not play more than 45 minutes.


Loan Out

Hull has requested to loan DLC Jack Hughes. My coaches believe he's ready for prime time with the senior squad. I completely disagree and want to give him a season in the Championship at Hull to see how he does.


Loan In

Welcome 32 y/o ST Valeri Bojinov to Ipswich. He's contracted by Getafe in La Liga in spain but they're pretty much done with him. I could have bought him for $300k or so, but they gave me the option to loan him in for the year for a fee of $50k and only want me to pay half his salary ($12k of his $24k total per week). For a one year stop gap the loan seems a good deal.

Physical: Pace 10/Accel 11, all ratings between 9-13.

Mental: Off the Ball 17, Determination 15, Flair 14, Work Rate 13. Teamwork is 10, everything else in 11-14.

Technical: Finishing 16, First Touch 15, Dribbling 14, Passing 13, Technique 15.

Our scouts believe he's our 3rd best striker behind Khan and Constantino and he'll see a good bit of playing time if he can be productive for us.

[Radii]

Here's an updated depth chart going into the season, ignoring any current injuries:

GK: Murphy/Johnson
DL: Kirkland/Adriano/Fryers
DC: Brown/Bruce/Fryers/McKerr
DR: Berthet/Adriano/McKerr
DMC: Guarin/Yebda/Coutts
MC: Donnelly/Magira/Soo-Jin/Yebda/Coutts
AMC: Soo-Jin/Gordon/Coutts
FC: Constantino/Khan/Bojinov/Lewis

There's still a lot of overlap in the midfield but I'm a lot more comfortable with what I have now. McDonald Magira is slated to start at MC along with Donnelly, while Soo-Jin is slated to start at AMC over Neil Gordon. There will be a lot of rotation here though and I think everyone will get enough playing time to keep them happy.

With that, we've made it up to August 18th and its time for our opening match, woohoo!!

[Radii]

Competition Expectations

We're expected to fight against relegation in the EPL of course. In the FA Cup we're expected to reach the 4th round, and in the league cup we're expected to reach the 3rd round.

League Cup 2nd Round Draw

So the EPL teams jump in in the second round. We're going to be playing on the road at Championship Side Bolton. They finished 20th in the Championship last year and we should be solid favorites against them but we could have definitely gotten a better matchup. We need to win to meet board expectations in the league cup.


August 18th, 2018

Ipswich @ West Ham

West Ham are even money favorites today over us. We're 11:5 to get a win and 11:5 to get a draw. Could be worse! We played them twice in the 14/15 season when Ipswich promoted up and fell right back down. West Ham won both meetings. West Ham has been a mid table team most years in this dynasty with a best finish of 11th and worst finish of 17th.


GK: Murphy
D: Kirkland/Bruce/Brown/McKerr
DMC: Guarin
MC: Mariga/Soo-Jin
AMC: Gordon
ST: Khan/Constantino

McKerr starts for Berthet who just came off his injury and isn't quite ready to go yet. Donnelly is still hurt and won't play today so Mariga and Soo-Jin start at MC, Gordon at AMC. Adriano is also still hurt so he's not available as a backup DL/DR.

West Ham ST Emilio Nsue is listed as their dangerman. He scored a career high 17 goals in 31 matches last year. Counterattacking is our default strategy in these games and that's where we'll start.

17': Their "other" striker Vargas puts in a strong header off a cross in from the left, Murphy has to dive to make the save, good stop for him. That was their first clear cut chance.

19': We earn a corner with our first on target shot as Mariga shoots from 30 yards out and its turned behind. Corner comes to nothing.

25': They have a throwin deep in our end, after a header its crossed into the 6 yard box, their man Frederico wins a header over Gordon and puts it into the net. 0-1

33': Constantino earns us a corner with a nice run down the right. Gordon takes the corner to Alex Bruce, the near man in the area. He dodges a tackle, turns, has a solid look, his shot deflects off one of their defenders on the line and into the net!!! Our first EPL goal comes from 33 y/o central defender Alex Bruce, whee!! 1-1

39': McKerr sends a long ball forward for Constantino after we win it in the defense. Constantino runs with two defenders but controls the ball well, he goes down the right side, is able to turn and send a pass into the area for Soo-Jin. Soo-Jin shows beautiful control about 10 yards away, he's in the right side of the area on a really tight angle but puts a beautiful shot near post under the keeper, we take the lead!! 2-1

HALF: West Ham has 8 shots, 4 on target, 2 clear cut chances. We've got 9 shots, 3 on target, no clear cut chances. We have 5 shots from long range which isn't helping us much I don't think. We've got 59% of the possession. We're not tackling well at all, 38% success rate there. I'm noticing that their forwards can run with the ball for quite a long time with our defenders just trying to stay in front of them. So far so good!

47': They open with the ball and move straight down the field, sending in a cross from the right, they've got a man there... Murphy comes well off his line to go after the ball and deflects it behind. We clear the corner easily. A decisive but scary decision by Murphy there.

53': They basically have full control right now. Nsue puts a shot over but they're controlling the ball in our end non stop right now.

60': This time they hit us on the counter. We lose the ball on an attack and they send it long. Our defense isn't set and is out of position badly. Their striker Vargas runs onto it, here Murphy doesn't come all the way out, and it gives Vargas a solid look, and he beats Murphy. 2-2

66': Khan and Constantino work the ball around, Constantino gets it 20 yards out and tries to find a shot, he runs circles around the defense before putting a shot wide. Poor shot but ridiculous control to generate a decent look in the first place.

69': They build up down the left, the ball goes to their star Nsue, he runs across from the left to the middle of the field, pulls up and shoots from 20 yards out, its a rocket of a shot perfectly placed in the left side of the net, we had no chance there. 2-3

69': Bojinov is in for Khan and Yebda in for Mariga.

They close out the final 20 minutes quite easily.

West Ham 3 : 2 Ipswich

Well that was a hell of an exciting introduction to the EPL. Sadly we couldn't get any points out of it. Maybe they underestimated us at first, but hey, we found a way to get a couple goals on the road! Next up, finding a way to get a point out of a match.

Their striker Nsue is man of the match.

Goals: Bruce (7.3), Soo-Jin (7.2)
Assists: Constantino (7.8), Gordon (6.8)

The rest of the team were between 6.3-6.8. McKerr struggled a bit with a 6.3, Brown a 6.4. Looking forward to having Berthet back in there.


We travel to Nottingham Forest in 3 days for our next match.

[bbgunn]

Enjoying the dynasty!

A minor point: Kang Soo-Jin's family name is Kang (Korean family names come first). Just in case you wanted to list that in your lineups.

