The Kids Are On Rua dos Jerónimos

[turnip]

Thread title references this stone-cold classic

 

In typical fashion, I start a youth-only save with Clube de Futebol Os Belenenses and get through a couple of seasons only to find out that Jimbokav has done about a million seasons already. 

I, however, care nothing for history. Rivalries with rebel clubs mean nothing to me, for once we are finished, we will be the best team in Portugal and [some other team] will just be yet another club we've humiliated with a bunch of 18 year old players.

 

Season 1 - Portugal Championship 

We weren't great, but performances held up well enough to clinch a second spot in our Initial Phase. Solid defense alongside respectable offense, basically. We started the season with a 4-3-3-DM, but soon switched to a 4-2-3-1 that just seemed to work a lot better. 

Following this, we went into the Promotion Group. We made a really good start to the Promotion Group, winning 6 of the first 7 games with one of our youth intake coming straight into the first team. This meant that we had Promotion sealed, which allowed us to then send out a bunch more of the youth intake for the last 3 matches. 

Youth Intake

 

Daniel was basically destined to be our first international call-up. Not an ideal centre-back, with his lukewarm Jumping Reach, but there's nothing else to dislike other than the inevitable matches he'll miss because of international duty.

Amadu is good enough to make some substitute appearances. Slightly ropy Mentals and nothing to write home about with Physicals.

 

Rafael is a bit like Amadu, but with better Mentals and slightly worse Technicals. So, a better option all-round.

And finally, the cherry on top of the intake: Fabien Roy. The kid good enough to make first team appearances from the off, with no massive holes in his game.

The rest of the intake was pretty good. 

Problems

Staff. Hopeless, the lot of them. Also, why does a club in the 4th tier need a Technical Director on £1200 p/w and a Director of Football on £1000 p/w, and and a Loan Manager on £975 p/w? That's a lot of money at a club whose bank account is basically a colander with a large "free money, here" sign sellotaped to the side. 

Edited November 23, 2021 by turnip

[turnip]

Season 2 - Portuguese Third Division

This is normally the space in my decades-old mental format for updates that I talk about transfers, so here goes:

We sold no-one.

We signed no-one. 

 

International Call-ups

 

League

With most of our young players from last season having a season or so of football under their belts, we started the league campaign quite well. Fabien Roy and Daniel Redzepagic were the immediate promotions to the first team, with Rafael Tavares coming in towards the end of the autumn and mostly sticking around after that. This propelled us to "very well" in the 'how's your league campaign going?' category. Strange how bad everyone else in our group was, though:

The seemingly-interminable gap between the First Stage ending and the Promotion Stage starting utterly tanked our form. I mean, "utterly tanked" is strong; but we went W-L-D-D in our first 4 games and even though we spanked Caldas and Sao Joao Ver 5-1 and 4-0 to finish the group, we ended up second to Trofense. 

This, in turn dragged us into a 2-legged tie against Oliveirense for the privilege to play in the Promotion/Relegation Playoff. We saw them off (just) to set up the matches against Varzim. I was... ... ... put out, shall we say, to discover that because of what I assume is a bug/database error, almost everyone under the age of 19 in my squad couldn't play in these games. Which is half of my team, including subs.

We put out the only team we could for the first (Away) leg, with 5 grey players on the bench, and got a boring 0-0; but when we had 3 red injuries in the first half of the second leg, I decided that my appreciation of the "play the cards you're dealt" philosophy could get in the bin on this occasion, and I reloaded. The second run through finished 0-0 and we won on penalties. Not the way I would have wanted to do it, but eh.

Youth Intake

 

Frejus looks like he could be a very good player in time. He needs work basically everywhere, but a good base Tackling and some very useful Mentals leave me optimistic. 

Vlad was my coaching staff's top pick from the intake. I don't dislike him, but man I hate that attribute weighting for AMCs. He'll need game time to develop, and quite a lot of development at that.

 

Anyone got any decent tactics utilising 4 AMCs? Rodrigo looks useful. I might re-train him as an Inverted Forward at AMR, to avoid that whopping 6 in Passing.

I've already started Goncalo on un-learning that trait, since that would give us the option to play him as an ST, something we've been short on quality with in our first two intakes. 

Staff

We're having a bit of an overhaul this summer. Useless, overpaid dumplings are being thrown to the winds, and I'm hoping we can bring in some better - or at least cheaper - replacements. We're also going to start populating our B team with players, to see if that can kick-start a bit of development for them.

Key Players

Nicholas Ayuel is our Australian ST. After an underwhelming first season, he discovered the point of scoring goals this year and bagged 19 in 28.

Luis Pereira is a reliable option at DL. We've actually got a couple of younger players who could also be excellent, but he's good for now.

Daniel Redzepagic has made good progress with some attributes in the last year. I'd like his Technicals to improve in some way or other, but I'm happy with what's moved so far.

Fabien Roy is seeing a bit of movement but, again, not with the Technicals. There's no desperate rush, though, as I think he'll be fine for the second tier. 

[turnip]

Season 3 - Liga Portugal 2 SABSEG - mid-season update

A few of our older, and least useful players left at the end of their contracts. I kept enough that the one Mentoring group we've got running still has some mentors to include.

Fabien Roy signalled his intention to leave. I told him to shut up and he whined; I then jacked his Asking Price up to £1.5m because it never seems to make them any more pissed off.

Nicholas Ayuel also signalled his intention to leave, but wanted an Asking Price of £50k or summat. Given he's the only player in the team you could really call a striker, I figured having him around for the season and letting him leave on a free was probably the better option. I did offer him around at £400k, though. No takers.

Competitions

Thoroughly entertaining football, as you can see. Good enough to have us second in the league, mind you, even if we've definitely been scraping results. 

I've been looking for opportunities to give some of the youngsters playing time, which seems essential if you want them to develop. It's a delicate balancing act, since the reason they need game time is because they're ****, which means they don't necessarily add much to the team when they play. 

Still, a few players have been above-average so far; notably our pacy DC Francisco, Roy, GK Soares, DR Infante and Vlad Duna, who I threw into a couple of early games when we had injuries and played pretty well.

Youth Intake Preview

We've got a new HOYD who seems to be a significant upgrade on the last one (albeit the best personality we could get was 'Resilient) so although he's likely had nothing to do with this intake, it'll be interesting to see his CA/PA predictions when they come through:

[turnip]

Season 3 - Liga Portugal 2 SABSEG - end of season update

The transfer window was suitably boring. I managed to send a few players out on loan, and then I finally succumbed to temptation and offered Nicholas Ayuel out like a cheap guitar. Sydney FC were the ones most desperate to play bad music and took us up on the £400k offer - I had been hoping to massage any low-ball offers into something that included a 50% of next fee clause, but £400k for someone with less than 6 months on his contract was a good deal.

