Part 75: Chapter the Second: Stumbling out of the gate.
Chapter the Second: Stumbling out of the gate.August 1, 2018-September 1, 2018
Don't worry about the title, I'm sure it wasn't written with foreknowledge of what's about to transpire.
Now that we're in the Championship we're going to see a lot less fixture congestion in the front half of our schedule. No Johnstone's Paint Trophy, no FA Cup matches before January. It means playing something like four to eight fewer fixtures a year.
Three years ago we were predicted to finish 21st in League Two. We finished 14th. This is going to be a similarly difficult year, but we've got a great amount of young talent, one of the best players in the league in Mujkic, and we should steadily improve as the season goes on.
Holt and Curran are both buried on the depth chart. I'll send them out on loans where we'll pay the salary and can recall them if we need them due to injury.
At some point I'm finally going to say yes. That point is probably about £600,000.
At Fulham, August 4, 2018
Championship
Fulham plays at the picturesquely named Craven Cottage. They're an old club, with a great deal of history, and have been in the Cottage since 1896. Fulham as a club has never won major honors, and as recently as the 1990s was playing in League Two. I've heard that their fans are a pretty friendly bunch, as well.
Craven Cottage currently has a statue of Michael Jackson outside of it, thanks to former owner Mohamed Al-Fayed. Michael Jackson has no connection with Fulham, outside of playing a concert at the stadium once and attending a game once. Ultra rich people are weird.
Their entire starting 11 is better than ours with the exception of right back.
Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Counter
Starting 11: Higgs, Siegrist, Todd, Lewis, Peters, Simpson (c), Holland, Bailey, Rainey, Gorman, Harrison.
Subs: Love, Vaillant, Poole, Tedesco, Shirra, Coulson, Pym.
It's a scoreless first half, but Fulham has better of it and has a goal disallowed for offsides. They smash the crossbar just before the whistle, and we escape to the locker room. Our performances have been OK, with the exception of Siegrist and Harrison, who I pull aside for personal chats. Fulham scores on a corner just after halftime, but Harrison makes up for his earlier errors and gets us the equalizer. Both sides play well for the rest of the game, which finishes level. We take a point from a team that was in the Premier League the previous season.
Fulham 1-1 Wrexham
A minor knock, we'll have to use Holland at defensive mid until Troelsen gets back from his mandated rest.
Bristol City is a Championship team. It's definitely the highest level of play Curran can hope for on loan. Don't be a twit, Curran.
Hahaha, no. I might just sell Smissen if he's going to take that much to re-up. He's near the peak of his capabilities as is, and we've got four fullbacks on the first team when you count Vaillant, along with two youth players who can play in an emergency.
In a month we'll be past the transfer window and I'll be able to determine exactly how much I can offer Lewis.
Poor Holt, so unwanted.
That's good, but what's better is that we raised ticket prices again and as a result pulled in 500,000 more pounds than last year for a total of £1.4m in sales. Our balance sheet is at a very healthy £3.1m, and thanks to the increased TV revenue (£275k a month) we should be close to breaking even most months.
Our financial health stems from my firm grasp on wages. Despite seeming like a drunken sailor offering £10,000 a week salaries to players, I've kept our current wages well below that of any competitor, even Chesterfield is spending £500,000 more than us. We're positively dwarfed by West Ham, the Hammers are outspending us by a margin of ten to one.
We've also made a profit of £1.55m on our players sold, which is half of the reason our bank account is large enough to be earning us £7,500 a month in interest. Some of this could change before the end of the window, if I find a cheap left back I'm going to sell Smissen and if I find a great player out of contract who I can sign I'm definitely bringing them in. Add in new contracts for Lewis, Higgs, and Bailey and we might catch up to or pass Chesterfield's wages.
It's too bad he wouldn't get a work permit, he'd be a good replacement for Smissen. Of course, if he had a EU passport he would be a lot more expensive.
vs. Bury, August 6, 2018
Capital One Cup, First Round
Bury's still buried in League Two, this gives me an opportunity to let some of the kids play.
Just to give you an idea of how far we've come in two years.
Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Attack
Starting 11: Love, Siegrist, Vaillant, Poole (c), Kemp, Troelsen, Shirra, Tedesco, Coulson, Eden, Pym.
Subs: Rogers, Smissen, Chapman, Newman, Walley, Mujkic, Harrison.
Bury is lively the first ten minutes, which they cap by a goal. We assume control after that, equalizing in the 44th minute. Vaillant needs to come off at 52 minutes after suffering his second minor injury of the day, and Bury spring back to life in the final half hour of regulation while we play disjointedly. We're forced into extra time, and we have a great chance to take the lead but Harrison misses an absolute sitter in the 96th minute. Instead it's Bury who take the lead in the 103rd minute. Coulson answers immediately, but the goal is called off for offsides. It's an awful call, Coulson was certainly onsides when the pass was made, but there's no replay in soccer. A flurry of chances from both sides to finish the game, but this time we are the giants and Bury the giantkillers.
Wrexham 1-2 Bury
At least no one saw that debacle.
This is adding injury to insult.