[Radii]

Thanks bbgunn!

[Radii]

August 21st, 2018

Ipswich @ Nottingham Forest

Just like our first match, We're 11:5 to win today, Nottingham Forest are even money. We have a long history with them going 4-2-5 lifetime, but haven't played since the 15/16 season as they promoted up and seem to have made it stick this time with finishes of 12th and 14th the last 2 years.

GK: Murphy
D: Kirkland/Bruce/Brown/Berthet
DMC: Guarin
MC: Mariga/Kang
AMC: Gordon
ST: Khan/Constantino

ST Ivan Popov is their dangerman and I release a statement to the media saying he seems impossible to stop, hopefully putting the spotlight on him. He's scored 18 and 15 goals in his last two years in the EPL for Nottingham. Their other front man is Chris Wood who scored 11 goals for them last season.

Berthet starts today at DR. We'll go out there today looking to counter attack.

2': They control it from the outset, passing back into the defense before moving forward. There's a pass in from the right to midfielder Moseley, he takes a shot from 25 yards out and buries it into the left side of the net, Murphy had no chance and our defense wasn't lined up well to challenge him. 0-1

5': We win the ball and try to counter, there's no immediate break to be had, but after a little buildup, Kang finds Constantino in the area, a perfect poachers move... Constantino hits the post from near point blank range, massive choke there.

19': Weve actually shot 7 times to their 2 here.. but all our stuff is way off target or super long range, but we have been working hard to get the ball forward.

23': Gordon with a yellow for a tackle in their offensive end. They get a free kick from 35 yards out or so and put it back in play to build up on offense, we cut out their attack nicely though.

35': We work the ball forward after they lose it on offense, passed to Kang a solid 30 yards out, he shoots from there, its almost perfectly placed, it hits the crossbar though, so very close.

44': There's the counterattack! We win it in their end and push ahead quickly, a pass to Khan near midfield, a ball lobbed forward left that Constantino is first two, he controls it well, 3 defenders converge to him, he passes to Khan, Khan into the area and he beats the keeper!!! I thought we had a goal in us today, now to see if we can find a second. 1-1

HALF: We're playing really really well, we've taken 12 shots, though I think many I didn't see in highlights, I dunno. Just 3 on target, 2 clear cut chances and the one goal. They have 5 shots, just 1 on target for the goal. Possession is even as are most of the other stats. Come on guys, get a point today!!

50': EPL Speed becomes really apparent here, we win a ball in defense and there's a long ball forward, Constantino has a line on it and at any other level he simply outruns the defense for an easy goal. Here the defender keeps up with him and wins a key tackle before he gets into the penalty area.

56': They control it on offense for a good while... finally sending it out left, cross into the area, and Mariga is deemed to have gone up unfairly with their striker... its a penalty. They bury it and we trail. 1-2

59': We have some very nice buildup, a nice series of passes around hte left side has Magira get into the area, send a pass over to Gordon for a decent looking shot, but right at the keeper.

62': Yebda in for Gordon, Gordon has a 5.6 rating and a yellow and took a little knock to hurt his fitness. Kang moves up to AMC, Yebda MC next to Mariga.

67': We give up a couple corners, on the second they get a solid header off, Muyrphy has to dive to save it, it deflects back into play and Kang is there to clear.

76': Kang with a yellow.

78': Bojinov in for an ineffective Constantino, McKerr in for an exhausted Berthet and we're going to try to attack for the final 15 minutes.

81': Mariga with a yellow.

92': We earn a corner, this could be our last chance, just another minute or so of added time. Its cleared easily, we recover and send it back forward and earn a throwin. We get a cross in from Magira, Bojinov with a header, its over... and that's the game.

Nottingham Forest 2: 1 Ipswich

Man of the Match: Matthew Khan (8.2)
Goals: Khan
Assists: Kang (6.6)
Notables: Kirkland (7.0)

Gordon a 5.6, Brown a 6.1, Constantino a 6.4.

I thought Constantino made the pass to Khan for the goal, but we had a few people near the penalty area, I guess Constantino got it to Kang who knocked it a few feet over to Khan, I couldn't tell in the highlights, assist to Kang tho.


Two close losses on the road. This one was frustrating as we had a couple clear cut chances missed, one by Constantino that is hard to chalk up to anything but stage fright, and of course gave up a penalty to break the 1:1 tie.

Next up is Chelsea, then the League Cup, then finally one we have a legit shot to win against Huddersfield.

[Radii]

-- Gordon Donnelly resumes full training. He won't be ready to go for Chelsea but will play against Bolton later in the week.

-- Adriano resumes full training as well, same as Donnelly really.

Injury Update

-- Troy Brown turns an ankle in training. He's going to miss 4 weeks.


August 25th, 2018

Chelsea(2-0-0, 1st) @ Ipswich(0-0-2, 15th)

We're 7:2 dogs to win at home, they're 4:6 favorites. I'm surprised and happy that its not worse.

GK: Murphy
D: Kirkland/Bruce/Fryers/McKerr
DMC: Yebda
MC: Mariga/Gaurin
AMC: Kang
ST: Khan/Constantino

Chelsea is led by Mario Balotelli who IRL went from Internazionale to Man City last year. In the game he stayed in Italy becoming a true star there, scoring 20+ goals 4 times. Last season Chelsea bought him for $48.5 Million and pays him $275,000/wk. McKerr starts for Berthet, Kang up to AMC, Gaurin at MC, and Yebda starts at DMC. Gordon sits today.

Balotelli doesn't start for Chelsea today. Carols Vela and James Holland start up front for Chelsea. A 36 year old Petr Cech is still their keeper.

We counterattack again today.

4': It doesn't take long, midfielder Canales tries a shot from 20 yards out, we deflect it but Vela is first to it and buries it. 0-1

15': Briggs with a cross in, Vela is behind the defense and heads it in.. a second man came forward and our defenders looked confused. 0-2

36': Alex Bruce gets a yellow for a dive as we try a free kick into the area.

HALF: So hey Chelsea is good. They shoot 12 times to our 4. They're gonna crush us, lets just get this over with.

55': Maybe I'm giving up too early but we keep playing more on short rest. Gordon in for Kang, Bojinov in for Constantino, Coutts in for Yebda.

74': Alex Bruce slides into Carlos Vela as he tries a cross from the left side of the area. Vela is hurt. Mwhaha (ok that was mean).

90': Bojinov with a yellow.


That'll do it.

Ipswich 0 : 2 Chelsea

Vela is obviously man of the match.

