Part 30: Prologue: Team makeover party!

Volume Three: Consolidation
Prologue: Team makeover party!
May 31, 2015-June 30, 2015

Finally, I get to remake the team in my image. While the core of the first team will remain the same, with roughly 16 holdovers from the prior season, we're going to be shedding a lot of dead weight and bringing in several new faces to compete for time at several positions.



First, though, the commands of the board are made reality.



I bet the kids will be excited to have heated changing rooms when the Cannon Memorial Barn is completed in December! The price is actually £330,000 when you look at the facilities line item on the expense page. That extra £20,000 is just the contractor trying to bilk you.



Now we won't get heckled for our field condition until next January.



I tried to set up a friendly with Tackleford as the game said they'd pay us 40k to play at their place, but the request was rejected. In hindsight it's because the League Two season starts August 1st, and they wouldn't commit to playing the day before. But I'd prefer to think it was just to spite me. Tackleford!





Three new coaches! Now our Ass Man isn't trying to train five categories all by himself! Compare the following:



versus:



Our end goal is to have another fitness coach, another goalkeeper coach, and two more coaches to reduce the current staff's workload to one training category. But this is already a huge step up from having an Ass Man who's job was to evaluate talent train every player in every part of the game.



Now that we're in the Football League we're subject to Financial Fair Play regulations. This is an effort by UEFA to keep the megabastard clubs from buying up every smidgen of talent and creating an unbreakable cartel, and prevent clubs like Bolton (current debt £163,800,000), Portsmouth (debt of £135,000,000 before going from FA Cup winners in 2008 and the Premier League in 2010 to bankruptcy, twice, and being purchased by a fan trust in League Two), and Rangers of Glasgow (£134,000,000 in debt, including £74,000,000 in taxes owed, knocked from perennial contention for a Champion's League spot to the bottom tier of Scottish pro soccer in 2012) from racking up huge debt and eventually imploding. It's very new, and FM14 is the first version to simulate it. We won't have to worry about this for a long time, the short version is that if we go over the wage cap of 60k/wk we'll be penalized with transfer embargoes (no new players from other teams), being docked points in the league, and disqualification for European competitions. I love this game.



Training camps are set up by the board. I don't know how to trigger them, so I can't give you the option of voting to offer one. Instead I'm going to pretend it's a late Christmas present. Training camps are excellent for rapidly improving team cohesion, squad harmony, and tactical preparedness. The only downside is that they cost more money than just practicing at the club facilities and that you're limited to the geographical area for friendlies during the camp. It's also well timed, by July 4th most of our team should be assembled.



If Tackleford wants to pay me for an overrated malcontent who I benched when promotion was on the line last season, I'm more than happy to take their money.



I have a Director of Football solely to automate the selling of unneeded players. He's an intelligent fax machine with no real powers.



Meat market's open again.



And that means all the transfers we made previously for young talent are brought into the team. Only Harrison is going to be on the first team for now, so while the overall number of new players is high the actual effect on team chemistry is not.



The best part about this is if they use him as a starter they'll be benching Parsons and Ellis, both of whom are better than Nsangou and have greater potential. Plus, £70,000 is a nice bit of business for us, we're now in the black on transfers since I arrived last autumn.



Players will sometimes return from break still worn down from the previous season. This is more likely if they're playing a lot of international games on top of their club commitments, and also if they're fairly young and not yet fully inured to the rigors of the season.



Player tiredness (or Jadedness, as the game calls it) factors into my preference for long pre-seasons, I can let Simpson take an additional three week vacation without risking his fitness for the start of the season.



I decide not to bump up expectations for the year, no reason to make the players nervous. They seem enthused for the fight to stay afloat at a higher level.



Can't wait!



Aww yiss, profitability.



He never got into a game for the team once I took over.



The good thing about having the same players season over season is that they remain pretty familiar with the team's tactics. This level of preparedness will drop when we add more first team players, but we'll still be able to spend most of the season focusing on game specific strategies than general tactics during training.



Our first signing is a replacement for Damian King. He'll officially join the team at the end of his contract on June 30th. You may also notice that we're deducting £9k from the transfer budget despite Poole signing on a free. That's because Poole has an agent who negotiated his deal for him, and agent fees are taken from the transfer budget. I hate agents.

Matthew Poole
Centerback


Poole is a good fit for our “covering” centerback. Covering centerbacks team up with a “stopper” partner, and are tasked with cleaning up any messes the stopper creates when going to close down attacking players. They need good quickness to get there quickly, and strong aerial skills to win headers in the box.



