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| An interesting offer... |
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| 2nd already |
They were 2nd in the table and managerless after the former coach had moved to 1st placed Celtic. Traitor. Good for me though as it put me in a great position. Mid way through the season I would be taking over a team that was still challenging for the title but was only expecting European qualification.What added to the appeal was the fact they had money to spend. I could have a bit of a flutter and because of the relative size of the the club I could do so without breaking the bank completely. I could
move away slightly from the all youth all the time approach I had started to favour at Platanias. I would still be a selling club in the long run as the SPL was quite low rep, and had dropped down to about 24th in the European Competition rankings, below even the Romanian top tier. Even the Greek Superleague was technically above them by a few places though they both only rate 3 stars. Eventually big clubs from big leagues would come calling for my stars and I would probably have to sell.
That would be in the future though. I had the more immediate and pressing concern of trying to break Celtics strangle hold on the title. Every title since 2013 had been won by Celtic. Every. Title. They had clocked up almost 20 years/seasons of dominance. At least in the Superleage Olympiakos and Panathinaikos had swapped it occasionally. Some had challenged here but not consistently with only the likes of Rangers, Aberdeen (after I got them promoted back to the top!), Hearts and Hamilton having any sort of sustained presence in the top 3.This should be fun then. I eagerly took a look at my team and got a bit confused. I think they were over performing by being in 2nd place. I also couldn't work out what tactic they had been using before. They had a lot of players that were Inside Forwards but had been set up to play 4-4-2. They had a few pretty good players but they also had some ageing over paid players. One in particular, X, was on £11.5k a week! I had an ageing winger or two on about 6-7k each, a disgruntled old midfielder who'd never really been used on about another 8k as well. I think in total almost £40k of the £105k wage budget was taken up by some quite old and very average players.
The plan was initially to keep hold of them as it would be a few games until the transfer window. Then I would start shaping the team. To begin with I didn't want to be too sweeping with my changes, especially as it was mid season and the team had clearly been doing well. I didn't want to disrupt that. But at the same time I couldn't be content with the players I had. If I was going to use wingers then I wanted better ones. If I wasn't going to use them I wanted to get rid of them. Either way their days were numbered unless they performed well in the 3 games they had.
And they didn't. I got thumped twice and managed a draw. Not the start I'd wanted so I decided they would be going and I would re-shape the squad into my currently preferred 3-5-2 or 5-3-2 (3 CB's, 2 WB's, 3 MC's and 2 ST's). We might suffer but at least I could claim responsibility for that suffering.
There were some good players present. We had good keepers, good central defenders, and a good but old striker (Dalziel). We did have a lot of players on loan though, and plenty who would leave at the end of the season too so I had another justification for trying to get some recruits.
Transfers
So we needed some fresh blood. As it stood the team probably didn't have enough MC's to effectively cover the formation and any wingers we had wouldn't be close to useful in the formation. So I needed to shift wingers for MC's. I had the money just to buy players but the wingers were eating into the wage budget.
I shifted quite a few on free's or low amounts, and got some loans to cover the wages of some of the higher played wingers I couldn't shift (whilst putting them in the shop window and getting them out of my hair).
At first my head was turned by two strikers. Karlsson and Lifbom, both Scandinavian, both cheap. I'd followed them both since being at Platanias but they had always laughed off my interest. Not so now.
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| Lifbom |
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| Karlsson |
Lifbom could play in a variety of positions but it would be upfront that he would get used. Promisingly he wasn't on full time training before he joined so I'm expecting a big boost initially to his stats.
Karlsson was in a similar position of becoming full time so I held out hope I could shape his stats into a good poacher. For both of them I had the feeling that I could possibly rotate them into the squad and play from the bench. They already looked better than some of the backup/youth strikers I had and looked like they would be better in the long term than some of the half decent strikers already at the club (who would soon be getting the boot). I needed midfielders though.
I had a look through my not so short short list and found two gems for midfield, N.Irish youngsters Snodden and Kearney.
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| Kearney |
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| Snodden |
I felt a bit guilty about raiding Linfield but they were good. Good enough to do well immediately, young enough and with promising enough scout reports. They had a good spread of mental stats already and I could see them slotting into the MC-d and MC-support roles I had, either side of an advance playmaker.
It was at this point I had something of an epiphany. Who would be perfect for the AP role in the middle? Magill from Platanias is who.