Notables: Guarin (7.0)

Constantino 5.6, Murphy 6.1, Bruce 5.8.


We did sell out the joint today.

-- After the match Chelsea's manager Carlo Ancelotti says that he thinks there's a lot of time left in the season and I should be able to save Ipswich from Relegation. I respond and admire his tactical ability. shrug!

[Radii]

August 28th, 2018

League Cup 2nd Round

Ipswich @ Bolton

We're even money favorites against Bolton, a team off to a hot start in the Championship. We're better than last year in theory though and we should do well here.

GK: Murphy
D: Kirkland/Bruce/McKerr/Berthet
DMC: Yebda
MC: Mariga/Kang
AMC: Gordon
ST: Khan/Constantino

McKerr starts for Fryers at DC today, Berthet back in at DR. Kang back to MC, Gordon AMC. Donnelly and Adriano aren't really fully ready yet and I'll work them in vs Huddersfield instead which is only 3 days after this. We're attacking today.

11': McKerr with a yellow.

22': 3 total shots, all long range, all off target so far.

22': Berthet a yellow.

26': We build up on offense, Kang gets it ahead to Khan, Khan skips over a defender in the area, Khan with a shot... saved and parried away. Khan is first to the rebound, this one is a clear cut chance, but the keeper dives and saves this one too! Doooh.

HALF: Gordon got a shot off near the end of the half but that's really it, the last 20 minutes fly by. We have 3 guys with poor morale and I was hoping for a great showing here to fix that up. Maybe in the second half. We end up with 7 shots on the half, 3 on target. They shoot 4 times, all off target. They haven't seriously threatened at all but we really need a goal here, we gotta win this.

48': They have a bit of buildup, a through ball and our defense doesn't react at all, their man Carver with a clear cut chance from 15 yards out... and he puts it wide.

51': Constantino receives a pass 25 yards out, he decides to it himself, a run around one man, into the area, its a clear cut chance though the angle is tight... and its saved.

54': Khan with a ball ahead for Constantino, he's behind the defense, he can't miss here... but he does, just wide...

66': Kirkland is hurt and his fitness goes in the tank. I'll bring him out ASAP.

69': Adriano in for Kirkland, Guarin in for Yebda.

80': Bojinov in for Constantino, I really wanted him to play his way out of his slump here that seems to be getting him down, but he has missed about 5 clear cut chances this season now.

91': We intercept an attempt to clear a ball out, Kang quickly finds Mariga for a shot from the edge of the penalty area... but its saved.

94': We get a free kick about 40 yards out, its sent wide, then centered for Kang, he puts it into the area for Khan... woooow Khan looked to be 3-4 feet offsides, but its not called, and Khan buries the shot!! 1-0

This is in the last minute of added time. Bolton have every right to be really, really pissed off about this one.

Bolton 0 : 1 Ipswich

Man of the Match: Kang Soo-Jin (8.2)
Goal: Khan (7.8)
Assist: Kang
Notables: Murphy (7.0), Berthet (7.2), Kirkland (7.1), McKerr (7.5), Bruce (7.1)


Its our first win of the year. Hopefully this will boost our spirits leading into a very winnable league match against Huddersfield in a few days.

[Radii]

-- We reject a $5.75M bid for Neil Gordon from Southhampton.

League Cup 3rd Round Draw

There's 12 non EPL teams still left, but we're not lucky enough to draw one of them. We're going to host West Ham, the team we lost 3:2 against in our league opener.

September Update

-- We have league matches on the 1st, 17th, 22nd, and 30th. League Cup 3rd Round will be on the 26th. There's a week break Euro Championship Qualifiers.

-- The only training update this month regards our starting keeper Brian Murphy. I don't wanna see training news about 35 year olds. Throwing, Composure, Concentration and Acceleration all fall a bit recently.

-- The board is pleased with my leadership. Our increased stature is still the positive. The fans are concerned about the play of Neil Gordon and that's listed as the primary negative. We made $3 Million last month. Thanks TV Revenue!


September 1st, 2018

Huddersfield (1-0-2, 12th) @ Ipswich (0-0-3, 19th)

We're even money favorites to get a win at home here, Huddersfield are 11:5. Huddersfield got a 1-0 win over Birmingham.

GK: Murphy
D: Kirkland/Bruce/McKerr/Berthet
DMC: Guarin
MC: Mariga/Donnelly
AMC: Kang
ST: Khan/Constantino

Donnelly gets his first start today. Mariga starts at MC next to him and Kang at AMC instead of Gordon. I debate sitting Constantino and his poor morale but I am giving him another shot today. We're attacking at home.

We're one of just two teams without a point in the EPL so far (Blackburn is the other). I feel like we're under a very very large amount of pressure to get 3 points at home against one of the teams we were in the Championship with last year.

9': We earn a corner, its headed away but we send it back in. Constantino has it out left, runs into the area and finds a small opening, blasts a shot... and its off the right post! Soooo close buddy.

12': Donnelly with a good run down the left side, a cross in... Constantino heads it just over.

36': We work the ball around on offense, Mariga shoots from 25 yards out, the keeper has to dive to push it wide, that was a great looking shot.

45': We earn a corner, its taken to Alex Bruce who gets a shot but puts it right at the keeper.

HALF: We end up with 8 shots, just 2 on target. We do settle for 5 from long range. They shoot 5 times, none on target. We have a 60/40 possession edge, we're not doing well in the air (47% on headers) but otherwise seem solidly in control, minus the goals.

56': Guarin with a yellow.

59': They have it out wide right, there's a cross in, midfielder Tunnicliffe is open and wins a header.. and beats Murphy. Ugh. 0-1

62': Donnelly with a pass to Kang, he shoots from 20 yards out, just saved by the keeper... we keep control and Donnelly earns a long range shot, its saved and tipped wide. Corner goes nowhere.

71': Gordon in for a tired Donnelly. Gordon AMC, Kang MC. Bojinov is in for Khan.

78': We look to buildup on offense but can't seem to get anything into the area... Kang pulls up from 20+ and strikes it... just off the crossbar and back into play. The ball seems to hang in the area for hours with people fighting for control.. but they finally clear it out.

85': We earn a corner as we try to cross it in and have it blocked... they clear, we recover though, but just can't do anything productive.

87': We earn another corner, we're not getting anything threatening leading up to these, just trying to find someone open at all... they clear this, we control and try to work the offense again. But we just cannot get it to anyone in the area for anything at all.

94': We have one last shot, Guarin takes a long one that isn't anywhere close. Kinda like the rest of the match. Sigh.

