Part 43: Chapter the Tenth: No rest for the wicked.
Chapter the Tenth: No rest for the wicked.May 1, 2016-June 9, 2016
We don't have any games scheduled, it's time to take a vacation! Get me out of this country where it rains all the time (except when the sky is trying to kill me with small ice stones) and it always smells like sheep! Book me on the next flight to Cabo!
Wait, I can't? I have to get the team ready for next season? Aww. Sassafras.
The first thing to look at is whether any of our Under 18 players are ready to start putting in time with the first team. Chris Todd is the only one to have done so to any real effect so far, Morgan got a cameo in the Barnet game as well. Gary Petit looks like he's ready to play some time at Centerback, while Holt, Morgan, and Peters will also get limited time with the first team. None of them besides Todd are advanced enough to play more than a half dozen games with the first team, though. Peters and Hay are the only two that will age out of the U18 league after this coming year, players who are under 19 on January 1st are eligible for the next season.
My scouts know of about 350 players in the British Isles who are going to be reaching the end of their contracts on June 30th and who would potentially be interested in joining us. I order updated scouting reports on all of them. They fill my inbox for most of the next month, and this is just the first cull.
Bah, Clarke, and O'Hanlon are on the trading block. Bah is adequate as a backup but not quite good enough for this level of play and has been surpassed by Harrison and Coulson. He makes £1,500/wk, and is our 7th highest paid player. Clarke has been solid for us, earning a 6.77 rating in 21 starts and 10 sub appearances in League Two last year, but is 27 and earns £1,700/wk, tying him for our 4th highest salary. O'Hanlon barely played last year but still earned £1,000/wk. All of them could be useful players for us next season. All of them are replaceable at equal or lower price, and can be improved upon. So they're getting sold.
Adian Cooper might also get sold. He improved as the season went on, but he's earning £1,700/wk and his performance did not match his wages. I'll want to play both Franks and Coulson next season, which means one of them will be playing on the left wing at times, and that means less opportunity for Cooper.
I'm naturally going to start by asking for a high price, over the course of the transfer window I'll lower my asking price if there's no interest.
Don-Duncan and McGuinness were drawing interest from some English teams. English teams can sign players from other English teams to pre-contracts only a month prior to the end of the current contract. So rather than wait to see them leave on a free on June 30th, I offer them to the interested parties at a low price. Now instead of having to pay most of their June salary (£4,500) I'm going to get paid that amount for giving these teams first crack at signing them. It's about £9,000 in total, which is a small sum but important when you're running the slim margins we are.
I give the players just over a month off. We're going to be aiming high next season, and I want to have everyone getting as much training as possible. Thanks to the amount of positional rotation we did no one played more for us than Simpson's 51 games last season, and only three players appeared in more than 40 games. The player with the most appearances was Al-Beloushi, who appeared in 69 matches, 47 for us and 22 for the Kuwaiti national team. As he's a goalkeeper, I'm unconcerned about him wearing out. A month should be enough to have everyone return in shape and rested.
Our end of season meeting is a little schizophrenic. The team splits on whether it's fair that I expect a top half finish next season or whether it's better to shoot for the mid-table again, and the result is that no one is happy.
I'm going to aim for being “untouchable” after next season.
We didn't have a single disappointing training performance, while several players improved a great deal. A good thing about having a young team is that you improve as the season goes on not just because your players are getting comfortable with your tactics and their teammates, but because they're improving as players. Since I tend to have young teams, and because I tend to win promotion every couple years as a lower league manager, you'll probably see years in the future that follow the arc of the most recent season. Slow starts with strong finishes are the norm with me until I get established in the Premier League.
They now rate as just good rather than great training facilities. Still better than most of our immediate competitors.
I tried to ask the board if we could relay the field, but it wasn't an available option. The pitch condition has returned to OK with the end of the season, it never got below “Very Poor” so no one wins the contest. I don't know if it will improve from “OK” on it's own, but I can reset the pitch condition manually, so I'll include it in my board requests at the end of this update.
Don-Duncan refused a contract offer with me that would have paid him £575/wk last month. He made out well by going to Luton.
Crystal Palace and Crewe Alexandria are both sniffing around Stuart Martin.
Martin really came on last season to be a rock in our defense, but he's also our highest paid player by a lot and his contract is up after this coming season. We can re-sign him but he'd want a raise from his already high salary.
Poole was pretty good this past season, and Chris Todd could use more playing time, so I offer Martin to Crystal Palace and Crewe Alexandria to gauge how much they're willing to give me for him.
This is what it will look like when we finish improving our Youth Academy. It seems like the staff requirements aren't all that high, we'd meet the level 2 academy requirements as we are right now.
I'm quite pleased that we made a net £8,000 on two players that would have been leaving for nothing.