We immediately put the money to good use, improving Youth Recruitment:

League

The decision to sell Ayuel was made on the basis he hadn't really done very much. It wasn't the best decision I've ever made in the game. We did well until mid-February, when the wheels properly threatened to come off - 3 draws and 2 wins in 5 games making me a concerned manager. We rediscovered our mojo through an unexpected source, and although Tondela had made up enough ground on us to pip us to 2nd (on head-to-head performances), Benfica B having run away with the league meant we were safe enough for promotion in 3rd place. 

The rest of the league sort of happened around us. I was surprised to see Chaves and Academica near the bottom of the table in January and even more surprised that they were both still there at the end of the season. It'd be funny if they both went down.

Youth Intake

Given the preview, I was expecting a good goalkeeper, a couple of decent full-backs, a couple more decent players and then some trash to round it all out. What I was not expecting was Augusto Manuel. After playing this stupid game for 25+ years, it's rare that my jaw literally drops at something in-game, but - bless Manuel - he achieved it. I think I stared slack-jawed at my screen for a minute or so before I realised. 

  

Chana (screenshot from the end of season) looks like being a pretty handy DC. He's obviously Natural at DL, but his attacking attributes are kinda crap, so nah, it's DC for you, my good man.

Santos is probably a more compelling reason why Chana can stay at DC. Already a more than useful ML, if he's got half the potential I'm hoping he has, he'll be a very good DL/WBL in time.

  

Another good new GK is never a bad thing and Goncalo is nothing if not a good new GK. Really, the biggest shame is that Tobi - last year's hot GK prospect - will likely never get a look-in now that Goncalo is here. I mean, just look at that Handling and Reflexes! 

But these hobos are all Ali Dia in comparison to Augusto Manuel, who - at 4* CA - is already Liga Portugal 2 SABSEG standard, has good Dribbling, Finishing, First Touch, Heading, Passing, Technique and Flair. Not just that, but his other Mental attributes are almost all within touching distance of double-figures. And he's two-footed! And he's professional! Just... take my money, Augusto Manuel. He actually asked for a £750k MFRC for domestic clubs in a higher division, but by virtue of scoring 7 goals in 7 games he dragged us to promotion and rendered that clause moot (for now). 

 

There was a fair amount of dross in the rest of the intake, but I signed them all anyway. They're blessed by association, innit?

 

Summary

(Ignore Baeta, Pereira, Pires and Nhaga - they're B-team players who didn't get a minute for the first team.)

It's nice that Francisco, Roy, Soares and Dună all finished the season with 7.0+ average ratings - they were all very good for us. Obviously Manuel did, too, but then he is Augusto Manuel. 

Fabio Miguel struggled rather a lot at times. I think he copped half a dozen fines for poor performances, and these were likely just some of the games I noticed. It's no surprise - the coaching staff think he's Portuguese Championship standard, and we're already 2 tiers above that. It's tempted not to play him, but the coaches also reckon he's got Premier League potential so he needs the game time. 

Daniel Redzepagic has continued to improve, notably getting his Jumping Reach and Strength both into double-figures this season. His new contract is MFRC-less, which makes me happy.

Oscar Soares was our first-choice keeper this season. He marked it with 3 converted penalties, but no free kicks, sadly. He's still kinda trashy, particularly if you compare him to Goncalo Galvao, but he was one of the best in the league at saving lots of crap shots this season which is... certainly a statistic.

Fabien Roy was probably our most consistent performer. Even in a season where he was annoyed at me at least 80% of the time, he just kept putting in good performances. He actually chilled towards the end - after no-one came in for him in the winter transfer window, he said he no longer wanted to leave; a day later, I removed the £1.5m Asking Price and he stopped being annoyed about that, too. I still can't offer him a new contract - he doesn't think the squad is strong enough to match his ambitions - but he's got 2 years left and, well, his £100 p/w ain't exactly breaking the bank, so no rush. 

[kingjericho]

That's a super intake. Great progress thus far

[turnip]

Season 4 - Liga Portugal Bwin - mid-season update

We didn't sell anyone, but we let a few of the older, useless players leave. Our DR wanted 'Important Player' status, despite being 3rd-tier standard - he didn't leave when his contract ran out, but did about a week before our first league game of the season. Bit of a dick move, if I do say so myself. 

Fabien Roy decided - again - that he wanted to leave and we agreed that I'd sell him if a team came in with £3m. Arsenal were the only team that actually made a bid for him, but those tight bastards would only go as high as £400k + 50% ONS, and after a couple of attempts to negotiate, they were told to duck cough. Fabien didn't care.

Daniel Redzepagic is also eyeing up a move elsewhere, and isn't interested in signing a new contract. We've got him until the end of next season, plus a year extra if needed, so there's no desperate rush. He's a harder one to replace, though I reckon we could get upwards of £5m for him if we had to sell. Mind you, he's going nowhere without a 50% ONS clause stapled to his forehead. 

 

We've had a much, much better start to the season than I'd expected. Results-wise, anyway.

I don't think anyone would look at the match stats from most of our games and pair them with the results. But, that's the [ahem] beauty of the game. Also, it's kind of nice to have a superkeeper playing for my team for a change. 

Obviously, some very nice results so far. The win against Porto was sweet both for us being really clinical, and Soares justifying his First Team Goalkeeper status with an overall excellent performance, capped with a penalty save late on. The Data Hub comes into its' own with this sort of thing, because we are statistical outliers par excellence when it comes to goalkeepers.

Soares is having a blinder of a season so far. Plus, he's at 100% with penalties so far. No goals from direct free kicks, though, which I'm sure would make @Jimbokav1971 sad.

Our first choice DC partnership are also playing well, as is Tavares who has finally reached Liga Portugal 2 SABSEG standard. Augusto Manuel, meanwhile, is just doing Augusto Manuel things. 

 

A couple of notable off-field things:

Firstly, we got the board to agree to upgrade Junior Coaching. We're obviously reliant on good young players coming through, so if we can get them coming through slightly better, that works in our favour. 

I got a new contract. 3 years (well, more like 2.5) is a good amount of time to have security.

Finally, the Youth Preview came in:

Honestly, I want full-backs. DRs, in particular. Still a good intake is nothing to sneeze at, and I'll take whatever I can get. If a Striker is there, fantastic, because I'm mildly terrified of what happens if/when a big team comes in for Manuel Augusto.

[Jimbokav1971]

The level of players you got from the very start is astounding! 

Really good progress so far. 

[turnip]

Supplementary update

5 goals in the calendar year is okay, but the Average Rating is very good - even better if you just take this season's numbers, of course. 

