And here's our form. We peaked exactly midway.
And here are the excuses... I mean reasons for our terrible second half of the season. The squad lacked depth beyond the starting 11 so when players started to get tired I had planned to rotate a few reserve or youth players in. Maintaining a reasonably strong team without tiring everyone out.
What actually happened was a horrible spate of injuries and difficult call ups. Fassi got injured in our 18th game I think and was out until the last two games of the season (where he was unfit anyway). Abbes got called up for the African Cup of Nations, missed games, and came back in need of a rest. I had no wingbacks to set up and take their place. Initially I used defenders who could play on that side of the pitch (DL and R).
It didn't take long for a second injury crisis to kick in though and I ended up having to use a central defender and an AMR to try and cover. They did okay but I lost a lot of attacking threat and defensive cover from the wingback positions. I couldn't switch to a normal back four either as I didn't really have the players for it.
On top of this los Riscos also ended up injured, twice, and missed a lot of the season. The games he did play he played half fit. Villia started to play more in AMC as did Fengqi when Flanagan had the ST role but it wasn't as effective as my first choice line up.
My central midfielders also ended up run ragged as there wasn't a great deal of cover for them (players that could were already covering elsewhere).
It wasn't until my final two games that I had most of my team back, though not fit.
I changed tactics for my final game to a 352 (with wingbacks) and got a good result. I'm considering using that and alternating it with my normal tactic if I could get the players to cover it. I liked the idea of having Fengqi and Flanagan both upfront at the same time.
All in the all the team did do pretty well despite this. We were predicted mid-table (13th) and got a healthy 10th and 47 pts. What's more we were only a few wins off being in the players. I know that doesn't count for a great deal in real terms but it did at least mean that if we could get some cover in and make sure we didn't flop like this again we could maybe creep into contention.
We also had some promising signs in the fact that we recorded wins over the big '2' (Panathiniakos and Olympiakos) and were only stopped from reaching the semi finals of the cup by an away goal.
End of Season Review
So a reasonable showing for our first season. The team gelled, most of the players were a success and we had a platform for next season.
The big issues were fairly easy to identify. As mentioned above we needed more depth so we needed to invest in more players. Ideally I wanted to bring in youth players and ease them in. I needed actual cover for the wingbacks, maybe some cover in midfield. I was fairly happy up front.
The next issue was slightly less obvious. Finance. I'd made some mistakes with the wages. I thought I was only just break the budget but towards the end of the season a lot of appearance clauses got activated and we ended a clear £10k over it. With more to come next season. Financially (before the end of season payouts and next season's tv money) we were almost £2m in the red. That would get pretty much wiped out but it would only get worse next season. I needed to bring players in without making the situation worse (or much worse) and hope for success or a sale. I think there'll be interest in my players but I'd need a bid for them that would make sense, on and off the pitch.
What about the player of the season? I couldn't really decided so I've just put some screenshots below of the key ones. I think maybe Tavima just pips it but it's close.
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| Tavima |
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| Fengqi |
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| Thoniatis |
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| Lehman |
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| Villia |
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| Helmer |
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