We haven't had this happen to us, yet, but players will act out if they're unhappy ingame. This ranges from talking shit in the media about how they want to leave, to skipping practice, and more. I really wish there were a mod to have them involved in DUIs and prostitute scandals, as the lack of such really ruins my immersion in a game dedicated to verisimilitude.
I can't get Palace and Crewe into a bidding war with each other, so we don't quite get £100,000 for Martin. It's never fun to sell players who are doing well for you, but Martin was just getting paid too much.
The Hammers win the FA Cup. And with that, it's time to start looking at how the other leagues did this year.
French club Lorient won the Europa League for the second time in a row. If the game is current with upcoming rules changes (and it has in the past), that means they get a berth in next year's Champion's League.
Alternate Universe David Moyes is much better than his real world counterpart. Liverpool somehow made it up to 8th place a season after they sold off AU Luis Suarez (ingame name “Angel Suarez”- which I'm quite hoping isn't random) for a bajillion dollars. The scousers were languishing in 18th place at mid-season. Everton's magic doesn't play in Football Manager, they join Wigan and Derby in the drop.
Atletico Madrid won La Liga, breaking the dozen year long duopoly of Barca or Real Madrid winning the title. I'm not sure how anyone can follow the Spanish league, it's got to be dull knowing that the season's going to come down to the outcomes of the Clasico's between Real Madrid and Barca. They're both so rich and such prestigious clubs that they can buy basically anyone they want, so they're never going to have more than a year where they're not quite the very best teams in the world.
That's more competition than is in the Bundesliga, though, where Bayern Munich is an all-conquering colossus of a team. Finishing 17 points ahead of second place in a top league is madness.
Italy had a close race, with AC Milan outlasting Fiorentina and a late charging Juventus.
Paris Saint-Germaine lapped the field, as is their wont.
Our parent club still can't get back into the Premier League. Best watch out, Norridge, we'll be in the Championship in two or three years.
Tranmere, Port Vale, Carlisle, and Bury all drop down to League Two, and will play against us next season.
Coventry, Mansfield, Northampton and Tackleford Fucking City all get promoted to league one, while Bristol and Barnet are replaced by Oxford United and Dartford from the Skrill Premier.
Last but not least, Barcelona won the Champion's League in a year where they couldn't manage to win La Liga. Manchester United made it to the finals, but just missed doing a double. Moyes out!
With the League Two season officially ending after the playoff final, we get paid. An extra £218,000 helps our bottom line.
Todd is officially a professional now, he goes from earning £80/wk to earning £450/wk.
Hah! You weren't even in the running for the award, Ed Philips! All that cash can't buy you respect!
Justin Bailey is awarded the Goal of the Season for
this beaut from back in October, while Coulson places third for his goal in January. Check out that celebration on Bailey's goal.
While all those exciting happenings were going on, my scouts finished working through the task I set of them. I'm down to 107 players who'll be available to sign on pre-contracts in 10 days time, and I order my best scout to file reports on the ones who look like bargain signings.
The Olympic draw occurs, England fails to qualify while the US is drawn with a group very reminiscent of the real life 2014 World Cup. We just can't avoid Ghana!
Many of the players I scout accept new contracts with their current teams or are transferred between the time I shortlisted them at the start of the month through the present.
England is still on a bit of a World Cup hangover, they can't beat Wales at Wembley.
We've added 1,200 club members since last season, each paying about £12 per season as dues.
I really do wonder who these sponsors are. Maybe Lavender House Salon thinks that there's an untapped market amongst our fans?
One benefit of investing in the club is that we can use those expenses as a tax write-off. I wonder what type of entity we're incorporated as. If we're a non-profit, shouldn't we be tax exempt? That would have saved us £700,000 this past year! I have no clue about English/Welsh tax law, I guess I need to pick up the Accounting Manager 2014 expansion pack to really drill down into that.
The eggheads lower our wage budget by £5k/wk, the current transfer budget is from selling players, primarily Martin.
We so don't have to worry about this.
There is no way I'm letting Harrison go. But could I interest you in one slightly worn Ibrahima Bah?
I go through all the League Two teams to see who needs midfielders, strikers, and left wingers, and try to foist Bah/Clarke/O'Hanlon/Cooper off on them. No dice.
We're going back to camp! Yaaaaay! I hope the ghost of the hobo we killed last summer doesn't haunt us!
It's now May 30th, so I've made offers to several players who will be out of contract in a month. You might recognize Graeme Underwood, who we had on loan from Norwich last season. Below is our shopping list:
Striker, first team: Someone to challenge Harrison for the starting job.
Winger, backup: A backup for Coulson/Franks, if we sell Cooper.
Central Midfield, backup/rotation: A replacement for Daniel Clarke.
Defensive Midfield, backup/rotation/first team: A replacement for Tommy McGuinness. If I find someone better than Kadhim I'll consider splurging and making Kadhim the backup.
Left Back, rotation: To match with Ashton.