Ipsiwch 0 : 1 Huddersfield

The first couple matches we were happy to get some goals, then we played Chelsea, sure, we're not getting anything there... but this one, this one hurts.

Notables: Kirkland (7.2), Mariga (7.3), Khan (7.1)

Bruce a 6.0, he's struggling a bit this year more than most I think.


Its still very very early, but we sit in next to last, just ahead of Blackburn, with 0 points. 3 teams have just 1 point so far.

[CAsterling]

Great read......it took me a few hours to read all 14 pages, but I love this dynasty.

I'm curious where the ex-Liverpool M C Cook ended up, and love the fact that you got Constantino to sign for you.

Brilliant. I'm looking forward to reading more about Ipswich in the EPL.

[Radii]

Injury Update

Backup DR Michael McKerr is hurt by Matthew Khan in training today(the 5th) and is going to miss 9-12 days. We don't play again for a good bit still so he could be available by our next match anyway.

-- We have an October match vs Tottenham rescheduled due to their participation in the EURO cup.

-- We have a December match vs Liverpool rescheduled due to their participation in the Euro Cup

-- Kang Soo-Jin has told the East Anglian Daily Times that he is having problems adjusting to life in Ipswich. Do I need to bring in a South Korean for him to hang out with when the transfer window re-opens?


September 16th, 2018

Ipswich (0-0-4, 20th) @ Sheffield United(2-2-0, 6th)

Sheffield Utd are even money favorites to win today, putting us at a familier 11:5 to win here and 11:5 to find a draw. Blackburn got a win recently leaving us the last team without a point in the EPL. We haven't played these guys since the 14/15 season but spent a lot of time in the Championship with them prior to that. The results weren't good back then, 2-1-7 lifetime record.

GK: Murphy
D: Kirkland/Bruce/Fryers/Berthet
DMC: Guarin
MC: Mariga/Donnelly
AMC: Kang
ST: Khan/Bojinov

We're on TV today I believe for the first time this season. 24 y/o ST Luca Vanelli is listed as their dangerman, he's valued at $11 Million and has a goal and an assist this year so far in 4 matches. Sheffield paid $18.75M for him last year, buying him off Blackburn. He scored 16 goals in 22 matches his first season.

Fryers starts for McKerr at DC, Troy Brown is almost back from injury. I sit Constantino for the first time today. Valeri Bojinov gets his first start. We'll look to counterattack today.

6': Mariga with the first two shots of the match, one in the first minute but its way wild. The second here in the 6th minute as Khan slips by a defender and gets the ball to Mariga at the edge of the penalty area, Mariga with a blast, pushed away by the keeper though.

17': They win a header for the first shot I've seen them take in a highlight, but its sent weakly right at Murphy.

21': Sheffield Utd earns a corner, taken to the near man, he shoots and Murphy turns it aside... or a defender deflects it, I can't actually tell for sure. The second corner is taken to the far post, Murphy comes out and doesn't get the ball, they head it... and Kirkland is there to head it off the line, whew!!

34': They start to pile on the pressure, with recent highlights of headers going over and shots deflected for corners. Finally here they earn a corner, its sent to the near man who passes it back to midfielder Sharp who is 25 yards out, he strikes from there and somehow none of the 15 men in the area deflect it and it rockets into the left side of the net... 0-1

38': Berthet plays a ball up ahead of the defense, Khan is there and first to it, the defense is tracking hard thoug. Khan gets off a solid shot from the right side of the area.. the keeper saves but it falls back to Khan. Instead of shooting right away he runs closer with it and it seems to allow the keeper to recover and dive on the ball... seems like we wasted a great chance there.

HALF: That's it for the first half. Fryers and Bruce both with 6.4's and Bojinov with a 6.3, we are just struggling to get anything. We shoot 8 times, but 5 are from long range. They have 9 shots, 5 on target and of course the one goal from 25 yards out. No changes at the half, other htan the instruction to work it into the box before shooting. We shoot too much from distance it seems.

62': We're giving up a bunch of corners but they so far are having no luck. They have 9 corners on the match to our zero...

64': Constantino in for Bojinov. Maybe with fresh legs something happens? Also Bojinov is tiring way faster than everyone.

72': Gordon in for Kang

74': Literally every single highlight this half involves them taking a corner kick. This one sees a pass into the area, passed back out to the corner taker, crossed in and a header by Gowens for a goal... that's their 14th corner of the match and I think 8th of the half. 0-2

77': We earn our first corner kick as Donnelly has a shot blocked from 20 yards out that goes behind. They clear it, Berthet tries to send it back in and its deflected back for corner #2. They clear this one as well. We recover but they've got about 17 men in the box, how this is possible I dunno but I swear, 17... we're not scoring at this point.

And that's it, we don't get close again.

Sheffield United 2 : 0 Ipswich

Their defender Gowens put up an 8.6 today and earned man of the match.

DMC Fredy Guarin gave us a 7.1 today, no one was awful but no one stood out either.


Not good, not good! Our next match is at home against another early relegation candidate in Birmingham. We'll see what we can do.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by CAsterling

Great read......it took me a few hours to read all 14 pages, but I love this dynasty.

I'm curious where the ex-Liverpool M C Cook ended up, and love the fact that you got Constantino to sign for you.

Thanks! Sam Cook spent 3 months with Woking when we won league 1, playing 15 matches and putting up a huge 7.43 rating, getting a couple goals, 4 assists and 3 man of the match awards for us. IIRC I brought him in when a bad injury forced another season long loaner out the door early that year for us.

He was sold to Hibernian in the Scottish Premier League for $2 million. He played 18 matches for them last season, notching 4 goals and 3 assists and a 7.26 rating as they finished 11th out of 12 teams in that league, barely avoiding relegation.

I tell my scout to scout him, he's a physical god with 5 physical ratings above 15 including 18 pace, and a great passer, but he doesn't have the solid balanced all around ratings that guys like Donnelly have.

I'm looking forward to reading more about Ipswich in the EPL.

I think we might have 33 more EPL Matches to go before we don't get to read about Ipswich in the EPL for awhile at this rate. But hopefully things will turn around!

[Radii]

My scouts think Cook would be a decent midfielder in the EPL and that he's not quite up to the same standard that Donnelly and Mariga are at. He's still just 20 years old and might be someone I should try to keep on my shortlist over the next couple years.

[Radii]

-- Champions League group play has started, I may not remember to check in too regularly, I just happened to catch a news item about Arsenal that sent me looking. Chelsea, Man U, Arsenal and Man City made group play this year. Man City is in a group with Real Madrid. Arsenal is grouped with Celtic, Ajax and Villareal. Man U and Chelsea seem to have easier draws. Chelsea has dominated Europe over the last decade, winning the Champions Cup in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2017. They were runners up in 2016. Chelsea and Man U opened with wins, Arsenal and Man City with draws.

