Daniel Evensen Posted February 6, 2023 Share Posted February 6, 2023 Note: this story is a continuation from my last thread. I considered keeping them as one thread, but decided in the end that a second chance needed a second thread. Here’s hoping that we have a bit more success this round! Second Chance That cold, dark October night in München haunts me to this day. We didn’t just lose. We were annihilated. And I found myself out of a job. What were we going to do? Could we simply uproot our entire family again and move? Would anybody hire me in the football world after my embarrasing defeat? And that’s when Charlotte’s nose twitched. I can’t explain what happened next. It makes no earthly sense, that’s for sure. All I wanted was a way to restart, a way to make things right again. I must have told her a hundred times during that losing streak that I felt that I was set up to fail, that there was no way to succeed with this squad, that I was about to lose my mind trying to meet the board’s expectations while working with a bunch of injured and uninspired players. And, well, I got my chance. When Charlotte’s nose twitched, a huge shaft of light eminated from somewhere behind her. I didn’t have a chance to see anything clearly. Pure whiteness covered me — whiteness and light that you could touch, a warm and satisfying energy that you could feel. I guess I fell asleep. Dream I had a very strange dream as I slumbered. I stood in front of a large stone archway, done in the classical Chinese style. There was a couplet written on either side of the archway, sort of like what you’ll see around the door of a traditional Chinese home during the Chinese New Year. The right side read “假作真時真亦假.” The complementing left side read “無為有處有還無.” I must have looked at that poem for hours in that dream. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it. I guess it means something like “When lies are true, the truth becomes false; when nothing turns into something, something becomes nothing.” But what sense does that make? And why do I feel like I’ve read that somewhere before? Besides, who in the world would write such a cryptic poem in such a place? Usually the poems written on both doorposts have some sort of wish for propserity, for good fortune or good luck. Anyway, since it was a dream, I finally gave up on solving the puzzle and just walked through the archway. Next thing I knew, I was awake. The Office I could smell the leathery cigar before I even opened my eyes. It smelled like the crowd at one of the baseball games I had attended as a child. It stank — a foul, musty, humid aroma that I felt I could touch just as much as that ray of light that attacked me. When I opened my eyes I had a headache, a hangover that surprised me. The lights above my head paled in comparison to that light I had just seen. I wanted to go back to sleep, to close my eyes again, to reenter that strange world with the strange doorway. “Did you have a nice nap?” asked a thick, deep male voice — in Chinese, no less. And then I saw the owner of the cigar. I nodded meekly, wondering what truck had hit me, and looked casually around the office. The office was huge, immaculately clean, and seemed to be coated in gold. Football jerseys hung in picture frames along the wall. In front of me, behind a wooden desk that seemed impossibly large, sat the man with the cigar. He looked unimposing and kind, perhaps 20 years my senior, with a light greying beard and a thinning, receding hairline. A shiny golden nametag on the front of the desk read “GUO KANG, CHAIRMAN,” with the equivalent in Chinese and Korean underneath. Behind him was a huge red and gold club emblem. The word “YANBIAN” lept out of the center, followed underneath by “연변” in Korean. Truth and Illusion I knew it couldn’t be true. It had to be a dream. I knew about this team. I’d always been fascinated by it. Yanbian FC were the representatives of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in the Chinese footballing world. Their rise to the top of Chinese football without spending insane money on famous European players was the stuff of legend. And their fall in 2019 due to tax issues was an absolute tragedy. “I thought… I thought the club was dissolved,” I managed to say in Chinese, my head aching. Mr. Guo just laughed. “Your wife is very pretty,” he said, “and is quite convincing. We’re happy to have you on board.” Now I was more confused than ever. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 6, 2023 Author Share Posted February 6, 2023 Moneyball This was better than Christmas morning. It was better than anything I’d ever experienced, actually. It turns out that Chairman Guo Kang is rich. Rich as in billionaire rich. Rich as in endless transfer budget rich. And he had just put me in charge of his new hobby: trying to get this club to the top. The transfer budget technically wasn’t endless. The numbers weren’t entirely clear, but I gathered that it was somewhere around 360 million renminbi, which is probably about $60 million USD. Our wage budget was a cool 12 million renminbi per week, or about $2 million USD. It was a dream come true. I pinched myself several times that first day to make sure it wasn’t a dream. I was there, all right, as present and as real as I had ever been at any point in my life. I ate lunch, I drank, I used the bathroom, I stubbed my toe on the corner of my desk, and I spoke to everybody around me. It was real, and I was really there. The problem, of course, is that I had no idea how in the world I’d arrived. It just, well, it just happened, I guess. Another problem soon made itself manifest. It wasn’t October 2022 anymore. We were back to early July, as if nothing had ever happened. Almost like somebody pushed a reset button. Europe Waking up to find yourself on the other side of the globe is one thing. Time travel is another. But that was nothing compared to the next surprise. I looked at the memos that were laid out on my desk. One explained new changes to the Chinese football structure. And it simply didn’t make sense to me. The document was written in a very bureaucratic tone, like something that had gone through multiple hands and clearance levels to obfuscate as much as possible. The gist of it was clear enough, however. Due to some sort of political negotiation — perhaps some kind of international incident? — UEFA had come to a sudden and unexpected agreement with the Chinese Football Association. From now on, there would be a path to European competition for the best teams in China’s top flight. In the current season, the Chinese Super League winners would advance to the Champions League First Qualifying Round. The second, third, and possibly fourth place teams would have the chance to enter the Conference League through the Second Qualifying Round. In a messy cursive style at the bottom of that memo was a note to me. “We win!” is what I made out after looking closely for a few minutes, followed by the traditional Chinese “加油” (“let’s go!”) underneath. And it was signed “Chairman Guo.” I learned as I thumbed through the other documents that China had made a number of concessions to open that door. Chinese teams could now field a number of foreign players; we could register up to 20 in the first team in our division. No more than 8 foreign players could be on the pitch at once, which was a little less than ideal — but still struck me as more liberal than any of the other Asian football associations. The restriction against non-Chinese goalies remained, but I figured we could work within those parameters. This was going to be an adventure like no other. New Home I spent most of my first day getting to know the squad. It was a messy squad at best. Most of the players were unambitious. We had a great looking 15-year-old goalkeeper, Wu Ping, who seemed clinically depressed to me. And so I went to work, trying to figure out how to spend all of this money, and hoping not to disappoint Chairman Guo. It was no easy task, by the way. If you think you’re good at negotiations, you try convincing an up-and-coming young superstar that he should leave the clubs of Europe for a Chinese third tier club that nobody’s ever heard of. I heard more laughter from agents on the phone than I’ve heard at comedy clubs. When 5 o’clock hit, I suddenly realized that I didn’t know where home was, or how to get there. You can imagine my shock when my staff assistant told me that my car was ready. Chairman Guo had thought of everything — including the fact that I didn’t know how to get home. And so I found myself in the back of a black Audi with special license plates, being whisked through the busy streets of Yanji. Yanji Yanji is the sort of city that simply has to be real. No writer, no matter how drunk, would ever dare to concoct such a ridiculously multicultural town in such a sensitive part of the world. The city of Yanji is only 45 kilometers away from North Hamgyong Province, the northernmost province in North Korea. As such, Yanji, and the surrounding Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of Jilin Province, has been the site of countless international incidents over the years. Yanji and the surrounding area itself is also home to the majority of China’s Korean minority group (朝鲜族). Far from North Korean defectors, these are Chinese citizens of Korean ethnic origin, most of whom descended from families that crossed into Chinese territory during the Japanese occupation of Korea, back when the border wasn’t quite as clear as it is today. As such, Yanji has a real Korean flare for a Chinese city. South Korean shops abound, and it’s easy to find North Korean restaurants all around town. It’s also a pretty crazy place to raise a family. The drive wasn’t long, of course. We lived in a high rise apartment building in Renping, a small residential section of town very close to the stadium and the team offices. We were also close to the airport, which I soon learned offered daily flights to Beijing, Shenyang, and Pyongyang, with occasional flights to Seoul and Hokkaido. And that was it — a far cry from taking those Bavarian trains to Munich! Magic? Charlotte wasn’t surprised to see me ride up at all. “How was your first day?” she muttered matter-of-factly, as if nothing had changed at all. “Why are we here?” I asked her. “What happened?” “Oh, that,” she said, as if I were bothering her about some silly triviality. “You wanted a new beginning, right? Here’s your new beginning.” “Yes, but… how?” “Oh, wait,” she exclaimed, and handed me a manilla envelope. “Take this with you to work tomorrow. I’m sorry — I forgot.” There was something written on the outside in some language I didn’t quite know — Danish, or perhaps Norwegian? I could make out the letters “Knap” etched on the seal. “And one more thing,” she said. “I kind of… I might have exaggerated your resume a little bit. Just act the part — they won’t know the difference.” And that was the last we spoke about any of it. The Season Begins More transpired during the offseason than I can cover here. Instead of boring you with our numerous transfers, I’ll just cut to the chase. We can go over that later, of course. After a month and a half of cajoling and making false promises, I managed to piece together a side that will hopefully be a bit less embarrassing than what we had before. And so we find ourselves in mid-August, ready for the newly resurrected Yanbian FC to play its first match against Wuxi Wugou. Everybody expects us to win, of course. The press thinks that we’re shoe-ins to win the entire Chinese National Second Division Northern Group (that just rolls off your tongue, doesn’t it?). Chairman Guo demands victory right from the get-go. And I think we might be able to make it happen. That envelope Charlotte gave me just might be the dose of medicine that I needed. I don’t understand exactly how this happened, and I don’t know what to expect next. All I know is that it’s time for us to show what we’re made of. It’s time for football. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted February 6, 2023 Share Posted February 6, 2023 Oh nice! Very rare to see an Asian-based story around here. Really looking forward to this one now. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 6, 2023 Author Share Posted February 6, 2023 Taking Care of Business The nerves came back to my stomach before that first match. I had nightmares the night before: dream after dream of Ingolstadt, of upset players wanting to leave, of goal after goal going in during that 7-0 thrasing against 1860 München. Charlotte finally punched me in the back around 2 in the morning, frustrated by my night of tossing and turning. I think I muttered something to her about the poor quality hotel Wuxi hotel bed. She didn’t want to hear any of it, and muttered a somewhat vulgar equivalent of “sort yourself out” back at me. Needless to say, I was a mess the next afternoon. But, as it turns out, the match against Wuxi wasn’t exciting in the least. We scored early and often. We made it look easy, starting with an opening goal by recently acquired 24-year-old left winger Liu Yue in the very first minute. Both strikers scored, and we ended the half with a comfortable 4-0 lead — and Wuxi hadn’t even managed a shot on goal yet. The second half was much quieter. We threatened throughout, but did not manage to score. We didn’t give anything up, of course, and we came away with the dominating and deserved victory. Everybody was happy. Both our recent signings up front, the Chinese veteran Gao Yang and the Italian wonderkid Peter Rovaglia, scored goals. So did Kwon Hyeok-Kyu, the 21-year-old South Korean midfielder who made huge headlines when we paid 5.5 million RMB for him, a record for our club. Little do they know that we’ve got 300 million more to spend. It was a great day to wear the red and white. Emergency Goalkeeper What the public didn’t realize is that we narrowly averted a major disaster. When I came in to this team, the first choice goalkeeper was a 15-year-old kid named Wu Ping who couldn’t even look me in the eye. Wu Ping hails from Longquan, a small city in Zhejiang province that would take at least a day to reach via train from Yanji. Maybe it was being on his own for the first time that was getting to him. Maybe it was the wheat-based northern cuisine and the harsh, gutteral sound of the local accents. I don’t know what the problem was, but he sure seemed depressed. The coaches told me that they thought he had good enough natural talent to play at this level, and that he might advance. However, Wu Ping had so little faith in himself and his own abilities that I wondered if he’d ever amount to anything. I went out in search of more help in goal, signing 31-year-old veteran Hou Yu from Meizhou Hakka, as well as a 25-year-old backup, Zhang Yan, who came over from Chengdu Rongcheng. I figured that we’d keep Wu Ping on the under 19 squad until he started to develop some confidence, or until we could loan him out. Of course, as fate would have it, both Hou Yu and Zhang Yan managed to injure themselves shortly before our first match. And so it was that we started the 15-year-old kid. We had no other choice. We simply had no other goalkeeper with the ability to play at this level. It feels like poetic justice that he managed to keep a clean sheet in the end. Fast and Furious We’ve got a lot of games to play in this league — 46 in all, to be exact. They come fast and furious, with only a few days in between. Charlotte warned me about spending too much time at work. She never talked about Ingolstadt directly; she only warned me about “you know what” and “that one time.” It took me a few days to realize that the children had absolutely no memory of our German adventures, as if our life were some sort of director’s cut from Men In Black. That manilla envelope she handed me at the start of the season seems to have helped. Still, I can’t help but think about transfers while I wander around the house. And, well, Charlotte herself doesn’t help things. She keeps asking me questions about what our other 21-year-old Korean midfielder, the baby-faced Lee Jin-Yong, was like in person, as if he were some sort of movie star. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Beijing Renhe We’re up next against Beijing Renhe, one of several teams from Beijing in this version of the Chinese league. This will be our home opener, and we’d better put on a good show for the fans. Beijing Renhe also won its first match 4-0. This should be a good early test of our squad’s ability to measure up against good competition. And, you guessed it, we’ll have Wu Ping back in goal. I can’t help but root for the kid. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 6, 2023 Author Share Posted February 6, 2023 9 hours ago, BenArsenal said: Oh nice! Very rare to see an Asian-based story around here. Really looking forward to this one now. Yeah, and not just any Asian story — this one comes based off of a really interesting Chinese-language mod I found on the Steam Workshop. I think it will work. I hope it will work. I hope the finances aren't screwed up... and there's only one way to find out! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mandy42 Posted February 7, 2023 Share Posted February 7, 2023 This forum is being overtaken by women with mystical powers called Charlotte! 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 7, 2023 Author Share Posted February 7, 2023 3 hours ago, Mandy42 said: This forum is being overtaken by women with mystical powers called Charlotte! If you think that's impressive, just wait until I get to our young North Korean signing. