Part 58: Prologue: Before the afterglow fades.

Volume Five: Double or Nothing.
Prologue: Before the afterglow fades.
May 1, 2017-June 9, 2017

We're moving up a division, but the heart of the team is pretty well set. We've got a lot of young players who should continue to improve, so we don't need to be out there hunting for a lot of additions. Likewise, many of the youth team players are getting to the point where they can start being added to the first team rather than bringing in players from outside the club to fill holes. We've already replaced one of the six players leaving the club (Al-Beloushi, Spilsbury, Jenkins, Kadhim, Franks and Netala) with Gavin Baker, and I'm hoping Scott Shirra will be ready for some time later this season.



I've decided to look into moving Reid. He's 32 years old now and while he hasn't declined he's due for another sizeable pay bump (up to £3,900/wk). So since a team was interested in him I made them an offer.



He found out and was not pleased. Now I'm probably going to have to use him to avoid him festering in the locker-room.



My decision on Daniel Thomas is made easier when I realize he has an option year on his current contract, so I activate it. He and Ioan Peters will be our primary backups to Smissen and Tench.



I reach out to Chris Todd, who's got just a year left on his current contract, and get him to sign a very team friendly deal that will keep him with the club for the next three years at just £600/wk with no annual or promotion raises. It's generally easier to get players to sign deals right after a successful season, while they're still basking in the afterglow of victory.



It's a good thing I got to negotiations with him as quickly as I did, there's a lot of Premier League teams interested in him. Now we won't be forced to sell him, and we should be able to keep him on the club until we're challenging to join the BPL ourselves.



I also am able to wrangle Mujkic to a new contract, he's now signed through 2021 and he agreed to double his minimum fee release clause to £10m. He didn't even require going over the individual cap, after the end of year raise he's making £3,800 a week.



Chelsea's interested in him, but I'm not sure if even they're willing to pay his release fee. I'm very much hoping Mujkic stays with us for at least this season, getting promoted will be much, much easier with him. I'd like to keep him as long as possible, simply because he's got the makings of a world class player and having one of our positions locked down for the next decade would be great for the club and the fans.



Highest level of confidence possible.



I'm not very good at these chats, I keep expecting the team to be more ambitious than they are. When I ask them to gun for a mid-table finish next season several players (notably fussbudget Luke Reid) think I'm asking too much, but when I try to reduce my expectations to just staying up that angers several of the other players, including our captain Stuart Simpson.



Ugh. We still have him under contract for two more years. He's only earning a pittance, but seeing him limp about the team facilities like some broken doll depresses the other players.



We'll get 25% of any future transfer fee from Kadhim, and it'll save us a few thousand pounds in salary when he transfers three weeks before the end of his contract. Kadhim was decent for us, but I won't miss him.



Port Vale goes back up to League One, but more interesting was the saga their manager went through while leading the team to promotion.



He's actively plumping for a new job while in the League One playoffs.



The fans are happy to be rid of him despite his just getting the club promoted.



But the Port Vale board wants him to stay. Kind of an odd thing, maybe he doesn't think the team can stay up next year? But it still makes no sense as Doncaster got relegated to League Two, the job would be a demotion.



Ah, there's the payment I was expecting.



Most of it is eaten up in paying out the squad bonus, but that's OK. When you have to pay out large squad bonuses it means you're doing well.



Yeah, I'm just going to put this on my desk for everyone to see when they walk into my office.



Unfortunately for him he doesn't have an award bonus in his contract. We had a well rounded club last year, with a lot of players earning good but not spectacular average ratings and none worse than mediocre.



It's the taxman!



We're continuing to add more dues paying members, there's now over 16,500 in total after being at just 10,000 when I came to the club. I do wish we'd start hiking the price of being a supporter, 12 pounds for membership seems pretty low and right now it's not a very large source of income for us.



He must have just hired this guy, when he negotiated his new contract with me he didn't have an agent. I'm glad he ditched this particular agent, guys who refuse to negotiate at length are the absolute worst.



Drat, Sigurjonsson is pretty good and he would have been perfect to partner with Simpson. Guess I'll just have to look elsewhere. But the season across Europe has finally ended, so let's take a quick look at what happened around the continent.



Looking at that table never gets old.