We had a couple of bids from him in the January window - both from St Pauli, but Óscar seems to be a bright kid and doesn't want to leave to join a smaller club. 

Milan ponied up the £3m Fabien agreed on, but I really wanted the 50% ONS, so I offered him out and negotiated with Inter for this. I then rejected the Milan bid - they would have loaned him back to us as well. I'd have liked more money, but if he progresses, we could end up making another £5m+ for him. 

[turnip]

Season 4 - Liga Portugal Bwin - end of season update

9 draws in 16 games is hardly spectacular form. Some good performances in there, notably the win over Sporting which was - remarkably - deserved. We sent the kiddies out for the final match against Nacional da Madeira and although the scoreline suggests a drubbing, it was actually an even game. 

We could afford to send the kids out because with a couple of matches to go, most of the important variables were fixed and we were confirmed for 5th. Sporting should have done much better - they fired their coach not long after we beat them - but they were a little unlucky in that they spent the first half of the season with 3-4 games in hand, and I assume the fixture congestion just killed them. On the other hand, **** 'em - more money than 15 of the other clubs in the league and they shat up Europe and repeatedly fell in ******* in the league. Porto, meanwhile, are scary. They put 10 past Tondela at one point in the season. I've actually activated some other leagues, just so there's a bit more consequence to their usual 'hoover up every South American Wonderkid' strategy. 

Porto beat Braga for the Beer Cup and I assume will beat Braga again in the Taça de Portugal final. 

Portuguese clubs were an embarrassment in Europe. Benfica & Porto finished bottom of their Champions League groups, Sporting and Braga finished bottom of their Europa League groups and Vitoria didn't even reach the Europa Conference League group stage. 

 

Youth Intake

Nothing spectacular this time around, and a few more issues in terms of Personality and Determination, but still a lot to like. 

  

I'm not as enthusiastic about Renato as my coaching staff are - I reckon his Acceleration/Pace are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in how he's judged - but another DL isn't a bad thing. 

Rafael looks like a better prospect. I debated retraining him as a DR initially, before going for Inverted Forward, but having thought about it some more, I think I'm just going to try DR on Complete Wing Back and see what happens. If he can get his positional ability up before the new season, he'll get game time. 

  

Marcel is the good striker promised in the preview. And, yeah, he's good. Lots of development needed - there are some XL-sized holes in his game right now - but he looks like he could be a good Poacher once he's older.

Nuno Semedo is my pick from the intake. Physicals need some work and Technicals are quite clearly telling me not to retrain him, but I think he could be another very good DC like Redzepagic. He's already made improvements to his Mentals. 

 

Overall, I'm happy. Even the crappiest players in the intake - according to my scouts - have enough about them to make me think they're worth keeping around for a 'break glass in case of emergency' deal; like Sergio Filipe and Charly Girardet.

 

His first season as a regular starter has given him lots more opportunities to be fined, and those fines have dragged his Determination up to double figures (it hasn't touched his Work Rate yet, which is interesting). 

Redzepagic presumably benefiting from the extra rep from being a regular for Luxembourg, with Augusto Manuel just doing Augusto Manuel things. 

 

Summary

Our first team put a hell of a shift in over the season. 39 games for poor Augusto, a kid who hasn't even signed his professional contract yet. He definitely tailed off performance-wise towards the end of the season. We paid him less than £1 per minute of first team football this season, and he played almost every match. I'm pretty sure that's illegal.

Daniel Redzepagic was probably the most tired player in the squad and the Head of Sports Science sent me the same "Uh, hey boss, Daniel Redzepagic is kinda knackered - you wanna do something about that?" message every couple of weeks from October until April. He probably spent more time sitting at home playing Fortnite than he did training this season. Oh well.

Soares rounded off his season with an impressive average rating. I was happier that Galvao managed to get a goal of his own, though. 

Rafael Tavares continued to develop - I'm a little concerned that he's thinking of moving to a bigger club and insisting on a MFRC. He's a dependable DLP who's now one of the more Influential players in the team.  [edit] Actually, nevermind, he's softened and is now on a new contract for 5 years. 

Vlad Dună is our most valuable player, according to the game's arcane formula. When I offered him a new contract, he wanted a MFRC for £26m (Tavares wanted £500k, for comparison). I'm increasingly convinced he could be very good.

 

Elsewhere, we managed to give some younger (lol) players a bit more game time. The good defenders from last year's intake played a few games each - Santos and Chana - while Yaovi would have played more when Redzepagic was dying of exhaustion except he was off with Benin at ACN. 

 

The challenge for the summer is to try to keep our best players. Obviously. Redzepagic is the most likely to leave, and I'm tempted to 'use up' his contract extension if only to get his Asking Price higher. Fabien Roy will be a huge loss once his loan runs out, but the £15m+ I'm expecting in future clause revenue should compensate nicely. Other than that, we'll see. 

 

[turnip]

[Sonic Youth]

Another Belenenses thread  

Shooting up the leagues, and now your facing the Braga of Spain  

Some of your goof intakes are amazing!

Just remember, if Sevilla knock you out of a cup, you can concentrate on the league 

I’ll get my coat.

[turnip]

  

 

Augusto Manuel doing Augusto Manuel things.  

[turnip]

Season 5: Liga Portugal Bwin - mid-season update

We managed to get a new affiliate. The board said I could choose, and I went with Braganca, since the 4th tier is precisely the level that our 'need game time' youngsters can play at, and they have decent facilities. We sent a couple of players there, but honestly, the rest of the guys we wanted to ship out aren't even good enough for the 4th tier. 

A couple of players did get loans to the 3rd tier and are having decent seasons so far. Well, okay, Tobi is having a good season; Lampreia is playing badly in a team bottom of their league group. But at least he's playing!

We had a couple of offers for Redzepagic, but we rejected the best that RB Leipzig could scrounge up on deadline day. Neither Yaovi nor Chana were ready to make the step up.

Competitions

Our poor league form at the start of the season was a function of us sending the backups while we focused on trying to qualify for the Group Stages. The excellent form since has really surprised me. 

The win Away against Porto was sweet even if they're having a markedly worse season than last time around, but I actually think our best XI is quite good. Really, it's the results in Europe that have been amazing. The results against Sevilla were obviously amazing, but again, those were with our best players. Beating Vojvodina 3-0 was great, and seeing Rui Vilar getting a hattrick was mindblowing - if this kid scored a hattrick against you, your first instinct would be to great a GD post complaining about it. Winning 1-0 in Istanbul courtesy of a Marcel Reuter goal was probably even more astonishing, since we kind of deserved it. 

