Career This season made my week

[Heskeynho]

Long time lurker, I’ve come here for insight for years, and now have something decent to share. A story split into wild preseason, a quick summary of the season and the results. Sorry ahead of time if this is long but it should be a good read.

 

 So I start a save with the November database ( I had plans to get kaka regen down the road) and I think hmmm who can I build off of that isn’t a top 5 team in any major league that I could get a chance to test some wonderkids for once since I usually play lower leagues and try to build league reputation. After narrowing it down to Atalanta, Stuttgart, Bilbao, Southampton and Everton; I chose to go with Southampton, they’ve got my boy Pierre-Emile Højbjerg. Walking in confidently into my new office, i tell the board I’ll win the prem. With that budget I get my staff squared away, and start bargain hunting. Except I see Southampton has a metric crap ton of dead weight in its squad and in the reserves.....

FIRE SALE!

everything must go!!!

9 fringe players end up selling for £45.75m. Not bad, that puts my budget up to 76.88m. With the sales of gabiadini and tadic for £19.25m and £17.75m to köln and Everton respectfully I’m up to a cool £113.88 million. Great now I can focus on a few guys and build around hojbjerg and Van Diijk.

10 days in, bidding early on got me a few soon to be household names to put into my squad. The plan was to follow Rami’s heavy metal 4-4-1-1 EME tactic and give a whirl. With that in mind I scoop up rodrygo (£6.5m), Arthur (£9m), scarpa (£11.75m) and Wendell (£14.75m) for a total of £42m. Knowing rodrygo and wendell wouldn’t be more than 2.5-3 stars for most of the season, I needed to get one or two more players that would be first team material from the start. Somehow I manage to get Henrichs for £25.5m + Sam McQueen (worth £7m at the time). As well as A. Diawara from Napoli for a rather large sum of £39.5m + Nathan Redmond (~12m at the time). Bringing my spendings to a total of £107. So with only £6.88 in the kitty I call my business to a close and set up IT as we head into August.

The hype is real, I’m giddy to see this squad in action. Now you may be saying, ok, that’s not special we can all get a decent squad in a month if we get lucky with sales and don’t get into bidding wars.  To that statement I would agree, yet that’s not how this story continues. I got football managered......

you would think if your club just cleared out all the 1-3star players and filled it in with 5 star potential players that you would be committed to this promising project as a player.... but the drama comes in none the less.

T-minus 1 week to the start of the season. Hoedt is injured for 3 months and van djiik is requesting a trade, I decline and hope he changes his mind. Granted I had sold all my other cb’s except one youth player with the hopes of loaning in someone to fill in my bench. This might be harder than I thought.

The following, the board grants van djiik his opportunity to leave, and now hojbjerg is requesting to leave too. These two are the pillars of who I’m building around. Well this is gonna suck. As we approach deadline day, Im hit with a few other injuries to rotational players, I’m left with very little depth. Shortly befor deadline day  psg come in, oil refinery and all, with a £48m bid for van Djiik. I accept, and frantically try to sign someone.... luckily I pulled out the ol razzle dazzle with RBL and get upamecano for £19m + josh sims (£5m). 

Onto the season we go

January UPDATE:

well as you can see, after a wobbly start the tactics and players pull through for a good first half of the season, although after constant bickering, hojbjerg has been granted the chance to leave and now I have another headache, Arsenal end up buying him for £54m and with a little over £89m burning a hole in my pocket, my inner 10 year old decided it was time to ball out and splurge. By the 20th of January I made my route with soler, pavon and de ligt for £49m, £14m and £17m each. Leaving me with 9m.

now before I continue I’d like to commend Charlie Austin for being as durable and reliable as a Nokia. The man got the job done but was now facing 2 months of injury. I only had him, i never had a back up for him, i didn’t even need it, the man was in form and full of stamina every game. What more could I want. The next day Fernando Torres is placed on transfer list for being salty after a season long benching. I bid on him faster than John terry going to Wayne Bridges house. I get Torres for £4.4m. What a signing he would turn out to be. For most of the season I would be mingling with 2nd, 3rd and 4th place never more than 3 points off united in 1st. 

Gameday 38, united sit on first with 81 and I’m in second with 79. We were to play Arsenal at home and united to play Chelsea away... 

we gave them a thrashing. I’m sure somewhere in Newcastle, Rafa Benitez shed tears of joy. But I was in luck, Chelsea beat united 2-0. 

Results:

in total we pulled a double with the league and the Carabao cup. Quite a fine effort and with many more wonderkids than I thought I’d have at this point. 

Now the best for last, a few days after the final game I get a message saying Torres is rolling the years back in his training. My god he’s back.... he’s finally back. 

Now my goal is to see if I can win player of the year with him next season. 

TL;DR I got lucky with trades, won a double and made Fernando Torres a machine again.

Edited May 14, 2018 by Heskeynho

[Ashez]

I really enjoyed that, well done mate!

[Woody]

I echo @Ashez mate, that was entertaining 😆

Edited May 14, 2018 by Woody