Daniel Evensen Posted March 11, 2023 Author Share Posted March 11, 2023 No Surprise We defeated Qinghai Oulu, just as we thought we would. The final tally was 5-0, though it could have been a lot better. Our xG was 8.15, which is simply incredible. I think we hit the woodwork 5 or 6 times in the match, and Younes Delfi missed a penalty in the 85th minute. That makes 31 wins in a row, and it’s not going to stop. We’re still on a roll, and I think we’re getting better and better. I think, that is. Big Injury Juan David Torres, who has been an incredible centerback for us, tore an abdominal muscle while doing weight training. He’s going to be out for 3 months, which puts him out for the rest of the season. We’ve got a few options to replace him, though none of them are great. There always is Ye Jie, but he’s in a bad mood, and I really don’t want to play him. We need to look for other options, and I particularly want to see if we can’t use this opportunity to develop some young Chinese players. We’ve already pushed Yan Kun up to the senior squad. He’s a 20-year-old 196 centimeter Chinese central defender who is coming off an injury of his own. Yan Kun came in during our first transfer window. We bought him for 4 million RMB from Jiangsu in another one of our big signings from that club. Everything about Yan Kun looks good, and I really am eager to see how he’ll play once he’s ready. But he still needs some time to recover. The other Chinese option is Shi Jiayang, a 16-year-old centerback from Panjin who is already 192 centimeters tall. We bought him from Qingdoa Qingchundao not too long ago. I bet he never guessed that he would wind up straight with our first team, but that’s where he is now. It’s not clear if Shi Jiayang has what it takes, though, and he hasn’t played a game for us at any level. This is a huge risk. The final option we have is Ariel Guzman, a 19-year-old Chilean centerback who is only 181 centimeters tall. Guzman comes to us from Universidad de Chile. We bought him for 1.25 million RMB, and we’re going to need to get our money’s worth quickly. Guzman is probably the best of our options. The problem, though, is that he isn’t Chinese, and we can’t put out a team of only foreign players. Transfer Day It’s February already. The transfer window is now closed. Our Director of Football surprised me by putting an offer in for yet another attacking left midfielder. His name is He Chen, he’s 26 years old, and he looks like he’ll be fairly good. The Director of Football agreed that he’ll be an important player, which likely isn’t going to happen. However, it’s good to have Chinese players who aren’t total disasters. Meanwhile, the Wu Ping saga has come to an end. I finally put him on the transfer list, and Wuhan Three Towns bought him off of us. Their 900,000 RMB offer is nowhere near what we thought Wu Ping was worth when I first came on board, but we’ll take it. Beggars can’t be choosers. Even with all the money we’ve spent, we weren’t the highest spending club in China during the transfer window. Shanghai Port spent 365 million RMB, beating us out by about 100 million or so. We did bring in 125 players, though, and also sold 34 players, which was more than anybody else. Most of the Shanghai Port transfer total came from buying Goncalo Inacio from Sporting CP for 300 million RMB. I think we had the better transfer window, to be honest. Jingchuan-xian Wenhui We’re playing that obscure team from western China once again. We’re going to win this one without many problems: that I can guarantee. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 13, 2023 Author Share Posted March 13, 2023 Dominant Win It won’t surprise you to hear that we wiped the floor with Jiangchuan-xian Wenhui. This one was like playing against a team that wasn’t there. Wenhui didn’t get a single shot off, and had an xG of 0. Our 5-0 win was so dominant that it wasn’t fair. Ariel Guzman made a first team start for the first time, but didn’t play particularly well. I wound up going with Ye Jie in the second half. Ye Jie played better, but his upset feelings about the Fan Xiang transfer make me extremely reluctant to rely on him. Luciano Parra wound up with 4 goals in an absolutely incredible performance. The 4th of these put him in first place for the time being in league goals, with 29 total in only 17 games. We’ve now scored 171 goals this season, and keep scoring no matter who starts for us. I still think we likely have the best team in the country. Charlotte and the famous Lee Jin-Yong fan club were extremely happy when Lee Jin-Yong scored a goal of his own. He wound up wandering deep into the Wenhui penalty box and scored one from point blank range. He’s not much for long shots, but he’ll punish you if you leave him open for long enough. We’re doing well, and I feel very good about this team. Pressure The good times might be ending soon. Four days after that big league win, we host Zhejiang FC in the quarter finals of the Chinese FA Cup. Chairman Guo stopped by a few days before the match. He walked up slowly to my small desk, gave me a big smile, holding a cigar in the left side of his mouth, and started talking loudly. “I’m looking forward to holding the Chinese FA Cup in my hands,” he said, giving me a wink. That got a rise out of everybody in the area. “You’ll beat Zhejiang,” he said. “I know I can count on you.” I feel nervous. Zhejiang are one of the better Chinese Super League sides. We’re expecting snow for this match. I’m happy that we’re at home, though I’m not sure how much of an advantage it will give us. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon1982 Posted March 14, 2023 Share Posted March 14, 2023 (edited) On 07/02/2023 at 09:25, Mandy42 said: This forum is being overtaken by women with mystical powers called Charlotte! I imagine this is a different Charlotte to the one in my story! Complete co-incidence Edited March 14, 2023 by Jon1982 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon1982 Posted March 14, 2023 Share Posted March 14, 2023 Daniel. I like this story, especially the use of headings which breaks up the text. Nice to also see another Asian story here as well KUTGW. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 14, 2023 Author Share Posted March 14, 2023 Thanks! I just hope we can keep the good times going. I'm surprised that we've had so much drama so far; I would have thought that all this winning would have prevented some of these players from getting so upset. Oh well... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 14, 2023 Author Share Posted March 14, 2023 Victory in the Snow We did it. I don’t know how we did it, but we did it. We had a decimated squad, hampered by injuries and sickness. We’ve had to deal with colds and the flu. We wound up having to start teenagers at centerback. And yet we were still able to beat Zhejiang FC. It was a snowy, wintery evening. Our players were slipping and sliding all over the place. And yet we were still able to force mistakes from Zhejiang, helping us on our way to a close and hard fought 2-0 win. Jacob Dicko Eng scored both goals for us, and came within a whisker of a hat trick at the end of the match. We were on our heels for most of the first half, but wound up with a wonder goal from Eng not long before halftime. Eng’s second goal came on the back of an amazing pass by Lee Jin-Yong, sending the ladies in the crowd into a frenzy. That one came in the 81st minute, and was enough to make the victory complete. It wasn’t all roses, of course. Wang Tong was sent off after an absolutely ridiculous tackle in the 67th minute, one that led to a straight red card. He didn’t need to make the tackle, and I guess he just got caught up in the moment. Mueanta made his debut, but wasn’t able to do much, unfortunately. I took him off at halftime to try to conserve his energy and avoid another injury. The conditions were really treacherous. We won, though, and that’s what counts. Playing The Youth Our squad is in pretty bad shape. It’s not the injuries, either. It’s the weather. We’ve got 4 players out with either the flu or colds. I’ve been sending players home left and right. We do have enough to field a squad, but we’re going to have to use some interesting players. We’ll start Zhu Bin in our next match. He’s a 16-year-old left winger who came up through the youth academy. Zhu Bin has made enough progress to get a taste of first team football, but I’m not entirely convinced that he’s really good enough to play for this squad. He will be in the future, but I don’t know if he’s good enough right now. I suppose we’ll see. The other experiment will be Shi Jiayang, a 16-year-old centerback who is clearly not good enough at the moment. We bought Shi Jiayang from Qingdao Qingchundao in the 2nd tier for 450,000 RMB. He came in on January 1st, spent about a week or two in the under-21 squad, and now has to make it work on the first team. It’s pretty crazy. The coaches tell me that he probably doesn’t have the required ability or potential for this squad. However, he’s young, he’s tall, he knows how to play the position, and he’s on our team. We’ll play him whether it works or not. We’ll see if starting him haunts us. Beijing University We’re playing on the road at Beijing University again. We should be able to win this match, though I’m not sure if our young players are going to be ready for it or not. We’ll see. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 16, 2023 Author Share Posted March 16, 2023 Beijing University Well, the experiment paid off. We won this match easily, 3-0. Neither Zhu Bin nor Shi Jiayang looked bad out there. Shi Jiayang had a poor first half, but got it together and had a number of shots on goal in the second. And Zhu Bin is already the best at taking free kicks on the entire squad — all at the tender age of 16. Younes Delfi was our only goalscorer. We didn’t need contributions from anybody else, as it turned out. He scored an easy hat trick despite playing in the unfamiliar right attacking midfielder position. Delfi is a great signing and has all the signs of being a great player. And that makes it 33 matches in a row. The dream season just keeps moving on. Mueanta was too tired from our cup match to start this one. Pietro Rovaglia and Cheng Binbin were leading the line for us. Neither had a particularly good match. I’m worried that Rovaglia might wind up on the outside looking in by the time we get to the summer. But we’ll worry about those problems later. Parra’s New Contract Oh — Luciano Parra now has a new contract. Right on the heels of becoming the best goalscorer in our league, Parra has signed a new contract worth a whopping 32 million RMB. I just hope it doesn’t get to the 20-year-old’s head. The key aspect of this contract is that it completely removes his previous release clause. Parra’s here to stay. The spokesman for the supporters is concerned that Luciano might not have a place on the squad, which is hilarious. I can see him being a problem when we get to the Champion’s League in a few years, maybe. At the moment, though, he’s our big star. We’re going to make sure he’s paid. Jiangsu Nantong We’re going back south, this time to play in Nantong, Jiangsu Province. We’re going to win this match easily. Maybe we should keep the kids in there. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 17, 2023 Author Share Posted March 17, 2023 Jiangsu Nantong I thought we were going to roll on to victory again. I was wrong. We scored two quickly. Luciano Parra scored a quick header in the 3rd minute. Then came Younes Delfi, scoring yet another goal from the right wing. That made it 2-0 before 20 minutes were up. And then they came back. Tao Hongqiang, the Nantong striker, scored a goal in the 25th minute, and then tied the score with a penalty in the 29th. I was shocked. We haven’t given up this many goals in a league match in months. Thankfully, Suphanat Mueanta came back, scoring two penalties for us. A final goal by Jacob Dicko Eng gave us our 5th goal, leading us to a 5-2 victory. Still, that one has me worried. We should have crushed this team. China Locomotive We’re back at home again, this time to face China Locomotive. At Charlotte’s behest, I’m going to start Lee Jin-Yong again. My assistant manager thinks we should stick Mr. Kwon back out there, but I just can’t handle his inconsistency. I just hope we don’t keep letting in goals. Liu Shaoziyang is supposed to be the best young Chinese goalie in the world. I’m not sure what’s going on. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 17, 2023 Author Share Posted March 17, 2023 China Locomotive This one wasn’t even close. One of my assistant managers recommended that we start both Parra and Rovaglia as strikers, and that we stick Suphanat Mueanta out on the left wing. I thought it might be good to put Delfi back on the right wing to see what he could do. The result was a huge victory, much bigger than I had ever expected. Rovaglia wound up scoring 4 goals and getting an assist. Mueanta had 2 goals of his own, and Parra contributed 1. Younes Delfi wound up with the Player of the Match award, as well as the Player of the Week award, for his 3 assists and excellent contribution. We’ve now won 35 straight league games. If you count our Chinese FA Cup run, we’ve won 40 in a row. We show no signs of slowing down at all. This has been an amazing season, much better than I ever anticipated. And the real crazy part is the fact that these players are so young. Devastating Injury It’s bad enough with Juan David Torres out for another two months or so. I received word of a training injury that hurts even more. Camil Jebara, our great 20-year-old Swedish left winger, is out for 8 to 10 months with damaged cruciate ligaments. This is one of those injuries that might completely derail his career, and there sadly isn’t anything we can do about it. We do have other players who can play his position (Mueanta, for example, as we saw in our last match). However, I fear that Jebara will never be able to make up for the lost training time, and that he might never be the same again. I stuck him on the under 21 roster. It will take him some time to heal, and then we’ll take a look and see what his future is like at this club. Month in Review We’re losing money each month, but we’re still a rich club anyway. Most of that money lost comes due to player wage expenditures, which isn’t a huge issue. We’re still far below the allotment the board set. The board is happy in general, but remains lukewarm about our match performance. They also aren’t thrilled with my transfers, mostly because of the young players with questionable potential that I continue to sign. I think that this investment will pay off in the future, however, and I’m not going to give up my quest for wonderkids. The supporters are much happier, though they are also very critical of my transfer decisions. Ye Jie is currently the closest we have to a squad leader. There’s good unity on the squad, but still not too much by way of cohesion. We’re slowly pushing our general squad personality towards something more professional, which will hopefully start showing through once we reach the summer transfer season. Taiyuan University of Technology We’re heading out to Taiyuan for our next match. A win here might clinch promotion for us, assuming that Jiangsu FC lose. Yes, that’s right: our new rivals are currently in second position. If we crush Taiyuan and they lose, we’ve clinched promotion and can relax a bit. We’ll still play every game like it’s out last, though. I’m not going to take it easy. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 18, 2023 Author Share Posted March 18, 2023 Taiyuan University of Technology Apparently the students in Taiyuan don’t exactly play fair. Our match against the Taiyuan University of Technology was simply ugly. There were 9 yellow cards in all, 6 of which were called against them. We won, 4-0. It wasn’t pretty, though. And, worst of all, Luciano Parra was injured by a pretty deliberate challenge. There were bright spots. Both Yan Kun and Shi Jiayang scored. Yan Kun’s goal was a sight to behold, too. He scored from a few yards outside the penalty area, giving us a glimpse of what an amazing player he truly is. In the end, however, it was the 16-year-old wonder Zhu Bin who came away as the man of the match. His passing was simply amazing, and I’ve got a feeling that he’s going to wind up being our first choice left winger in the near future. Parra’s Injury Luciano will be out for about a month. The press is worried that this will damage our chances. I think we’ll be fine. It means that Rovaglia will have more chances up front. My plan is to start him together with Mueanta up top, and to stick Delfi on the right wing. We’ll probably stick with Zhu Bin on the left wing, and will let the rest of the team come together naturally. Speaking of Yousuf Delfi, there are already calls for him to be called up to the Iranian international squad. He deserves it. Lee Jin-Yong On Loan? “You said no, right?” Charlotte asked me at breakfast the other morning. I gave her a blank look. “You said no?” she repeated, eying me carefully. “No… to what?” I asked, puzzled. “To the loan request, silly,” she replied. “You know you need to keep my 오빠 here, right?” It took me a while to figure out what she was talking about. We received two different offers from 2nd tier South Korean clubs to take Lee Jin-Yong in on loan. Neither club wanted to pay any of his wages, which are hilariously high at 465,000 RMB per month (highest on our squad). He’s been starting a lot recently, too. There’s no reason to loan him out, and so I refused both offers. Still, I’ve got to wonder how in the world the Lee Jin-Yong Fan Club knows this stuff before I do. Inner Mongolia We’re playing against the Caoshangfei squad from Inner Mongolia at home this time around. We’re almost certain to win. We’ll clinch promotion with a win here, and I think we’ll probably clinch the league as well. No pressure. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 19, 2023 Author Share Posted March 19, 2023 Caoshangfei This match wasn’t any contest. We only won by a 3-0 margin. However, we didn’t give Neimenggu Caoshangfei any chance at competing. Mueanta scored an easy goal in the 17th minute, followed by a free kick strike from Paul Wade. Kristoffer Paulsen sealed the deal with a header from a free kick in the 56th minute, and that was all she wrote. Paulsen got the Player of the Match award, though it wasn’t quite as impressive as his prior performances have been. I think that award came to him mostly due to his goal. That makes it 37 wins out of 37 matches for us in the league. We’ve scored 193 goals in the process. We’re likely to beat the 200 goal mark before the season is over. It’s hard to believe, but we still have 9 matches left. Title Push Apologies for being a bit abrupt, but we’ve got a title to push for. We are playing on the road against Beijing Baxy again. We’re sure to win. The question is whether Jiangsu and Beijing University lose. A win here means that we’re promoted, since Beijing University will be at least 27 points behind us with 8 games remaining. Meanwhile, a loss by Jiangsu would put them 26 points behind us with 8 games remaining, clinching the league for us. If Jiangsu draws, they would be 25 points behind us, also clinching the league for us. Once this is done, the only remaining question will be whether we can hit 200 goals or not. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted March 20, 2023 Share Posted March 20, 2023 I have a question: was there a modifications to the rules in this database you're playing? Because as I understand, for the Chinese league, there is a limitation as to how many foreign (non-Chinese) players you're allowed to field at any one time. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 20, 2023 Author Share Posted March 20, 2023 6 hours ago, BenArsenal said: I have a question: was there a modifications to the rules in this database you're playing? Because as I understand, for the Chinese league, there is a limitation as to how many foreign (non-Chinese) players you're allowed to field at any one time. Yep! I downloaded an extended fantasy Chinese league database from the Steam Workshop. The rules are different: you can have up to 20 foreigners registered, and as many as 8 on the pitch at any time. The database also resurrected a number of Chinese teams that have gone bankrupt over the years, including our rivals Jiangsu FC, who went under a year or so ago, and Yanbian FC, who went under back in 2018. It also includes a path to the European Champions League if we manage to finish in first place in the Chinese Super League. If I remember right, the database is called something like "入歐" (enter into Europe) as part of its name. I made a few slight modifications to get our club out of debt... and to add on a sugar daddy... Anyway, the entire thing is 100% fantasy, from the more friendly foreigner rules to the fact that these otherwise bankrupt and dead teams are able to play again. I'm not certain that there are enough professional teams surviving in China right now to warrant a third division... 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 20, 2023 Author Share Posted March 20, 2023 Promoted! Well, we did it. We managed to secure promotion to the Chinese First Division. We didn’t look particularly good, though. Beijing Baxy, who are in 22nd place and are a simply awful team, managed to hold our strikers at bay. We won this one by 2-0, one of the slimmest margins we’ve had all season. Pietro Rovaglia became the hero, scoring two quick goals in the first half that proved to be the final margin of victory. Our other strikers were eerily quiet. Mueanta had the worst game that he’s had for us yet, and has me worried about how he’ll do next season. There was a crowd of 1,000 there to watch us, probably the biggest crowd that Beijing Baxy has had all season long. I’m just happy that we were able to put it away. The Spoils of Victory Everybody is happy following our triumph. Chairman Guo was thrilled, though he did remind me that he knew we would wind up on top all along. We’ll see if he is willing to open up his pocket book a bit more for us in the coming transfer window. It wasn’t exactly a shock result for the board, of course. The board thought all along that we should gain automatic promotion to the First Division this season. If we really want to impress them, we’d better duplicate the feat next season. The fans are also delighted, though they had the same expectation right from the start. They don’t give you a lot of room to budge around these parts. Anyway, we’ve got two big pieces of news after this victory. The first is that our Under 21 team has officially won its group, after an emphatic 10-0 win. The Under 21 team has gone undefeated in its season to date, and looks absolutely stellar. Young striker Max McMillan scored 36 goals in his youth season for us, making me wonder whether he’ll start trying to elbow his way into the first team squad next season. The second big piece of news is that Ye Jie has finally gotten over the sale of Fan Xiang. Being able to start for the Chinese