Worth noting the fact that by deadline day, Porto had already lost as many games as they did all last season. And that Sporting are really benefiting from not having to **** up Europe. 

 

Players

Vlad Duna finally dragged his Passing up to 10. It's improved from 6 at Intake, which isn't shabby. He wants to leave, but seems to have overlooked that he has 30 months + an optional 3 year extension left on his contract. Buy a house, dude, you're going nowhere. 

Rodrigo Prata has also hit the 'magical' double digits for Passing. He's wanted by other clubs but isn't fussed about leaving. Yet. He's got 4 years left on his contract. 

We also got confirmation that we're producing the most Primera Liga players, which is arguably cheating considering we sent some worryingly untalented players out for the games against Boavista and Vitoria. We're only 6th on the list for Europe as a whole, though. Galitos seem like a club it'd be worth parking a scout at, if I was planning on signing anyone. 

Augusto Manuel was rewarded for being Augusto Manuel, by getting named European Golden Boy. He's continued to make steady progress and (I think) was named our first Wonderkid. Which he is:

 No goals yet for Angola, though, which is moderately shameful. (He's up to 6 caps). 

Our goalkeepers remain statistical anomalies. Goncalo Galvao's game-time has contributed to really consistent development and his performances have been great (getting a couple of goals is nice, too!). Still, he's not a patch on Oscar Soares whose performances are so extraordinary they're single-handedly responsible for almost everyone else on the scattergraph being clumped together. Damn, dude. It'll be a shame when I sell you. 

 

Sundries

 

 

Youth Intake Preview

Well... that's... certainly a preview. 

 

Edited December 9, 2021 by turnip

[turnip]

Season 5: Liga Portugal Bwin - end of season update

Another good end to the season. We confirmed our top-5 finish fairly early on, and going into the last few games, things were generally pretty close between all of us. Braga had a decent chance to finish ahead of Porto on the last day, but Porto beat Sporting (which allowed us to overtake them; so... good?). The Europa Conference League tie against Dundee Utd was a bit of a shame - the second string team did a good job in Scotland but couldn't close the deal back home. 

As with last season, performances did drop off. The usual January re-evaluation of us as a team seemed to leave opposition teams a bit in two minds. But we'd made enough ground in the first 'half' of the season to ride out the bad results and cling on to a European place. Some good last-gasp goals, including in the win over Sporting and, importantly, the last day win over Arouca . 

 

Summary

[Apologies for the random order these stats are in; the game seems to despise me trying to re-order the columns I'm adding.]

Augusto Manuel again tops the charts for 'minutes played'. It helps that he's the only good (or even 'decent') striker at the club. Or, has been. Goals weren't fully spread around, because Augusto Manuel is... well, you know how that goes. Still, Carlos Balde got 9, Fabio Miguel scored 6 as did Oscar Soares and Renato Alves. Rodrigo Prata grabbed 15 assists, Vlad Duna got 8, Balde 7,  Fernando Santos and Joao Correia 5. 

 

Notable Personages

Renato Alves made it into the second string team early in the season and then moved across to the First Team towards the end of the season when Fabio Miguel picked up some injuries. He looks like he'll be really good.

Rafael Cruz is now up to 'Competent' at DR and only had a couple of truly awful performances playing there. He still needs lots of development but, again, looks like he could be very good.

Fernando Santos made the DL slot his own by the end of the season. His ego is developing, too, and he asked for a new contract mere months after he signed his first Pro contract. £37m is a MFRC I can live with.

Carlos Balde is finally looking like a professional football player. His progress has been rather slow for someone who came through in our first Youth Intake, but - his occasional woeful performances aside - he's a mostly solid option at AMC.

 

Youth Intake

I did screenshot the intake, but the discrepancy between the first day and end-of-season reports is too high to make much of it. It was very good, though. (I did end up signing Joao Pereira as well). 

  

I need another excellent GK prospect like I need gangrene (to quote Motorpsycho), but Guedes is another very good prospect we'll likely never use. 

Ivan Valido is a more exciting option, because we are in full square-peg-round-hole mode when it comes to DR. Having someone who's more naturally suited to the position will be very nice.

  

Robert Kendall is my pick from the intake. Lots of work needed, but almost certainly good enough to avoid being embarrassing if we give him matches next season.

Bilal has already been capped by Morocco's Under 20s. Again, the attribute weighting for AMCs is hitting him hard (plus, that excellent Pace/Acceleration). If his PA holds true, he could be mindbogglingly good. 

 

Off-season plans

I probably need to sell Radzepagic, unless our Reputation pops enough that he thinks we're a viable long-term option and signs a new contract (unlikely). Roberto Francisco would also leave in an ideal scenario, but we wouldn't make much from selling him, his performances have still been fine and I'm not sure we're 100% ready for a backline of Yaovi and Chana. 

Augusto Manuel signed a new contract with a £40.5m MFRC, so that's an area of concern. We should be able to keep him this summer, at least. 

Mario Osorio, one of our veterans I've been keeping solely for Mentoring purposes, has got his National B licence and he isn't awful, so I've offered him a Coaching role with the U-18s and fired the second, ****, Fitness Coach we had for some reason.

 

Oh for... sure dude, whatever.

Edited December 11, 2021 by turnip

[turnip]

Season 6: Liga Portugal Bwin - August & September

Transfers

I tried shopping Daniel Redzepagic out, but couldn't get an offer I liked. A few had +30% Profit of Next Sale, which is... ehhh, not what I want. We've still got one transfer window to try to get some money for him - honestly, if we get good performances from him, it might be worth losing him on a free if we can massage a 3rd/4th place out of the league. 

Augusto Manuel came to the realisation that he's Augusto Manuel around the same time that Atletico Madrid starting hanging around like a bad smell. Funny that. I told him he can leave for his MFRC, which he didn't complain about. He'll be worth it.

I did sell Oscar Soares. He was keeping Goncalo Galvao from the regular football he'll need to become the next Portuguese #1. He wasn't worth much - £120k + 50% ONS - to Crotone, but he only had a year left on his deal, and a few good performances in Serie B will do any future transfer fees the world of good. 

Vlad Duna wanted to leave, but I rejected the couple of crap bids we received and no-one else was interested. He's since playing nice with me, but I'm still not letting him leave.

We also received some derisory bids for Rodrigo Prata from Brescia, but he seemed chill with me telling them to **** off.

Competitions

We threw the cup match against Sporting and were never likely to get much Away at Benfica. Otherwise, it's been good. The backups got a great 0-3 win in Gothenburg and should do well against Lech in the game I'm about to play. Leicester are the other team in our Europa Conference League group. 