Injury Update

Nearly immediately after resuming full training, Troy Brown is hit in the face by McDonald Mariga and has a bruised jaw, knocking him out for another week.


September 25th, 2018

League Cup 3rd Round

West Ham(6th, PRM) @ Ipswich(20th, PRM)

I forgot about the league cup. We lost 3:2 to West Ham in the league opener and get to host them now in the league cup. After this we've got 5 days off before Birmingham so we should be able to give it our best and not have to worry too much. Our poor EPL start is being noticed by the bookies, we're 4:1 to win at home here today, much much worse than the odds we got on the road just a few weeks ago.

GK: Murphy
D: Kirkland/Bruce/McKerr/Berthet
DMC: Yebda
MC: Mariga/Donnelly
AMC: Gordon
ST: Khan/Constantino

We do make some changes today. McKerr back in for Fryers, they've been rotating at DC with Troy Brown out. Yebda starts at DMC, Gordon AMC and Constantino gets another shot to get out of his funk. I tell Constantino in the pregame talks that I have faith in his ability.

11': We control much of the early action, the first on target shot comes as Gordon strikes one from 20+ yards out that's solidly struck and forces the keeper to turn it behind for a corner. We get a poor header off target from the corner is all.

25': We earn a couple more corners that lead to more high headers. We have a 65/35 possession edge so far, they headed one in off a cross that Murphy had to save, that's the only threat against us so far.

HALF: Only one off target long range shot is taken in the last 20 minutes of the half. We have 6 shots to their 5, each team puts just 1 on target. We are playing pretty well I think and the highlights have been mostly in our favor, we're doing a good job of not letting them build anything up, we just have to find a way to score dangit!

69': Constantino receives a pass about 25 yards out, he makes one man miss, cuts right, into the area, jukes another defender, he's got a really great look here... shoots near post, but the keeper turns it behind. The commentary: "How did he miss that" and "He's not playing with a lot of confidence here"

71': We earned a corner, they cleared it out, but it was sent back forward, Khan had a shot saved, Constantino was light years offsides as he got to the rebound and scored, the play continued just long enough for him to actually put the ball in the net before the call was given. Wonder if that can help the confidence any.

REGULATION: I left all my starters in because it seemed so obvious we were going to extra time. And we are, we dominated that half, just no goals. We end 90 minutes with 14 shots to their 6, we only allowed West Ham one second half shot. I bring in Guarin for Yebda at DMC, and Kang in for Donnelly at MC, our two most tired guys.

97': We give up a corner. Guarin heads it clear, safe for us.

99': We earn a corner on a Kirkland cross into the area. Gordon takes it and they head clear just as easily.

ET HALFTIME: They shoot once, we shoot none in this 15 minute period. I bring Coutts in at MC, Kang up to AMC, Gordon is out. He picked up a bit of an injury in extra time and needs to come off. I feel like West Ham is playing for the tie and I worry about what's about to happen but screw it, I tell my guys to go out there and attack.

112': We give up a corner but clear it easily.

115': We give up another corner, this one they take to the near man Cohen, he blasts it immediately and its in between Murphy and the defender on the line, we had no chance to stop that one. 0-1

That'll do it.

Ipswich 0 : 1 West Ham

Their goal scorer is man of the match today.

Notables: Kirkland (7.5), Bruce (7.3), Khan (8.4)

Khan drew a lot of fouls and passed the ball well. Kirkland has been putting up consistently better numbers than everyone else as well during these struggles. Constantino actually gave us a 6.9 today but he missed a clear cut chance and that has to hurt more than help.

[bbgunn]

Originally Posted by Radii

-- Kang Soo-Jin has told the East Anglian Daily Times that he is having problems adjusting to life in Ipswich. Do I need to bring in a South Korean for him to hang out with when the transfer window re-opens?

I find that really helps out a lot when you bring in a fellow expat to keep someone company when they are not adjusting to life in a new country, or are otherwise unhappy.

It can work out for you in interesting ways. Once, when I was playing an MLS team in FM, I shelled out a lot of money for a Brazilian Designated Player midfielder, and he had a miserable time adjusting to the U.S. So I went out and used a few pennies on a Brazilian defender and forward, both deemed by my head scout as "decent" or "useful". Turns out the forward was my leading goalscorer for that season, helping me to get to the playoffs!

[Radii]

September 30th, 2018

Birmingham(1-2-2, 14th) @ Ipswich(0-0-5, 20th)

When I last looked Birmingham were 0-2-2 and in 17th, a win bumps them up a good bit. We're 7:2 to get a win at home here today while they are 4:6 favorites. 9:4 for a draw. We're 1-1-2 lifetime against these guys but haven't seen them since our year in the EPL in the 14/15 season.

GK: Murphy
D: Kirkland/Bruce/McKerr/Berthet
DMC: Guarin
MC: Mariga/Donnelly
AMC: Kang
ST: Khan/Lewis

Brahim Ba is their leading scorer and dangerman, he's got 2 goals so far this year and 13+ each of the last 3 seasons for Birmingham. Guarin back to DMC, Kang back at AMC and today we run Khan/Lewis up front, just trying another combination. Birmingham runs a 4-2-3-1 with 2 MC's, three AMC's and a striker, interesting. Counterattacking strat today.

22': after a first minute Birmingham shot and a 3rd minute corner for us about 20 minutes run off without a highlight. We earn a couple corners here but no shots.

28': A highlight opens as we are trying a counter... Lewis has the ball on our side of midfield, he runs by one man and sends a ball forward to Khan. Khan is 35 yards out, has a defender close... he holds off his man, gets a bit closer and strikes before the keeper can rush out too far. Its in the right side of the net!! A great counter, great pass by Lewis and great control and finish by Khan. 1-0

35': We have it in their end, winning possession back twice after they make tackles ot try to clear. Berthet sends it to Kang, he puts it into the area for Lewis. Lewis could shoot but he lays it off for Khan who has a wide open look from the penalty spot... but he hits it right at the keeper, a beautiful move and we should have gone up 2-0 there.

42': We cut off any potential breakaway as they send a long ball down the right to Ba, but they do earn a corner out of their little break... they get a header as the corner comes in but its wide.

HALF: McKerr and Bruce are struggling in defense for some reason, 5.7 and 5.8 ratings there at the half, but I'm really liking what I'm seeing in these highlights. Lets hang on to this lead guys!! We've allowed 5 shots, all off target, and taken 3 shots, 2 on target/2 clear cut chances from khan with the one goal. We are not tackling particularly well (57%) nor winning headers (46%).