It's going to be slightly harder to get promoted from here on out, there's only three promotion spots in League One and in the Championship. We're starting to play against some recognizable names now, Sunderland used to be a Premier League club before falling quite a long ways, while Portsmouth is a classic case of fiscal implosion since the departure of 'Arry Redknapp back in the mid-aughts. He did bring them an FA Cup, and honors reign forever, so who cares that they're slumming it down here these days.



Millwall, Leyton Orient, and Swindon will be joining us in League One, none are especially big names. Meanwhile, Everton is back into the BPL after the massive embarrassment of their first relegation since the Queen was coronated.



Aston Villa is relegated, which is just as much a shock as Everton's relegation was. Aston Villa are seven times champions of top division English football, they haven't played anywhere else since a brief hiccup in the 1970s saw them fall as far as what is now League One.



Cardiff City wins the FA Cup, but check out who has the most assists of any player in the tournament.



Order is restored in Spain, with Atletico dropping back to their accustomed third place.



Napoli is the first non-Juventus/Milan/Inter champion of Serie A since 2001, when Roma took the scudetto.



I accidentally took this screenshot before the season actually ended, but despite some stiffer competition than usual this season Bayern Munich won the league again. Poor Frankfurt had a miserable season, finishing in the bottom quarter of the table.





Inter wins the Europa League over Marseilles on penalty kicks, while both club's supporters whine about how making a deep Europa League run exhausts the players and how they'd be better off not even being in the competition.





Even if Atletico couldn't top their cross-town neighbors at Real Madrid in La Liga, they do conquer the Champion's League for the second time in three years. This makes it four years in a row that a Spanish team has won the CL, with Barca taking home the honors in the years where Atletico hasn't. Stupid sexy Spaniards.



Our hunt for a defensive midfielder continues, fruitless.



Mateo Mujkic kicks some real ass during international play during the summer, which makes me eager for his return and our beginning.

I've arranged a mixed set of friendlies for the pre-season. Along with the usual local patsies we're going to be going up against Brighton and Hove Albion and Aston Villa. Both are high end Championship clubs, if we can hang with them we'll be able to hang with anyone in League One. And, of course, we'll be playing Tackleford. I've also picked up several players who are now arriving at the club as the transfer window reopens.



Mark Holland is our first signing, he'll play a backup role in our midfield.

Mark Holland
Central Midfielder



Holland has very high aggression, which concerns me a little, but his high bravery and work rate also means that he'll be a beast in the midfield destroyer role. I'm going to have him working on his technical skills, which are well sub-par compared to his excellent mental stats and pretty good physical ones.



Ryan Gorman has loads of talent, hence his high salary. He didn't break through while he was at Liverpool, but my scouts love him.

Ryan Gorman
Attacking Midfielder



“Leading Premier League attacking midfielder” you say? Yes, please. He's probably behind just Mujkic and perhaps Todd as our highest ceiling player. I'm going to primarily play him on the wings, as we don't currently use the attacking midfield spot. He's got a good chance of usurping Michael Coulson's role, but my one concern is that he's already 23 and probably near the point where he stops improving by leaps and bounds. Still, he's one of our better players already and he's ours now.



Our new backup goalkeeper, an economy model.

Tom Taylor
Goalkeeper



Taylor has a lot of potential, but is a ways from realizing it. We're now back to having an actual difference in wages between our keepers, and all told we're spending just a smidge more on Higgs and Taylor than we were on Al-Baloushi last year. First task is to get that Command of Area stat up, it's one of the critical stats for keepers, and his is extremely low.

Our youth signings Scott Shirra and Rob Johnstone have arrived as well.

Rob Johnston
Central Midfielder



Johnston is extremely raw, and will take several years of development before we can really tell if he's going to be a major part of our future. Shirra, on the other hand...

Scott Shirra
Attacking Midfielder



This is the player I dropped six figures on. He's 16, but is already one of the most technically proficient players on the club. The only reason why he won't be getting playing time from the very start is because he's got to learn his new position at central midfield. Once he does that he'll be ready to start playing alongside fellow phenoms Mujkic and Todd.

And that's where we stand as of June 9th. The transfer window is open again, and preseason friendlies are rapidly approaching. It's been a good rest for our players, but now it's time to get back to work so we can take League One by storm.