 

Milestones

The board needed a little persuading, but they agreed to upgrade the Youth Fax. It's another couple of years before the "Develop the best youth system in the country" Club Vision is due, but it's crucial we get it pumped at every opportunity. 

Drogba will never live up to his real world namesake, but if he develops well, there's no reason he can't be a useful squad player going forward. He got an assist in this game. 

Bilal seems like he's made out of papier maché at this early stage, but he'll get as many games as we can give him in Europe to maximise his chances for early development. 

Bobby hasn't disgraced himself yet - the 6.5 he got against Sporting was the 3rd best rating of anyone who started that game.

[turnip]

Season 6: Liga Portugal Bwin - October - December

 

It's going... well. I wasn't expecting to go 10 league games without conceding, particularly since the match against Boavista was one we sent the backups to. A good thing about not conceding is that while Rodrigo Prata and Augusto Manuel are in the team, we'll always pose a threat going forward. And they've scored a decent number of goals between them. Obviously, any time we beat Porto I'm happy, and getting a draw Away at Sporting and at Braga is a great result. The borked fixture list means we play Braga in the return fixture in January (one of 7 league fixtures in the month), alongside another match against Benfica. 

The 1-1 against Lusitania Lourosa was notable because I didn't even want to send the backups. Sporting had already clinched first place, so I sent a 3rd-string team who fully deserved their 1-1 win. Bear in mind; some of those players make a turd on a stick look like a decent player:

Morina will have a good international career with Luxembourg (normally the faintest of praise, but a Redzepagic-fuelled Luxembourg have had some remarkable results recently); I'm still trying to decide how good Sousa and Crespo could be. 

Speaking of Redzepagic, I'd assumed that the close of the transfer window would put the kibosh on any further movement, but Besiktas offered £5m+ [don'taskIcan'tremember] and I accepted. If they sell him for £15m in the future, we'll make money either way, and Chana is probably ready at this point to step up.

Goncalo Galvao has joined the ranks of the 'wants to join a bigger club' club. Fernando Santos is there, too. Performances have generally been pretty good, regardless of the mercenary ways of some of our players. Vlad Duna is willing to negotiate a new contract, but his agent wants a £1.6m MRFC to clubs in the Champions League! Dude, I'd rather pay for the holiday you'll take when your contract with us runs out than accept that piece of **** being anywhere near your contract. (I just checked and Rodrigo Prata's agent wants something similar.) We really need to qualify for the Champions League. Either that, or hope our club's rep pops up to where it should be. 

Renato Alves' improvement has been gonzo. He was flagged as 5* PA on intake, but looked trashy alongside Santos, Chana and Manuel. We're going to miss him when he jets off for ACN duty with Cape Verde. Yaovi will be off with Benin as well. Still, neither national team will be there for long, looking at their respective groups. 

On-loan Tobi has also got a call-up, of a more interesting variety:

I'd kind of forgotten about him, but with Galvao sniffing around for a bigger club, I finally remembered to extend his contract for another 4.5 years.

Youth Intake Preview

We'll be letting Fabio Miguel go at the end of the season, so another AMR would be most welcome. Yet more depth at GK is pretty much as expected, but I will admit to some excitement at the prospect of a decent Centre-Back. We'll have an entirely new centre-back pairing in the league next season, so being able to start training up another one or two would be a great relief. 

[turnip]

Season 6: Liga Portugal Bwin - End of Season

  

The second half of the season was basically as good as the first half, but we couldn't hold off Porto for the title. It's hard to argue with; they do have Scrooge McDuck levels of money (and their main striker is an atrocity on two legs). We did the best we could, and the win against Sporting on the final day was a nice way to cap off qualifying for the Champions League. The performances in the 4 previous league games were the most pleasing - where before there's been an element of luck to the pastings we've administered, the wins against Lourosa, Feirense and Belenenses SAD  were proper Top vs. Bottom games, while the win over Vitoria was fully deserved. 

In Europe, we dispatched Sturm Graz comfortably enough, but Loko Moscow were more clinical than us, which isn't something I've written before in this thread. The backups played all 4 of those games, and acquitted themselves well, I'd say. 

Summary

Prata was probably the standout performer this season; 19 Assists and 14 Goals in his 36(11) appearances. Lots of back-post headers for the incongruously short-and-not-good-at-heading Inside Forward.

Renato Alves was the other unexpected provider of a bunch of goals. Again, not great in the air, but 11 Goals and 8 Assists is evidence of his knack for chipping in. 

Balde and Duna did their part, while Galvao got 6 goals but from 8 penalties, which isn't a great conversion rate. 

Look at this. Really, just, look at it. Does anyone have any idea of what this means?

Actually, it makes a little more sense when you find out that literally all of our goals were scored from inside the penalty area. I guess Galvao sucks at taking Free Kicks?

In terms of new players breaking through this season, the main candidates were:

Robert Kendall, who earned a regular spot on the Midweek XI and made a few sub appearances at the weekend as the season went on.

Bilal Falatt; 26 appearances without really sparking into life, but still looks like a very good prospect. 

Joaquim Vasconcelos is a player I was really keen to give game-time to, given Manuel's apparent desire to leave. He's not ready to take over from the big guy, but he did well in Europe. 

Nuno Semedo was our 6th choice DC at the start of the season, but got a few games due to injuries, and did well. He still looks like he could be great. 

 

Sadly, there are a couple of players whose time at the club has come to an end.

Fabio Miguel was at the the club when we started and had lots of first team football, but never really kicked on. 20-odd goals and slightly fewer assists in his time with us. He's off to Vitoria, to probably never play for them.

The more meaningful loss is Roberto Francisco, who's been a first-choice DC since our first season. 180 league appearances in that time, and nothing less than reliability personified in that time. Our coaches reckon he's a Portuguese Championship-level player, but he's been a huge part of us making it to the Champions League, and has been our Captain for the last 3 seasons. Legend (in spite of what the relevant screen says). 

The money from Redzepagic's move funded the training facilities. The Champions League money should fund the next lot. 

 

Youth Intake

  

Roger looks like he could be good. Quickness is generally easy to train up and that... should... put a dent in most of his flaws. 

Joao could go either way - ST or AMR. Not much to say, but he shows promise with either position and depending on where his development takes him, we have options.

  

I'm not one to harp on about poor personalities too much, but **** me sideways if Alex doesn't have the worst one I've seen yet. The sad thing is he could be amazing. He was an immediate promotion to the First Team just so I could slap him in the Mentoring group. Also, it was a wake-up call that I need to improve my coaching team, because he could be the biggest waste of talent since Ravel Morrison.

Mario, meanwhile, looks like the pick of the intake. We're training him at ST for now, if only because we've got other options at AMR. 