58': A couple threats from Birmingham, a cross goes in, they have an attacker basically on top of Murphy and somehow neither win the ball, it goes sailing wide and Donnelly clears it. They work it back forward and AMC Chapman fires from 20 yards out but sends it wide.

62': Corner for birmingham, they have a good shot as Murphy came out for the cross and didn't get it... but a header is high.

73': Fryers in for Kang, no AMC and a 5 man defensive line

87': Yebda in for Donnelly

91': Mariga with a yellow, he went in for a tackle and injured his opponent.

95': We give up a corner, should be about over here... they end up with a cross and header off the corner that's over the bar and that's all they can do.

Ipswich 1 : 0 Birmingham

Man of the Match: Stuart Kirkland (7.3)
Goal: Khan (6.9)
Assist: Lewis (6.8)

McKerr just didn't do well, he didn't win many headers and he ended up with a 5.5 rating. No one else but Kirkland found better than a 7.0 today. Its 3 points though, 3 points we desperately needed to get our season going!


The matches don't line up evenly in the EPL with all the tournaments going on and such. A few teams have 5 matches, a few have 6, and a few have 7. Right now 3 teams are tied for 15/16/17th place with 5 points. 18th is Tottenham with 3 points in 5 matches, 19th is Ipswich with 3 points in 6 matches and 20th is Watford with 1 point in 7 matches. 17th is our goal to avoid relegation. Loooong way to go, we'll look a little closer at the standings when everyone hits say 10 matches.

Sheffield Utd is currently leading the league. Sunderland 2nd, Aston Villa 3rd. Chelsea didn't allow a goal in a 4-0-0 start but are 0-2-1 in their last 3 and have fallen to 5th.

[BYU 14]

grats on your first EPL win, hopefully this gets some momentum going for you!

[Radii]

October Update

-- We play on the 6th, 20th, and 28th this month and a 2 week break for more Euro Championship Qualifiers. I think we had a match rescheduled around here somewhere as well. We travel to Old Trafford on the 20th to play Manchester United. Whee! With so little action I may have a the backups playing on the reserve team to keep warm.

-- The board is pleased with my leadership this year. Our increase in stature remains a positive. Our 0-2 defeat to Sheffield Utd is a negative. We made $882,000 last month profit. That's a bit low considering $4.76M in TV revenue. Still, we're currently sitting on a profit of $14.5M on the season and instead of the usual slow (or sometimes not so slow) drain on profits throughout the year the TV contract is allowing us to continue to bring in money. We have a positive cash balance of $6.4 Million right now.


Injury Update

-- Matthew Khan hurts his shoulder in the weight room. He's going to miss 3-4 weeks. Its just Oct 2nd so he'll miss 3 matches only most likely.


-- Zeki Fryers doesn't show up for training and I issue a warning. He's getting a lot of playing time right now but he's still unhappy with me and wants out. He does accept his warning.


October 6th, 2018

Ipswich(1-0-5, 19th) @ Everton(3-0-4, 12th)

Everton are huge 1:2 favorites at their house today. We're 9:2 to win and 13:5 to draw. We're 0-1-1 lifetime against Everton.

GK: Murphy
D: Kirkland/Bruce/McKerr/Berthet
DMC: Yebda
MC: Mariga/Donnelly
AMC: Kang
ST: Bojinov/Constantino

Yebda starts at DMC, Bojinov and Constantino up front today with Khan hurt and Lewis tired. Midfielder Jack Rodwell is listed as Everton's dangerman. He's an impressive looking player but hasn't done much this year so far in 7 matches, 0 goals/0 assists. He's valued at $16 Million and makes $125,000/wk though!

We'll try to counter again.

7': Constant pressure from Everton. They've shot 4 times and had 3 corners, but mostly just stuff off target.

9': Buildup from everton, they get a header from about 10 yards out that hits the crossbar... so close to a goal there.

23': They get a long ball forward and a striker gets to it, its the first clear cut chance of the match and Murphy makes a reflex save, whew. They've got 8 shots already.

36': On their 6th corner of the match we try to clear it out but they get it right abck into the area and Kardec on their 11th shot they finally get one past Murphy. 0-2

HALF: Everton has 15 shots, 7 on target, 3 clear cut chances. We have 0 shots. 61/39 possession edge to Everton. This is awful.

52': Kang shoots from 25 yards out, its blocked by a defender. Its our first shot of the match.

53': One of their strikers simply embarrasses Alex Bruce, moving right around him to earn a wide open shot from close range, their 4th clear cut chance. Murphy comes up huge again with the stop and we clear the corner out.

54': midfielder O'Sullivan blasts a shot from 20 yards and a good bit left of center into the right side of the net. 0-2

58': Rob Lewis in for Constantino, Adriano in for Kirkland and a recently cleared to play Troy Brown in for Alex Bruce. All guys who need to get some minutes and this is a lost cause.

69': Jack Rodwell with a yellow for Everton.

73': A very nice looking shot from Kang at the edge of the penalty area is our first on target shot, saved unfortunately.

They kill off the rest of this easily.

Everton 2 : 0 Ipswich

That's as soundly as we've been beaten to date. Any time we tried to counter they instantly dispossessed Constantino/Bojinov with 100% reliability. They ended up shooting 31 times.

Their midfielder Lee O'Sullivan is man of the match.

On our side Murphy put up a 7.0, so did Mariga. Bruce had a 5.3, he's been really bad this year.

[Radii]

We've got 8 players called up for international matches on 8 different international teams:

England U21: DL Kirkland
Scotland: MC Donnelly
Kenya: MC Mariga
South Korea: AMC Kang
Colombia: DMC Guarin
Algeria: DMC Yebda
Wales: DC Brown
N. Ireland: DR McKerr


Injury Update

DAMMIT.

-- DR Slyvain Berthet tears a groin muscle running sprints in practice and is going to miss 7-8 weeks. TWO MONTHS.

-- DR Michael McKerr strains his back on the very same day in the weight room and he's out for a month.


-- Not all that interested in international friendlies, but actual competitions are always fascinating. Troy Brown puts up a 6.9 rating playing all 90 minutes as Wales beats Azerbaijan 3:0 in Euro Championship Qualifying.

-- MC McDonald Mariga gets a 20th minute goal as Keyna crushes Sao Tome & Principe (where?) 4-1 in qualifying for the African Cup of Nations.