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 7, 2023 Author Share Posted February 7, 2023 On A Roll Beijing Renhe was no problem for us. I thought we might have a slow start, but then our attacking left winger Han Jin scored in the 9th minute, and it was all downhill from there. Our recently signed 21-year-old North Korean striker Kim Kuk-Jin scored a goal in the 37th minute, and had an excellent debut in general, including several crucial passes that really opened up the game for his teammates. We wound up running away with a 4-0 victory, the second in a row by the same margin. We dominated every single aspect of the match. Wu Ping’s lack of confidence in himself was no handicap whatsoever, as we gave up only 4 shots in total all game long. It looked like men against boys out there — even though our squad was younger on average. Winning always feels good. Babe I’ll never figure Charlotte out, and it’s not just because of those strange, mystical powers that she has. One moment she’s the embodiment of some long-forgotten Taoist deity, and the next, well, she’s like a schoolgirl. “Why didn’t you start my 어빠?!” she demanded of me in Chinese as I walked in the door that evening. Her Korean pronunciation of the term of endearment — technically “older brother,” but often indicating a crush more than an actual family tie — was like something straight out of a bad Korean drama. “Your what?” I asked, stunned and hoping that I had misheard some other word. “You know,” she said. “Defensive midfield. You’ve got two slots, and you didn’t start my Lee?” Lee Jin-Yong — that’s who it was. The baby faced 21-year-old — the one we signed for 5.5 million RMB from Daegu. I didn’t think much of giving him the day off. I wanted to see how Cong Zhen, another new defensive midfield signing, would work in that role. Lee hails from Daegu, down in the south-central part of South Korea, and a considerable distance from Yanji. We had to offer him a number of enticements to leave his hometown team to come north. Most importantly, we were forced into promising improved training facilities, though we did weasel our way out of promising to bring in another South Korean player to help him settle in. Of course, we wound up signing Kwon Hyeok-Kyu a week later, so I guess we would have been okay with that second point. Lee really shouldn’t be playing on a team of our stature, if you ask my opinion. He’s already playing at a China Super League level, and will likely be a big star for us if we can keep him happy. His contract does come with a 6 million RMB release clause for domestic clubs in a higher division. If we do have to sell him, we’ll make a small profit, I suppose. However, my guess is that we’ll win the league this year and will sign him to a better contract before next season even starts. And now the only trick is keeping Charlotte away from him. Jiangsu We’re up against the reformed Jiangsu Football Club in our next match. You might have heard that Jiangsu Suning was dissolved in early 2021 due to financial difficulties. Actually, Jiangsu had won the league only a few months earlier, leading to widespread questions about the financial stability of Chinese football. I don’t know what happened to those questions. All that I know is that Jiangsu is back, and they’re in the same division that we are. And now I’ve got a plane to catch to Nanjing. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 8, 2023 Author Share Posted February 8, 2023 Disaster You could hear the crunch echo throughout the mostly empty Olympic Sports Center in Nanjing. There was the crunching sound of ribs breaking, and then a moan, an awful moan that the entire stadium could hear. I didn’t see who smashed him, but I did see who the victim was. Lee Jin-Yong, our young superstar, lay on the ground writing in pain. It wasn’t until after the match that I heard our trainer’s diagnosis. Broken ribs. The plan was to send Lee out to a specialist for about two months to heal. Fortunately, we have more than enough defensive midfielders to cover for him. Still, I hate to see a kid with so much talent get injured like that. The Fan “When is he going to be back?” Charlotte asked as soon as I stepped in the apartment. It was a little after midnight, our plane had just landed, and I wasn’t in the mood to talk about anything. I took off my shoes, left them at the doorway, and tried to make a beeline for the bedroom. “Answer me!” she said, half sobbing and half shouting. I sighed. “The physios tell me it’s not as bad as it looked,” I said. “Two months, maybe. He’ll be back in no time. He’s young; he’ll heal.” A temporary look of comfort washed over Charlotte’s face. The fire in her eyes quickly returned, however. “How in the world could you put him out there against those savages? You should have left him on the bench and put that new Spanish kid out instead.” There was a strong accusatory tone in her voice, as if I had deliberately smashed one of her prize vases. “You mean Borja Calvo? He just got here yesterday. And, besides, weren’t you upset with me the other day for not starting Lee?” I was too tired for this argument anyway. And why was she still fawning over this 21-year-old kid? “I just hope he’ll be okay” was her reply, and she left me in peace. Jiangsu We did play a match in Nanjing, by the way. We won, too, 3-2. We didn’t play particularly well, though we dominated throughout. Jiangsu didn’t have a shot on goal, but they did grab one after an errant cross managed to hit our young Scottish center back Aidan Quinn on the back of the foot and made its way into the net. Wu Ping didn’t have a great match, and our defense has some clear holes. We’re bringing in a bunch of new faces to try to plug the gaps, though. I think we’ll be just fine moving forward. Charlotte’s not the only one who ignored the match and focused on Lee Jin-Yong, by the way. Lee’s face has been all over local television and in all the local newspapers. I’ve declined several interview requests to talk about him, and I’ve had to face all sorts of sly attempts by supporters to find the name of the hospital he’s been staying at. Yanbian FC fever is starting to catch as we continue to win. Someone told me the other day that we added 4,500 followers on social media, which I suppose is important to some. Chairman Guo is still upset that we can’t sign the likes of Haaland and Mbappe, though, and I worry that he’s going to hold it against me. I also really hope that Lee gets better soon, by the way. We’re paying him 465,000 RMB per week, which would be a ridiculous salary at any other Chinese club. Chairman Guo has no problem with that; in fact, he wants to see us sign more good players on big wages. Still, I can’t help but be frustrated at the thought of all that money going to a guy sitting in a hospital bed. Strife Huang Bowen, one of our new strikers, came up to me upset the other day. Huang is a 22 year old native of Kunming in Yunnan Province. We picked him up off of Yunnan FC for just under 4 million RMB a few weeks back. He’s already played very well for us, scoring once in his only match so far, and looks like a great signing for the future. Well, if we can keep him happy, that is. “Why’d you have to go do a thing like that?” he asked me with his somewhat awkward southwestern Chinese accent. I had to strain my ears a bit; they tend to drop the “h” sound in the south. “A thing like what?” I replied cautiously. “The new guy. Why’d you sign him?” I almost started laughing. I didn’t know which one he was talking about. We had just had 5 new players come through in the last two days, and that doesn’t count all the young trialists. “You’ll have to be more specific…” I said, trying to keep a diplomatic tone. “The old one, you know, the one from across the border.” And then I knew what the problem was. Kim Yong-Il is his name, a name that gives you a pretty good hint at where he’s from. He’s a starter for the North Korean national team, a good striker who the scouts were excited for. He was also a mistake, in retrospect. I say that not only because Huang got upset. If Huang Bowen gets the game time he wants, he’ll get over it in a jiffy. And if he stays upset, we’ll just loan him out. No — it turns out that Kim Yong-Il had a few signs of trouble that I didn’t care to check up on when I signed him. In particular, he seems somewhat frail for a 28-year-old — and there are rumors that he tends to fall apart in the big ones. We still think he’s worth taking a chance on. And he only cost us 150,000 RMB. We’re not thinking about the long term future here. We just want some strength in depth, somebody who can help push us through this stage and into the next league. But try explaining that to Huang Bowen. I didn’t handle it well, I’m afraid. I just hope he doesn’t raise too much of a stink around the locker room. Gansu There’s not much time to worry about these trivialities, of course. We’ve got a game coming up, our 4th in 11 days. We’re hosting Gansu Tianma. We should win. We’ve got excellent quality and good depth, even if we did lose a key piece to an injury. We also are expecting a large crowd, which is exciting. They tell me we might have as many as 23,000 show up for this match. Maybe Chairman Guo doesn’t care much for my signings, but the fans sure seem to be interested. As for my wife? I’m sure she’ll get by. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted February 9, 2023 Share Posted February 9, 2023 I like where you're going with this. It's a nice idea, taking an obscure lower league side and giving them lost of money. Interesting things are bound to happen. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mandy42 Posted February 9, 2023 Share Posted February 9, 2023 22 hours ago, Daniel Evensen said: As for my wife? I’m sure she’ll get by. You'll find her at the hospital if you need to talk to her! Poor Lee can't get away from her now if he's bound by the chest to his hospital bed! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 9, 2023 Author Share Posted February 9, 2023 1 hour ago, Mandy42 said: You'll find her at the hospital if you need to talk to her! Poor Lee can't get away from her now if he's bound by the chest to his hospital bed! I think I'm going to make her the official head of the Lee Jin-Yong fan club... much to my dismay. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 9, 2023 Author Share Posted February 9, 2023 (edited) Amazing Gansu showed up to their match against us, though you can’t be blamed for thinking that we played that one all alone. We gave up 0 shots and 0 chances to them. Gansu had an xG of 0.00. Meanwhile, we scored 7 goals on 42 shots, dominated possession, and looked like a team playing a completely different game. New signing Luciano Parra completed his debut hat trick in the 67th minute. I brought Huang Bowen on, mostly as an apology for signing Kim Yong-Il (who also scored, of course). Huang scored a goal in the 72nd minute. I hope he realizes that I do want to play him from time to time, and that we make transfers to win games, not to play favorites with our players. I’m amazed at how well we played. No fewer than 8 players made their debuts for us, and yet we still won by a huge margin. We looked like we’ve always played together. The crazy thing is that our squad cohesion can only improve from here. There’s not much more you can say about this match than that we dominated. We shouldn’t be the third tier; that much is for sure. It won’t be long before we start moving up. Monthly Review We’ve had an interesting month. After 4 games and a total of 16 goals for and 2 goals again, I suppose we can make some conclusions about our performance. We tend to score our goals deep inside the penalty area. We’ve been able to simply move the ball inside and score, which is absolutely fantastic. We’re good at getting the ball into the final third, which is a lot better than we were doing in that other reality that I’d just as soon forget. We’re scoring goals about 1/4 of the time when we enter the final third of the pitch. I mean, we’ve just been absolutely dominant on offense; there’s no other way to put it. As for negatives — well, it turns out that Lee Jin-Yong is leading the squad in losing possession. That’s right: the fan favorite, the baby-faced young South Korean wonderkid, the man whose picture is in all the local tabloids, Mr. Lee is playing worse than our other defensive midfielders. I’d love to tell Charlotte this news, but I can’t find the time to talk with her. She’s been busy organizing a fan club for Lee Jin-Yong, along with an army of housewives, college students, and teenage girls from Yanji and the surrounding area. “이진용 화이팅!” (Go Lee Jin-Yong!) is their rallying cry, and none of them seem to mind that her Korean is heavily accented and sounds odd. She still doesn’t know what hospital he’s staying at. We’ll see how long I can hold that bit of information secret. We’re the best team in the league at attacking movement, and by a really high margin. We attract a lot of fouls, mostly because of the sheer quality that we possess up front. Our crossing is also excellent — easily best in our division. I would wager that we have the best crossing in the country, actually. Anyway, our finances look good. We’re still rich. In fact, I think we’ve been making money despite our wild spending. It turns out that we get 1.4 million RMB for each win, which is absolutely silly. And yet I still can’t convince Chairman Guo to improve the training facilities, despite the fact that I promised half the squad that we’d do so. Come to think of it, I can’t even meet with Chairman Guo if I want to. He seems to spend all of his time out on the town, riding around in his Tesla, or flying to random parts of the country in his private jet. I don’t care. I’m fine with focusing on the football, thank you very much. The board seems mildly happy with how we are doing. Perhaps they are upset by the two goal we’ve conceded in four matches. The fans are also mildly pleased. I know that they want a big signing, but we simply can’t do that yet — not at this level. That will come later, I hope. Our squad heirarchy is pretty well set. Fan Xiang, who I’ll introduce you to tomorrow, is clearly the squad leader, and Ye Jie is right behind him in terms of squad influence. We’ve got a good number of influential players, and the dressing room atmosphere is excellent. All of that is impressive when you consider how many changes we’ve made. We’re into the beginning of September now. The transfer window has closed. We brought in 46 players, easily most in the country. We weren’t able to match the 790 million RMB that Shanghai Port spent — but that’s because we’re so far down the league pecking order. Once we make it up to the Chinese Super League, we’ll likely outspend them. Shanghai’s not that hot anyway. Who would want to go to such a bland, plastic, commercial city? Why go shopping on the bund at overpriced stores when you can hang out in the border area and visit the Korean restaurants? Yanji might be a small city, but it’s a city with heart. I’m still convinced that it’s the best city in the country, and I defy anyone to prove me wrong. Mr. Kwon For a little while this summer, Kwon Hyeok-Kyu (권혁규) was our record transfer. We broke our own record, of course — Chairman Guo simply wouldn’t have it any other way. Signing Kwon, who has been capped at the under 20 level, was still a great coup on our part. At only 21 years old, he is an excellent player who is sure to improve. Mr. Kwon is simply a natural for the Segundo Volante role. Sure, he’ll tell you that he wants to play as a deep-lying playmaker, but watching him for only a few minutes will convince you that he should be the Volante. His ability to hold the ball back a bit and make the critical pass in between the defense is simply amazing. He’s kind of like a young Tom Brady out there, holding the ball back a bit and reading the fullbacks and centerbacks before making an extremely precise pass to push the attack forward. Seriously — Kwon Hyeok-Kyu’s passing statistics are really something for midfielders at this level. He’s got a few problems with inaccuracy, but I think that’s mostly caused by the sheer number of new players we have on the squad. Once we start gelling a bit more, I think he’s going to emerge as one of the greatest players in all of Asia. Now, I am worried about Kwon’s lack of consistency. He’s been good so far, but he’s also playing at a level far beneath his actual ability. We’ll see whether he can keep his good streak up once we start moving up the table. He might quite have the boyish looks and charm of Lee Jin-Yong, but his stats are much better than Lee’s. He’s not a tackler or an interceptor, but he is very good at making incisive, key passes that cut the defense in half. When we do start working together as a squad, his pass completion statistics will only improve — and then we’ll really be a force to reckon with. Our 7-0 victory will seem like nothing then. Inner Mongolia We’re off to Inner Mongolia (Nei Meng Gu; 內蒙古) to face their representative. Everybody think that we’re sure to win. We’ll see if anybody shows up at the Hohhot City Stadium for this Friday afternoon kickoff. I think it’s going to be extremely hot. The little bit of good news that has come our way is that Huang Bowen was selected for the China Under 21 squad. The press is still speculating that he wants out. I think we can keep him on, though, and am planning on starting him this afternoon. Fingers crossed. Edited February 9, 2023 by Daniel Evensen Missed three words. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 11, 2023 Author Share Posted February 11, 2023 Domination I suppose we’ve got a good team. I mean, we didn’t just beat Neimenggu. We crushed them. We pulverized them. We won the match 8-0. We beat them so easily that we scored 8 goals before the 60th minute. We didn’t score any afterwards, and it didn’t matter. We’re turning this league into a joke. We’ve got an absolutely amazing side, and I simply can’t believe my eyes. Han Yu finally made his debut in goal for us, and, naturally, kept a clean sheet. He looks good, though there are rumblings in the squad that the players are hoping for more depth in goal. I guess it probably wouldn’t help if I told them that we still had our 15-year-old goalie with no self confidence. We’ve had a great start to the season, and it looks like things can only get better from here. We’ve got great depth to the squad, and we’re playing well even though the players haven’t really learned how to play as a team yet. It’s remarkable. The 8-0 thrashing of Neimenggu is a new division record for the largest margin of victory. It beats the 7-0 scoreline that we put up in our last match, which itself matched what Beijing University did against Qingdao on the first day of the season. And it just so happens that we play Beijing University in a few games. The Hat Trick Wonderkid Huang Bowen is still worried about our new North Korean signing taking away his lunch. He’s gone to the press with his concerns. Nobody seems to be paying much attention to him, though. He apparently didn’t notice that I had him play the entire game against Neimenggu, nor did he seem to care that he wound up scoring. I shouldn’t pay too much attention to Huang Bowen, though. We’ve got a much better striker at the club already — and he’s younger, too. Luciano Parra is a 19-year-old Chilean wonderkid, and is such a good player that my scouts demanded that I sign him. I thought it was a bit excessive considering how many strikers we’d already signed, but I went for it anyway. Parra has played 2 games for us so far. He’s scored hat tricks in both of them, easily earning two player of the match awards. And he seems simply unstoppable. In my opinion, he’s already the best player in the entire Chinese league system — and he’s only 19 years old. And the best part is that he’s not whining to me after I try to make a signing to give us more strength in depth. He’s not flashy, nor does he have that gorgeous face that starts up grassroots fan clubs and steals attention from the rest of the squad. He’s focused, he’s quiet, he does his work, and he’s nothing but quality. I can’t believe he’s playing for us. First Real Test We face our first real test in our next game, the first round of the Chinese FA Cup. We’re up against the Cangzhou Mighty Lions, who are in the Chinese Super League, two divisions above us. Cangzhou is in 18th place and isn’t playing well. The pundits think that we’re going to win this one handidly. I don’t think it will necessarily be so easy, though. We might have a good side, but I’m not certain that we’re quite at the Chinese Super League level yet. We won’t sell out the stadium, but they tell me to expect about 25,000. I just hope we do well. And I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep tonight. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 12, 2023 Author Share Posted February 12, 2023 Chinese FA Cup First Round We almost blew it. Cangzhou might not be the best team in the Chinese Super League, but it certainly looked like they were as good as us in this match. Mr. Kwon came on after about 30 minutes were gone by due to a minor injury to one of our other defensive midfielders. He was first on the scoresheet with a penalty in the 37th minute. And that was it for us. Cangzhou came back with a goal in the 85th minute, one that we really shouldn’t have let in. Off we went to extra time. Kim Kuk-Jin, our younger North Korean striker, gave us new hope with a goal in the 101st minute. But then disaster struck. Mr. Kwon fouled a Cangzhou player in the penalty area. He received a straight red card for his efforts, which I thought was absolutely ridiculous. The penalty was good, the score was tied, and we wound up going to penalties. We won in the end, 5-4. Hou Yu made a big save for us, and we salvaged the match. It was worrisome, though. Our statisticians will tell you that we were the better team on paper. We dominated possession, we had more shots, we had a higher xG, and so on. I don’t think I fully believe it, to be honest. We may have dominated the match in statistical terms, but we weren’t really all that close to scoring most of those opportunities. We’ve had a lot of wasted shots from outside the box — lots of low percentage play without the good teamwork that we need to move forward. I’m starting to believe that our success has been due to how poor the league is at the level we’re playing at. We might not be the best team in the country after all. However, in the end our massive home crowd went home happy. Another crowd of over 24,000, which bodes well for the future of the club. It could be worse. Red Card Fallout I didn’t need to see the replay. I knew right when it happened that I would appeal the red card. There was no question in my mind that no red card should have been given. It’s not just because I like Kwon Hyeok-Kyu. It’s because the play looked clean to me. I don’t need to see it from another angle, I don’t want to hear the referee’s explanation, and I certainly don’t want to hear what the media has to say about it. I know what I saw, and I’m going to do the right thing based on what I saw. The appeal fell flat, of course. We’ll be without Mr. Kwon for at least one game due to the suspension. There are some suspicious rumors going around Yanji that referee Hei Xiaohu might have been paid off. I don’t fully believe it, since we won the match in the end. Still, that was an extremely questionable call to make with less than 10 minutes to go in extra time. Of course, we wouldn’t even be thinking about it if our boys had played together like a team. That’s the real headache. Shaanxi Three days after that nerve wracking match, we’re back at it — this time hosting Shaanxi Guoli. We’re favorites to win again. Shaanxi are playing particularly poorly so far this season. We should be able to pile on the pressure — I hope. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 12, 2023 Author Share Posted February 12, 2023 Shaanxi It turns out that I had nothing to worry about. We scored 7 minutes into this match and never looked back. We only gave up one shot the entire game, won 63% of the possession, and dominated the match despite not looking particularly good. 25-year-old striker Gao Yang, fresh off of injury, was clearly the player of the match. He passed well and got the ball into excellent areas, and finished the match off with a header for a goal in the 93rd minute. That makes 6 straight wins for us in the league, and we’re currently top of the table. We’ve scored 30 goals in 6 games, which is a pretty good clip. And we proved in this one that we didn’t need Mr. Kwon’s stabilizing presence after all. Of course, it might be a different story when we play a team that can actually compete with us. Torres We’ve got more good young players on this team than I can talk about at once. It’s probably easiest to split things up a little bit. Juan David Torres is a 22-year-old Colombian center back who was a fan favorite from the moment he arrived. He was one heck of a scouting find, too. I’m not sure how our scouts came across him, since he’s never had an international appearance at any level, and was hiding in obscurity somewhere on the Real Cartagena roster in the Colombian 2nd Division. The scouting report on Torres was so good that I bought him right away, throwing 4 million RMB at Real Cartagena. He’s been a hit so far, with a high average rating and numerous excellent performances for us so far this season. He’s also got a somewhat loud personality — a media-friendly individual who knows what he wants and pushes hard to get it. When he does finally learn Chinese, I think he’ll be an excellent player for us. Charlotte doesn’t care much for him, of course. She’s never cared for the tall centerbacks. She’s always been a bigger fan of the midfielders with long hair. The Big Test We host Beijing University next, in a #1 vs #2 matchup that is probably the most important game of the year. A win puts us way up in the standings, and almost guarantees that we will win the league outright, given how bad the competition is. If we lose, we’ll really have an uphill fight from here on out. I don’t foresee Beijing University losing to anybody else anytime soon. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted February 13, 2023 Share Posted February 13, 2023 Put those Uni students in their place! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 13, 2023 Author Share Posted February 13, 2023 (edited) Over the Hump It wasn’t pretty, but we managed to pull it off. Tang Xincheng scored our first goal against Beijing University in the 5th minute. It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing from there, though. We had a few good chances, but were rebuffed by a good defensive effort from the students. Mr. Kwon took a penalty in the 44th minute which the Beijing University keeper saved. Kwon tried to shoot it in again from an angle, but wound up hitting the side bar. He had a particularly poor game; I’m wondering if he wasn’t still ruing his red card in the Chinese FA Cup match. We finally scored again in the 72nd minute. Centerback Kristoffer Paulsen headed in a free kick, and that was that. The 2-0 victory wasn’t as dominant as our other victories have been. At least we didn’t lose, though. The Leader We’ve all got our own favorite players, I suppose. Charlotte has given up on watching our current team entirely. She prefers to spend her days scouring the Yanji hospitals with the other ladies in the Lee Jin-Yong fan club. I don’t think that they’ve found him quite yet, but they’ve also covered just about every hospital in the entire Yanbian Korean Autonomous Region. I mean, I’m a fan of Lee Jin-Yong as well, but he doesn’t bring the leadership skills to our club that I really want to see. For that, I look for the likes of Fan Xiang. Fan Xiang hails from a ethnic Korean family here in Yanji. At 24 years old, he is one of the few homegrown players on this club that has talent — and just so happens to be the natural club leader, too. It’s amazing what he’s been able to do with these players. No matter where they come from, no matter how little Chinese they understand, Fan Xiang has been able to earn their respect and get them in line. Together with Ye Jie, our other born leader, the two of them form an extremely strong leadership front, one that I think might last us for years. I do wish Fan Xiang were a more talented player, but we’ll take what we can get. It’s the leadership I care about more than the on-field talent anyway. I’ve heard rumors that Fan Xiang is related to the great Chinese defender Fan Zhiyi (formerly of Crystal Palace), though he assures me that the shared family name is only coincidental. I wouldn’t sell Fan Xiang to a Premier League side if they came asking anyway, even if they did make me a multi-million offer. As for Lee Jin-Yong… we’ll address that one another day. Qinghai We’re on the road again, this time to visit Qinghai Oulu. Qinghai play on the campus of Qinghai Normal University. You’re probably wondering where in the world that is. It happens to be on the western end of the country, a good 3,000 kilometer drive away, or about 31 hours if you hit all the green lights. Of course, we’re going to fly. Chairman Guo will see to that. As long as we stay on his good side, he’s more than happy to spend money to make us feel comfortable. Understandably, we’re only going to have around 200 away fans at the “stadium.” I’m not certain that it can be considered a stadium, of course, since the ground only has a 1,000 person capacity. If we don’t win this one, something is terribly wrong. Edited February 13, 2023 by Daniel Evensen Absolutely ridiculous typo. Shouldn't have stayed up for the Super Bowl last night. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 13, 2023 Author Share Posted February 13, 2023 On 09/02/2023 at 10:15, BenArsenal said: I like where you're going with this. It's a nice idea, taking an obscure lower league side and giving them lost of money. Interesting things are bound to happen. Should have responded to this earlier - my apologies. The database I'm using is really interesting. It includes numerous defunct Chinese teams that have been brought back to life. I was excited when I saw Yanbian FC on the list — but was then horrified when I realized that the database creator also saddled the team with €30 million worth of debt. As much fun as it is to play with a huge amount of debt and no money, I think I had my share with Ingolstadt. I made a few, umm, executive decisions in the pregame editor, including messing around with a foreground "rich benefactor," which just isn't as much fun as the old "sugar daddy" term. Of course, the board and fans hate me for not signing high profile players, which is kind of hard to do when you're so far down the pecking order. I did give Yanbian a bit more reputation, but it didn't make much of a difference. Once we've been promoted once or twice, things are bound to get interesting. I'm particularly interested in seeing how we fare in European competition when we can only use Chinese goalkeepers. And, yes, we will be able to play in European competition. The database I found on Steam was prefixed by "入歐," or "enter Europe." I thought at first that it was some sort of AFC revamp to resemble UEFA more closely, but it turned out to provide a path for Chinese teams to play in Europe. It's a silly idea, but there's a lot of potential there. Big thanks to the random Chinese person who created and shared the database! I just hope it's stable in the late game, lol. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 14, 2023 Author Share Posted February 14, 2023 Laughter I think we can safely say that we have a better team than Qinghai Oulu Institute. This match wasn’t even close. It took us 22 minutes to score the first goal. By the time the dust had cleared, we had 10 goals to our credit against 0 by Qinghai. Han Jin scored four, and young North Korean striker Kim Kuk-Jin had 3 as well. We scored 3 of our goals on penalties, proving that Qinghai couldn’t touch us even if they tried to break the rules. I’m seriously starting to wonder why we can’t just be promoted now and be done with it. We’ve now got 42 goals in 8 matches in the league, and are comfortably in first place despite having a game in hand over most of the other teams. Han Jin Well, after his surprise hat trick, I think it’s time to introduce you to Han Jin. Like Fan Xiang, Han Jin is one of those players that I normally wouldn’t want to start. The coaches have reminded me that he doesn’t like to play in big matches, which isn’t going to work for our club in the long run. We’re a big match club, and we’re going to play in a lot of big matches in the future, and anybody who doesn’t like it is going to have to leave. Mr. Han is 28 years old, a native of Yanji, and from a local ethnic Korean family. He is also an extremely professional player, always dressing nice, always showing up early to every event, and always courteous and respectful to everybody he speaks with. The Koreans traditionally refer to themselves with phrases such as “동방예의지국” (東方禮儀之國 in 한자), which I translate loosely as “The country of courteous people in the East.” I don’t know if that counts for all Koreans in general, and it certainly doesn’t apply to the political leaders in North Korea. However, when it comes to Han Jin, this is absolutely the case. He’s as courteous and polite as they come, and is an absolute joy to be around. Which means that Charlotte wants nothing to do with him, of course. He’s just not as handsome as Lee Jin-Yong, I’m afraid. Anyway, Han Jin is an excellent leader for our team. When placed together with Fan Xiang and Ye Jie, Han Jin helps to form our own version of Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers). I just hope it will be enough to keep the egos in this squad at bay. Jingchuan County We might as well stay in the west. We’re playing in Gansu Province this time against Jingchuan County, a team located in the city of Dingxi. I’ll be frank with you. I speak Chinese fluently, have lived in the country for several years, and consider myself knowledgeable in Chinese cultural and historical matters. And even I’ve never heard of Dingxi. They expect us to pound the living daylights out of Jingchuan, and I think we’ll do that regardless of who we put out on the pitch. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 15, 2023 Author Share Posted February 15, 2023 More Dominance This is probably the only team in the world that could win 8-0 and still make me feel nervous. We dominated in our trip to Gansu Province — of course we did. Everybody knew we were going to win. Luciano Parra had his third hat trick of the young season. Huang Bowen had two goals, and was tantalizingly close to scoring a third. Borja Calvo scored two from defensive midfield, and Mr. Kwon managed to score yet another one of his specialties. But it took us 22 minutes to score the first goal, and the second didn’t come until the game was a half hour old. I started to wonder if I had brought the wrong team along with me. We dominated as we should have, but, boy, we could have played better. The Streak Don’t look now, but we’ve won 10 matches in a row. 9 of them have come in the league. One came in the Chinese FA Cup first round, and that was against a team in the Chinese Super League. We’ve only given up 4 goals, and 2 of those came in that Chinese FA Cup tie. We’ve had 8 clean sheets from 3 goalkeepers, and yet most of the boys are whispering in worried tones about how we lack depth in goal. I think we’ve got a great club. Why does it feel like it’s not as good as it could be, though? Morale Issues We all seem to be happy. Well, almost all of us. Huang Bowen is still upset. I’m not sure what to do for him, either. He’s gone public with his frustration over me signing Kim Yong-Il. Not even the fact that Huang Bowen has made more appearances than Kim Yong-Il (6 to 3) and has scored more goals (6 to 1) can appease him. Kim Yong-Il hasn’t lived up to his reputation for us so far, and I am starting to regret the signing. However, all of this nonsense has me wondering about how professional Huang Bowen really is. I can’t do anything else in this situation other than give him the playing time that he wants. If he’s not happy with that, I really don’t have any answers. He might look grumpy when he sees me, and he might spend more time talking with the press than I would like, but at least Huang Bowen is getting it done in our matches. I know I can rely on him, which is more than I can say for Kim Yong-Il and his tendency to run away when the going gets tough. It’s not easy, even when you are undefeated. Young Viking One of the key signings that has gotten us this far was Kristoffer Paulsen, our 18-year-old Norwegian central defender. We signed him from Viking FK for almost nothing — only 1 million RMB. And he’s been absolutely incredible for us, performing as arguably one of the best defensive players in the third tier. Stavanger, Norway, is certainly a long way away from Yanji, China. It’s a bit colder in Yanji, though, and the local economy is not quite as developed as Norway’s. Still, he seems to feel at home with the side, and has been playing well. Charlotte doesn’t care much for him, of course. She tells me that we Western men all look alike anyway. Taiyuan University of Technology We’re off to face another university team, which should mean another win for us. Taiyuan are in 14th place and aren’t playing all that well. If we lose this match, then something is simply not right in the world. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 16, 2023 Author Share Posted February 16, 2023 No Contest Well, we did it again. We demolished the Taiyuan Institute of Technology, winning 8-0. We managed to bring the score up to 7-0 before the end of the first half. I started to worry in the second half, though, as our goal scoring suddenly stopped. Liu Yue finally finished off his hat trick in the 91st minute, however, and we put them away for good. Taiyuan managed 8 shots, which is more than I would like to give up. Hou Yu was equal to the task, though he did seem a little bit wobbly at times. We really ought to prevent the ball from even reaching him. I guess I shouldn’t complain due to our dominance; however, we are going to need a defensive upgrade before we start facing fiercer competition. Liu Yue was easily the man of the match, and picked up a player of the week award as well. I always wonder whenever any players from any other teams win player of the week, by the way. Our boys are so good that they simply shouldn’t be playing at this level. It won’t come as any surprise to you that our attacking is far above and beyond everybody else in the league. The defending has also been superb, aside from those two fluke goals against Jiangsu, of course. We are simply a good team, and we continue to put out quality results. I am concerned about Kim Yong-Il, though. He had a very quiet game, scoring an early goal and largely disappearing afterwards. My gut tells me that Huang Bowen should be starting more frequently up front. We just need Mr. Huang to stop freaking out about the fact that there are other strikers on the team. Invincible? That makes 10 wins in a row, by the way. We’ve won three matches this season by 8-0 margins, one by 7-0, one by 10-0, three more by 4-0, and one by a 2-0 margin. Only Jiangsu managed to score two goals against us, and both were flukes against a 15-year-old goalkeeper who seems to be clinically depressed. I’d say that’s a pretty good run of form. The board doesn’t seem to agree. I’m not sure if the problem is the quality of the opposition or the fact that we’re not scoring 30 goals a match. Whatever the reason is, Chairman Guo always seems to have something to criticize. For example, the 2-0 win against Beijing University, who are second in the league and the only team that mounts any sort of challenge to us, led to quite a bit of criticism from him. He told me that we should have won by a bigger margin against a team that is supposedly inferior. I’m not sure what more we can do other than win — but, then again, when you have that kind of money I guess you’re not easily impressed. Chairman Guo also didn’t think much of our earlier 4-0 win against Shaanxi, and gave us “B-” grades for the 8-0 demolishing of both Taiyuan and Jingchuang-Xian. And that 10-0 domination on the road against Qinghai? That got a straight “B.” And don’t even get me started on how upset he is that we’re not signing Haaland, Mbappe, and the rest. There’s simply no reasoning with Chairman Guo on that issue. If he doesn’t have the best, he won’t be happy, and that’s that. North Korean Flair We’ve got another DPRK international to introduce you to. His name is Pak Myong-Song (박명송), and he’s a 28-year-old fullback who is one of the mainstays of the squad. Pak defies all stereotypes about North Korea as being a “hermit country.” He’s 6’0”, tall and lanky, in excellent shape, and has 23 caps to his name. He’s absolutely solid, with an excellent, determined personality, and is a natural leader on a squad full of leaders. He hails from Pyongyang, which means that there are certainly political connections in his past. It doesn’t seem to affect his persona much, though. He gets along just fine with our other Koreans, including the other DPRK nationals, the South Koreans, and our young Chinese-Korean players. Statistically speaking, Pak is league ahead of every other defender in our league. That’s no surprise, of course — just about everybody that we have is yards ahead of the competition. We also picked him up for a song - under 200,000 RMB. You can find quite a few good players if you’re not above scouting the DPRK national team. He’ll be around for a little while. I’m not sure if we’ll hold on to him once we finally make the Champions League in a few years, but we’ll see what happens. Charlotte doesn’t care much for Mr. Pak, by the way. She’s too focused on finding Lee Jin-Yong’s hospital. Jiangsu Nantong We’re hosting Jiangsu Nantong next. Like Jiangsu FC, this is a club headquartered in the city of Nanjing. They’ve played better than expected so far, and are in 6th place. Having said all that, we should win this one easily. Lee Jin-Yong won’t play, of course. Aside from him, we should be up to full strength. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mandy42 Posted February 16, 2023 Share Posted February 16, 2023 2 hours ago, Daniel Evensen said: No Contest Well, we did it again. We demolished the Taiyuan Institute of Technology, winning 8-0. We managed to bring the score up to 7-0 before the end of the first half. I started to worry in the second half, though, as our goal scoring suddenly stopped. Liu Yue finally finished off his hat trick in the 91st minute, however, and we put them away for good. Taiyuan managed 8 shots, which is more than I would like to give up. Hou Yu was equal to the task, though he did seem a little bit wobbly at times. We really ought to prevent the ball from even reaching him. I guess I shouldn’t complain due to our dominance; however, we are going to need a defensive upgrade before we start facing fiercer competition. Liu Yue was easily the man of the match, and picked up a player of the week award as well. I always wonder whenever any players from any other teams win player of the week, by the way. Our boys are so good that they simply shouldn’t be playing at this level. It won’t come as any surprise to you that our attacking is far above and beyond everybody else in the league. The defending has also been superb, aside from those two fluke goals against Jiangsu, of course. We are simply a good team, and we continue to put out quality results. I am concerned about Kim Yong-Il, though. He had a very quiet game, scoring an early goal and largely disappearing afterwards. My gut tells me that Huang Bowen should be starting more frequently up front. We just need Mr. Huang to stop freaking out about the fact that there are other strikers on the team. Invincible? That makes 10 wins in a row, by the way. We’ve won three matches this season by 8-0 margins, one by 7-0, one by 10-0, three more by 4-0, and one by a 2-0 margin. Only Jiangsu managed to score two goals against us, and both were flukes against a 15-year-old goalkeeper who seems to be clinically depressed. I’d say that’s a pretty good run of form. The board doesn’t seem to agree. I’m not sure if the problem is the quality of the opposition or the fact that we’re not scoring 30 goals a match. Whatever the reason is, Chairman Guo always seems to have something to criticize. For example, the 2-0 win against Beijing University, who are second in the league and the only team that mounts any sort of challenge to us, led to quite a bit of criticism from him. He told me that we should have won by a bigger margin against a team that is supposedly inferior. I’m not sure what more we can do other than win — but, then again, when you have that kind of money I guess you’re not easily impressed. Chairman Guo also didn’t think much of our earlier 4-0 win against Shaanxi, and gave us “B-” grades for the 8-0 demolishing of both Taiyuan and Jingchuang-Xian. And that 10-0 domination on the road against Qinghai? That got a straight “B.” And don’t even get me started on how upset he is that we’re not signing Haaland, Mbappe, and the rest. There’s simply no reasoning with Chairman Guo on that issue. If he doesn’t have the best, he won’t be happy, and that’s that. North Korean Flair We’ve got another DPRK international to introduce you to. His name is Pak Myong-Song (박명송), and he’s a 28-year-old fullback who is one of the mainstays of the squad. Pak defies all stereotypes about North Korea as being a “hermit country.” He’s 6’0”, tall and lanky, in excellent shape, and has 23 caps to his name. He’s absolutely solid, with an excellent, determined personality, and is a natural leader on a squad full of leaders. He hails from Pyongyang, which means that there are certainly political connections in his past. It doesn’t seem to affect his persona much, though. He gets along just fine with our other Koreans, including the other DPRK nationals, the South Koreans, and our young Chinese-Korean players. Statistically speaking, Pak is league ahead of every other defender in our league. That’s no surprise, of course — just about everybody that we have is yards ahead of the competition. We also picked him up for a song - under 200,000 RMB. You can find quite a few good players if you’re not above scouting the DPRK national team. He’ll be around for a little while. I’m not sure if we’ll hold on to him once we finally make the Champions League in a few years, but we’ll see what happens. Charlotte doesn’t care much for Mr. Pak, by the way. She’s too focused on finding Lee Jin-Yong’s hospital. Jiangsu Nantong We’re hosting Jiangsu Nantong next. Like Jiangsu FC, this is a club headquartered in the city of Nanjing. They’ve played better than expected so far, and are in 6th place. Having said all that, we should win this one easily. Lee Jin-Yong won’t play, of course. Aside from him, we should be up to full strength. he'll change his tune when you give him the Ronaldo baby oil bill 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 17, 2023 Author Share Posted February 17, 2023 Slow Start We won again. We won 8-0 again, as a matter of fact. But it wasn’t as smooth as it should have been. I’m not happy with how we played in the first half. It took us 26 minutes to score, which is inexcusable for a match in which we scored 8 times. We also let Jiangsu have far too many shots on goal throughout the match. I was worried for a while that our clean sheet streak was going to be snapped. Huang Bowen got the start up front again. He scored twice, and came tantalizingly close to a hat trick, but just couldn’t get it over the line. Tang Xincheng, our attacking right winger, wound up earning the player of the match plaudits. He had a good game and deserved it. Mr. Kwon, meanwhile, seemed to disappear for most of the match. I’m worried that his inconsistency is acting up again. I’m probably the only manager in the world who feels frustrated after an 8-0 victory. I had a surprise press interview not long after the match. Xu Di of the China Daily wanted to know if I thought we could keep the unbeaten run going. It’s probably not auspicious to respond directly to questions like that, but I let him know what I was thinking. I told him that I thought we had a great squad with great players, but that I was also seeing the beginning signs of complacency. We haven’t gelled together as a cohesive unit quite yet, and I worry that our success might lead to a sudden downward swing if we’re not careful. I do hope we can keep it up, though. Month In Review We’re already up to October 2022. The economy hasn’t recovered, but at least our squad is doing well financially. Chairman Guo seems happy with the finances. He hasn’t felt the need to throw more transfer budget money at us yet, at least. He still wants us to sign more high profile players, which isn’t going to be possible for a little while. As long as my job is secure, I don’t really care if he feels upset or not. Oh, by the way — we’ve set a few records already. Our 66 goals so far in the campaign has set a league record, as well as a club record. Pretty impressive when you consider that we’re not even halfway through the season yet. We’ve also set a record by going six matches without conceding. Even still, I’m hearing a lot of discontented rumblings about not having strong enough players in goal. Hou Yu had a few good saves in the last match, but he also made me feel a little bit on edge at other times. Our other attacking statistics at the end of September are somewhat odd. We tend to dribble more than other teams, and yet are fouled more as well. I think this is simply because we wind up with more possession, mostly because we have better players. I tend to think of Mr. Kwon as our great passing presence in the midfield, but it seems that the Frenchman Paul Wade is just a bit more accurate. Meanwhile, youngster Borja Calvo is our best creative midfielder, again beating Mr. Kwon out by a large margin. We score a lot of goals and give up very few goals. Naturally, we are at the top of the league. It’s hard to predict how we’ll measure up once we’re promoted, however. Now, with all of that, you’d think the board would love me, right? Wrong. The board are somewhat pleased with our results, but are not over the top. They’ve given me a “C+” for the month. I’m baffled by this, and have no idea what I would need to do to get a better grade. The supporters have apparently given me a “B” grade, which I also find baffling. Are they upset by the three 8-0 victories? Should we give a few of those goals back? Finally, the Three Musketeers of Fan Xiang, Ye Jie, and Han Jin continue to maintain order in the squad. As I’ve said before, we’ve got a lot of players from a lot of different countries, and we’re still struggling to work together as a cohesive unit. Those three have done an excellent job at maintaining law and order, and have prevented things from becoming too strange. The Third Musketeer I suppose I should introduce you to Ye Jie, the third of our amazing Chinese trio. Ye Jie is yet another one of our players who really should be playing at a higher level. He’s 27 years old, a native of Jilin, China, and is Han Chinese, slightly different from our ethnic Korean Chinese contingent. He’s been with the club all his life, and would be the captain if Fan Xiang weren’t also here. His performance so far has been nothing short of sensational, though I think this is because he simply shouldn’t be playing at such a low level. I do worry about his dislike of big matches, however — a problem he shares with Han Jin. We can move forward with him for now, but this may become a problem when we start moving up the ladder. Of course, by that time Ye Jie will probably be a bit too old for my purposes anyway. We’ll see. The Test Only three days after that victory, we’ve got to go down to Qingdao for another Chinese FA Cup match. We’re facing Qingdao Hainiu, who are one tier above us and have been in incredible form so far this season. The bookmakers think we’re a cinch to win it, but I wouldn’t be so sure. We had a rough time in our last Chinese FA Cup match, and I worry about our fitness levels. I don’t think Chairman Guo would behead me if we lost this match. I just hope I don’t have to find out. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 19, 2023 Author Share Posted February 19, 2023 Close Call I thought we were going to lose against Qingdao Hainiu. The casuals loved it, but the coaches hated it. This was one of those goal-heavy matches that would make any coach hate his defense. Luciano Parra is a great striker. We knew that already, of course. But he really proved his greatness in this one, scoring twice before even 10 minutes were up. Guo Yi scored a third in the 11th minute, and I thought we were home free. Qinghao has a good team, however. Hayllan, their star striker, got a hat trick before all was said and done, and we were really in danger of losing in the first part of the second half. Huang Bowen came alive for us, scoring two late goals and rewarding my faith in him. I really was a fool for signing Kim Yong-Il, wasn’t I? Huang Bowen has the potential to be a great star for us for years to come, and we should really look to build on his abilities. We wound up with a 6-4 victory. Hou Yu, our first-choice goalkeeper, really disappointed me in this match. I let him know how I felt, fining him and scolding him for doing a bad job. I think he will find himself in the backup role. We do have a few young goaltenders that I’m looking at, though I don’t think they’re ready yet. As for now, that Chinese goalkeeper requirement is really not treating us well. I guess you would look at the match and say that we were in control the whole time. I felt differently. We really need to improve if we’re going to play against better competition, and it’s clear to me now that the teams we’ve been playing so far have been too easy for us. And you thought this was going to be an easy year! Team Outing It’s October, which means it’s time for the Chinese National Day holidays. Anybody who has lived in China knows that “Golden Week,” usually from October 1 to October 7, is the best time to go out and explore. We took a trip to the most interesting historical place in town: the Memorial of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea. I was worried that the newspapers would make a big deal out of the American manager taking his squad to visit a museum devoted to the “other side” of the Korean War. The politics never really came up, however. Instead, we found ourselves in a mostly empty museum, looking at statues of old Communist leaders and trying to read the misspelled English captions inside darkened rooms. The ceilings were blackened from decades of cigarette smoke, ostensibly due to numerous party leaders making official visits. It was an interesting museum nevertheless, even with the heavy propagandistic overtones. And it was right next to the Yalu River shoreline, which was the most interesting part. Interesting Friends After our trip, I noticed that Stefan Jonovic was hanging out with the North Koreans in a small pack, away from the other players. I haven’t talked much about Jonovic, mostly because he hasn’t really played much. He’s an Serbo-Austrian centerback, 26 years old, an extremely determined player with a great attitude and the ability to be a leader. We think that he’ll be good enough to play with us for two years or so, after which we’ll likely move him on. For now, though, we really haven’t even needed to play him. He’s been injured, and, well, there have been better choices at centerback. But the most interesting thing about him is that he has managed to crack into the otherwise impenitrable North Korean social group. He doesn’t even seem to mind the aggressive looking “bodyguards,” dressed in all black, who insist on sticking with our three first team North Koreans everywhere they go. They all seem to get along, which is hilarious considering that Jonovic doesn’t speak a word of Korean and clearly has no interest in learning. Don’t ask me how they communicate. Now, I don’t really care about his political beliefs, and I do hope that he is able to help integrate them with the rest of the squad. Still, I’ve got a lot of questions about this social group. China Locomotive We’re playing China Locomotive on the road next. China Locomotive plays in Tianjin, not too far away from Beijing. They’re in 21st place, which means we’re likely to win this match no matter what happens. If we don’t win, Chairman Guo will have his revenge. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 19, 2023 Author Share Posted February 19, 2023 We Allowed A Goal Yeah, yeah, we won 9-1. Yeah, yeah, it was a dominating performance. I know all that already. But the problem here is that we allowed a goal. Pietro Rovaglia had a hat trick this time around in our dominating win. He could have scored 6, actually, if he remembered how the offsides rule works. This is why Parra has had more game time. Anyway, we’ve now won 12 straight, and aren’t showing any signs of stopping. We’ve set numerous records already, and we’re only 12 games into a 46 game season. That’s right — you’re going to have a lot more of this to read as we move forward. Song Wenjie was injured, but I’m not worried about that. We’ve got a lot of depth at both right back and left back. The only problem we have is in goal. Goalkeeper Crisis You don’t believe me, do you? We’ve given up only 3 goals in 12 league matches, and have scored 75. I know that looks like a good record, even if you do consider the fact that we gave up 6 goals in 2 Chinese FA Cup matches. But it is a crisis. Believe me. I’m starting to hear rumblings about the crisis in the squad. It hasn’t become a huge problem yet, but there are players here and there who are concerned. You won’t see it in public, but they will tell you in private that they think we lack depth. Of the goalkeepers currently owned by the club, the one with the highest asking price is Peng Peng. He’s on loan at Kunshan FC in the Chinese Super League, who wanted to loan him back right after we signed him. I was a bit too hasty with that signing, and failed to note his consistency issues. He’s also played quite poorly so far this season, which does not bode well for his future. The board, by the way, is furious about me signing him. After that is Hou Yu, who is on my bad list after giving up those 4 ridiculous goals to Qingdao Hainiu the other day. I really don’t want to start Hou Yu again. I’m hoping to put off having grey hair for a few more years, thank you very much. We’re starting Zhang Yan now, who the coaches say doesn’t have the required ability or potential for our squad. And that leaves… well, nobody. I mean, we could bring up Wu Ping, if we really wanted. He’s the 15-year-old who has low self belief but high ability. Maybe we could set up a mentoring unit for him. Other than Wu Ping, the closest we have to anything is Sun Ya’nan. And he’s a long way off from the first team. We paid quite a bit for Sun Ya’nan, by the way. It’s worth it for us to invest in his future. But, yeah, he’s not at the level we need him to be at right now to offer us much. The scouts haven’t found many other Chinese goalkeepers worth our while, unfortunately. Actually, with all the money Chairman Guo has, I’m tempted to throw it all around, buy up every Chinese goalkeeper, and then loan them back out to their parent clubs at a profit. Of course, that could backfire. Fan Xiang Transfer Drama It’s not really much of a drama, actually. Fan Xiang doesn’t seem to want to go. However, Kitchee in Hong Kong really want him. The first offer was for 630,000 RMB, which is a joke. I turned that one down right away. The next one came in right afterwards, this time for 1,300,000 RMB. I turned that one down as well, but am going to keep an eye on the situation to see what comes of it. Sure enough, Kitchee were right back in it, this time with a 1,800,000 RMB offer. After I turned that one down, they came right back at me with a 2,750,000 RMB offer, which is about double what his estimated transfer value is. I’ll be honest with you — part of me wants to sell him off while his value is high. Fan Xiang is a great leader, but he doesn’t have the ability to perform well for us at the next tier up. But I’m not going to sell him for money that we don’t need. I mean, you don’t come across a good homegrown born leader every day. I’d much rather have him stay on as a fringe player as we improve. That reminds me — Eastern apparently are interested in buying Ye Jie as well. Ye Jie is another player I would secretly like to sell, but I’m not convinced that I should break up the Three Musketeers so early in my career. More Inner Mongolia Fun We’re back to Inner Mongolia, this time to take on Neimenggu Caoshangfei. They have a poor team, and we are setting records like it’s going out of style. This should be pretty easy. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 19, 2023 Author Share Posted February 19, 2023 Domination Well, we dominated again, this time winning 6-0 in front of a crowd of less than 400. I’m not quite sure how the finances in this division work. You’d think that most of these clubs would need actual fans to show a profit. Anyway, whatever. Huang Bowen was our best player. The media still think that he’s heading out the door, though I doubt it. He’s played well, and will continue to start as long as he keeps playing like this. Kim Yong-Il, on the other hand, is turning into a bench warmer. Huang Bowen received a bonus for hitting his 10th league goal this season. Chairman Guo gave him a check for 620,000 RMB. It means nothing to Chairman Guo, of course. I hope it means something to Huang Bowen. We really could use him kicking around the place. Drama No, this isn’t about my wife and Lee Jin-Yong. He’s going to be out for a few more days; those stories can wait. This time it’s about Ye Jie, who is upset that he’s no longer a star. Ye Jie has been starting regularly, but is clearly not good enough to start every match for us. I tried to get Fan Xiang to calm him down, but Ye Jie wouldn’t hear any of it. Ye Jie asked me what the problem was. I tried to tell him that he’s a bit older than the other players, that he doesn’t quite have the same potential, and that we need him more for leadership than for his playing ability. That got him upset, of course. He told me that he wants to play more often, and threatened a move to Hong Kong if I didn’t comply. There wasn’t much more I could do than reiterate what I had just told him. Surprisingly, it worked. He calmed down and apologized. We’ll see how long this lasts, however. It’s not good for us to have players in leadership positions who are not likely to play. We’ve got far too many players who expect to be stars anyway. I need to sit down one of these days and actually sort that stuff out. Maybe I’ll do it later. Wu Ping Well, we did it. We signed Wu Ping to a new contract. It’s for 50,000 RMB per week, which is kind of high for somebody who is only 15 years old and has no self confidence. I’ve also moved him up to the first team, and am trying to find a suitable mentorship group for him. If he’s going to stay at the club, we might as well figure out a way to cheer him up a bit. The fans can see his talent, of course. They just don’t know what he’s really like. Beijing Baxy Beijing Baxy are going to be our next victims. Beijing Baxy are as semi-professional side with no money and no talent. If we don’t win this match, we are really in serious trouble. The papers are playing this up as the match of the day, which is hilarious. We should score at least 7. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 21, 2023 Author Share Posted February 21, 2023 Critics I saw before the Beijing Baxy match that the critics among our fanbase were back up on Weibo, trying to find things to nitpick about. One overzealous fan said that I’d better have a good reason for starting 22-year-old striker Huang Bowen. I do have a good reason for starting him. He’s our best goal scorer. After 14 league matches (including today’s win), Huang Bowen leads the squad with 14 goals and 4 assists. It’s even more impressive when you realize that he’s started only 7 games and has come on as a substitute in only 3 others. Luciano Parra, the 19-year-old Chilean Hat Trick Machine, has started in 8 matches, netting 13 goals and 2 assists. He’s got the flare, but Huang Bowen’s got the talent. I’m having a hard time envisioning any scenario in which I wouldn’t start Huang Bowen, assuming he was healthy enough. Meanwhile, Kim Yong-Il has been rotting away on our bench. Beijing Baxy That’s right — we won again. We only put 6 past them this time, though, which is a bit of a disappointment. Most of our scoring took place in the first half hour of the match. Once we were up 5-0 we essentially drifted away into complacency. Liu Yue managed to get the man of the match today, though it could have been anybody. He also managed to win the player of the week, though just about anybody on our side could have won that award as well. Pietro Rovaglia, who is starting to become upset that I’m not treating him like the star he thinks he is, managed to get another goal in this one. That makes 8 goals in 8 appearances for the 21-year-old, whose only failing is that he’s not as fancy and as consistent as Parra and Huang. I suppose the most shocking part of the match was Stefan Jonovic scoring his first goal for the club. I guess I should play him more often, though it’s hard to find a spot for him among all of our good young players. In truth, the most help he provides to us is social support for our DPRK contingent. Anyway, as I mentioned before, that makes 14 straight league wins in a row, with no sign of slowing down. Big Spender You’d think that Chairman Guo would be thrilled with our success. If that’s the case, you simply don’t know Chairman Guo. He doesn’t hang around the clubhouse often, but he was there a few days ago for our staff meeting. He kind of barged in unannounced, which scared me. You see, I normally conduct staff meetings with a bunch of grunts and nods. The coaches and staff members come to me with their suggestions, and I usually approve them without much thought — assuming that they’re not totally ridiculous, of course. I learned a long time ago that grunting, nodding, and delegating all but the most essential tasks is the northeast Chinese way. Of course, the problem is that you never know what the big boss thinks about your habits. Chairman Guo asked me into his office afterwards, and I thought he was going to chew me out for my inattentive managerial style. I was surprised by what he said. “Why haven’t you spent the transfer budget yet?!” he demanded in a scratchy voice and a harsh, almost guttural northeastern Chinese tone. “Sir, umm, well, you see…” I hemmed and hawed, looking for an escape. “Perhaps 300 million RMB was too much?” His eyes were firey and his face was demanding. “Well, sir, you see… At our level, it’s not easy to find pla—” He cut me off before I could finish. “Oh, it’s a scout problem, is that right? We can get you a new scouting team if you want. I’ll make it happen right away.” That wasn’t going to help, of course. The real problem is our reputation, not the quality of the scouting team or the amount of money in the bank. “No need,” I said quickly. “We’ll manage. I’ve got a plan, and I’ll spend the money. You’ll see.” That got me out of the meeting, but didn’t solve the problem. We’re simply not at the level yet where we can buy expensive players for massive amounts of money. I do have a large group of new players ready to come in during the winter transfer season, which will help a little bit. I just hope that our scouts can find us somebody good that is actually worth the money. As nice as it is to play for a billionaire, I’m also not in the mood to make stupid financial decisions that could hurt the club in the long run. We’ll also eventually need to figure out how to convince other clubs to take some of our surplus players on loan. After all, we can only register 50. I never thought having a big transfer budget would wind up being a problem. Qingdao Red Lions We’re back home again, this time to face the Qingdao Red Lions. The Red Lions aren’t a great side. We should dominate this match without any problems. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 22, 2023 Author Share Posted February 22, 2023 Signs of Weakness We beat the Qingdao Red Lions, 5-1. I’m worried, though. We scored all 5 goals in the first half, and basically coasted from there. Luciano Parra had yet another hat trick, scoring all 3 goals within the first 21 minutes. The only goal we gave up was a penalty. It was Ye Jie’s fault. His foul in the penalty box was silly and needless. It’s not exactly endearing to me, and makes me feel less likely to give him the extra playing time that he was moping about the other day. But it’s the offense that I’m really worried about. We need to remember to finish off strong. Return of the King Charlotte seemed happier than usual. I bet you can guess why. I tried to delay the news for as long as I could, but the press got word of Lee Jin-Yong’s recovery the other day. He’s not entirely recovered from the broken ribs, but he’s good enough to start. We’re going to put him out there in our next match and will see how things go. The Lee Jin-Yong fan club is in full force, awaiting his first home performance. Of course, we’re going to be on the road for our next match, visiting lovely Ningxia, far to the west. Ningxia Renhaixi We’re expected to win, of course. Charlotte is going to attend the match with me. I knew she wanted to see our babyfaced beauty’s return. When I asked if she could use club funds to go, Chairman Guo’s only reponse was to insist that we fly first class and stay away from any nosy reporters. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted February 23, 2023 Share Posted February 23, 2023 On 18/02/2023 at 02:23, Daniel Evensen said: Month In Review We’re already up to October 2022. The economy hasn’t recovered, but at least our squad is doing well financially. Chairman Guo seems happy with the finances. He hasn’t felt the need to throw more transfer budget money at us yet, at least. He still wants us to sign more high profile players, which isn’t going to be possible for a little while. As long as my job is secure, I don’t really care if he feels upset or not. Oh, by the way — we’ve set a few records already. Our 66 goals so far in the campaign has set a league record, as well as a club record. Pretty impressive when you consider that we’re not even halfway through the season yet. We’ve also set a record by going six matches without conceding. Even still, I’m hearing a lot of discontented rumblings about not having strong enough players in goal. Hou Yu had a few good saves in the last match, but he also made me feel a little bit on edge at other times. Our other attacking statistics at the end of September are somewhat odd. We tend to dribble more than other teams, and yet are fouled more as well. I think this is simply because we wind up with more possession, mostly because we have better players. I tend to think of Mr. Kwon as our great passing presence in the midfield, but it seems that the Frenchman Paul Wade is just a bit more accurate. Meanwhile, youngster Borja Calvo is our best creative midfielder, again beating Mr. Kwon out by a large margin. We score a lot of goals and give up very few goals. Naturally, we are at the top of the league. It’s hard to predict how we’ll measure up once we’re promoted, however. Now, with all of that, you’d think the board would love me, right? Wrong. The board are somewhat pleased with our results, but are not over the top. They’ve given me a “C+” for the month. I’m baffled by this, and have no idea what I would need to do to get a better grade. The supporters have apparently given me a “B” grade, which I also find baffling. Are they upset by the three 8-0 victories? Should we give a few of those goals back? Finally, the Three Musketeers of Fan Xiang, Ye Jie, and Han Jin continue to maintain order in the squad. As I’ve said before, we’ve got a lot of players from a lot of different countries, and we’re still struggling to work together as a cohesive unit. Those three have done an excellent job at maintaining law and order, and have prevented things from becoming too strange. The thing I noticed in FM23 is that, once you have a lot of money, the board becomes really hard to please. It's like no matter how you end up dominating, you're not likely to get anything better than a B grade. Pretty weird. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 23, 2023 Author Share Posted February 23, 2023 7 hours ago, BenArsenal said: The thing I noticed in FM23 is that, once you have a lot of money, the board becomes really hard to please. It's like no matter how you end up dominating, you're not likely to get anything better than a B grade. Pretty weird. Yeah, I'm not sure what more I can do to make them happy. Oh well. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 23, 2023 Author Share Posted February 23, 2023 Kim Yong-Il After writing him off as too inconsistent for our team, Kim Yong-Il worked hard to show me up. We were going to win against Ningxia — we knew that coming in. We won decisively, though, putting out a 7-0 total that left no doubt about our abilities. Kim Yong-Il ended the match with 2 goals and 2 assists, showing me that he really deserves to continue starting on the attacking right winger side of things. He thinks he’s a striker, and I thought he’s a striker, but it turns out that he plays best as a winger. Who would have thought it? There was no goal for Lee Jin-Yong, though Charlotte seemed happy to see her favorite back on the pitch. We’re going to hold him back until our next home match, after which he should be fit enough to play regularly again. Records Our run of good form continues. We’ve scored an amazing 99 goals in only 16 matches this season, and are on pace to break all sorts of records. It’s not that we’ve only beaten poor teams, either. Beijing University were competing with us for first place at the beginning of the season, and we only beat them by a 2-0 margin. We’ve also had to deal with fatigue issues and everything else that comes with having games every 3 to 4 days. The scorelines have been impressive. We won one match by a 10-0 margin, another by a 9-1 margin, 3 matches by 8-0 scores, and two more by 7-0. You can add in two 6-0 victories on that list, though it almost feels like an insult once you get to such a meager output by us. The only close match we’ve had so far was that 3-2 match against Jiangsu. That was the one that convinced me that Wu Ping really wasn’t ready to play at goal for us. He’s back in goal now, though, and looks better than ever. Zibo We’re off to Zibo in Shandong Province to play Zibo Qisheng. Zibo, a semi-professional team, are currently in 8th place. We need to play well if we’re going to keep this run of good form. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 23, 2023 Author Share Posted February 23, 2023 We Win Again Well, we won another one by a 7-0 scoreline. Mr. Kwon wound up with two goals, but Luciano Parra wound up being the hero. Parra had 1 goal, 2 assists, and a number of other key passes, and simply ran Zibo ragged. That makes 10 road wins in a row for us, and means that the dream season continues. We’ll see how long we can keep this up. We’re also one win away from setting the record for this division with 18. It’s not a great record, of course, since it stems from the days of much smaller leagues in the Chinese third tier. With 23 clubs and 44 games, most clubs will win more than 18. But it’s still a nice record to have. Homecoming The female part of our fan base will be out in full force for this next match. That’s right: Lee Jin-Yong is coming back for his first home game after his injury. And, as predicted, Charlotte has the Lee Jin-Yong fan club ready in full force. I think he’ll be able to stay out there for the full match this time around. We’ll see how he looks. We certainly could use him, at any rate. Looking to the Future Han Songfeng, my assistant manager, stopped me in the hall the other day to talk about two players he thought I should pay more attention to. The first is Zhu Bin, a 15-year-old kid from the remote city of Jiamusi up in eastern Heilongjiang Province. It’s so far to the east that it’s practically in Russia, and it’s several hundred kilometers north of Vladivostok. Needless to say, Zhu Bin isn’t going to be scared of the Yanji winter! Zhu Bin is quick, is training quite well, and looks like he might be a great attacking left winger for us. He’s so good, in fact, that I’m starting to wonder whether I should bring him up to the first team squad in January to give him a try. Han Songfeng thinks that Zhu Bin isn’t quite as good as the 28-year-old Han Jin at the moment, but noted that he’s close. Given how poor our competition has been this season, it might be worth it to give him some game time and see how he develops. The second youngster is Yan Kun, and there’s an interesting story behind him. Our scouts told me about Yan Kun at Jiangsu FC right after we beat them. You’ll remember that game — that was that narrow 3-2 win we had at the start of the season, the one and only game in the league that we almost lost. Anyway, it turns out that I bought their star 20-year-old central defender for 4 million RMB after that match, and promptly put him in the under-21s team and forgot about him. Yan Kun isn’t as good as our star central defenders. However, he is big. I mean, he’s a giant: 196 centimeters and 93 kilograms, by far the biggest player on our squad. Now, he is slow with all that weight — but does that really matter for a center back? He’s also got a great personality and a really good attitude. With all the improvement he’s been showing in training, it might be time to pull him up to the first team when January rolls around. In other words, we may have already found a replacement for Ye Jie, just in case he gets upset again. Dalian Shide We host 4th place Dalian Shide next. This is match that we might lose, even though everybody thinks we will win. Dalian has a good team and has been in good form lately. We’re scheduled to face a number of good sides in the coming weeks. I think a lot of our recent success has been due to having poor competition, and not really because we are an overwhelmingly dominant team. Only time will tell, of course. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 24, 2023 Author Share Posted February 24, 2023 A Little Scary Dalian Shide are a good team, and it showed in their match against us. Kim Kuk-Jin, who the coaches now say has that contagious fear of big matches, showed up for this one anyway. He scored a goal in the first 15 seconds to give us a big 1-0 lead. We then had 3 more goals from Guo Yi, who earned his first hat trick of the season — all in the first half. And, of course, Lee Jin-Yong was in the center of it all, making numerous incisive passes that cut apart the Dalian defense. Charlotte’s Lee Jin-Yong fan club went home happy and noisy. However, there were some problems. Huang Bowen had an awful game, and looked like he didn’t want to be out there at all. I wound up having to fine him for his awful work. Huang Jianwei came on at halftime, and contributed very little in his role in defense. Not only was he relatively ineffective, but he also handed Dalian a goal by fouling a Dalian player in the penalty box with about 25 minutes to go. We were still up 4-1 after the penalty, but I was starting to wonder where the magic went. November to Remember October was a good month for us. Here’s hoping that November will be even better. With 18 straight league wins, we’ve set all sorts of records. Too many records to report on, in fact. The easy way to think about it is that we’re basically going to set another record every single time we win a game. That will be particularly true if we can keep this winning streak alive. And I honestly don’t see any team in our league capable of beating us at this point. Financially, we’re still a rich club — but you knew that already. I still can’t spend the transfer budget fast enough, and Chairman Guo is still upset with me for not buying more high profile players. Speaking of Chairman Guo, I had another one of those smoke-filled room meetings with him. He told me that he’s chiefly impressed that I’ve got such strong backing from the squad, despite the fact that they come from such a variety of countries and backgrounds. As far as the matches are concerned, though, he’s still not all that impressed. Not angry, but not beaming with joy, either. The fans are much the same: happy with the tactics, happy to see players playing well, and somewhat lukewarm on our results. Our performance analysts put together a few mildly interesting reports. Our defensive midfielders, for example, continue to lead the league in just about every category, though their pass completion rate is a bit below average. They make up for this by making progressive passes that move us forward rather than just passing the ball around in circles. Our goal output is obviously a huge outlier in the league. We score far more goals per game than anybody else, and no club is better at preventing goals than we are. And, of course, that’s because of our excellent defense, which usually stamps out scoring opportunities before they even begin. We face something like 4 shots per game and allow around 5% to score, which is insane. It’s good and all — but it could be better. Morale Morale is at an all-time high. I mean, that’s going to happen when you win 18 in a row, regardless of the league you play in. Fan Xiang, our captain, is still clearly established as a team leader. Ye Jie, our vice captain, is highly influential, and Pak Myong-Song, the North Korean international fullback, has also become highly influential. Han Jin is the most influential of the other players, which goes to show you just how important our Three Muskateers are to this squad. We’ll hold onto them as long as we can, though I do worry that Fan Xiang, Ye Jie, and Han Jin will turn into fringe players once we move on. Our social groups have also changed. Jonovic is still hanging out with the North Koreans, but Kim Kuk-Jin has apparently started hanging out with the Three Muskateers in the “normal” social group. Now, I’ll warn you here: I’ve got so many transfers scheduled for January that we’re probably going to wind up destroying what little cohesion and good morale we currently have. I’ve got a funny feeling that a number of our players will find themselves out of a place, and we’ll probably end up maximizing the number of players we can have out on loan. Nothing destroys a winning team quite like a nosy manager with a lot of money! Tai’an Tiankuang We’re hosting Tai’an next, in another game that we should win. Tai’an is a smallish city (population of “only” 5.7 million) near Tai Mountain in Shandong Province. They’ve played a bit over their heads this season, but I’ve got a feeling that we’re about to help them return to earth. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 24, 2023 Author Share Posted February 24, 2023 Signs of Weakness? We managed to beat Tai’an Tiankuang, but it wasn’t pretty at all. We didn’t score at all in the first half of this one. I think that’s the first time all year that we’ve been held scoreless in the first half. I was really starting to worry until Pietro Rovaglia finally connected for one at the start of the second half. We then had to rely on two penalties by Mr. Kwon to give us that 3-0 margin. It seriously was not a pretty match for us, and the offensive display really has made me worried. I mean, we dominated possession, we had 27 shots to their 7, and our xG rating was above 4 — but we still couldn’t manage to actually produce meaningful shots on target. I’m worried. Transfer Theory I think what is really happening here is that the league is divided into two general divisions: awful teams and mediocre teams. We’re apparently the best of the mediocre ones. Seriously — I refuse to believe that we are really a great team, particularly after our inability to score in this match. We’re just good at beating up on the dregs in the league, and are just a hair above being horrible to prevent us from being demolished. I’ve got a number of new players coming in on January 1st. I’m not going to stop there, either. I’ve instructed our scouts to scour East Asia for high quality teenagers, the sort of players who make their national teams — and especially the sort of players who are consistent, who aren’t injury prone, and who have good personalities. That shouldn’t be too hard, should it? Now, we do need to be careful. We’ve already got more than our share of foreign players at the club. We can only have 20 registered at a time, and we can only loan out 8 foreign-based players over the age of 22 at a time. In other words, if we wind up with too many old guys from foreign countries in the squad, some of them will likely wind up sitting around unregistered for matches. In theory, we could hope that some of our foreign players qualify for Chinese citizenship. In reality, though, it takes 1,825 days (about 6 years) for players to qualify for Chinese citizenship. In other words, that’s not an adequate short-term solution. Even with the money we’ve got, the best plan has got to be to target young players, get them in as young as possible, and go on from there. A foreigner who comes in at age 15 could become a Chinese citizen as early as age 21, and would be home grown at club to boot for potential future Champions League registration. In contrast, a foreigner who we sign in his early 30s would likely always take up a foreign slot on our roster, would end up declining, and would have to take up one of our outgoing loan slots if we were to loan him out. And this is why I’m not going to sign “high reputation” players. I just wish I could convince Chairman Guo. It makes perfect sense to me. Qingdao FC We’re back in Shandong Province again, this time to face Qingdao FC. This is another match that we should win easily. I hope we do. I’m starting to get worried. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 27, 2023 Author Share Posted February 27, 2023 So Long, Qingdao Well, another day, another win. We made up for that poor looking 3-0 win the other day by smashing Qingdao on the road, 6-0. That makes 20 straight victories for us — but, hey, who’s counting? Luciano Parra wound up with 4 goals in this game. Song Wenjie came away with the Player of the Match award, however, after 1 goal and 2 assists. I would have given it to Parra, but they don’t ask me to make these decisions. This marks the 16th shutout we’ve had this season — all the more impressive when you consider that we haven’t yet decided on a full-time first choice goalkeeper. I think that problem will be solved soon, however. Trouble in Paradise Not all is well, however. Mr. Kwon came up to me with his agent a few days after that win against Qingdao FC. He was upset because he didn’t start. He expects to start in every possible game, regardless of his fitness level or the need for our other defensive midfielders to start. I knew this problem was going to come up as soon as I signed him. We’re going to have this problem with a number of players, actually. Too many of them looked at our squad when we courted them and concluded that they should be superstars. They can’t all be star players, and they’re going to need to learn how to share the load. Mr. Kwon’s form has been good lately, but I know that he has a problem with consistency. I need him rested up for big matches, and yet I worry that he will decide to simply not show up when we need him most. Fortunately, we do have other, better players ready to come in as soon as our current players start throwing a fit. That’s where money comes in handy. Shanxi Longjin We’re off to Shanxi for another away match that we should dominate again. I hope we don’t become too complacent, though. The match after this one is the big Chinese FA Cup tie against Tianjin. As much as I’d love to focus my efforts on that, we need to make sure we keep our winning streak alive. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted February 28, 2023 Author Share Posted February 28, 2023 Shanxi Longjin It won’t surprise you to learn that we beat Shanxi Longjin. However, this was another one of those games in which we fell asleep in the second half. We got out to a quick 1-0 lead behind a rare Fan Xiang goal, doubled it when Rovaglia scored in the 14th minute, and then saw Mr. Kwon score one in the 36th minute to put us up by three. And that’s all she wrote. I don’t know why, but these players seem to get goal shy every now and then. We’ve seen it happen a few times this season. Teams that we should be absolutely dominating on paper are able to fend off our attack enough to keep the scoreline somewhat reasonable. Mr. Kwon played well despite his upset feelings towards me. However, Pak Myong-Song wound up with the Player of the Match award, despite having 0 goals and 0 assists. I don’t really understand it, but I’m not going to complain. That makes 21 straight matches. We’ve scored 122 goals, which is off from the pace we were on before. The crazy thing is that we don’t have the most prolific goalscorer in the league, which is a bit counterintuitive. The Big One We’re back at home for our next match — a Chinese FA Cup game against Tianjin. Tianjin are in 7th place in the China Super League. This is our chance to show that we are just as good as the best teams in the country. The board and the press both expect us to win. I’m not quite as confident, to be honest. We have a good side, but I don’t think we’re quite good enough to compete at that level — not yet, at least. I’m also concerned that Huang Bowen is out with the flu, which means we’ll be missing some firepower up front. And, of course, this match comes only 3 days after our victory in Shanxi, which means that a number of our players will be tired. Tianjin’s Director of Football, Yu Genwei, told the press the day before the match that they plan to rotate their squad and play some of their younger players in this match. My hope is that Tianjin makes good on this threat and continues to underestimate our abilities. Otherwise, we might very well be looking at our first loss of the season tomorrow. Fasten your seatbelts for this one! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 2, 2023 Author Share Posted March 2, 2023 Tianjin I didn’t sleep at all the night before this one. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw visions of Hou Yu letting in 4 goals to Qingdao Hainiu in our last Chinese FA Cup match. I decided to start him anyway. We were at home this time around. It was an evening game, played in -4 Celsius conditions — a little bit too cold for football, in my opinion. Of course, it’s only going to get colder as the winter moves along. We’re only in early November, after all. Lee Jin-Yong got another start, though he was only able to give us a single half before he was too tired to go on. Of course, Charlotte had the official Yanji Lee Jin-Yong fan club out in full force, which accounted for a significant percentage of the 24,000 in attendance. I’m pretty sure I was more nervous than any of the boys. They were limber and stretching, and I was in the bathroom throwing up. Even Chairman Guo didn’t seem all that nervous. He watched the entire match from his private box, smoking a thick, leathery cigar, and flashing me a smile and a wink from time to time. It only took 18 minutes for Luciano Parra to give us our first goal, which was a header from close inside the penalty box. Guo Yi followed that up with a goal in the 24th minute, another shot from close range. And, amazingly, it turned out that those two goals were all that we needed. We came out victorious, winning 2-0. The truth is that we dominated the match. Our xG was 2.30, which dwarfed Tianjin’s pitiful 0.20. We had 55% of the possession, and we had an amazing 19 shots to their 3. I suppose I should be happy with Hou Yu for the good performance, though I honestly think it was due to our defense more than to any contribution on his part. I mean, he only faced 3 shots all game. A win is a win, though — and I’ll take this kind of win any day. A Fluke? Tianjin Manager and Director of Football Yu Genwei was back in the press after this one, telling anybody and everybody that they would have won the match 9 times out of 10. I was tempted to set the record straight in the papers, but decided not to play that game with him. Mark my words, though — we will ensure that Tianjin knows how good we are when we eventually face them again. Our next Chinese FA Cup opponent is none other than Jiangsu FC, who just so happen to be in our league. You might remember what happened the last time we faced them. Jiangsu managed to score 2 goals against us, one of which was an own goal by Aidan Quinn. Wu Ping was in goal that day, and our squad was a lot different. However, we still are in danger of losing. We’ll travel down to Nanjing for that match on January 2nd, right after the transfer window opens. That’s going to be an absolutely wild affair. Certain Victory Our next league opponent is Yantai Yintai, who are in last place and haven’t won a match yet this season. We’re going to win this match. I mean, the bookies have Yantai at 100-1 odds, for crying out loud. There is simply no way that we can lose this one. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 2, 2023 Author Share Posted March 2, 2023 Disappointing Win Yeah, we beat Yantai Yintai. Everybody knew we were going to win. We won 4-0, which meant another clean sheet for Wu Ping. But I’m still not happy. Two of our goals came from penalties by Kwon Hyeok-Kyu, who was on his way to winning Man of the Match. The other two goals were a little tap-in by Kim Kuk-Jin after 11 minutes and an easy shot by Pietro Rovaglia in the 25th minute. We didn’t score at all after the 43rd minute. We basically cruised our way to the finish line. That’s what I’m worried about. We can’t expect to win against better competition when we don’t have it in us to dominate the easy ones. Maybe it was because of the snow - I don’t know. I do know that Yantai had a player sent off in the 55th minute, but that didn’t seem to help our goal scoring at all. We can’t expect to continue to have success if this is our approach. I know we are undefeated and that we set new records with each goal we score. However, I can’t help but think that a shakeup is in order. Playing Time Concerns Over half of the squad is upset with me about their playing time. Nobody will listen to reason. We have two matches every week. The tactic we use is somewhat intense. We simply can’t put the same 11 men out there every single match and expect to do well. Some players are receiving regular starter playing time, as we agreed to, and are expected regular starter playing time — and yet are still upset with me. It makes no sense. My feeling is that we have a number of unprofessional players on our squad who are coasting because they happen to be better than our woeful opposition. Again, this is convincing me that a change is in order before we make it to higher levels. Maybe Chairman Guo was right to be skeptical all along. Liaoning FC We’re up against Liaoning FC next. They’re having a good season and are in 4th place in the league. We should be able to crush them, though. The trip to Shenyang should be enjoyable. We’ll see if it’s snowing there. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 2, 2023 Author Share Posted March 2, 2023 Victory We won another one, this time against Liaoning FC in Shenyang. It was a cold evening at Tiexi Stadium. We played somewhat mediocre, once again scoring 3 goals early in the 1st half and then letting our feet off the gas in the 2nd. Liaoning FC are in 4th place in the league, and I was worried that they might come back to make life difficult for us. A striker named Wang Zhiyu scored a goal for Liaoning in the 84th minute, and I started to wonder if we might drop points for the first time this season. We were able to see it out until the end, though. Kim Yong-Il continued to make a good argument for staying in the team, scoring 2 goals and adding an assist in this match. If he keeps playing like this, we’ll keep him around. However, he hasn’t been as consistent as he could, which has me concerned. December We’re in December already. We’ve only got a few games before the January transfers come in. We should also be clinching our ticket to the 2nd tier before too long. We remain in excellent financial shape, which is not really news, of course. Chairman Guo would dump money into the club if things started to go wrong anyway. It won’t surprise you to know that we have the best attack in the Second Division North. It might surprise you to know that we are scoring 5.61 goals per game, that our non-penalty expected goals per game is 3.64, that we’re getting over 30 shots per game, and that we’ve complete over 25% of our crosses. This offense has been absolutely stellar. But I still want to improve. We should be better than this. Chairman Guo was actually very impressed with that 3-1 win against Liaoning FC on the road. I suppose he considers them to be our rival. I honestly don’t think we have a real rival in the entire country, but that’s just my opinion. The fans also seem to be warming up to me, though they are a bit confused by all the rotation we have to do. We’re going down to one match a week from here on out, which means that the crazy rotation issues will probably subside. Player Issues Much to Charlotte’s chagrin, Lee Jin-Yong has asked to take a month off to return to South Korea and collect his thoughts. Lee Jin-Yong is clearly a star on this team, but has had difficulties settling in. Being injured with those broken ribs didn’t help things, of course. We want to do what we can to keep him happy, since he’s pretty clearly one to hold onto for the long term. Huang Jianwei, a right back from Yanji who we barely ever play, has gone public with playing time concerns. This one kind of caught me off guard, but we’ll figure out a way to handle it. We’ve only played him in 5 games so far this season, and he’s been less than spectacular in each of those appearances. I went to the trouble of offering him out to other clubs, but, unsurprisingly, nobody seems interested. He might find himself rotting on the under-21 roster, awaiting the end of his contract. And, in the only bit of good news I’ve seen over the past month, Huang Bowen finally dropped his playing time concerns. That’s excellent news. We want to build this team around Huang Bowen. Wuxi We’ve completed the first round of the season, and are back to Wuxi Wuguo again. We’re playing them in Yanji this time around. We should be able to win this one easily, though our recent form does have me concerned. It feels like ages since we last scored a second half goal, for example. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 3, 2023 Author Share Posted March 3, 2023 Flipping the Calendar We’re up to the 24th game of this season, out of 46 total. We’ve already played against every team in our division once, and are undefeated. I’d say that’s a pretty good start. We kept it going in our home match against Wuxi Wugou this tme around. We wound up with a 2-0 lead after 23 minutes, and just coasted to the end from there. Song Wenjie scored one penalty and missed a second. The second one really shouldn’t have been a penalty to begn with. It didn’t matter much in the end, though. Our defense looks great. Wuxi managed only 4 shots all game long, and didn’t seem to ever present a challenge to us. The offense, meanwhile, was slipping and sliding around on the snow and ice all game long. This might be a long, cold, and dark winter. Huang Bowen had a particularly bad game, which makes me worry for his future at the club. We’re not going to wait patiently for him to remember how to play. He’s got to start showing up to these games if he stands a chance at staying here. The Big One We host Jiangsu FC again. They are in 3rd place, and are a good team. You’ll remember that we barely beat them last time, 3-2. That was the game that finally convinced me that Wu Ping was not a viable option in goal for us. We face Jiangsu again at the beginning of January in the Chinese FA Cup. This might turn into a rivalry in the end, especially if they are promoted along with us. Song Wenjie has the flu and has been sent home. I think we should be good to go otherwise. I just hope that the boys turn up this time around. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 3, 2023 Author Share Posted March 3, 2023 A New Rivalry Is Born We defeated Jiangsu FC handily, 3-0. Everything went our way. Luciano Parra scored in the 29th minute. Mr. Kwon scored a penalty at the start of the second half. And Kristoffer Paulsen finished it up with a third right before full time. Jiangsu had a player sent off in the 53rd minute for a horrible tackle on Mr. Kwon. It was the sort of play that you usually see in an intense rivalry game. This hurts Jiangsu’s chances of being promoted. However, I’ve got good reason to believe that this is the beginning of a serious rivalry. The Adrian Sander Story We signed a 20-year-old Brazilian kid named Adrian Sander for free near the start of the season. He looked good, but has never been quite good enough to start for us. He’s played a total of 2 matches for us, neither of which were all that spectacular. For the most part, he’s been on the bench as an option in case somebody gets hurt. And, well, he’s not all that thrilled about it. It all started a few weeks back, when Sander started talking with the press. Articles started to come out about how he was going to force me to move him on to a different club. Finally, I wound up answering a question from Tang Fei of Sports China about the situation. I told him that we were continuing to discuss the problem with Adrian and that we would solve it internally. For some strange reason, Adrian thought I mean that he would get more playing time. Now, I’ve done my homework on this one. Fan Xiang told me in private that Sander’s endless concerns were starting to get on the other players’ nerves. Nobody seems to care whether Adrian stays or goes. Sander’s biggest problem is simply that he’s not good enough. Paulsen is 2 years younger than him, and is already better. There’s simply no way Sander is going to start at centerback as long as we have Paulsen. Sander can technically also play in defensive midfield. However, Lee Jin-Yong is the same age, and is already a much better player with a lot more talent. Sander simply didn’t fit in. And so I decided to sell him. Guess who bid on him? Jiangsu FC, of course. And we ended up selling him, for a measly 630,000 RMB. Adrian Sander will be a Jiangsu FC player on January 1st. Told you we are now rivals. Goodbye Hou Yu Hou Yu has been sold as well. Hou Yu never got over me fining him for giving up 4 goals to Qingdao Hainiu. That was the match that caused me to bring Wu Ping back up to the senior squad. I was just about ready to sell Hou Yu then. He never got over his upset feelings, and has been training extremely poorly. And so I decided to cut him loose before things got worse. Shandong Taishan in the China Super League made a 1.15 million RMB offer for him. That sounded about right to me. I accepted it, knowing full well that we have a whole host of goalkeepers superior to Hou Yu coming soon. It took only a few days, and it’s now official. The Hou Yu era of Yanbian FC will come to an end on January 1st. Beijing Renhe We’re facing Beijing Renhe again. You probably don’t remember what happened last time. We made short work of them, winning 4-0. The newspapers are buzzing about our former player Xia Xu facing us again. I sold Xia Xu to Beijing Renhe not long after arriving. I fortunately still have my notes from those days. Xia Xu let us for only 6,000 RMB, which strikes me as an incredibly low amount. He is a defensive midfielder who I knew would never play a major role with our squad — particularly not when we had the big Koreans coming in. His biggest weakness is his unambitious personality. We had a lot of that on this club when I first arrived, and there are still some remnants of that problem hanging around here and there. I’m happy that I sold him. I just hope that we win again. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 7, 2023 Author Share Posted March 7, 2023 Beijing Renhe We defeated Beijing Renhe again. It wasn’t anywhere near close this time. Luciano Parra got another hat trick in the first half. Huang Bowen, who is furious with me, still managed to score a goal. And Han Jin, who my coaches say isn’t good enough for our team, scored another one after a mistake by their defenders. We looked absolutely awesome out there this time around. I wish we could play like this every match. This means, of course, that we’ve now won 26 matches in a row in the league. It’s also helped a little bit with our squad cohesion and overall mood. With the schedule slowing down a bit, we can rest our actual starters a little bit more. It’s going to be a shame for the players who aren’t quite good enough to actually start for our first team squad, of course. And we’ve got a lot of players coming in once January rolls around. Things are about to get really crazy around these parts. Xia Xu, who I sold not long after arriving, actually had a pretty good game for Beijing. But there was simply nothing he could do about how awesome Parra is in the attack. The media asked me whether I thought we could part with Hou Yu after he turned in yet another clean sheet. They don’t know yet who I’ve signed to replace him in goal. Don’t worry: we’ll be just fine. The Huang Bowen Saga Huang Bowen has been unhappy with me all season. And things finally came to a boiling point this week. It might be because of the frigid Yanji temperatures, or because he’s not scoring goals the way he was. Whatever the reason, I’ve had enough of Huang Bowen and his reluctance to try. His most recent training performances have been nothing short of awful. I got in an argument with him afterwards, and warned him that I would be forced to get rid of him if he didn’t shape up. After his flippant reply, I put him on the transfer list. Nobody wants him, interestingly enough. The general feeling is that his wages are too high for any other Chinese club. And, interestingly enough, no foreign clubs seemed interested in him. I also offered him out for a loan until the end of the season, but nobody seemed interested in that, either. He might wind up being a real thorn in our sides. Left Back Issues We signed a 25-year-old named Zhang Jianyi back at the beginning of the season to help fill a hole in left back. We’ve got a problem now, though. Due to injuries, international duty for Pak Myong-song, and a suspension Zhang Jianyi picked up for accumulating too many yellow cards, we now have no actual left backs to play our next match. It looks like Lee Jin-Yong is going to wind up playing in that position. I haven’t been happy with Zhang Jianyi ever since he arrived. I really wish we had a good young Chinese leftback to take his place. We’re not going to renew Zhang’s contract at the end of the season. However, I’m not certain what we’re going to do for a replacement. And I really don’t like playing our baby-faced midfielder at left back. But we have no choice. Coming Back Home Speaking of Lee Jin-Yong, he’s back. Charlotte is thrilled, of course. The whole Lee Jin-Yong fan club is happy to see their hero return. He seems refreshed after taking that month to recuperate in South Korea. It’s not great for his development, but at least he’s been able to clear his mind a little bit. I really want to keep him here for the long run, and am more than happy to cater to his desires, no matter how strange they might seem. Aidan Quinn is also back from his month in Scotland. The sad thing is that I’m not sure I even noticed he was gone. Luciano the Great I know I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Huang Bowen and not quite as much talking about Luciano Parra. It turns out that Parra is on the verge of breaking the Yanbian FC record for most goals scored in a season. The old record was set by Ha Tae-Goon (하태균) back in 2007. Ha had scored 27 goals in that season, back when Yanbian FC was in the old Chinese Super League. Ha’s career sadly faded away after his Yanbian days. He found himself playing for a smaller side in the Chinese First Division, and then wound up back in South Korea in an emergency backup situation. Parra’s career is going to be different, though. He’s got real talent. Youth Intake It’s not quite youth intake time yet, but we did have a preview come through the other day. Our Head of Youth Development seemed a bit perplexed by the whole thing. He told me that this looked like a real golden generation for our team, and yet he also said that none of the players coming in look like they will ever have the ability to play for our first team squad. My guess is that the presence of so many talented players on the first team squad is skewing his thinking a bit. I’ve got a feeling that one or two of the new boys will probably wind up good enough to hold down squad positions once we’ve trained them up well. Of course, if they don’t work out we’ll just buy good young players from other teams and call it even. Gansu Tianma We’re playing Gansu Tianma again. We’re going to win this match. The question is whether we’ll score 10 goals against them again. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 7, 2023 Author Share Posted March 7, 2023 Gansu Tianma We absolutely destroyed Gansu Tianma. We won, 7-1. No surprises there. Pietro Rovaglia had an absolutely amazing match, scoring 3 goals quickly and simply dominating offensively. Gansu simply had no answer for him. That makes 27 straight league wins for us, and an amazing run of 30 wins in a row in all competitions. You’d think that I would be over the moon with delight. Of course, I’m not. Hou Yu, who has one foot out the door, gave up a ridiculous goal by playing completely out of position. I don’t care that we were up 5-0 or 6-0 or whatever it was at the time. He’s not going to be able to survive at higher levels if he’s letting in awful goals like that at our current level. Rovaglia is going to get more game time now that Luciano Parra is injured. Parra has injured ankle ligaments, which will open the door for Rovaglia to score even more goals. My assistant managers think that Rovaglia is the better player, though we’ll see if they change their tune in the end. All I care about is scoring goals, and I hope that Rovaglia has worked in training on staying onside. I do think we will be fine, though. You’ll think so, too, when you see the sort of players we brought in. Transfers We brought in 108 new players. I’m not kidding. Most of them are young, though, and a whole ton of them are goalkeepers. I went kind of nuts once I realized that all Chinese clubs are required to use only Chinese goalkeepers. We don’t necessarily have a monopoly on talent, but at least we can sort through them and figure out which ones are good. And we still have over 100 million RMB to spend in our transfer budget. Chairman Guo keeps telling me to spend, so I’ll keep spending. Players Out Only two noteworthy players have left. As I mentioned before, Adrian Sander, our 21-year-old Brazilian center back, was signed by Jiangsu FC. We might see him again really soon, actually. Our fans are a bit skeptical about this deal. The truth, though, is that Sander simply wasn’t good enough to compete with the likes of Rovaglia and Torres. He was upset that I wasn’t starting him, and I likely wasn’t ever going to start him. Selling him was simply the best option. The other one, of course, is Hou Yu, who joins Shandong. The fans are understandably furious about this deal. Hou Yu never lost a match for us, and gave up only 2 league goals during his time with us. I’ll never be able to forgive him for giving up 4 goals in that awful match against Qingdao Hainiu, however. I’m convinced that he would only play worse if he stayed on as we move our way up the ranks. We’ve got better goalkeepers now anyway. Hou Yu will likely be a fringe player at best with Shandong, and I doubt we’ll hear more about him again. Players In It would take me a long time to go through each of our signings, even if I limited myself to first team players only. Instead, I’ll go through the players that are going to start our next match. I’ll introduce our new players before they appear, and will try to make it easy for you to keep up. In goal for our next match will be Chen Wei. Chen Wei is a 24-year-old Chinese backup goalkeeper who is only starting this match because our new first-choice goalkeeper is fatigued. Chen Wei comes in from Shanghai Port in the Chinese Super League. We bought him for a cool 4 million RMB. He wasn’t getting a ton of game time with Shanghai Port, and will likely ride the bench for us as well. He’s good enough for this level, but will likely be a fringe player until we can find some good young goalkeepers with high potential and good personalities. Rafaël Jire Rafael is an 18-year-old Belgian right back who is only starting our next match because Pak Myong-Song is still on international duty. Rafael comes in from Jong KV Mechelen in the Belgian lower leagues. We got him for only 400,000 RMB, which I think is an absolute bargain for a player with his potential. Rafael is probably not quite good enough to be a starter, but slots into our first team nicely. George Hall is an 18-year-old English midfielder who we stole away from Birmingham. Hall cost us a cool 10 million RMB, which is our biggest transfer ever. That might give you an idea as to why I’ve had a hard time spending the 350 million RMB I’ve been given. He wasn’t quite good enough for the Championship, but he should be more than good enough to play in China. I’m wondering if we can make him home grown at club. Jacob Dicko Eng is an 18-year-old Norwegian attacking left winger who we bought from Vålerenga. We’ve actually got quite a Norwegian presence on this squad now — almost as significant as our Korean boys. Eng cost us 7.5 million RMB, which I think was another good bit of transfer business. Vålerenga are in the Norwegian top flight, and he had managed to crack the first team before we convinced him to come be a star in Yanji. Eng comes in as our best left winger by a long shot. Our squad is starting to look a lot more professional. Camil Jebara is a 19-year-old Swedish attacking right winter who seems to have come in completely under the radar. Jebara cost 7 million RMB from Landskrona Boll och Idrottsällskap, down in the Swedish lower leagues. He played well during their 2022 season. At only 19, Jebara is clearly the best offensive player on our team, and looks like an absolute wonder signing. Finally, Younes Delfi is our Huang Bowen replacement up front. Delfi is a 22-year-old Iranian striker who looks absolutely awesome. We picked Delfi up from Foolad for only 470,000 RMB, which is an absolute bargain. He had previously played in Belgium and Croatia before returning to Iran. Delfi should help us forget about Huang Bowen in a hurry. He’s far too good to play at this level, and might be the long-term striker we’ve been looking for. We’ve got more first team players coming; stay tuned. Monthly Review We’ve hit January 2023, which means we can take a more broad look at how things are going. We’re still rich, of course. Our finances are doing just fine, thank you very much. The board is generally happy with everything, though I think my transfer spending spree made them upset. I went a little bit nuts, signing every young Chinese player I could find who didn’t seem like a disaster on first sight. In hindsight, I regret doing it, as many of those players came in with the inconsistent kiss of death. The fans are generally happy, though they are concerned about some of those transfers. They’ll forget about Hou Yu soon enough. Our squad dynamics didn’t take much of a hit, despite the crazy transfer season. A number of previously influential players are now on the under-21 team, unregistered and waiting to leave the club. We did bring in a few older Chinese players with extremely professional personalities to try to help establish more law and order in the dressing room. In fact, I saw that right away. I made a few adjustments to the playing time for four of our players. Each of them felt upset, and yet each of them left their meeting with me feeling content with what I decided on. Maybe there is something to this morale thing after all. The Big One Our next match is the big one: a Chinese FA Cup game in Nanjing against none other than Jiangsu FC. The media are convinced that we’re going to win this one without any problems. I’m not quite so optimistic. 