The intake overall was good, but there's a cadre of **** personalities present and correct. I really need to get that under control. 

[turnip]

Off-Season ongoings

I guess prime real estate is hard to find in Lisbon. Makes sense, but the £4.9m for selling the ground seems a bit on the low side. I forget if @Jimbokav1971 has had a new stadium yet, and if so what the damage was for you. 

Also, £550k per month is pretty yikes. If this was a save where I was signing players, I could probably fund that through player sales, but now it's a balance of selling players to stay afloat vs keeping them to make sure we get into Europe each season. 

 

Also, the U-19 coaching staff has been revamped. Some of those coaches are pretty bad, I won't lie. Lukayan, Liu Shuhao and Krasuski in particular have pretty heinous coaching attributes, but they've also got scope to improve with coaching badges. 

I also got a new Head of Youth Development. Slim pickings looking for someone who can contribute to training and has a good personality, but hopefully Fernando is a good option. Really, the plan here is that the staffing influences the Youth Intake players to have the kind of personalities where they progress in spite of the fact that their coaches haven't got a ****ing clue what they're doing. 

[turnip]

Season 7: Liga Portugal Bwin: August - October

 

Little of note happened in the window. Augusto Manuel finally put his money where his mouth is and demanded a transfer, so I offered him around for £25m + 50% ONS. Surprisingly, no-one was keen to take us up on that offer. 

The usual paltry bids came in for Vlad Duna and Rodrigo Prata, and were met with my usual dismissal. Galvao still wants to leave, but no-one's made a bid for him EVER.

But it's a problem with a deadline - Galvao, Manuel and Fernando Santos all have contracts expiring at the end of next season, and I doubt there's a team in Portugal that can afford the wages they'll ask for (certainly not us). We will have to sell, but I really, really want that 50% ONS clause. 

 

A good start to the season. The loss against Braga was annoying, but we deserved it, and we've certainly ridden our luck enough this season. The Champions League games have all seen us utterly FM our opponents; the fact it's been our second-team playing those matches just rubs salt into the wounds. Vasconcelos has been pretty clinical in his run-outs so far - 3 goals in 4 CL appearances, from 1.95 XG. 

We've had a fair number of annoying injuries to the second-string team, which has meant we've had to rotate players in and out. I'm rapidly running out of patience - for now - with Rafael Cruz, who has made literally zero progress with his Technical attributes despite getting a decent amount of game time last season and playing pretty well. I've already replaced him in the First XI with Ivan Valido, who at least looks like a DR. 

Vega is the latest non-entity to get a bit of match time. Mostly through injuries to other players (it's seriously irritating when a player gets picked for the U19s, gets injured and no-one bothers to tell me). He's oookay, I guess. Still very raw, and my coaches don't really rate him, but he'll just about do in a pinch. 

Next thing to look forward to is the Youth Intake Preview. Hopefully it'll be good.

 

[abulezz]

Manuel looks like a 'Best Ever in Club History' type. 

[turnip]

Season 7: Liga Portugal Bwin: November - January

As expected, the end of our Champions League campaign came with us getting humped in Lille and Milan. We also bowed out of the Beer Cup with our 7th game in January (seriously, what cretin does the fixtures in Portugal?). Still, the youngsters deserve a lot of credit for earning us a couple of million in prize money in Europe, and a deep cup run. Portimonense suck this season, but it was an even game. The Away games against Benfica and Porto went much how I expected they would - the first team played, but struggled to assert themselves.  

The defeats against Porto and Benfica have hurt our league position. Still, we don't play any good teams on the road in the 10 league matches between now and mid-May (really, fire that fixture scheduling idiot: 6 league games in January and then 10 in February, March, April and May combined ). We also have a Cup Semi-Final against Benfica because of course we do. 

Sending the kids to a cup game against the hated , Away from home and getting a win is sweet. Alex Baidoo-Addae getting that goal is nice. He's gained 1 point of Determination so far, meaning he's now no longer "Easily Discouraged".

We didn't sell anyone in the transfer window. I did shop Manuel around, but although we got some decent bids (£25m+), no-one seemed keen on the +50% ONS. Bayern tried to make me send some people round with baseball bats, but in the end, Manuel's staying for at least a few more months. If we get 1st or 2nd, I might accept a low bid with 50% ONS.

Bayern were the highest bidders for Fernando Santos, coming in at around £27m+30% profit ONS, but we don't have anyone ready to take over from him, so I rejected. I promised I'd sell him for his MFRC (which is a hilarious promise), so he didn't care. Caen, meanwhile, got Carlos Baldé pissed off by making me reject a very [rude gesture] bid for him. Still, everyone's still here. 

Paul was our highest-CA defender from last season's intake, and has made enough progress for me to give him some game time. He's done well so far - 4(1) at 7.05.

Meanwhile, Tobi has been playing a bunch of matches - initially as GK for our second team, but Galvao has been injured a bit recently, so Tobi's stepped up. His progress is astonishing, if you look at 'All Time', but none of that is from the last 12 months. Still, he's hardly a bad keeper and if he has the potential my coaches think, he should be a good replacement for Galvao eventually.

 

In terms of club progress, the board gave me a new contract, and agreed that I could do another coaching course. Which was nice. 

And finally, the Youth Intake Preview looks good. Again.

This is nice. Short of a 3* CA newgen, though, it's the personalities I'm most interested in at this point.

[turnip]

Big old pay rise, but 100% worth it.

I can't remember what I promised him; I think I blacked out at that point. I'm sure it'll be fine.

[turnip]

Season 7: Liga Portugal Bwin

Youth Intake

Normally I bundle this in with the end-of-season stuff, but I felt this needed a separate post.

First up, the personalities are better. Not perfect, but if you compare it to last season's intake where we had 8 bad personalities, to only have 3 outright bad ones shows promise. 

Secondly, the perceived PA is great.  @Jimbokav1971 has long gone with the theory that an intake is a good one if only 1 player has 5* PA, and it's a theory I broadly agree with, so to get 5 is awesome. And bear in mind, with Augusto Manuel, Fernando Santos and Goncalo Galvao in the team, that's a high bar to be judging these players against.

To then have two 4.5* players on top is great. And none of these 7 have the bad personalities. And, broadly, they're at positions we could do with strengthening. Admittedly, getting Fernando Santos to re-sign with us means the two promising DLs are 'nice to have' rather than 'ohmigodyes', but another GK, another DC, another AMR and another AMC (who'll also be a great ST) is gravy. 

  

Alexandre looks like he could be great. Not a world-class player (unless his Technicals improve a lot), but he's got a solid base of Physicals and Mentals to work from, along with being two-footed. Noice!