Injury Update

-- This is the worst two week break in the history of sports! (Probably not, but dear god I'm annoyed). AMC Neil Gordon has a twisted knee on Oct 16th and is going to miss 2-3 weeks.



October 20th, 2018

Ipswich(1-0-6, 19th) @ Man Utd(5-1-1, 5th)

The news headline is "Ipswich face the impossible". Yeah, yeah we do. We are 10:1 to get a win and 5:1 to even pull off a draw on the road here. Man U are 1:6 favorites.

GK: Murphy
D: Kirkland/Bruce/Brown/Adriano
DMC: Guarin
MC: Mariga/Donnelly
AMC: Kang
ST: Khan/Constantino

ST Danny Welbeck is killing it this year so far with 5 goals in 6 league matches. Outside of a couple loans he's been a semi-regular player for Man U over the last decade, playing 15-20 matches most seasons and scoring 5-9 goals. This is certainly looking to be his best year ever. Their other Striker today is 32 y/o Jan Angel Albin who has 2 goals in 5 matches. Wayne Rooney is hurt.

Brown is finally back in the starting lineup, Adriano gets his first start at DR. Guarin is back at DMC and Khan made it back to full training early and is back in the lineup today. We'll try to counter again.

1': Kirkland with a foul about 25 yards out, they shoot and its blocked behind for a corner, but we're able to clear it out.

16': Nothing to get excited about but Man U seems to be starting slowly against us, just 2 shots so far and we haven't really allowed a huge chance yet. I'm sure they'll win but its nothing compared to the onslaught from start to finish we faced with Everton.

40': Over 20 minutes without a highlight. They earn a corner here, I'm noticing their crosses are just very well placed, I expect they're going to score on a header when they put a perfect ball into the area and we don't react well. Here though, a cross in off the corner, a shot... Murphy can't get to it, but Adriano clears it off the line! Wow, that wasn't right at his corner either, he had to lay out to block that shot. I'll watch the replay, if we somehow pull off a point here I'll fraps that highlight. I might anyway.

HALF: They shoot 6 times, putting 3 on target and earning one clear cut chance. We shoot 3 times, nothing remotely close. Kang did have a decent crack from about 20 yards out but it went sailing a decent bit high. I feel like we're playing well, can we hold them off for another 45 minutes? They are more technically sound, though that should be obvious. 77% on tackles, 81% on headers compared to 57% and 44% for us.

47': Brown makes a nice tackle as one of their strikers tries to get into the area after some buildup, commentary: "brown is driving his team on!". We clear the corner easily.

50': Dear god. They have a free kick from just inside the midfield circle... 45 yards or something? Its a rocket of a shot bending from left to right and Murphy has to completely lay out to save it... yeah we don't have anyone that can do that!! But nice save.

62': the ball sits in our penalty area for... ever? Almost ever. A shot is blocked by one of our defenders and falls to their other striker, Kirkland is right on top of it to tackle it away, we try to clear but its deflected and back into the crowded penalty area... finally we clear. That was really really scary.

67': Donnelly with a yellow for a tackle out wide left.

68': Rob Lewis in for Constantino.

71': Bojinov in for Khan. This is more fatigue in Khan's first match back from injury.

72': They have a free kick near midfield and work it forward quickly. There's a ball from star midfielder Parejo into the area for ML Thiago Carleto... he's burned Adriano to get open there, he's out a bit wide to the left but puts his shot perfectly by Murphy to the far post and in. 0-1

77': They've taken 4 or 5 shots since that last goal, they are seriously putting the pressure on now.

83': Its a one goal game, Maybe I should care a lot more about keeping this at one goal, but I tell the team to attack to see if we could get a moment of magic here.

93': Alex Bruce falls over on a throwin. He didn't take the throwin. The throwin didn't come in his general direction. He just fell over injured with no one around him.

That'll do it.

Man Utd 1 : 0 Ipswich

The floodgates really opened in that second half. We didn't shoot a single time in the second half, just 3 all game. Man U shoots 23 times in the end, they really, really put the pressure on in the final 30 minutes. A decent effort by us but no points.

Notables: Murphy (7.1), Kirkland (7.3). Kirkland is 11 for 11 heading the ball.

Kang Soo-Jin was way off today, 5.9. He, unlike Kirkland, can't win anything in the air. We know that though, he's like 4 feet tall (... checks player sheet... 5'8", heading 5, jumping 5).


-- Alex Bruce is going to miss 5-7 days. We play again in 8 days so he'll likely not be full strength for that one, but hopefully he can play.

[Radii]

-- Zeki Fryers is absent from training again today. He's just unhappy here. When I took over he thought he was a first team regular but I just didn't value him that way and I don't think he's going to accept staying. I transfer listed him last year and he's still transfer listed. I think between Alex Bruce playing so poorly at times and Fryers' problems I'm going to have to look to sign a defender come january and offer Fryers away for really cheap if not free. I fine Fryers a week's salary for missing practice again. He accepts this and says he'll try to be less of a douche. I don't believe him.


October 28th, 2018

Sunderland(7-0-2, 1st) @ Ipswich(1-0-7, 19th)

Well this looks bad. We're 0-0-2 lifetime against them from the one year we made it up before. They're 1:2 favorites, we're 9:2 dogs. They're off to an incredible start, especially given their history. They finished 10th last year, that's their best finish since a 7th in 2000/01 almost 20 years ago.

GK: Murphy
D: Kirkland/Bruce/Brown/Adriano
DMC: Guarin
MC: Mariga/Donnelly
AMC: Kang
ST: Khan/Lewis

ST Darren Bent leads them with 4 goals so far in 5 matches, a 34 year old worth $300,000 at this point in his career. Looks like he came to Sunderland for a $16.5M fee IRL in 09/10 from Tottenham. He's stayed with Sunderland his whole career, scoring 10+ goals 4 times in the last 9 years. Their top threat however is Nuno Goncalves, a 26 y/o worth $9.75M from Portugal. He's got 3 goals/2 assists and is identified as their dangerman... but never mind, Goncalves isn't starting today, in his place is 21 y/o Julian Barnes, an up and comer who looks alright too.

We start Lewis over Constantino today. We'll counter as usual.

18': Guarin picks up a yellow trying to win the ball to keep it in our attacking end. Slow game so far, 2 shots for them, none for us.

20': Adriano takes our first shot from pretty far out to the right after beating a defender... its wide.

21': They build up on offense after a terrible Khan turnover.. midfielder Arismendi takes a crack from 30 yards out and its just wide.

32': They're up to 6 shots now but all are way way off target but the one mentioned.

34': We earn a free kick from a long way out on the right side, Kirkland takes it and sends a long cross into the area, Donnelly wins the header, but its sent high.