6 of our 11 starting players came in the day before this match, for example. Our squad cohesion isn’t abysmal, but it also isn’t all that great. The players haven’t even had time to shake hands before being asked to go out and put on a show. And, of course, we’ll see if Adrian Sander winds up playing against us. Chairman Guo called in to tell me that he expects me to win. I guess I’m thankful for the confidence, though it would be nicer to hear some moral support rather than “you will win at all costs.” Charlotte is going to be disappointed that Lee Jin-Yong won’t start. Hall is much better than Lee Jin-Yong, but he’s not quite as handsome, I’m afraid. I hope for a win, but I’m feeling nervous. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted March 8, 2023 Share Posted March 8, 2023 108 players and not a decent left back? Tut tut 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 8, 2023 Author Share Posted March 8, 2023 4 hours ago, BenArsenal said: 108 players and not a decent left back? Tut tut That's the Football Manager way, after all! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 9, 2023 Author Share Posted March 9, 2023 Huge Win We didn’t just beat Jiangsu FC. We absolutely torched them. The 6-2 final score looks closer than the match really was. After a nervous scoreless first half, new signing Younes Delfi pushed one across, followed quickly by a goal from Rovaglia. And that opened up the floodgates. In all, both Delfi and Rovaglia wound up with two goals. Dutra, a youngster who had been on the under 21 squad until the day before this match, chimed in with two goals of his own, both from free kicks. Jiangsu did manage to score two, both from their target man Xiao Jinqing. We wound up starting new signing Chen Wei at goal, as I mentioned yesterday. He didn’t look good on either of those Xiao Jinqing shots, though I will note that he seemed to fare better than I think Hou Yu would have. They gave the man of the match award to Rovaglia, though I think Delfi might have been more deserving. We’ve got some really good strikers on this team now. Rovaglia is fortunate to get the start, of course. Parra is still my personal first choice among the two, though Rovaglia seems to have made better progress recently. The press grilled me a bit for taking Rovaglia off around the 60 minute mark. He was sitting on a potential hat trick, and I probably should have left him on. He looked tired, though, and I didn’t want to overuse him in a match that we had basically already won by that point. We’ll see if he complains, though I doubt he will. Anyway, all of that means that we still are undefeated and untied in all competitions this season. We’re also made it to the quarter finals of the Chinese FA Cup, which impresses even Chairman Guo. We’re moving up! More New Faces I’ve got two new players to introduce you to. First is Jung In-Gyom (정인겸), an 18-year-old South Korean attacking left midfielder from South Korea who looks incredibly good. I think he might turn out to be a real bargain. We paid Bayer 04 only 275,000 RMB for him, which is an insane steal in my opinion. He never made any Bundesliga appearances, but I’m certain we’ll be able to put him to good use right away. He’s consistent and has the potential to be a Chinese Super League player, which is what I care most about. I think he also could become home grown at club, assuming he stays for the long term. Second, of course, is Liu Shaoziyang (劉邵子洋), a 19-year-old Chinese goalkeeper who is going to become our long-term keeper. He was capped at the under 23 level, and I’m pretty sure he’ll make it to the Chinese national team before long. We paid 3 million RMB to take him off of the hands of Bayern München. Yes, you read that right. We’re raiding the Bundesliga of its young talent now. Liu Shaoziyang has a great professional personality, is a natural leader for the squad, and has the potential to be very good. He’s the best Chinese goalkeeper our scouts could find. Liaoning We host Liaoning FC again in our next match. Liaoning is in 4th place, but they don’t stand a chance here. We bought their best striker, Cheng Binbin, from them before the start of the transfer window. He’s with us now, which means that they don’t really have much of an attack. We’ll get to Cheng Binbin in a future writeup. For now, we’re going to focus on beating Liaoning and keeping our streak alive. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 9, 2023 Author Share Posted March 9, 2023 Liaoning FC Maybe I brought in too many players at once. We beat Liaoning FC. That was never really a question. But we didn’t do it with our normal Yanbian style. The match was scoreless until the 67nd minute, when Andrija Kolundžić came on. I haven’t said much about the 20-year-old Kolundžić, who was kind of rotting away in the under-21s at the start of the season. I was worried that he couldn’t survive playing at this level. Well, I was wrong. I gave him a chance in the first team after he spent a quiet year in the under-21s. This was in part because there were rumors going around that he was upset at his lack of playing time. He came on as a substitute, and promptly scored a goal. Rovaglia followed up with one in the 75th minute. That set the stage for Cheng Binbin, one of those new signings that I haven’t mentioned yet. Cheng Binbin’s story is even more amazing than Kolundžić’s. Cheng Binbin was on Liaoning FC until coming to us at the beginning of the transfer window. Cheng Binbin wound up with the third goal, scoring a real wonder in the 88th minute. He ended up being name the man of the match, with a goal and an assist in what was otherwise an ugly match. There were 14 yellow cards in this match. Liaoning striker Wang Zhiyu was finally sent off with a second yellow card in the 90th minute. This really wasn’t a great mach for casual observers. Liaoning isn’t a bad team. They’re in a solid position in 4th place in the table, and probably could beat us if we had to keep facing them. I’m happy that we got away with this one. The Huge Signing I love my scouts. However, they don’t always know what is right. I’ve had my eyes on Suphanat Mueanta for a long time now — even since before I came to manage Yanbian FC. I kept my scouts looking at him constantly to see if he would be willing to come down to our level. He’s been in pretty poor form recently, and Buriram United seemed willing to sell. I made a 12 million RMB offer and kept my fingers crossed. Well, we got our man this time. Mueanta is a 20-year-old full Thai international who is a wonder to watch. Check him out on YouTube if you don’t believe me. He’s got incredible potential, and is clearly the best striker on our club. He’s also got 8 caps and 3 goals, which itself is quite impressive. Even with concerns about his recent form, Mueanta has played incredibly well in Thailand. He is injured, though, and won’t see his first match for a few weeks. That might pay off in the long run, though, as it gives us a chance to get him more fully integrated with the squad. The catch (and there always is a catch) is that Mueanta thinks he’s going to use Yanbian as a stepping stone. We did have to include a minimum release clause. My plan is to try to sign him on more money once the season is over and we’ve been promoted, hopefully with that clause gone. I want to take him to the Champions League, and would feel devastated if some European side came in to get him. However, Mueanta wasn’t exactly a popular signing with the squad. Pietro Rovaglia started making noise about how he might be replaced by the new guy. I tried to get Fan Xiang to calm down Rovaglia, but it didn’t quite work. I know that Fan Xiang has those great leadership traits, but I’m worried that his relative lack of skill compared to the rest of the squad makes him the wrong player to ask in these situations. I really don’t want to break up our Three Musketeers core, but that day might come. Anyway, I talked with Pietro, who expressed his concerns quietly, and then backed down in the end. This is why it’s important to cultivate good relationships with your players. The Other Big Signing I give myself the credit for Mueanta. Our next signing, though, is entirely due to our scouts. I kept hearing rumors from our scouting team about a 20-year-old Brazilian left back named João Victor. Now, I’ve been under a bit of pressure from our more hardcore group of fans for not having a proper left back. And I really heard it at home the other day when I was forced to use Lee Jin-Yong in that position. It turns out that the ladies in the Lee Jin-Yong fan club really don’t want to see him filling up fullback holes, even if there are offensive overlapping chances. Anyway, the scouts loved Victor, and so I went and bought him. It only cost me 7 million RMB. Victor’s not quite the massive signing that Mueanta is, though he does come in with quite a bit of potential. It’s not quite as easy to make the Brazilian international teams as it is to make the Thai teams, apparently. However, Victor’s form with Red Bull Bragantino in Brazil has been more than good enough to impress me. And the best part, of course, is that he’s fast. We like fast players in the back. We need more. New Faces I should introduce you to at least some of the new names that I haven’t mentioned yet. First up is Andrija Kolundžić, the 20-year-old Croatian right winger who has put in his time in the under 21s. We bought him in the summer from GNK Dinamo Zagreb, where he was also stuck in the youth team. It only cost 400,000 RMB; I think we likely got a bargain. The best part about Kolundžić is his fantastic pace, which is exactly what we need in that position. Second is the hero from the Liaoning game, Cheng Binbin. He’s a 25-year-old Chinese striker who originally comes from Langfang in Hebei Province, and he’s stayed in northern China for his entire career. He scored 18 goals in 20 appearances for Liaoning this season, and was one of the best players in our division. That’s precisely why we signed him. And he only cost us 850,000 RMB. My one complaint about Cheng Binbin is that he’s slow. He’ll probably wind up being a 4th or even 5th choice striker for us. But at least he’s got a better attitude than Huang Bowen. Next up, and last for today, is Elias Dahle Haugland, another player I brought up from the youth team. Haugland is a 20-year-old Norwegian centerback (told you we had a lot of Norwegians) with a great attitude and a lot of potential. Haugland came to us from Molde, where he had been rotting away on the reserve squad. The real kicker here is that we got him for free. That’s right: with all of our wealth, we didn’t pay anything in this case for a kid who is now on our first team. Haugland has a great attitude, has trained well, and is a great asset for our squad. Going The Wrong Way Sadly, some players I’ve mentioned before are moving on. We’ve wound up loaning a number of players out to April 25, our North Korean affiliate club. This includes Gustavo Rico. And this is a fascinating story. Rico is a 20-year-old Mexican right winter who is actually a good player. He’s played about 7 games for us so far, and has done well in his few appearances. However, he really isn’t going to get any playing time at the moment — not with the squad that we’ve built. The hilarious thing here is his career trajectory. We found him playing for Ballard FC in the United States, and signed him on a free transfer at the beginning of the season. That’s right: in 6 months he went from playing in the United States to playing in North Korea. That’s got to be a first. Goodbye Huang Bowen? I’ve been trying to offload Huang Bowen, whose morale keeps declining. Kitchee Sports Club in Hong Kong finally made an offer for him. They’re offering 3 million RMB, including fees after installments and a certain amount after league appearances. Kitchee are one of the most successful clubs in all of Hong Kong, and have a bit of money to throw around — though clearly not as much as we do. I can’t say that this would be a step forward in Huang Bowen’s career, but I also can’t say that I foresee a bright future for him here. Anyway, I accepted the offer. Rumor has it that Eastern, another Hong Kong club, might also go in for him. We’ll see if that pans out or not. Neimenggu Zhongyou In the middle of all this chaos, we’ve got another match: this time against Neimenggu Zhongyou. There’s simply no way they can compete with us, even if our cohesion is in question. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 10, 2023 Author Share Posted March 10, 2023 Neimenggu Zhongyou This one started off with a bang. We won a penalty in the first 15 seconds of the match, after which Kwon Hyeok-Kyu scored the first goal. And it was downhill from there. We wound up winning 6-1. Mr. Kwon wound up with two goals, and everybody had a good match. Neimenggu did wind up with a consolation goal, due to a really poor piece of goaltending by Liu Shaoziyang. I guess we’ll have to keep an eye on him in the future. It wasn’t quite as bad as some of the howlers that Hou Yu let in, but it still wasn’t good enough for a player of his caliber. Still, we got the victory, and have improved to 29 wins in a row. I can’t complain about that. This was the debut match for João Victor, who looked excellent despite not scoring. I think we have a truly great player on our hands. Goodbye Huang Bowen It’s official now. Huang Bowen has been signed by Kitchee. You might wonder what in the world happened. He scored 17 goals in 19 appearances for us, and suddenly has found himself playing for an obscure team in Hong Kong. The problem was never his skill. The problem was always his attitude. I don’t care how skilled you are. If you’re not going to fall in line and try your hardest, you don’t have a spot on my squad. The sad truth is that he is easy to replace. Oh — Kitchee also came in with a 3.25 million RMB offer for Fan Xiang. He’s still our captain and our most influential player, but he also is not likely to start any games for us. I’m going to let them talk with him to see what happens. We don’t need the money, but I would also rather have an everyday player like Liu Shaoziyang take over the captain’s armband from our fringe player Fan Xiang. Perhaps we will break up the Three Musketeers after all. Shaanxi Guoli We’re back on the road again, this time taking on Shaanxi Guoli. We’ll win this match as well. I don’t think we’ll lose again this season. Also, once Mueanta is recovered from injury, we really will be unstoppable. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 10, 2023 Author Share Posted March 10, 2023 Another Win Yeah, we beat Shaanxi easily. The final score was 6-0. Did you expect something different? New signing Zou Jiancong scored on his debut, showing that our scouts actually know what they are doing. I guess I haven’t introduced him yet; I’ll talk more about him below. In the end, though, it was Frenchman Paul Wade, a familiar face around these parts, who wound up with the Man of the Match award. He’s young, he’s excellent in defensive midfield, and I think he’s going to be a mainstay on our squad for years to come. The good times just keep on rolling. That makes 30 league wins in a row without a single defeat. And we’re sure to win our next match, too. I guess I owe it all to Charlotte’s magic. Selling Our Captain Oh, by the way, I sold Fan Xiang. This wasn’t really even a business decision. I made the move because it’s getting to the point where he’s just not good enough for this squad. I figured we might as well cash in now. Everybody’s upset about it. Ye Jie was absolutely furious and demanded to speak with me. I did my best to calm him down, and even appealed to his role as a leader and mentor in our squad. He still wouldn’t listen to reason, and stormed out of my office. And so I did the only thing that made sense to me at the time. I put Ye Jie up for sale as well. Eastern in Hong Kong came in with an offer for him, which I accepted. It wasn’t much money, but I figured I’d salvage what I could of our morale. Ye Jie wound up rejecting the offer in the end. However, I might have another trick to stop him from ruining our morale. New Affiliate Club It took me a while to realize that April 25 in Pyongyang is one of our affiliate clubs. I love having affiliate clubs. It gives me a place to stick those players who aren’t quite good enough for our main club. We can give them game time and let them develop without taking a risk on them playing poorly for our first team. Of course, it also gives us another place to stick those pesky players who are upset about decisions that I make. After all, I’m all about pushing people around and making sure that I can do what I want. We don’t have any room for dissenting views on this club! Anyway, I went to the board and asked for another affiliate club. It took a while, but they finally agreed. Our new affiliate club is Yanbian Fayuan, or the Yanbian Law School. Don’t ask me why we’re suddenly able to send our 20-year-old foreign players to law school without paying anything. This isn’t my country, and I don’t make the rules. I just do what I’m told, like a good soldier. Yanbian Fayuan are an amateur side that could really use some of the help our loan players could give them. I think this will be an excellent relationship. Qinghai Oulu The only question coming into this match is whether we’re going to win by 10 goals again. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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