Sam is another who needs a lot of work on his Technicals, but man there's a lot to like. The Pace, the Determation, the Teamwork/Work Rate, the fact so many of his Technicals are above 5... If nothing else, quick full-backs sell for hefty fees. 

  

Evandro has the slight misfortune to be coming through at a time when Renato Alves is tearing it up, but what a misfortune to have. Needs a bit more Acceleration, but if he makes even a little progress, he'll be lethal in our league.

And finally, Nélson; the jewel in this particular crown of players. Mentals need some work, but I love everything else. He's already scored on his debut - on Youth Intake day - and having signed a pre-contract, the game is valuing him at £10.5m-£19.5m.  Spicy!

[turnip]

Season 7: Liga Portugal Bwin: February - May

As mentioned in the last update, we didn't have any difficult Away games in the final stretch. When we slapped Sporting around (Manuel getting all 4 goals), I was optimistic, and then the 2-1 win against Benfica was when I started to feel confident, particularly since Benfica and Porto had drawn 0-0 the match before, allowing us to leapfrog them both to the top of the table. Portimonense could have given us a scare if I played these games (rather than using Instant Result), but their 2 goals were a bit streaky and we thoroughly deserved our win. 

Look at it. It actually looks better this way, since you can't see that Porto conceded 9 goals in the league all season. We both scored 87 goals across the campaign, though, which is nice. 

We had the fewest Yellow cards in the whole league all season, which is nice, and something I aim for, given how thin we've generally been with squad depth. 

The main competition in the squad was between Renato Alves and Augusto Manuel around who would be our best player for the season. Manuel got the most goals but Renato edged it for me with his overall contribution. I still have no idea how he gets as many goals as he does; I watch the highlights and they're mostly either back-post headers or running-in-behind slotted finishes, but he doesn't really have the attributes for either. Oh well. 

 

  

The new centre-back partnership of Yaovi and Chana, after a slightly rocky start, ended up being a generally good combination. Yaovi has never had a period where he's improved leaps and bounds; he's been consistently incremental to the point where there have been a couple of points in the past where I wondered whether his perceived PA was actually right. But he's been to the World Cup with Benin, even if they insist on playing him at MC. Weirdos. 

 

Youthful Goings-On

 

 

I'm actually debating taking Europe seriously next season. It'll almost certainly be too late to get Manuel or Galvao to accept new contracts, but the next wave of top prospects are more likely to hang around if we can offer competitive wages and look like a decent club overall.

[turnip]

The months between updates can mostly be explained by my just wanting something different from Youth-Only. Also, my mildly escalating panic over the future-minus-Augusto-Manuel.

 

Season 8: Liga Portugal Bwin

No-one of any importance left in the summer; we de-wormed a bit and sent some more players out on loan. 

As the Autumn dragged on, I decided that making whatever money we could make from Augusto Manuel and Goncalo Galvao was the most fiscally responsible action. When they actually left in January, the board were immediately seized with a fit of apoplexy. I can kind of  see their point on the flogging of Galvao for £4m + 40% of next sale, but the kid's now worth £47m-£74m and at Stuttgart, who aren't nearly good enough to keep hold of him if he continues to improve, so that feels like a transfer that will come through for us. Augusto Manuel for £20m to Bayern is probably worse business in the long-term, but I still reckon that getting £20m for someone who was due to leave for free at the end of the season is reasonable business at least.

Rafael Cruz was the other January departure. After 2 seasons of suffering through his execrable performances and utter lack of development as a DR, Marseille came in for him. I'd have taken much less than the £2.1m-£3.5m + 50% ONS we fleeced them for. 

Competitions

We snuck through a Champions League group with Inter, RB Leipzig and FC Kobenhavn, with our backups playing remarkably well at times to ensure we finished second. Liverpool were a tougher proposition.

Benfica beat us on penalties in the Beer Cup (we totally blew in the match); but despite the backups getting most of the game time, we made the Final of the Taça de Portugal and then comfortably beat Porto therein. 

Meanwhile, we just sort of walked the League. Porto were good for 95% of the season, but their manager ****ed off to join Inter at Christmas and the team dropped 7 points in December. Benfica actually rallied pretty well - they were lower-mid-table up until October. This was definitely one of those seasons we aquaplaned our way through. 

Marcel Reuter started the season well, having had a pretty underwhelming season on loan in the third tier last year. By the time Augusto Manuel left for Germany, I was at least mildly optimistic that Marcel would be able to step up to the task, and he did in style: 29(8) appearances; 27 goals. As with previous seasons, our AMR and AML (Alves and Prata) also chipped in with a bunch of goals/assists. Tobi had a good season as our primary goalkeeper, bagging 14 goals (and missing a few penalties as well). He was also called up to the full Brazil squad for the first time.  Fernando Santos is now our best player and had another very good season - he's improved (if Average Rating is any sort of guide of that) every season he's been in the squad. I did also manage to give a few youngsters some game time - mostly in the cups, mind you, but no-one was completely useless. 

 

Off-Field Events

 

Youth Intake

A good preview and another very good intake. Jaime Rolo was the only one we didn't sign. A few of them got bumped up a little in the old PA star ratings once they'd put pen to paper on contracts. Gilles Skrijelj took a fair amount of negotiating to get a decent contract agreed. The complete lack of strikers was... odd. Not a problem at the moment, but it could have been. 

 

Leandro is promising in the sense that he has reasonable attributes. I'm not thrilled about the 10 Tackling, since that's always a pain to improve. 

Gilles Skrijelj, along with having a name that's very tricky to type and being quite greedy (£1.7k p/w! Sheesh) is probably not as good as he initially looks. Pace & Acceleration get you a lot of CA, but eh, he's fine.

 

Marcos Veiga is another nice GK to have knocking around the club, now that Galvao has gone. A nice basis of attributes to start from (plus, Free Kick Taking of 9 is always tasty). 

Renato Gomes is the pick of the bunch, though. It's nice to have someone who could be an option if Fernando Santos leaves, but we should probably find something for him to do in the event we keep Santos around. He looks like someone we could turn into a pretty good Roaming Playmaker if his PA holds up.

 

 

Next Season

The challenge will be to see if our 2nd XI is strong enough to let us send the big guns to Europe and still be competitive in the league. I've also got a bunch of contracts to re-up in the summer, and a few big teams will come in for Fernando Santos, so I'll probably end up pissing off a few players. 

[turnip]

Season 9: Liga Portugal Bwin - August to December

No major outgoings this season. I probably should have reduced the size of the squad more, but there wasn't much interest (at least for our younger, backup-of-backup players) and I couldn't be bothered trying to drum any up.