national team during the most recent international break might have helped calm him down a bit. However, I’m afraid to say that it’s probably too little too late for the 28 year old centerback. With youngsters like Yan Kun and Paulsen hanging around the first team, Ye Jie is starting to look expendable. Winning The League? The next task facing us is to defeat Ningxia Renhaixi once again. If we win this one we win the league. It’s as simple as that. View draft history Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 21, 2023 Author Share Posted March 21, 2023 The Title I was nervous for this one. We didn’t do anything in the first half to put me at ease, either. Pietro Rovaglia won a penalty in the 25th minute, but his shot was saved by the keeper. I should have insisted on Younes Delfi taking the penalty, but Rovaglia hopped in there before I could say anything. We went into halftime drawing 0-0. A draw would have secured us the title. But you know how things are around here. We want to win every match. Drawing just doesn’t do it. I took Rovaglia off after his awful first half performance. And that’s when Delfi started working his magic. Delfi’s first goal came from a corner in the 46th minute, a close range shot that probably was offside. His second, third, and fourth came within 5 minutes of each other, near the 60 minute mark. And we won, 4-0. The Chinese National Second Division Northern Group title is now ours. We knew coming into this that we were going to be promoted. I never thought that we would wind up going undefeated, however. This wasn’t exactly a surprise. The pundits had us picked to win before the season started, and that was before I started making big splashes in the transfer market. Still, a win is a win. The board is happy, our fans are happy, and I’m happy. We’ve now won 39 league matches in a row. We’ll see if we can keep our Chinese FA Cup dreams alive in the next match. It’s going to be close. Honestly, I’m still not convinced that this team is good enough to compete at the Chinese Super League level, let alone in the European Champions League. We’ll see when we get there, I suppose. Even the likes of Delfi have had off games here and there. I worry that some of our younger players have developed a strong dislike for big matches. And, of course, I want to do everything in my power to ensure that we’re developing good Chinese players. Speaking of which, we finally managed to get recognition in the Team of the Month. Liu Shaoziyang and Yan Kun, two of our young Chinese stars, were recognized as the best at their positions for the month of August. I’m hoping that is a sign of things to come. Month In Review It’s April, which means it’s time to look back at what happened in March. We’re still rich, of course. We haven’t been turning much of a profit, but there’s still more than enough money to keep us going for quite some time. The board is pleased with everything except for my transfers. Actually, Chairman Guo still doesn’t seem all that thrilled with our results, despite the fact that we’ve won the league title without losing a single game. I’m not sure what more he wants from us. The supporters are even more upset about my transfer policy. I guess my policy of signing every halfway decent under-18 player we can find regardless of future potential isn’t winning over a lot of converts. Sadly, there’s no way for me to tell everybody that they’ll thank me in 5 years for what I’m doing here. Our squad dynamics are good, especially now that Ye Jie is happy again. He’s happy just in time for me to sell him this summer. The one piece of sad news is that Zhang Jianyi, our left back, is out with damaged cruciate ligaments. That’s going to keep him out for 9 months, and likely will mean the end of his career. I was never really convinced by his abilities to begin with, and I just don’t see him getting past this injury — certainly not if we keep improving our personnel. We’ve had a number of injuries lately. Hopefully we can stop that problem from spreading. Guangzhou City We’ve got another huge one coming up. We’re going down to Guangzhou to face Guangzhou City in the Chinese FA Cup semi final. The press think that we’re going to win. I actually think we have a better chance this time than we did against Zhejiang FC. Guangzhou are in 11th place in the Chinese Super League and haven’t played well lately. We’re not only undefeated, but we’re also going to start Luciano Parra and Suphanat Mueanta, our two big star strikers. We’ll have Lee Jin-Yong out there too, for the ladies. Chairman Guo expects us to win, of course. He always expects us to win. Let’s hope that we don’t disappoint him. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 22, 2023 Author Share Posted March 22, 2023 Undeserved Victory Man, we played poorly. This was the worst match I’ve seen yet. Everybody played badly. We went down 1-0 in the 33rd minute after giving up a penalty on a ridiculous defensive play. I don’t even want to think about it. Everybody was playing poorly, and our defense looked ridiculously bad. The offense was doing okay, but we couldn’t find the goal. I think we had 5 shots hit the woodwork. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I mean, the goal isn’t that small. A miracle happened in the 2nd half. I put Rovaglia on after Luciano Parra had the worst game of his career in the 1st half. Rovaglia tumbled over in the penalty area in the 81st minute, after I had given up completely, and the referee mysteriously awarded a penalty to us. I’ve been back to watch the clip, and I simply don’t see it. Pietro fooled him. That’s all there is to it. Anyway, Mueanta tied it up, and we held on through an uneventful extra time period. We then won the shootout, 4-3. Yan Kun, of all people, scored the final goal. This is the same Yan Kun that we bought from Jiangsu FC at the beginning of the season and stuck in the under-21s. This is the Yan Kun who I took no notice of until our coaches started pointing him out in training. This is the same Yan Kun whose debut was delayed because of an injury that took him out for over 2 months. He’s only 20 years old, and he’s on top of the world. We have a final match to look forward to. We’ll play against Shenzhen FC, who are 4th in the Chinese Super League. That game will take place right after the end of the regular season. Qingdao Red Lions We do have a regular season to finish up here. I’ll keep going through it game by game. We should win this next one easily, even if we don’t play any of our regular starters. The Qingdao Red Lions are bad, and we look like sure favorites. The next big question is whether we will hit 200 goals for the season. We’ve scored 199 so far. After that, we’ll see if we can get our goal differential in the league up to 200. I’ll have to think of some other goals once we hit that one. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 23, 2023 Author Share Posted March 23, 2023 200 Goals Well, we did it. We hit 200 goals for the season. This one came pretty quickly. Younes Delfi scored in the 3rd minute to make it 1-0. He then scored again in the 10th minute, goal number 201 on the season for us, to make it 2-0. Zhu Bin added in his first goal of the season to put us up 3-0 in the 14th minute. And we basically coasted from there. 3-0 wasn’t a great scoreline, though I can forgive the players after the drama of that Chinese FA Cup game. Now we have some time to rest and reflect on our accomplishments. The next goal is to get our goal differential up to 200. Finally, I’m hoping we can wind up winning every single competitive match this season. That one might be tricky, though: I don’t think we’re going to be favorites for the cup final at the end of the season. But you never know. One That Got Away? The press made a huge deal about a very young centerback named Du Kai who started for the Qingdao Red Lions in our 3-0 win. Apparently he had been a Yanbian player at one point in time. I did a bit of research, and realized that he was one of the young players I was quick to get rid of right after I arrived. Du Kai has a good personality and clearly has a lot of potential. He’s only 16 years old, and yet has started 9 games for the Qingdao Red Lions first team already. Still, my scouts reminded me that he’s not a particularly consistent player, and that he’s had problems with injuries in the past. I don’t feel quite that bad about letting this one get away. Plus, his team lost. Take that. Li Changyi There’s another player I should introduce to you. His name is Li Changyi, and he’s got the role of backup goalkeeper for us. He started that game against Qingdao, and managed to keep a clean sheet in the process. We brought him in during that January transfer window, as one of the 100+ players that I managed to slip into the doors. He’s got an okay personality, but has great skill and excellent potential. We purchased him from San Fernando in Spain for 480,000 RMB. They got him off Brea, who in turn purchased him from Huesca. That’s quite a bit of traveling for a kid who is only 19 years old. He’s not as good as Liu Shaoziyang, who is arguably the best young Chinese goalkeeper in the world (and who recently earned his first full international start). Both are 19. Both are excellent assets, though. It will be interesting to see who develops faster. We’ll probably start Li Changyi in cup matches next year. Young Player of the Year 22-year-old Frenchman Paul Wade might wind up winning the young player of the year award. When the season started, I thought Kwon Hyeok-Kyu was clearly our best defensive midfielder. Wade has been nothing short of sensational, though, and winds up earning the starting role week in, week out. None of our other players are in the running, which I consider a bit strange. Luciano Parra is 2 years younger and is currently leading the league in scoring. I guess that’s why I don’t make these decisions. Dalian Shide We go off to Dalian for our next match. We’re going to win this one without any problems at all. At least we should. I worry about complacency. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 24, 2023 Author Share Posted March 24, 2023 Awful Performance This was our worst match all season. We beat Dalian Shide, but it wasn’t pretty by any stretch of the imagination. Jacob Dicko Eng scored in the 18th minute, and that was all the scoring. The 1-0 victory came together with a large number of fouls by our defenders, who were beaten time and time again. Now, Dalian is a good team. However, we are so much better than them that we should have dominated this match. And we didn’t put out a second rate team, either. I’ve got a bad feeling about the final 5 matches of the season. Low Turnout We’re playing Zibo Qisheng at home in our next match. I received a message telling me that we’re expecting only a little over 10,000 fans for this one. I know that we’ve already won everything — but where are our loyal supporters? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted March 25, 2023 Share Posted March 25, 2023 How many games are there in the season?! Seems like a damn long slog... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 25, 2023 Author Share Posted March 25, 2023 6 hours ago, BenArsenal said: How many games are there in the season?! Seems like a damn long slog... 46 at this level - there are 24 teams. Unfortunately, even the fans are giving up at this point, lol. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 26, 2023 Author Share Posted March 26, 2023 Zhu Bin’s Breakout Zhu Bin had the best game of his young career in this one. We demolished Zibo Qisheng at home, 6-1. Zhu Bin finished up with 3 goals and an assist, becoming the anchor of our offense. After our previous poor performance, it was good to see the boys playing like I knew they could. We didn’t have much of a crowd there, unfortunately, but at least we were able to produce a convincing win. There are only 4 more games left this season. Before long, we’ll be worrying about transfers and getting through the summer again. Qingdao FC We host Qingdao FC next, in another match we should win easily. Once again, we’re looking at a potential crowd of under 12,000. I guess this is what happens once promotion is no longer in doubt. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 26, 2023 Author Share Posted March 26, 2023 Apologies for the recent short posts. We've had a bad cold going around here at home: it's been kind of hard to concentrate. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 27, 2023 Author Share Posted March 27, 2023 Qingdao FC Another day, another victory. We hammered Qingdao FC in this one, 8-0. It wasn’t really close. Pietro Rovaglia scored 4 goals, making me wonder whether he’s going to give Luciano Parra a run for the most goals in the league. Suphanat Mueanta actually won the man of the match award, however. He powered through 2 goals of his own, and made 2 excellent assists to boot. It’s getting hard to decide which of the strikers to start each game. Delfi seems unstoppable from the attacking right wing, and I want to give Zhu Bin as much game time as I can on the attacking left wing. That means that Rovaglia, Parra, and Mueanta are all fighting for two striker spots. It’s not an easy choice to make — but it is a good problem to have. At the moment, Mueanta seems to have the upper hand. I’ve been toying with the idea of moving Rovaliga on, but he keeps improving. Parra, who was my favorite to begin with, has been playing poorly in his most recent matches, and I’m afraid that he’s starting to look like our third choice striker. We’ve also got Cheng Binbin, a Chinese striker who was recently out with injury. He hasn’t played much for us, but still happens to be among the most proficient attacking players in the league. And he’s only 25. The future is going to be mighty interesting. Month In Review We’re now into May, and things are winding up. There are 3 league games remaining, two of which will be on the road. We’ve also got our Chinese FA Cup Final match coming up. There isn’t too much surprise in our month in review documents. We’re still rich, of course. We’ve lost money this season, but it hasn’t been as extreme as it could have been. In fact, the board has been a bit too generous with our budgets for next season. They’ve given me a 381 million RMB transfer budget, despite the fact that we’ve still got about 90 million left of last year’s budget. The wage budget is also going to be around the 17 million RMB level, even though we’re not close to the 12 million level that our budget was at originally. I guess Chairman Guo really does like throwing the money around. The board have given me an A for my overall performance, though only a C+ for the matches. The board seems most impress with the culture around the squad. It thinks that my transfer activity has been subpar. The supporters have given me an A-, but have only given me a D for my transfers. They’re really frustrated with my habit of buying unproven 15 and 16 year old Chinese players in the hopes of turning them into something in the future. We’ll see who will have the last laugh there. Our dynamics remain good, and Pak Myong-Song has turned into a highly influential player. This might prove crucial, as I’m secretly planning to move Ye Jie on this summer (assuming he’ll agree to a transfer). We gave Pak Myong-Song a 3-year contract extension not long ago, even though he’ll be turning 29 soon. He’s a much better player than Ye Jie, and is far more consistent, which I value very highly. That also keeps a strong Korean cultural presence on the squad, another thing I consider quite important. This summer should be interesting. Tai’an We’re heading to Tai’an for our next match, in another one that we should win pretty easily. Our goal differential currently stands at 206, which is extremely high. I think the trick now is to simply win our three remaining leauge matches and hope for the best in our upcoming cup final. Meanwhile, Jiangsu FC are one win away from securing promotion to the next level for themselves. I was hoping a few weeks ago that they would miss out, but it seems that we’ll have to play them even more next season. I sense a rivalry brewing. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 28, 2023 Author Share Posted March 28, 2023 Another Victory We beat Tai’an, but it wasn’t pretty. We went up 3-0 early, after goals from Zhu Bin, Jacob Dicko Eng, and Pietro Rovaglia. That was it from our end, however. Tai’an also got one back with a goal from a corner early in the second half, and looked like they might score another one to make it close. Our offense completely broke down, and we looked pretty poor. It’s a win, but we’ve got problems. I can’t get Luciano Parra to score again, and I’m not quite sure what his problem is. He went from scoring hat tricks every other game to getting basically no chances in any of his matches. I figure the other teams are keying him, but he needs to figure out a plan of action. It’s not going to get any easier from here on out, after all. We’ve got two more matches left, and then the cup final. I just hope we don’t start screwing it up. North Korean Drama The North Korean football press (whatever that actually amounts to be) is calling for Kim Yong-Il to be dropped from the national team due to his lack of games for us. He’s played okay for us this season. He’s had 7 goals and 5 assists in 15 appearances. It’s not bad, but we’ve got two other strikers with over 30 goals each in just a few more appearances. I’ve got a feeling that we’re going to look to move Kim Yong-Il on during the offseason. We clearly don’t need him. The other sad news is that Pak Myong-Song suffered a training injury that will have him out for 3 months. That means that he will miss our upcoming Chinese FA Cup Final match, which is a real downer for me. Pak Myong-Song is easily our best right back, and is probably the best right back currently playing in China. We’ll win our remaining two league matches without him, but I worry that his absence will kill our chances in the cup final. Home Finale We’re hosting Shanxi Longjin in our final home match this time around. We’re going to win, of course. I just hope we get a good crowd this time. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 28, 2023 Author Share Posted March 28, 2023 The Home Finale It’s not going to surprise you to hear that we absolutely destroyed Shanxi Longjin in our final home match. We won, 7-0. Mueanta had a hat trick, Rovaglia almost had a hat trick, and everybody played well. Zhu Bin set the pace by scoring inside the first 15 seconds, though it was brought back for being offside. Yes, that’s right: we could have scored even more if we had a bit more luck. We’ve only got one more league match now. The perfect season dream is alive. Injury Crisis We really have an injury crisis brewing. It has me worried about the Chinese FA Cup Final in a week and a half. Paul Wade is the latest to be injured. He’s been excellent in that defensive midfielder role. I’m not sure what we’re going to do without him. Without Wade and Pak Myong-Song, the anchors of our defense are going to be missing. None of these injuries were caused in matches, either. They’re all training related. This is surprising, as we’ve been relatively injury free all season. Perhaps the football gods are angry with us. Or maybe somebody else will step up. Season Finale Our final game in the Chinese Second Division North is a road match against Yantai Yintai. Yantai Yintai are the worst team in the league, and have somehow only managed 12 points in 45 matches. This one should be a breeze. The big question is that Chinese FA Cup Final match. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 30, 2023 Author Share Posted March 30, 2023 Yantai Yintai I wish I could tell you that this was a close, dramatic game. It wasn’t. We didn’t just beat Yantai. We pulverized them. We won every single way we could. We dominated this match, playing as if the other team weren’t even there. Zhu Bin wound up with 4 goals in this match, the last of which was an emphatic shot from range that I doubt anybody could stop. He’s only 16, and yet he looks like an absolute machine. What a player! We won this one 8-0 in the end. Mueanta had two goals, Andrija Kolundzic piped in with one, and Lee Jin-Yong, who has been the talk of Yanji all season, scored an early goal as well. Yantai didn’t have a single shot on goal. This wasn’t our largest margin of victory all season long, but it was certainly our most impressive win. These boys want to win. You can feel it. Awards With the end of the season comes the conferring of awards. Luciano Parra wound up just 3 goals short of the top goalscorer award. Jing Wenbo of Beijing University won that with 36, with Xiao Jinqing came in second place with 35. Parra only had 33. I actually haven’t started him lately because of his sudden scoring drought; hopefully he’ll remember how to score during the summer. As we predicted, Paul Wade wound up winning Young Player of the Year. It wasn’t even close. He was arguably the best player on our squad, with an amazing 83% pass completion percentage. Oh yeah — and I wound up with the Best Manager award. Now, that’s not Best Manager for all of China, mind you. It only includes all managers in the Chinese National Second Division North. However, it’s a good start. Foul Play? Jacob Dicko Eng has apparently been upset. If you’ve been following along, you know that I’ve been starting Zhu Bin on the left wing. Dicko Eng was purchased to play in that position. Jacob is only 18 years old, and should be on the club for years to come. Zhu Bin is a better player, though. He’s Chinese, and he’s only 16. I simply couldn’t find a way to get Dicko Eng back on the squad. Anyway, Jacob threw a fit, as you would expect. I had a hard time trying to talk him down. His agent was in a huff, and I was worried that he was going to start getting the rest of the squad riled up. That didn’t quite happen, though. We were able to calm him down eventually. And then Charlotte got the brilliant idea of having him over for dinner. I didn’t see anything wrong with the meal. We had “Cherry Shaped Pork” (櫻桃肉), a famous Suzhou dish with quite a history. Everybody seemed fine afterwards, and I certainly felt fine the next day. I don’t know what Charlotte did, but whatever she did worked well. Dicko Eng has food poisoning, and will wind up missing the Chinese FA Cup final after all. You know, it would have been nice to have him as a substitute. But I should probably refrain from tempting fate. The Cup Final Well, here we are. Nobody expected us to get this far. We’re playing in the final of the Chinese FA Cup against Shenzhen FC. The media have us picked as favorites to win, which is insane. We’re missing numerous players due to various ailments. George Hall and Jung In-Gyom are both away on international duty. Plus, Shenzhen is in 4th place in the Chinese Super League. I mean, if we do pull this off, you’ve got to think that we should storm through our schedule next season as well. We’ll see what happens. I’m nervous. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 31, 2023 Author Share Posted March 31, 2023 Chinese FA Cup Final I can’t believe that we made it this far this quickly. It’s been only a single season, and yet we’ve already made it to the top of the Chinese football world. We played a huge final in front of a sold out crowd and a large television audience. And we took on Shenzhen FC, a team much more reputable (and arguably better) than us. And we won. We won this one 2-0. It was closer than the scoreline would have you think. The first half was scoreless, and I was worried that we were really going to blow it. Our first goal came from Pietro Rovaglia in the 57th minute. It was a complete fluke. Luciano Parra passed the ball aimlessly ahead to absolutely nobody, and made a half-hearted attempt to run after it. The Shenzhen rightback went back to the ball, and inexplicably decided to pass it back to goal instead of letting it go out for a goal kick. Rovaglia saw what was happening, ran towards goal just in time, and got his head on it. Shenzhen had a number of good chances right afterwards. We scored the second after a set piece on a great shot from Delfi that happened to ricochet off the foot of Shenzhen captain Lim Chai-Min. And, well, that’s all that we needed. We’ve done the double. The Summer Victory is sweet, but it was still a long summer. We had dozens of players coming in and out. I don’t know how many players we’ve got out on loan now. It’s absolutely crazy. We did make a few large signings, though I’ll have to introduce you to the new players tomorrow. Everybody seems to think that we’re going to straight out win promotion from the First Division this year. Chairman Guo thinks that we should be able to win the league outright. I’m not sure that we’ll go undefeated this time, but I suppose we’ll give it a try. Time really does heal all wounds. Jacob Dicko Eng got over the food poisoning and is no longer upset about not playing often enough. I guess Charlotte really got to him after all. Our fanbase seems to have increased quite a bit. We’ve now got over 300,000 social media followers, an increase from where we were at the start by over 30%. I hope that this eventually translates into larger crowds. The board also surprised me by suddenly deciding to install under-soil heating in the stadium, a project that it completed this summer. This should help with those frosty winter games. We’re doing well financially. We wound up with a new soft drink partnership deal worth 200 million RMB per year, which is excellent. Mueanta, Rovaglia, Parra, Delfi, and Dicko Eng sold the most shirts — though we all know that Lee Jin-Yong is clearly the most popular player at the club. Oh — and I also fielded interview requests from several European clubs, including Celtic. I turned them all down, of course. I’ve got a lot of unfinished business here. UEFA Europa Conference League You might recall that I mentioned way back in the beginning that there is now a road into Europe for Chinese teams. Well, we’re about to experience that first hand. Because we won the Chinese FA Cup, we have been invited to the UEFA Europa Conference League. In fact, the first two matches of the new season will be against FK Voždovac in Serbia. We’re also slight favorites to win the first match, even though we have to travel to the other side of the world for it. I’ve made a number of players upset with me because I had to leave them out of our squad. The rules are pretty strict: we are supposed to have 4 players that are home grown at club, or that have spent 3 years at Yanbian between their 16th and 21st birthdays. We have very few of those players left, unfortunately. The other problem, of course, is that the Conference League will only allow a maximum roster of 25 players. I’ve got our First Division roster down to 33 right now. We simply can’t include everybody. Fortunately, most of our influential stars were understanding. There were a few fringe players who were upset, but most of them won’t ever make it off our under 21 squad anyway. I’m sure we’ll be fine. I can’t wait for the new chapter to begin! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted March 31, 2023 Share Posted March 31, 2023 Wow! European football! Exciting times! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted March 31, 2023 Author Share Posted March 31, 2023 4 hours ago, BenArsenal said: Wow! European football! Exciting times! Yeah, lol — this database is full of surprises! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted March 31, 2023 Share Posted March 31, 2023 And apparently FK Vozdovac's stadium is on the roof of a shopping centre. Handy... 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 1, 2023 Author Share Posted April 1, 2023 Fudbalski klub Voždovac This match was simply bizarre. We’re used to playing in a 30,000 seat stadium in Yanji. We’ve got a nice stadium — modern, somewhat new, and designed specifically for football. This match took us to Voždovac Stadium, a 5,000 seat stadium located on the roof of a shopping mall. That alone should have been a sign that we weren’t in Kansas anymore. I mean, yeah, we were on the other side of the planet — but playing in a tiny stadium on top of a shopping center is, well, weird. We lost this match. This is the first time I’ve managed Yanbian FC to a loss. You’ll look at the match statistics and will conclude that it should have been a win. And, well, you might be right, I suppose. But it never really felt like we were in this one. Zhu Bin, who was playing in an unfamiliar left back role, got us rocking with a goal in the 6th minute. I was beside myself with joy when that one went in. He’s only 16, and he’s already scoring in Europe. That was it, though. We had a number of good opportunities for our new young striker, Jeong Sang-Bin. His shots were so wild that I’m wondering if he needs a road map for the goal. We gave up an equalizer in the 63rd minute, and then gave up the winner in the 75th. The 2-1 loss isn’t a disaster, of course. We’ve still got the home leg left to play. We might be able to pull this one off in the end. It just feels so strange to lose. The New Signings I guess I should introduce you to our new players before I go much further. Just like I did during our last transfer window, I’ll have to introduce the new boys to you slowly. Most of our new signings are going straight into the under-19s squad; you don’t really need to worry about them yet. First up is Roméo Lavia, a 19-year-old Belgian central defensive midfielder we picked up from Southampton for a cool 100 million RMB. He was our record transfer at the time, and for good reason. He looked excellent. I had the money, and figured I might as well splurge a little bit. After all, the board was upset with me last season for not signing high reputation players. Lavia was willing to come on board, so, hey, why not? Lavia originally went to Southampton from Manchester City. In retrospect, Southampton didn’t really make much of a profit off of him; they purchased him originally for around 94 million RMB. I hope all of these transfers at a young age isn’t a sign of some sort of problem I’m unaware of. Given my luck, the whole thing will blow up in my face. Anyway, Lavia comes in as a superstar. We don’t think he’s quite as good as Paul Wade, but the two should team up well together in midfield. He also seems to get along well with the rest of the squad, which is great news. A few days later, the name Jung Sang-Bin popped up on my radar. Before I knew it, I had spent 180 million RMB to pick him up. He’s our new record signing. Jeong Sang-Bin (정상빈) is a tad older at 21. He’s from South Korea, which, of course, fits right in with our squad culture. He’s also a full international, with 3 appearances for South Korea’s national team, including 1 goal. We had to pay through the nose to get him from Wolves. Wolves made a big profit off him as well, as they only paid about 8 million RMB to get him from Suwon. We think Jeong Sang-Bin is going to be a huge hit. I’ve seen articles online calling him the “Korean Mbappe.” Of course, if he’s going to live up to that potential, he’s going to have to play much better than he did in his debut. I’ve got two more to introduce you to. First is Pedrinho, a 21-year-old Brazilian attacking left winger who looks okay. We picked Pedrinho up from SPO for 1.5 million RMB, which isn’t a bad price to pay. We can feel good about that transaction even if he doesn’t wind up turning into a star. He looks really good, too. My assistant managers think that he is one of the best left wingers on the club. Finally, we went out and got Eiran Cashin, another 21-year-old player — this time an Irish centerback. Cashin was another player who popped up in the scouting reports. We got him from Derby for 15 million RMB. The coaches think he’s the best centerback at the club, which really is saying a lot. The best thing about Cashin is his bravery and willingness to get into situations that others would shy away from. The worst part is that he tends to bend the rules from time to time. Anyway, you’d think that I’d stay away from big transfers after the sort of year we had last season. I just couldn’t help myself. Life, Death, and Taxes In my excitement, I forgot that we have to pay taxes on transfer fees we spend above 20 million RMB. That’s right: we are taxed at a 100% rate for fees spent (not received) over 20 million RMB. In other words, all of my transfer adventures gifted us a 240 million RMB tax bill. The club is not necessarily facing financial ruin at the moment, but we are doing much worse than we were before. I just hope that Chairman Guo will be lenient and understanding. I also hope that we can get back to our winning ways. Chairman Guo and the board do seem happy with the way the summer has progressed so far, which is a relief. The supporters also seem to be happy, though they are still concerned about my transfers. Again, the key here is to win. If we can win, everything will work out for the best in the end. We’ve had a few blips in player happiness resulting both from the new signings and from the Europa Conference League registration politics. Most of the players seem fine now, though George Hall is concerned that Lavia will replace him completely. Actually, if I were Hall, I’d worry about being replaced as well. That said, Jeong Sang-Bin and Eiran Cashin have already emerged as influential players in the squad. I think we’re moving in the right direction. The Home Leg Well, it’s do or die for us. I’m not a huge fan of these qualification knockout rounds. I wish we could just skip to the group stage. We might get to that point one day, if we can get our reputation (and China’s reputation) up high enough. For now, though, we need to focus on winning. It’s time for revenge. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 1, 2023 Author Share Posted April 1, 2023 Revenge! We came into this match knowing that we needed a win desperately. And, oh boy, did we ever deliver! Jeong Sang-Bin overcame his jitters in our last match by delivering a spectacular hat trick. We won this one 3-0, and looked really good in the process. In fact, we only allowed Voždovac to have a single shot, which wasn’t even on target. We dominated this game inside and out, and should feel very proud of our accomplishment. More New Faces There are more new faces to introduce, of course. Ronan Pluijmen is a 20-year-old Thai national left back who looks extremely good. We picked him up on a free transfer from Muangthong United. He didn’t have much of a season last year, but he played well in this start against Voždovac. The coaches thing Pluijmen is going to be a star, perhaps even better than Pak Myong-Song. Next up is Mathias Lazo, a 20-year-old Peruvian centerback who gives us more quality in the back. We picked up Lazo for 5.5 million RMB from Melgar, which was another excellent value. He also struggled for form last season, but looks good so far. Lazo looks like another long-term star player for us. I’m excited to see how he develops. Finally, we completed our conquest of Thailand’s national team by signing Patrick Gustavsson, a 22-year-old Thai international who was born in Sweden. Gustavsson came in for 6 million RMB from Chiangmai, and originally started things off with Oxelösunds IK. Finding him was the result of me ordering our scouts to look at every single young player on national teams throughout East Asia. Gustavsson is technically a striker, but will likely play on the attacking right wing for us from time to time. He’ll probably have some trouble earning starts, though, since Delfi is such a massive attacking force on that side. There are a few more players to introduce, but we’ll leave all of that for another post. Season Preview While we’re messing around with Conference League qualification, there’s also the small matter of the Chinese First Division that we have to worry about. The board expects that we are going to gain automatic promotion to the Chinese Super League this year. In fact, everybody in the country expects that we are going to win the First Division. The media has given us 1-91 odds to win promotion, and 4-11 odds to win the First Division outright. Suphanat Mueanta has been given 10-11 odds to be the top goalscorer in the First Division, which kind of surprises me. Jeong Song-Bin, meanwhile, didn’t finish in the odds at all. I would be surprised if Mueanta wound up being the top goalscorer on our team, let alone in the league. And, as you can expect, we’ve got three players in the running for First Division top player. Mueanta is joined by Romeo Lavia and Eiran Cashin in that conversation, and the three of them are neck and neck. In other news, the board has announced that the undersoil heating installation project is now complete. We should be ready for the worst of the winter. Wolfsberger AC Our next Conference League qualifying round is against Wolfsberger Athletiksport Club from Austria. We are slight favorites to win the first match, which we will play at home. I’m always worried when we have the first leg at home, of course. I hope that we have a dominating victory that puts us in a good position to defend when we head back out to Wolfsberg. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 2, 2023 Author Share Posted April 2, 2023 Frustrated! Our home leg against Wolfsberger AC was simply frustrating. We couldn’t get any of our attacks to work at all. We dominated the match, with 17 shots to their 7, and a 1.31 xG to their 1.01. And yet we lost in the end, 1-0. I’m not quite sure who to blame. Nobody had an exceptionally bad match. We just didn’t have any good performances, that’s all. Maybe it was the rain and wet conditions. I’m not sure. I’m still holding out hope that we’re going to have some sort of run in Europe to help the team’s finances out a bit. However, after two bad performances in four matches, I’ve got to wonder if we really have it in us. Abrefa I’ve got one more player to introduce. He’s Kelvin Abrefa, and we actually brought him over last January. He’s a 19-year-old English right back who looks really good. The plan is to use him as a backup for Pak Myong-Song for now, allowing him to get the experience he needs to take over the job once Pak is too old to continue. We purchased Abrefa from Reading in January. He had been on loan with Leyton Orient at the time. Because he had appeared for both Reading and Leyton Orient, we couldn’t play him at all last season. Sadly, he wound up on our under 21 team, even though he was clearly good enough for the first team. He’s an excellent player, has a great mentality, and should be good for years. I just hope he plays better in the future than he did against Wolfsberger. Do Or Die Well, this is it. If we lose this next match, we’re out of Europe, as quickly as it started. Wolfsberger AC are anticipating only 1,700 fans for this match, which is pathetic. We’ve been drawing just under 20,000 fans for each of our Conference League matches so far. Perhaps the lack of an audience will give us a slight advantage. We’ll see. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 4, 2023 Author Share Posted April 4, 2023 Wolfsberger Tears Well, it didn’t go as we hoped. There was nobody there at this match. It didn’t matter in the end, though. They scored a goal in the 37th minute to put them up 2-0 on aggregate. Lee Jin-Yong got one back for us in the 92nd minute to give us a draw on the evening. However, that wasn’t enough, and we’ve gone back home with our heads hanging. The New Season Enough of that European nonsense. We can now focus on the things that really matter. We play against Zibo Cuju in the first match of the new season. Even though we’ll be away from home, we are heavy favorites to win. This should be an exciting ride! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 4, 2023 Author Share Posted April 4, 2023 Destroying Zibo I’m not sure why Zibo Cuju decided to show up for this match. There was nobody at all in their stadium. I suppose limiting the audience proved to be a sort of face-saving measure for Zibo. We scored early and often. Mueanta had a hat trick, Jeong San-Bin scored, Zhu Bin scored, and both Lavia and Wade managed to score from their defensive midfield positions. In the end, we came away with a huge 9-0 victory. Maybe we’re better than I thought. Or maybe the quality of this league is just a hair behind the European Conference League. Li Min We had a new face out there against Zibo. His name is Li Min. He’s 17 years old and plays attacking right wing. He’s one of the young Chinese players that I want to give more playing time to, chiefly to ensure that we’re not bitten too badly by the various UEFA squad registration requirements as the years go by. We bought Li Min from Neimenggu Caoshangfei a few months ago. He was on our under-19 team for a little while. I decided to pull him up to the first team based mostly on his personality and the potential that I see in him. My assistant manager Han Songfeng doesn’t think that Li Min has the potential to play at this level. Apparently Mr. Han missed the fact that Li Min scored against Zibo. He’s fast and can shoot from range; he’ll be just fine. Mueanta’s Concerns Suphanat Mueanta came up to me looking distraught the other day. Apparently he was really upset that we didn’t last longer in the Conference League than we did. I was about to tell him that it was his own fault. I mean, he played really poorly in those matches. Not only did he not score, but he did very little to help our offense out. Fortunately, Suphanat cheered up as soon as I spoke with him, and seems to have dropped the issue. Chinese Super Cup We’ve got one of those one-off cup matches coming up next. We’re playing against Shandong in the Super Cup. Shandong, of course, won the Chiense Super League last year, and are currently fighting to get to the UEFA Champions League Group Stage. I think we’ve got a chance, but we’ll see. If we do win this one, I’m going to conclude that we’re simply the best team in the country. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 6, 2023 Author Share Posted April 6, 2023 The Best Team in China? So, can we officially call ourselves the best team in China now? This wasn’t necessarily the best performance we ever had. In fact, neither of our strikers played well. I’m worried about Mueanta, who just doesn’t seem to have the ability we’ll need at the highest level in the country. At least he’s still young. Still, we were able to pull off the 2-1 victory. We owe it all to Zhu Bin, who scored two quick goals in the first ten minutes to get things rolling. Frankly, I can’t believe it. Zhu Bin is 16 years old, and is a product of our youth system. He was a mostly anonymous player in our under-19s side until January, when I decided to give him a chance in the first team. And now he’s looking like one of the best players in the entire country. We played well at the beginning of this match, but started to taper off as time went on. Shandong got one back in the 57th minute, and our attempts to score were pretty easily thwarted by their defense. At least we were good enough to win. That’s all that really matters, after all. Good enough. Transfer Window We’re into September already, and the transfer window has shut. There was a flurry of spending on our part near the end, even though we didn’t have much money. I was fortunate to run across a number of 15 and 16 year old Chinese players who basically cost us nothing at all to sign. I think I added on about 20 signings on the final day alone. We signed over 200 players in this transfer window, the majority of which went straight to our under-19s squad. We also loaned out over 100. There weren’t as many loans for profit as I’d like, but I’ve got a feeling that we’ll see more of those in the future. The plan is to see which of those young players starts showing talent like Zhu Bin and eventually move them up to the front. In a few years, we should have a largely homegrown club that is more than capable of competing in the Champions League. Trust the plan. It’s working. Rivalry Renewed Our home opener is next. And we’re facing none other than Jiangsu FC, our rivals from last season. We’re going to have to put a decimated squad out there. Pak Myong-Song and Suphanat Mueanta are both away on international duty. Cheng Binbin has been injured for the past two months or so, and is still out. Come to think of it, I think Cheng Binbin has been injured for almost his entire time at the club. We might have to fix that in the near future. Anyway, I hope we put on a good performance. Word has it that we’re expecting over 21,000 people to show up, which would be a record for the Chinese First Division. Maybe we’ll single-handedly revitalize interest in football in this country. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 6, 2023 Author Share Posted April 6, 2023 Rivalry Renewed! Playing Jiangsu Suning FC just feels right. It feels natural at this point, like something that has to happen for the universe to truly be in order. And, of course, we won. It was 5-0, and it wasn’t close. Pedrinho was the hero and the Man of the Match, though he didn’t score. His 2 assists and 11 key passes were simply deadly. Delfi scored two goals, Jacob Dicko Eng had one, and even Eiran Cashin managed to nod a header in. It was a good day all around. We had over 22,000 people show up at the stadium. If we keep this up, we’ll start selling these games out before long. Inauspicious Debut Against the better judgment of my coaches, I decided to play a 17-year-old kid named Liang Xianjun at left back. Liang Xianjun came in over the summer. We got him on a free transfer from Ningbo Yinbo. I like him because he’s got a real solid, professional personality, and because he shows a bit of potential. The coaches think he doesn’t have what it takes, but I’m not sure how much I trust their judgment. Anyway, I had Lee Jin-Yong playing left back at the start of this one. He really should be playing defensive midfielder, and so I moved him up and stuck Liang Xianjun in there at halftime. Well, Mr. Liang decided to try one of those two-footed scissors tackles in the 74th minute, and got himself set off with a straight red card. The coaches might have been right after all. I’ll keep him on the first team squad for now, but might bring up a different young Chinese left back in January if Liang Xianjun doesn’t play a little bit better. With Joao Victor normally starting in that role, and with our other recent signing, Ronan Pluijmen, on hand, there is a real chance that Liang Xianjun may have played his last first team game for us. The moral? Don’t get sent off. Li Qiang We started another new player in this one. His name is Li Qiang, and he’s also 17. He’s a striker. I decided to start him in this match because Rovaglia was still recovering from injury. Cheng Binbin has been injured for a while, and another new striker who I haven’t introduced to you yet is out on international duty. We picked Li Qiang up from Hunan Billows in the summer. He never made an appearance for them. We paid only 300,000 RMB for him, which I think is an excellent deal. Anyway, he scored yesterday. He had a few attempts from close range that were blocked, and then managed to hammer in one from close range. Not a bad debut! Wuhan Changjiang We’re slight favorites against Wuhan, a team that was just relegated this past season from the Chinese Super League. It’s another home match, our second home match in 4 days. We’ll have a third a few days after that. Squad rotation is crucial during September in this country. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 8, 2023 Author Share Posted April 8, 2023 No Longer Invincible I felt good going into this match. I felt awful coming out of it. We were horrible. We lost to Wuhan, 1-0, and didn’t look even close to scoring for the entire match. It looked like it was going to be a bore draw until Pak Myong-Song was sent off for a second yellow card in the 70th minute. Wuhan scored the only goal of the match a few minutes later. We need to play better than this. This was completely unacceptable. Xue Xiaopeng Perhaps one reason for our poor performance was the fact that we started yet another new youngster. His name is Xue Xiaopeng, another 17-year-old Chinese kid — this time a defensive midfielder. We picked up Xue Xiaopeng from Beijing university for only 40,000 RMB, which is an absolute steal in my opinion. He played poorly in that Wuhan match, though at least he wasn’t sent off. He’s another kid with a great personality who is a very consistent performer. I’m convinced that he’s going to be a star in the future. And I don’t think we can place all the blame on his shoulders. Dandong Tengyue We’re going to do more squad rotation in this next match, which comes only 3 days after our defeat. We’ll be at home again, and are clear favorites to beat Dandong. My only concern is that we keep putting out teams of players who have no experience playing against each other. We have to rotate, though. We play Shandong again three days after this in the first round of the Chinese FA Cup. We can afford a defeat or two in the league, but we really can’t afford a defeat in that cup. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 9, 2023 Author Share Posted April 9, 2023 My Iranian Wonder Delfi dominated this match. I was worried that we’d suffer a letdown after that frustrating 1-0 defeat. As it turns out, we didn’t suffer any letdown at all. We beat Dandong by a 7-2 margin that was absolutely ridiculous. And Delfi scored 5 goals all on his own. Those 5 goals included two crosses that Delfi tapped in while standing right in front of the keeper. He also scored a penalty, and a bizarre fluke goal that looks like the goalkeeper tipped it into his own net. Now, this wasn’t a great defensive performance for us. Liu Shaoziyang gave up 2 goals, which isn’t characteristic for him, and looked particularly bad for both of them. We’ve had to do a lot of rotating defensively to accomodate our crazy schedule. That’s been part of our defensive problem. Things will calm down as the season progresses. Meanwhile, Delfi’s 5 goals are a new league record. And we’re just getting started. More New Faces Yep, I’ve got a few more new players to introduce again today. First is Ding Yuchi, a 17-year-old Chinese defensive midfielder who has a lot of potential. We picked up Ding Yuchi from the Tormenta FC Academy in the United States, of all places. I’m not sure what he was doing there. He came in for free, which is the best price, and he spent quite a bit of time in our under-19 squad last year. He’s consistent, he’s got a normal personality, and he should be good enough to play at this level now. He’s not going to really bother Wade and Lavia for game time, but he’ll likely see some action off the bench, and is a good kid to have on hand for when others are injured. And then we have Yan Dawei, a 16-year-old centerback who is probably one of the reasons why we gave up two goals. Yan Dawei came from Jiangxi Beidamen, and cost us a cool 1.2 million RMB. He didn’t play particularly well for Jiangxi last season, but that’s perfectly fine. We’re buying potential, not current ability. He’s not tall and doesn’t have a stellar personality, but he still seems to be a good option in the back. Might as well give him a chance. Huge Chinese FA Cup Challenge We might not make it out of the first round of the Chinese FA Cup this year. We’re playing away against Shandong. That’s the same Shandong team that we barely beat in the Chinese Super Cup a few games ago. We’ll see how this one goes. They are favorites, but only by a slight margin. Meanwhile, I’ve saved up our best players for this moment. I just hope they decide to show up. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 10, 2023 Author Share Posted April 10, 2023 The Comeback Shandong intimidate me. Mykhaylo Mudryk scored for Shandong 14 minutes into this one. I thought for certain that we were doomed. We did tie the match in the 33rd minute. Jeong Sang-Bin had the ball in a ridiculous position, sitting alone in the penalty area with 5 defenders surrounding him. Fortunately for us, one of the Shandong players decided to push him to the ground instead of taking the ball off of him, giving us a penalty. Suphanat Mueanta scored that penalty, and we were even at 1. Cryzan scored for Shandong in the 67th minute, and I thought it was all over. You’ll recall that we beat Shandong 2-1 in that Chinese Super Cup game just a few weeks back. I thought losing by the same margin would be poetic justice. But my players didn’t want to have any of that. Pietro Rovaglia, the player I came close to selling off, gave us the equalizer in the 72nd minute with an incredible shot. Zhu Bin, who came on as a halftime substitute for the fatigued Delfi, added to his heroics by scoring in the 80th minute with a thundering shot. He’s a special one. And then Jeong Sang-Bin finished them off with an excellent goal in the 89th minute. We won, 4-2. I still can’t believe it. We won. Shanghai Shenxin There’s not much time to dwell on other things. We’ve got to get ready to destroy Shanghai Shenxin in our next league match. This will finally put an end to the crazy run of matches we’ve had. We’ll be able to rest up and heal after this one is done. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
thegaminghakawati Posted April 10, 2023 Share Posted April 10, 2023 So Mudryk ends up in China? The Champions League introducing Chinese teams must have made a number on football. That said, great series, been a wild ride! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 10, 2023 Author Share Posted April 10, 2023 4 hours ago, thegaminghakawati said: So Mudryk ends up in China? The Champions League introducing Chinese teams must have made a number on football. That said, great series, been a wild ride! Haha, I didn't really even notice that — this is what I get for not paying much attention to what is happening in real life! Yeah, the Champions League possibility, combined with the relaxed foreigner rules, has allowed some of the richer Chinese teams to make some interesting signings. It was actually Zhejiang who bought Mudryk last season for 87.5 million RMB. That's not really all that high of a transfer price, actually - probably somewhere around 13 million Euros. Shandong bought him this season for 142 million RMB, which is a bit more like it. He's playing well so far - 1 goal and 2 assists in 4 league appearances, with a 7.40 average rating. But he wasn't good enough to beat us, apparently. Shandong are apparently stinking rich. They bought Jeremie Frimpong from Bayer 04 for 395 million RMB last season, for example. They also bought Maximilian Eggestein from SC Freiburg for 125 million RMB last season. Beijing have spent more than anybody else in China, though. Their big signing this season was picking up Alexis Mac Allister from Brighton for 330 million RMB. They also picked up Raphael Guerreiro from Dortmund for 167 million RMB. This version of China is becoming increasingly non-Chinese, haha. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 10, 2023 Author Share Posted April 10, 2023 Masterful Defense This was the most dominating 1-0 victory I’ve ever seen. Shanghai Shenxin didn’t have a single shot on goal. We had 32 shots to their 0, had a 3.00 xG to their 0.00, and dominated possession. I’m not sure how we managed to only score a single goal after that dominating performance. Younes Delfi added to his legendary status by scoring the only goal of the match. We hammered the Shanghai goal time and time again, but just couldn’t get another breakthrough. I’m just happy that their counterattacks all fell flat. The Taiwanese Kid This was the debut for Miguel Sandberg, another striker who we think has a lot of potential. Despite his name, Sandberg is actually a Taiwanese national team player. He’s Taiwanese-Swedish, was born in Sweden, and yet chose to represent Taiwan internationally. He’s 21 years old, is clearly the best player on Taiwan’s national team, and is probably the best player in the history of Taiwanese football. We poached Sandberg from Västerås SK for only 520,000 RMB, which is a bargain - not even 100,000 Euros. He was in our under 23 team all last season. I decided to bring him up this season due to that Taiwanese nationality, which counts as Chinese for registration purposes. Sandberg didn’t play particularly well in his first match, missing a number of easy scoring chances. We think he’ll be good if he continues to get game time, though. Shijiazhuang We’re heading over to Hebei to face Shijiazhuang Gongfu next. The press pointed out to me that I’ll be squaring off against a goalkeeper named Teng Shangkun. This requires a bit of explaining. We had a major goalkeeping crisis early last season. The 15-year-old Wu Ping was the best goalkeeper on the club. The problem is that he didn’t have the skill or experience to play for the first team squad, and he also had a horribly depressed and negative personality. I went into the market to buy any Chinese goalkeeper I could find — and, well, I accidentally bought about 60 of them. I originally purchased the then 31-year-old Teng Shangkun, thinking that he’d be our first choice goalkeeper. We got him for 1.5 million RMB, which seemed like a relative bargain. However, we then picked up Li Changyi and Liu Shaoziyang, rendering Teng Shangkun (and a number of other goalkeepers) useless. He wound up joining Shijiazhuang on a free transfer. We’ll see if this comes back to haunt us or not. My scouts have assured me that Teng Shangkun is nothing to be concerned about. Still, you never know. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 12, 2023 Author Share Posted April 12, 2023 I’m Glad I Sold You! Shijiazhuang goalkeeper Teng Shangkun, a former signing of mine, vowed in the press to make me regret getting rid of him. At first I thought his wish would come true. We played poorly at the start of this match. It took a great strike by Younes Delfi to finally put us on the board, about 23 minutes into things. Delfi scored again in the 36th minute, and Abrefa finished things off in the 86th minute with his third goal. It wasn’t a completely dominating victory, but it was good enough. Shijiazhuang managed 5 shots on goal against our 25. We won the possession battle, but only just barely, eking out a relatively miserable 51%. I thought I’d be cute, and decided to play Rovaglia and Jeong Sang-Bin together up front, with Delfi on the left wing and Mueanta on the right. Mueanta had yet another quiet game. Jeong Sang-Bin and Rovaglia didn’t team up well together. Delfi seems to be the only one capable of scoring around here. I don’t think this is a huge problem. Shijiazhuang are in 4th place in the league, and are actually a pretty good team. We’re not playing those weak Second Division sides anymore, after all. Still, I wish we were dominating these matches the way we once were. The Injury Crisis Jeong Sang-Bin was injured in that match. That makes our sixth injury so far. The press is playing this up as a big crisis. It actually isn’t such a big deal. Jeong Sang-Bin will be out for about 5 weeks — but, then again, we’ve only got 3 matches in October because of international matches. I see it as a good chance for our young Chinese players to get some valuable game time. I just hope we don’t lose. Month In Review It’s that time of the month again. Our finances aren’t looking so hot. We’re about 34 million RMB in the red, largely a consequence of the 180 million RMB in tax payments we had to make. I was snooping around the other day, looking at some of the transfers in the Chinese Super League. I realized that Beijing spent almost 900 million RMB on players. They must have an unlimited bank balance to be able to afford all of those taxes. The tax is simple: 100% of whatever you paid for any player that exceeds 20 million RMB. In other words, if you buy a major star, you’ve got to pay for him twice. Now you can see why I’m so focused on getting young players for cheap and developing them myself. The fans, of course, aren’t on board with that transfer philosophy, and have given me a C- for my efforts. They do seem somewhat pleased with our match performance, which is kind of a surprise after that lost to Wuhan the other day. The board is a bit more concerned about our match performance, and seems more pessimistic in general. Now, Chairman Guo does have the financial power to get us out of this hole, but he never seems to be around when I want to talk with him. He always seems to be on some jet going to some crazy place here or there. I prefer staying home, but to each his own. Our squad cohesion is still average. Eiran Cashin has become a highly influential player, and will likely be recognized as team leader by the time the year is over. Pak Myong-Song might join him on the top of the food chain. The fans simply adore Pak Myong-Song, even though we all know that Lee Jin-Yong is the pretty boy. I’ve got a feeling that our North Korean fullback will probably stay with this club until the end of his career. Jinan We’re playing in Shandong province again, this time against Jinan Xingzhou. This is a good match to play the kids in. We should win this one easily. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 13, 2023 Author Share Posted April 13, 2023 Jinan Xingzhou We were extremely good in this match. Rovaglia got 2 goals and 2 assists, and Mueanta complemented him with a hat trick. We wound up winning 6-1. Jinan’s only goal came on a penalty in the 93rd minute — and Liu Shaoziyang came within inches of saving it. It looks like we’re unstoppable. No matter how many players are injured, no matter what happens to morale, we always seem to win. I actually think we’re better this year than we were last year. Shanghai Jiading Huilong You know we’re playing an obscure club next. You can tell by how long its name is. This Shanghai team is nestled in 19th place, and are expected to be relegated. I’m guessing that we’ll steamroll right over them. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 14, 2023 Author Share Posted April 14, 2023 Business As Usual It was a win, but it was a quiet win. The highlight was Pietro Rovaglia scoring two goals. He had a good performance. The rest of the team was relatively mediocre in this one. We beat Shanghai Jiading Huilong 3-0, but we didn’t look all that convincing in our victory. Even our fans didn’t seem to think much of it. We only had about 16,000 bother to show up, which isn’t a great sign. I want to see us attracting around 22,000 or more each game. It was cold, I’ll give you that. It was -4 celsius, which is a bit on the cold side for mid-October — even in Yanji. Huge Match I’m sure our fans will care about this next one. We’ve been in second place due to our loss to Wuhan Changjiang. And now we get to face the team that lies in first place. We’re going west to Shaanxi to face Shaanxi Chang’an. The oddsmakers think that we’re slight favorites to win this one. I’m worried about another loss, unless we can get more offense than we had in our last match. We’ll see how this goes. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 15, 2023 Author Share Posted April 15, 2023 The Battle for First Place! I really felt the pressure in this one. We went way out to Shaanxi in the west to face Shaanxi Changan, who happen to be the only team ahead of us in the standings. And we completely demolished them. We scored 3 goals in quick succession in the first half, and let Shaanxi try to play catch up. They didn’t do very well, even though they won the possession battle. We had 23 shots to their 6. They wound up passing the ball aimlessly around for long stretches of the match, whereas we initiated strong and quick attacks every single time we had the ball. Suphanat Muenata chimed in with two goals, the second coming in the 92nd minute to make it a 4-0 route. The biggest question for us now is not whether we can win this league or not. Rather, the question is whether Mueanta, Rovaglia, or Delfi should be thought of as our best offensive player. All three are simply incredible, and I feel very blessed to have them all on the same team at the same time. Rovaglia won the Player of the Month award for October, so I guess he gets the nod for the time being. Both Mueanta and Delfi have scored more goals this season, however. Oh - and I just so happened to win Manager of the Month. Not too bad! Chairman Guo’s Cash Well, we’re not doing all that well financially. That tax bill in the transfer window really hurt us. I mean, it hurt us really badly. Losing out early on in the Conference League didn’t help things much, either. Thankfully, though, we’ve got Uncle Moneybags on our side. Chairman Guo didn’t say much to me, as usual. He blew a bit of cigar smoke in my face as I sat in his office, gave a cackle of a laugh, and told me that he’d take care of our financial problems. And, just like that, we wound up with 182 million RMB more in the bank. It’s not going to last long, unfortunately. At least I know we won’t have to sell players to balance the books. Chairman Guo did take the time to tell me that the board have been happy with our performances so far. They are a bit worried about some of the less expensive loan deals we’ve made for our unused players, though I think that will improve in future years. They’re also delighted that we beat Shandong in the first round of the Chinese FA Cup. The fans are also happy, though they think my transfers stink. But they don’t know anything. We’re building up for the future, not just trying to sign expensive players today. Meanwhile, our squad’s cohesion is slowly improving. More of our players are becoming influential, and more of the “others” are joining our core social group. I think the only weakness in this team is in defense, and I’ve got a feeling that we’ve got some good youngsters who need more game time to prove themselves. Life is going quite well. Guangxi Pingguo Hailiao We’re back at home for this one, taking on Guangxi Pingguo Hailiao. They’re a poor side, and we’re on a big winning streak. We should be able to win this one without any problems, even if we do start a few untried youngsters. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 15, 2023 Author Share Posted April 15, 2023 The Kids Are Alright Yeah, we beat Guangxi. They didn’t put up much of a fight. Just as I was hoping, we had a few goals from unexpected players. Patrik Gustavsson, the Thai international of Swedish heritage, scored a goal in the 24th minute, and added on two assists. There’s a good argument for him to be our starting right attacking winger. The only reason I can think of starting anybody else at the moment is if we want to get Mueanta or Delfi in with two big strikers. Miguel Sandberg, our Taiwanese international who is also of Swedish heritage, contributed a goal of his own in the 5th minute. And Yan Dawei, a very young Chinese right back who is probably the long-term replacement for Pak Myong-Song, chimed in with a goal of his own in the 57th minute. Jeong Sang-Bin scored one in the 53rd minute as well. He’s back from spending about 5 weeks on the injured list. We’re doing well, and we didn’t even have to start any of our really big names in this one. New Faces There are two more new Chinese kids to introduce you to, both of whom made their first team debuts for us against Guangxi. Once they are done, you’ve effectively met the entire first team squad, except for our 15-year-old emergency backup goaltender. Shi Xu is a 16 year old defensive midfielder who hails from Shanghai. We picked Shi Xu up over the summer from Shanghai Shenxin, who are firmly planted in the Second Division South. He cost us a cool 1.35 million RMB, which is an indication of his raw talent. Shi Xu has trained extremely well lately, has an excellent personality, and is quite versatile. He’s not necessarily a great offensive player at this point, but he is quite brave, which means he’ll show up when other players will shy away. Our other new face is Chen Jun, a 17-year-old centerback from Beijing. We picked Chen Jun up for free from Beijing University over the summer. Free is a pretty good price no matter how he does. He can jump well and has good talent in the air, even though he’s not exactly the tallest at 185 centimeters. He does need to speed up a bit to play effectively at this level, though I’d argue that having a slow centerback isn’t really the end of the world. Suzhou Dongwu It’s time for more rotation. We’re heading to Suzhou, the Venice of the East, and one of my favorite cities in all of China. We’re going to win this match pretty much no matter what. I know I’m not supposed to look too far ahead, but my eyes are firmly fixed on our Chinese FA Cup match against Tianjin, which will come 4 days after this one. We need to keep our big stars fresh for that. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted April 16, 2023 Share Posted April 16, 2023 185cm is pretty tall for an Asian! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel Evensen Posted April 16, 2023 Author Share Posted April 16, 2023 14 hours ago, BenArsenal said: 185cm is pretty tall for an Asian! Yeah, it's not bad - though you do get some tall people from northeast China. Li Changyi, our backup goalkeeper, is something like 190, if I remember right... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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