35': They build up on offense and get it to their man Barnes about 20 yards out, he turns and easily generates space and fires a shot, Murphy makes a great save and pushes it wide. We clear the corner, but they recover and build up again... another long shot, and another close save for Murphy, and another corner... this one is headed out again but sent back in again, same as before... here though they shoot and put it wide.

HALF: They get a header on target near the end of the half but Murphy makes an easy save and we go to the locker room scoreless. They have 10 shots to our 3. Most of the stats are even, possession, passing/tackling/heading numbers. They got 8 corners that half to our 1, they were definitely the aggressor most of the time and any attempt to start up the offense just didn't work out. On to the second half to see if we can keep them scoreless.

47': the highlight opens with them taking a corner, its sent into the area, defender Hoffman wins the header at the edge of the 6 yard box and sends it into the back of the net... well that was fast. 0-1

53': They earn another corner and its almost 100% the same, taken to the same spot, only difference is that their striker Darren Bent headed this one in. Ah well... 0-2

66': Midfielder Cattermole with a yellow for Sunderland.

70': Fryers in for Bruce, Bojinov in for Khan.

74': Coutts in for Mariga.

79': Things completely fall apart for us as Bent gets behind our line to take a pass from a good distance away, he gets to easily drop it in the net once he controls it. 0-3

86': Defender Hoffmann with a yellow. Lewis with a free kick from 25 yards out, its blocked and stays in play, we recover.. but they take it away immediately.

Ipswich 0 : 3 Sunderland

Darren Bent is man of the match with 2 goals.

Adriano 6.0, Bruce 6.1 for us today. They just totally worked us over in the second half.

[law90026]

Wow it's looking rough for your team this year. Time for a change of tactics maybe?

[Radii]

Originally Posted by law90026

Wow it's looking rough for your team this year. Time for a change of tactics maybe?

yeah i'm not quite sure what i would/could change really. Straight up defensive in most matches to hope for 1 point where now i'm getting 0? A more defensive formation?

We're 19th right now and 4 of our next 5 matches are against the teams in 14th, 17th, 18th and 20th. We've got an opportunity to make something happen still, though there's a fair chance that we just take a better financial situation back down to the Championship with us next year.

[law90026]

For my own game where I brought Bath to the PL, I basically used a lot of counter-attacking and drop deeper at the start of each game, especially against the bigger teams (and by bigger teams I meant mid-table sides and better).

After we managed to get a run of results (draws and the odd 1-0 against the odds win), I would sometimes mix in control against the smaller sides.

I don't think I ever went beyond control for the entire season. Even with that conservative approach, I still got hammered on occasion (bloody Man City smashed me 6-1).

Pace is important at the higher level as well I think. I also had Troy Brown in my game but he was too slow to cut it (it might be different in your game of course!).

[Radii]

November Update

-- We play on the 3rd, 10th, 14th, 17th and 24th this month. Potential additional dates depending on when we get into the FA Cup.

-- Our young DLC Jack Hull is 3rd in the Young Player of hte Month voting in the Championship. He's got a 7.5 rating for Hull in 7 matches, he's been awesome.

-- The board is pleased with my leadership still. Stature increase, blah blah. But now the signing of Valeri Bojinov at ST who hasn't done anything at all is a downside. We lost $331k last month. Just $3.8M in TV Revenue and very few matches played for gate receipts.


November 3rd, 2018

Blackburn(3-3-4, 14th) @ Ipswich(1-0-7, 19th)

We're 7:2 to get a win at home here today, Blackburn are 4:6. We're 0-1-1 lifetime against them from our one previous EPL year.

GK: Murphy
D: Kirkland/Fryers/Brown/Adriano
DMC: Guarin
MC: Mariga/Donnelly
AMC: Kang
ST: Khan/Constantino

Robert Bakos and Nikola Kalinic both have 2 goals for Blackburn.

Fryers starts for Bruce, Constantino is back in today. We're just going to play defensive here.

1': We start with the ball, after passing around on our own end there's a long ball ahead for Constantino, he controls it well but the defense is quickly tracking back... he gets a shot off but its saved by the keeper.

5': They have a cross from about 35 yards out near the left sideline, there's a header from Kalinic and its just perfect... aimed into the right side of the net, Murphy dove out for it but can't get to it. Its called a fluke goal in the commentary... 0-1

27': We have it on the offensive end, with little buildup after the offense is set Donnelly with a great ball into the area, Khan is behind the defense and its a clear cut chance... but he doesn't place it well enough and the keeper is able to get down quickly and push the ball away...

36': Yellow for midfielder Potts for Blackburn.

39': We earn another corner as a goal kick is sent all the way forward and Kang gets to it first, he's got a pretty good look though a defender cuts in front of him quickly and blocks the shot. Corner comes to nothing.

HALF: We're getting the ball forward here with a bit of regularity but we just cannot put the ball in the damn net! We actually end up with 9 shots, but only 2 on target. Blackburn shoots 7 times, 3 on target. Stats are pretty much even. Really their goal was a too perfect to be true header and we had a couple really solid shots... we can score here. Bruce comes in for Fryers who picked up a bit of an injury in the first half.

48': Their striker Kalinic with a yellow for a tackle near midfield.

54': Constantino earns us a corner with a long run down the right on a counter... corner is taken to the near man, passed out and we set up the offense, Khan sneaks through again, Kang put a perfect through ball, Khan with a shot from the penalty spot, clear cut chance #2... right at the keeper. Frustration!!!

69': Another offensive possession, Kang again puts a ball into the area, Constantino is behind his man... and its the worst first touch i've seen from Constantino in a long time, the ball shoots forward all the way to the keeper, just no control or confidence at all.

83': We build up on offense again, pass it from right to left, almost lose control a couple times but retain possession, Donnelly has it 30 yards out to the left, he spots an opening and passes ahead to Khan, Khan is in the area for his THIRD clear cut chance, he puts this one to the far post, beats the keeper... but the ball just goes wide, it may have even grazed the crossbar on the way out. Just shrugging and shaking my head at this point.

No more chances here.

Ipswich 0 : 1 Blackburn

This was a win. We played better, we WERE better today. Khan doesn't have any morale issues, he's a pretty experienced striker here, not the struggling youngster... and he gets shot after shot point blank on the keeper and fails to finish over and over. Just nothing but disappointment here.

Kirkland 7.3, Mariga 7.0. No one was really bad today, it was an ok performance minus the goals. We shot 14 times, we really generated chances today.



-- After the match the fans express frustration at my unwillingness to experiment with the team's formation.