Also young, also N.Irish. This in turned made me hatch a new plan, a new transfer policy. Looking around the squad I had some good Scottish youth players coming through. Also once I discounted players who would be leaving either in this transfer window or summer the majority of the squad was British or Irish (bar my recent striker signings). Why not build a squad around British and Irish players?
I normally don't like to restrict myself but I wasn't going to completely rid the squad of other nationalities. I could just make sure there was a core of players from the British Isles. This would combat all sorts of issues - homegrown restrictions, language barriers effecting play, homesickness, price tags, scouting costs and transfer efficiency. I threw the last one in their because I spent and had in the past an awful lot of time scouting players and making offers only for them to turn me down. I'd had a much better success rate with 'local' players and could do here. As a result I could focus my limited scouting network on a couple of regions, a handful of competitions and the relevant youth leagues. There's no point sending a scout to find the next Pele if they won't sign for you.
And as I said I didn't have to tie my hands and say no players from abroad. I could just limit myself so that only a few were brought in at a time, so I could better integrate them into the actual team. Maybe this had been my downfall with Platanias? I'd signed quite a few players last season, most of them from outside Greece and they came into a squad with lots of different nationalities.
I also had the romantic, sort of, dream of having Magill play in midfield with Snodden and Kearney both for Hearts and N.Ireland. Magill had his first cap and I would bet that Snodden and Kearney wouldn't be far off. With none of them topping 21 yet they could play together for years and form an amazingly cohesive midfield unit. More players would be added from N.Ireland at the end of the season too and I could always trawl for more talent to give a N.Irish backbone to the club. When I decided on this I also decided to add Wales to the game to so I could then picked from Scotland, N.Ireland, England and Wales. If all goes well next season I'll then add the Irish leagues too and cut back on a league elsewhere - maybe Portugal, Greece or Sweden.
So I went after Magill and comprehensively failed to get him during the transfer window. Although his value only showed up as £100k, and I'd got him for £160k before, they valued him at around £6m. They lowest I could get them to negotiate to was £5m. More than my wage budget, more than I could save up from transfers and more than I wanted to pay for even Magill.
I wasn't going to give up though. I went to the press...I praised him, I said I would do everything I could to buy him. He made positive noises back and I kept making transfer bids. When his agent approached me and then confirmed he would be open to a move I ramped it up a bid and endorsed him. If you've not used this option before in the talk to press module it's awesome. You basically state they should show some ambition and move to a good club, like yours. It pissed the current Platanias manager off no end but Magill agreed he should move and got upset that my transfer offers were being rejected. In my next offer Platanias suddenly dropped to £3m. Still a bit too much for me but with some clauses and instalments I managed to get them to agree to a paltry £1m up front. I had won. Magill would be playing for Hearts next season at the heart of a youthful and improved N.Irish midfield.
I also managed to confirm a few more signings. Only one was to join during the transfer window though (sorry I know I've jumped from closed to open). Still with my 'local' transfer policy I had my scouts look at League 1 and 2 in England. I don't mean to be horribly about Scottish football but if a player was doing really well at that level I was willing to take a punt at them doing pretty well in the SPL too. I managed to get, at the time, League 2 top goal scorer Geoff Harding.
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| Harding |
He had 24 goals in 34 games for Plymouth and he looked good. Better than all but maybe one of my first team strikers and all for the reasonably price of £500k. I perhaps overpaid a little considering his could still be a risk but I was confident enough that he'd repay that outlay this very season.
Back to the future transfers (sorry I know it's back and forth)...I knew that in summer I would be losing the two WBR's I had, one of the DL's I play as WBL and would be shifting more useless strikers (even with the two youth players and Harding I wanted a little more). So I looked around a little more and decided that after bullying Linfield and Platanias I would make a start on Hamilton. They have/had a WBR who plays for N.Ireland and is great. Only 25 and easily one of top WBR's in the SPL. He would also fit in with the N.Ireland core. I bullied and I got. He'll be coming to Tynecastle next season.
Hamilton also have a young Scottish DL who I think I can shape into a WBL. Only valued at £55k but they want a lot more. The bullying has commenced. It worked for his team mate it might work for him.
Elsewhere I had an Irish ST coming in, youth again, and a French DR, youth too. Still in line with my transfer policy as I don't mind a few signings from overseas so long as I don't over do it. Off the top of my head if all goes to plan transfer wise only 3 players next season will be from outside of Britain and Ireland. They're young too so maybe in time they'll be tempted by the crown Jewel of any players career - turning out for the Tartan Army ;)
Phew...big post. But I'm excited and lots happened. I'll leave the season update till the next.
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