Curran finds a place with Notts Co. in League One.
vs. Bristol City, August 11, 2018
Championship
I think we have a good chance of taking all the points here, Bristol doesn't look very impressive. If we can get a win we'll have taken four points from our first two games, a pretty exciting pace.
Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Attack
Starting 11: Higgs, Vaillant, Todd, Lewis, Peters, Holland, Tedesco, Bailey, Gorman, Mujkic, Harrison (c).
Subs: Love, Siegrist, Poole, Troelsen, Shirra, Rainey, Coulson.
It's an even first half. We look the better team, allowing Bristol just one shot. The referee is handing out yellow cards like candy, and Peters is sent off 52nd minute after picking up his second. It doesn't matter, Lewis scores from a corner in the 62nd minute, and we still look like a better team even with only 10 men.
Man of the Match: Stewart Lewis
Wrexham 1-0 Bristol
Smissen is on his way out, we'll get £450k-475k for him. To replace him is this Italian hunk.
Giuseppe Garuti
Left Back
Less defensively adept than Smissen, but more physical, creative, and technical.
I really wish Simpson had the ability to play at a higher level than this, I'm going to miss him as captain.
Best of luck to you, Sam. You were a capable lower league left back. Rangers now have both of our former starting fullbacks, having previously purchased Tench.
I'm not selling Lewis, though. He's still got the potential to get better and could end up being with us into the Premier League.
Our scouts have done a lot of work since the board voted to expand our talent hunt to the continent. It's resulted in a slight slip of our knowledge of UK and Irish players, meaning that it will be slightly harder to find diamonds in the rough at small UK/Irish teams, but we've already compiled an excellent database of Southern European players, and made a good start on Central Europe.
One thing I wish I knew more about were the economics of soccer television deals. I'm very well acquainted with the ones in baseball, where Major League Baseball has national deals with networks like ESPN, TBS, and Fox that bring them roughly a billion dollars a year, which is then split amongst all the teams. They also sell online streaming subscriptions, through MLB Advanced Media, and have a deal with the cable and satellite companies to offer the Extra Innings package that has out of market games that brings in considerable income. And on top of all that every single team either sells their rights to a regional sports network or owns their own cable channel, which can bring in staggering sums (for example, the LA Dodgers new deal is worth 7 billion dollars over the next 25 years, or £180m a year, and they're just one of thirty teams). Then there's the comparatively minor amount brought in by selling rebroadcast rights to foreign networks.
So I really wonder how the TV rights work in Football Manager. I know I can watch every English Premier League game live on my computer through NBC, and they have five or six games a week broadcast on their sports network with one on the flagship network. So I have to believe that, along with the nation-wide games broadcast by BSkyB and BT (which is worth a billion pounds a year!), every single game is broadcast in England for local fans. I doubt that I, as an American, could watch every Fulham game while the actual supporters living in London couldn't. I just have no clue how much those rights are worth. Likewise, rebroadcast rights for the big European leagues are also probably much more valuable than a sport like baseball, I know the EPL rights went to NBC for $83.3 million a year over three years.
To finally get to my point, I'm surprised that the Championship TV rights are worth so little. We're talking about £32,000 split between two teams for live primetime coverage of a game, and the leaguewide rights are just under £70m total. That seems right if the game is only accounting for the national broadcasting deal that Sky Sports has, but that would mean that unless you're picked as one of Sky Sport's live games you're not on TV at all. I'd like to be enlightened about this.
At Middlesbrough, August 18, 2018
Championship
In our first three games we'll have played two teams that have recently been in the Premier League. In fact, other than Crewe Alexandra, Chesterfield, and Peterborough United all of our opponents this season will have a history of playing first division football. Six of them have titles to show for it, such as Derby, Nottingham Forest, Wolverhampton, Burnley, Ipswich, Sheffield United, Sunderland, and three time winners Huddersfield. None of those titles are recent, the newest of the bunch was Nottingham Forest in 1978, and the Sunderland and Sheffield United titles date back to the 19th century. But we're up against teams with history, whereas our best ever finish is 15th in the second division way back in 1979, one of just four years the club has spent at this level.
Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Counter
Starting 11: Higgs, Siegrist, Poole, Lewis, Garuti, Simpson (c), Holland, Bailey, Gorman, Mujkic, Harrison.
Subs: Love, Vaillant, Todd, Troelsen, Tedesco, Rainey, Coulson.
Middlesborough scores twice via headers in the first quarter hour, and it looks bleak. Mujkic lightens my mood by getting us one back in the 45th minute, and then makes me elated by tying it up in the 64th minute. Harrison misses a must-make opportunity that could have won us the game, though, and we lose when Higgs scores a horrible own goal in the 87th minute when he picks up a loose ball and carries it across the goal line.
Man of the Match: Mateo Mujkic
Middlesbrough 3-2 Wrexham
I just found our keeper of the future, bumming around Prague.
David Novotny
Goalkeeper
We've got four 5-star potential players on the team. Novotny is one of them, along with Todd, Mujkic, and Shirra. He needs work before he's ready for the starting role, but he's going to be with this club for a long time. I signed him all the way through 2023, by that point he should be starting for us. Given that he has no contract clauses that will increase his price, he'll still be earning just £2,500 a week.