Fernando Santos had another go at pushing for a transfer but, as with the previous turnings of this particular wheel, nothing an AI club bid was quite in line with what I wanted. In the end, he stayed and then his interest in a move away cooled to the point I could give him a new contract. Santos wasn't the only player making their accountant happy, with Renato Alves, Frejus Yaovi and Sidnei Chana all getting hefty new deals. Oh, so did Tobi (£23k p/w) but I didn't screenshot that. It's nice to be at the point where MFRCs are rarely a point of discussion in contract negotiations. 

Alex Baidoo-Addae, the potentially talented AMC with a steaming turd of a personality, had been aiming to extend his streak of being the worst player in training, when he missed training (I mean, I guess you can't be the worst in training if you're not in training). I promptly transfer-listed him and sent him to the B team where we don't have any other players. He's barely improved at all. Hearts of Oak came in for him, and he compounded his streak of **** decisions by turning them down. If we can't sell him, I'm terminating his contract. What an arse. 

Porto had a bad start to the season and haven't been able to catch up with us or Benfica. Our second-string line-up finished second in our CL group (behind Inter, but in front of RB Salzburg and Sociedad). 

December was pretty brutal, with 9 games in all competitions, and we've got another 7 fixtures in January. I don't fancy our chances against Benfica in the Beer Cup, but we should get past Casa Pia in the Taça de Portugal. Then it should be a straight shoot-out between us and Benfica for the league; they might lose a couple of players in the window (here's hoping). 

Our own performances have been good, if not exceptional. The wide boy double-team of Prata and Alves is still bonkers in terms of how much they create. Tobi is doing fine between the sticks and has 8 goals of his own so far. Meanwhile, Reuter has continued to be good up front, and even if he's less prolific than last season, his overall numbers for the year were good enough to get the European Golden Boy award:

The Youth Intake preview came around as well, and looks promising:

Please be a right back, please be a right back. 

And I got a new contract

Which is nice. A decent pay raise over the last one, too. 

[turnip]

Season 9: Liga Portugal Bwin

Youth Intake

Well, that looks promising, doesn't it?

 

Boubacar is the right-back I wanted. Had I realised the game was listening, I'd have specified that he should have decent Pace, but eh, I'm hardly in a position to turn down someone who looks like a genuine long-term prospect.

Xavier has the flexibility to play in a bunch of positions and could probably do a decent job in any of them. I'm training him as a DR for now, since I think there's scope for him to be a viable utility player if we can plug some of the holes in his game.

 

Ussumane looks like a possible marauding CM in the future, if his PA stars are to be believed. His Mentals are a bit hit-and-miss, but I like what I see.

Mário is my pick from the intake, though. I like a CM who can tackle and is happy to sit back and ping the ball around. Don't get me wrong - he's not there yet, but if the PA holds and I get the training choices right, he could be a reliable long-term DLP.

 

Interestingly, I signed everyone from the intake. Which is extremely unusual for me. This meant I got the 'Scholars' news item a little earlier than I was expecting. This showed me something interesting:

Two players have been upgraded into the 'Elite Talents' part of the list.

 

Wen Bolun is probably never going to be very good. His Mentals are very poor, over all, and I think the 'Either' footedness is doing some heavy lifting on the CA/PA estimates. I'm prepared to be wrong, though.

Celso, meanwhile, caught my eye when I looked through the intake and is probably the best of the bunch right now. I'm going to train him as a Mezzala and see what happens. 

[turnip]

Season 9: Liga Portugal Bwin; end of season

We had a good end to the season. Injuries did start to bite as the season drew to a close, but we were able to eke out some good enough performances to stay ahead of Benfica. Our fixtures helped - the matches against Benfica, Porto and Sporting were all at Home (although we lost to Sporting in the 97th paid-for minute), while the tricky fixture Away to Braga ended in a less-comfortable-than-it-seems 0-3 to us.

In the Cups, Casa Pia took our first team to penalties only for us to lose to Braga in the semi-final of the Taça de Portugal, while the second-string team ground out a mostly deserved 1-0 over Benfica in the Beer Cup to send us head-first into a 1-2 defeat at the hands of Porto. 

In Europe, Bayern were just too good for us. I could have prioritised and sent the first team, but I'm not sure they'd have done much better.

We needed a point from our last two games to wrap up the title. Our last ever match at Estádio do Restelo saw us draw 2-2 against a Famalicão team who might have pushed for 3rd if they hadn't had to sell their Spanish wonderkid striker in January. We then slept our way to a 0-0 on the final day against Estrela. There was final-day drama, though, as Portimonense got a highly-suspect 4-2 win over Benfica to stay up on Goal Difference; Benfica's Goalkeeper of the Year contender Kovac shipping 4 goals for a mighty 5.8 rating. 

Performances this season were good again. Manuel Reuter got the league Top Goalscorer award (with 18; 22 in all comps) by virtue of playing fewer minutes than Benfica's main man. Renato Alves bagged 16 and Nelson Gomes finished a very productive first season as a first-team player with 11 goals in 27(16) appearances. But Rodrigo Prata had another storming season, with 11 goals and 16 assists - his Career Stats look pretty great these days. Sidnei Chana was our player with the highest Average Rating across the season, which as any ful no, is the real marker of quality. 

Our Second XI is actually coming along very nicely in terms of quality. I think they might be ready to start playing league games so we can take the Champions League a bit more seriously. We did have to give a couple of games to one of our young keepers after Tobi got injured, and Veiga did okay. 

As ever, Fernando Santos has clubs after him. He's off to the World Cup with Portugal, having not yet been capped by them, after another good season. Even with the wage bill exploding a bit this season, we've still got plenty of cash in the bank, so he won't be leaving for less than £30m if I have anything to say about it. Carlos Baldé is also going to the World Cup (with Guinea-Bissau) and is also wanted by other teams; he'd set them back much less than £30m, but I'm still not sure I'd sell him. Club Captain Rafael Tavares, meanwhile, has just finished a full season at DR (which he spent the first half of the season learning) and had his best season with us yet (going by Average Rating, at least) which makes me genuinely happy, because he's not very talented and if he was playing poorly, I might have started looking at moving him on. But he can stay and keep adding to his 296 Career Appearances. Lovely.

[turnip]

Off-Season

When we sold Gonçalo Galvão for £4m up front a season and a half ago, our board went totally librarian poo at me. 

I'd like to think my manager got a sulkily-apologetic text from the board members when this payment hit the bank. £25m for a player with 6 months left on his contract. Who's your daddy, you gormless chimps?

 

Liverpool, meanwhile, have made a couple of uninspiring bids for Fernando Santos. Bid more; I know you have the money. 

 

World Cup 2030

Nothing interesting happened. Definitely not in the second round, anyway.