None of the players we can afford will replace Liam Franks, the guy who carried us on our back to promotion, but Toms will be part of the cast of characters who will try. Toms' contract also has a minimum fee release clause, if anyone offers us £180,000 for him we have to let him go. That's only there because I forgot to uncheck it in negotiations. Minimum release clauses at the level requested by the players can only hurt you, if they get triggered it's because the player is a bargain and if they don't it means they're not living up to the price. If the player or agent insists on one, make sure the transfer fee you'd get is exorbitant.

Wilson Toms
Right Winger


Good flair, pace, and acceleration, meh everything else. About what you should expect from a lower league winger. He can get better, but at the age of 24 I'm not expecting drastic changes. At least his mental attributes will likely improve.



Our Justin Bailey replacement. Bailey demanded 1.2k a week, which was simply too much for a player that was already close to peaking and not likely to repeat last year's performance in League Two.

Aidan Cooper
Central Midfielder


Cooper can play three positions naturally, center midfield, attacking midfield, and attacking left winger, which makes him much more versatile than Bailey, although he's not as useful when playing old NES games.



The two are pretty closely matched, now that I look at it. Although Bailey is much better defensively and physically my scouts and staff tell me that Cooper is more likely to be the better player in a couple years.



Neill Senior is going to be so mad at me. I get rid of Nsangou and then bring in more competition for his job.

Danny Higgs
Goalkeeper


Higgs is the opposite of Nsangou in many, many ways. He's much more a standard shot stopper than someone who likes to try and play unusually, and their eccentricity scores couldn't be more different. I prefer a boring, dependable rock in front of the net, so that's fine by me.



I expect Higgs to give up fewer dumb goals than Nsangou did, while also making fewer great plays. He and Senior will fight for the starting job.



Another winger, this one can also play attacking midfielder in our new tactical scheme.

Tony Price
Right Wing


Check out that flair and creativity! When we park him in the center of our 4-2-3-1 as a trequartista he should be able to make things happen. He needs to improve his teamwork and off the ball, though, if he's going to reach his promise.




Speaking of the 4-2-3-1, this replaces our old base 4-4-2. It's a very aggressive tactic, and is vulnerable to quick opponents flying past our high line when they get possession. But the goal is to keep the ball and suffocate the other side. The players we've brought in should be good for that purpose. I'll use this when we're at home against clubs that are in the bottom third of the league. Using it against a promotion favorite or a higher division club in a cup match would be an entertaining way to commit suicide.




You don't have to sign up for reserve leagues, but then you have to either trust your U21 and U18 coaches to schedule appropriate friendlies for those teams or you have to do it yourself. Easier to just join the league. Often the board will force you to join the U18 league.



Don't you see the title of this volume? I'm going to be happy if we finish mid-table, anything more than that is unexpected. I'd be concerned if we somehow got promoted to League One, the bottom four teams in League One get relegated back to League Two, and yo-yoing between leagues is a quick way to really fuck up your club.



You mean they'd consider joining us now? I guess I'll take a gander.



Now that we're in League Two we're subject to the homegrown players rule. It's lenient at this level, we just need six players trained in England before their 21st birthday in our registered team. At higher levels we're required to have a certain number of players that have been at our club since they were in our youth program.



We got £5,000 in TV rights money last year. This is much better. But it's also something like 1/100th what Premier League clubs get. TV money is what drives the big time, and we've finally got ourselves a tiny slice of that pie.



Yearly and Promotion clauses in contracts stack. Good to know.



Tackleford has been spending big all off-season. It seems like they've been in on half the players I've considered signing, and they're offering way more money than I am. Their new owner is rich, too, so the spending doesn't even have to stop.





Your 2015-2016 Wrexham schedule! Games of note are Tackleford on November 24th and March 28th. In both cases the schedulers gave us no time between our prior games and the Tackleford fixtures. Someone should audit their bank accounts, I'd bet there's money from the new Tackleford owner in there. You'll also notice the Johnstone's Paint Trophy match scheduled, we're moving on from the FA Trophy competition to one contested by the teams in Leagues One and Two, as well as the League Cup.



I'm so excited for camp!



I hope we hold our team meetings here!



Aww, way to bum me out, Mexico. The US in this game seems decidedly less good than the real life version.



And we end this update with our release of a ton of players, only four or five of whom you'd recognize. I accidentally let one of my scouts go, too, and forgot to hire a new Ass Man and physio before Turley and Burke took their leave of the team. At least I know what I have to do at the start of the next update.