I expect that this will be a common occurrence.
Just one second, Mateo.
Galatasaray was practically giving him away, he should have been much more expensive but they were determined to sell him for some reason. He's not quite good enough to start for Galatasaray, one of the two biggest clubs in Turkey and a regular Champion's League presence, but he's more than good enough to play for us. The £900,000 fee is by far our highest transfer expenditure, but one I deem “totes worth it.”
Dejan Djurovic
Midfielder
Here's another addition to the club with five star potential, but he's ready for a spot in the first team immediately. Djurovic is a Serbian, meaning he only just became eligible to play in England without a work permit when Serbia entered the EU. I'm guessing that's how we got him, no one else was interested and we got lucky. We've now got a Croat and a Serb on the team, so I'll be looking for a Bosniak and a Montenegran in order to reform Yugoslavia.
I haven't forgotten, I have until September 4th. You'll get my offer when the window closes.
At Huddersfield, August 25, 2018
Championship
As mentioned previously, Huddersfield has won three top division titles. All of those came in the form of a threepeat in the early twenties, and they've never regained that glory. We're going to take some time to settle in as a team, I've brought in too many new players, not all of whom speak English and almost all of whom are from other countries, to expect everyone to be comfortable in the team yet. The plan is to get draws from these early away matches and attempt to win at home. Huddersfield is predicted to finish fifth, so any result here would be a surprise.
Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Defense
Starting 11: Higgs, Siegrist, Todd, Lewis, Mejasic, Troelsen, Holland, Bailey, Gorman, Mujkic, Harrison (c).
Subs: Love, Vaillant, Simpson, Shirra, Rainey, Pym.
We're down 3-0 before the first half blessedly comes to an end. Claudio Siegrist, our highest paid player, earns a deplorable 4.3 rating by forgetting that he's supposed to jump when a cross comes flying through the air and allowing two goals. Mateo Mujkic is also poor, earning a 6.1 rating. Justin Bailey is looking nothing like the player of the year candidate he was the year before. This is a rude awakening, and we were simply not good enough even given the low expectations I had.
Huddersfield 3-0 Wrexham
Holt had just a year left on his deal, and no place in the squad. After weeks of not drawing any interest at all, four different Premier League teams came with offers for him on the final day of the transfer window.
Chris Todd gets his first call-up from the Welsh national team, he only turned 19 in May.
He's surprised by his inclusion on the team, but is irritated by Stewart Lewis wanting a new contract.
Hey, Harrison was also called up. He has a clause in his contract that gives him a raise if he's capped. I didn't expect it to kick in so soon. But it's no problem that so much of the team is getting called up, unlike those unwashed peasants in League One and below we're scheduled for a break when these matches will be occuring.
We're getting to the point where real money is being thrown around in transfers. It's also the first time we've been in a league where more money has been spent on transfers than earned from transfers, sales amounted to about £29m.
Already the worm starts to turn. Can't keep you happy, can I?
vs. Ipswich Town, September 1, 2018
Championship
Ipswich finished well last year, but are predicted to rank 20th at the end of this season. I would very much like to get the Huddersfield whomping out of my players minds with a nice victory to start September.
Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Attack
Starting 11: Higgs, Siegrist, Todd, Lewis, Garuti, Simpson (c), Shirra, Bailey, Gorman, Mujkic, Harrison.
Subs: Love, Vaillant, Poole, Holland, Tedesco, Coulson, Pym.
Within minutes it's clear that the team is playing much better than they had against Hartlepool. But we nearly get nothing for our supremacy over Ipswich, not putting points on the board until Bailey's free kick finds Lewis's head in the 41st minute. We begin the second half in the same manner, commanding every aspect of the game but failing to make Ipswich pay. It comes back to haunt us when Ipswich scores an equalizer, and then the winning goal, late in the game. We lose having fashioned just one goal out of thirteen chances.
Man of the Match: Justin Bailey
Wrexham 1-2 Ipswich
What concerns me most from our first month in the Championship was the thwomping Huddersfield laid on us. At no point during that game did we seem able to handle them. Missed opportunities like the Ipswich Town match, or the fluke end to the Middlesborough game will happen, and they're frustrating, but the team still showed that they could hang with their opponents. Similarly, while it stings to go down to Bury in the League Cup we were playing a squad with three youth starters and players who had only just arrived. We should have still won, but it's not a sign of weakness. We'll have to see how long it takes this team to gel, and whether players like Simpson and Bailey can adjust to the higher level of difficulty, before I can start predicting what form the season will take.
The prediction contest this year is: How many players ask to speak with me about a concern they have between September 1 and the end of the season? That will be things such as gripes about playing time, wanting to be let out on loan, wanting a new contract, or wanting to be sold to a bigger club. Note it's the total number of players, not the number of times I'm asked, if someone keeps bugging me they only count once.
Also, I say we finish in 9th and make it to the fifth round of the FA Cup. I haven't played beyond this update as I write, so I have no foreknowledge as to what will actually happen.