Right Back, rotation: To match with Thomas.
Poole is being promoted to Martin's old spot as starting centerback, Todd is being promoted to Poole's position as backup CB, Petit is being brought into Todd's old job as 4th centerback, and Tony Holt is taking O'Hanlon's old job as our third central midfielder.
Sam Breakspear has a whole lot of potential, and a great, great name, but he's probably not quite as good as Harrison right now. Thus, if his agent wants to play hard to get I'm not going to the ends of the earth to sign him.
Well I hope confidence didn't decrease during the offseason. There's nothing new to judge me on!
Stupid leaked transfer stories. Of the four players I made offers to, only one actually signed with us.
Smisson will play left back with Ashton, you'll get a better look at him next update.
Everyone arrives for preseason in fine fettle. We're on the verge of a new beginning.
Our preseason friendlies will take us to Tackleford, and play a match against our parent club Norwich. Besides that we've got three matches against smaller Welsh clubs, and the Cross-border derby with Chester. We won't make a huge amount of profit from the games, but it'll add an extra 50,000 pounds or so to our balance and give us a forgiving schedule as we get in shape for the coming season.
BOARD VOTESWe need to set the wage and transfer budget for the coming season, as well as determine our season goal. I also have two requests to make of the board. First, our current financials:
Balance:
We currently have £260,000 in the bank. That's down from £925,000 last year, but the numbers are not exactly comparable as we have yet to bring in any money from season ticket sales.
Income:
Our total turnover for the 2015-2016 season was £4.1m. This is nearly the exact same as the 2014-2015 season, which means that, once we account for the FA Cup bounties from the Man City and Man U matches, we saw an increase in income of £600,000. We should see a smaller increase in income this year as crowds continue to grow and we continue to improve as a club.
NB: The total says £6.1m turnover because I added, then removed, 2m from the club bank account in late December when I was checking to see how the maximum salary offers were linked to current club balance. That 2m shows up under “Other” income.
Expenditure:
Our total expenditure amounted to £4.9m this past year. This was a significant increase from the £3.25m we spent the year before. The largest causes for this increased expenditures were from increased player salaries (up £437,000 year on year), youth facility improvements (£330,000), youth setup (up £145,000 year on year), match day expenses (up £135,000 year on year) and other expenses (up £220,000 year on year). Youth facility improvements are not being requested this year, thus it is likely that expenses will decline somewhat in the coming year. As such, it is likely that we remain in the black even without any income from the FA Cup, assuming we maintain our current rate of expenses.
QUESTION ONE: Season goal.
I believe we can make the promotion playoffs this season. If you feel differently, the wage and transfer budgets will be adjusted according to our ambitions. If there is not a single majority position among the board, a compromise goal will be chosen based upon all votes.
A) We expect at least a mid-table finish. If you do better, that's wonderful, but not expected. (20% decrease in wage/transfer budget)
B) We will be looking for a top half finish from you. (10% decrease in wage/transfer budget)
C) The board agrees, we expect you to at least make the promotion playoffs.
D) That's not ambitious enough. Finish in the top three, earn automatic promotion. (10% increase in wage/transfer budget)
E) Win the league, or die trying. (20% increase in wage/transfer budget)
QUESTION TWO: Wage budget.
Your accountants have set the initial wage budget at £38.3k/wk, with £32k in the transfer budget. That is a decrease of £5,000/wk from last season's budget. Last year they overestimated how much the team could spend due to the surprise income from the FA Cup. I would like to request a £36k/wk wage budget and an additional £50k in the transfer budget. At the end of last season we were spending £34,000/wk on wages and are presently spending £28,000 a week on wages.
Please state your preferred wage limit and how much additional money you would like to add to the transfer budget. (e.g. 35k/wk and 0, or 38k/wk and 60k) The average of your votes will be taken and used as the wage budget and added to the transfer budget. I reserve the right to discount outliers (e.g. 100k wage budget, 1 million pounds added to the transfer budget). Note that this total may be adjusted by the result of question one.
QUESTION THREE: Additional staff.
I would like to hire two additional coaches, one to train shooting skills and another to share goalkeeping training duties with our current goalkeeping coach. Currently we have just 2.5 stars in Shooting training, our second lowest category next to our goalkeeping coach at 2 stars per keeper skill. It would cost us approximately £700/week to take on these coaches. If there is not a majority for any one option, a compromise amount will be found.
A) You may not have additional funds to hire coaches.
B) You may have £400/week more to hire coaches, but not £700.
C) The more coaches the merrier, £700/week for new coaches.
QUESTION FOUR: Pitch condition.
I would like to have our landlords relay the field. Our current pitch condition is merely OK, and will degrade quickly over the course of the coming season.
A) Relay the pitch.
B) Don't relay the pitch.
Voting closes at 12pm Eastern Standard Time on Saturday, January 25th.