[FMT 21] - Following in the footsteps of Guy Roux

[Muttley84]

Guy Roux is a legendary manager, not only in French football but across Europe. This is both his really long sting with Auxerre, building them up from the lower divisions of French football, but also for his willingness to build teams by nurturing young talents and his hands-on approach. A native of Colmar, Roux played for AJ Auxerre between 1954 and 1957 and became player-manager of the then Division d'Honneur (4th level) club in 1961 (when he was only 23 years old) to become its living legend and symbol. In 1970 Auxerre got promoted to the Division 3 League, and Roux retired as a player. In 1974 Auxerre got promoted again, this time to Division 2. With Roux in charge the team made it to a Coupe de France final in 1979 and progressed to Division 1 in 1980. Roux retired from managing Auxerre in June 2005. At the end of his career as Auxerre manager, Roux led Auxerre through about 2,000 games, including a European record of 890 top-flight league matches (I will be not aiming for this).

The premise of this career is simple -  emulate what Guy Roux did and build a small club taking it to the top of French football. Given this is played on FM Touch 21 (yeah, I am that far behind), I don't have the option of picking from the 4th level clubs. What am I going to do instead is to simulate one or two years in advance, and pick one of the clubs which is newly promoted to the 3rd level (Championnat National 1) - having the conditions in mind: (i) The club was never in the professional leagues before (that is Ligue 1 and Ligue 2), (ii) The club comes from a city with under 30.000 inhabitants (that's roughly how big Auxerre was in the 60s) which is not found in the influence area of a bit metropole or larger city, (iii) Their kits are showing in-game (there are some teams with errors in this respect in the National 2). 

With that in mind, I will try to achieve the following objectives at the club I pick:
- Turn the club professional.
- Promote to Ligue 2.
- Promote to Ligue 1.
- Put a strong emphasis on regional and youth talent (will elaborate on this later).
- Win 4 Coupe de France trophies.
- Win 1 Ligue 1 trophy. 
- Have a player with more than 351 league apps (Fabien Col for Auxerre).
- Have a player with more than 94 league goals (Andrzej Szarmach for Auxerre).
- Sell a player for more than 27.3M Euro (Djibril Cisse sold by Auxerre).

Hopefully I will find a fun team to play with (and not do a lot of simulating for getting that club) and I can stick long enough in this for achieving at least half of the objectives I mentioned before. 

[Muttley84]

The club search has begun. As mentioned before I am going to be simulating one/two season in FMT21 and pick up a club promoted to 3rd division which: never been professional, comes from a city under 30k inhabitants and has a working kit in the graphics pack. I actually added another criteria to this, which is the club having a decently short name (won't like playing with someone like Saint-Pryvé Saint-Hilaire Football Club). So I've spent the past hours googling clubs found in National 2 in the 2020-21 season (one that in real life was shortened by COVID to just 8/9 games and nobody got promoted in the end). After applying all the criteria I've come up with a shortlist of clubs which are suitable for my self-imposed challenge, and they come from the following footballing regions (because not all of them are administratively in the region):
- Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes - GFA Rumilly-Vallières 74 
- Bourgogne-Franche-Comté - Jura Sud Football
- Bretagne - Stade Plabennécois Football & Les Voltigeurs de Châteaubriant
- Normandie - Union Sportive Granvillaise
- Nouvelle-Aquitaine - Bergerac Périgord Football Club, Stade Montois Football & Trélissac Football Club
Now we just have to start simulating seasons and see which of these clubs emerge first in the new promoted clubs (might take a while as looking through the initial database they all seem to have pretty low reputations). I have no personal preferences as I've already did the selection before to come up with this 8 clubs shortlists, but according to the club we get, we might or might not go for a regional approach also. That would be easy to implement in regions such as Bretagne and Rhone-Alpes, but might be a bit challenging in Bourgogne per example. 

[Ronaldo Beckham]

2 hours ago, Muttley84 said:

The club search has begun. As mentioned before I am going to be simulating one/two season in FMT21 and pick up a club promoted to 3rd division which: never been professional, comes from a city under 30k inhabitants and has a working kit in the graphics pack. I actually added another criteria to this, which is the club having a decently short name (won't like playing with someone like Saint-Pryvé Saint-Hilaire Football Club). So I've spent the past hours googling clubs found in National 2 in the 2020-21 season (one that in real life was shortened by COVID to just 8/9 games and nobody got promoted in the end). After applying all the criteria I've come up with a shortlist of clubs which are suitable for my self-imposed challenge, and they come from the following footballing regions (because not all of them are administratively in the region):
- Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes - GFA Rumilly-Vallières 74 
- Bourgogne-Franche-Comté - Jura Sud Football
- Bretagne - Stade Plabennécois Football & Les Voltigeurs de Châteaubriant
- Normandie - Union Sportive Granvillaise
- Nouvelle-Aquitaine - Bergerac Périgord Football Club, Stade Montois Football & Trélissac Football Club
Now we just have to start simulating seasons and see which of these clubs emerge first in the new promoted clubs (might take a while as looking through the initial database they all seem to have pretty low reputations). I have no personal preferences as I've already did the selection before to come up with this 8 clubs shortlists, but according to the club we get, we might or might not go for a regional approach also. That would be easy to implement in regions such as Bretagne and Rhone-Alpes, but might be a bit challenging in Bourgogne per example. 

Looking forward to seeing who you pick.

I had a look at these teams and really liked Union Sportive Granvillaise's home kit colours.

Edited August 29, 2023 by Ronaldo Beckham

[Muttley84]

After a lot of reloading and simulating seasons in France we finally got an eligible club - I present you Bergerac Perigord Football Club, commonly known as Bergerac. This is a football club founded in 1916 in Bergerac, Dordogne, Nouvelle-Aquitane, the club's home ground is the Stade de Campréal (2550 places). What's interesting historically the club started out as les Enfants de France Bergerac (EFB) - roughly Children of France Bergerac, which is very similar to Association de la Jeunesse Auxerroise - Youths Association Auxerre, underlining the core value of the club of promoting youth from within and not only.

For our manager I went with a generic 23 yrs old French Guy, born in Mont-de-Marsan (still in Nouvelle Aquitane) and with no special background as a football manager. The club benefits besides the 2550 stadium of Basic training facilities, Poor youth facilities, Basic Youth Recruitment. This is pretty much a clean plate for us to work with, but we should be very careful in the beginning, as we are predicted to finish last in the league. We do have 260 ticket holders (~10% of the stadium) and the board request isn't that much of a surprise - Fight bravely against relegation while Working within the wage budget (which is around 730k yearly at the season start). The club culture in game is - Strive to make progress on and off the pitch, and I can live with that.

[Muttley84]

As usual in FM Touch I only get one staff member in each area. This is the starting lineup of people who should help us implement our coaching philosophy at Bergerac. Not great, not terrible as some might say, but we are going to stick with them at least for this season - we lack both the funds and reputation to attract much better staff. In addition, us being a semi-professional club doesn't help a lot in that direction either. So the staff will be revised next spring close to season end, when we get a clear idea of both our survival in the league and financial possibilities for the upcoming season.

[Muttley84]

The Regional Approach

In the past edition I have lost motivation on doing "regular" careers and almost always searched for added challenges in playing. The latest on the list is the "regional challenge" - which means achieving success with only players produced in a certain region (smaller and bigger). Already tried this before (and failed mostly in Tuscany, Lombardy, Lisbon, Yorkshire or Bretagne), but in FMT21 (sadly I am still on that game) I will give it another go, and try to achieve success by using mostly/only players from Nouvelle-Aquitane (haven't decided on this on the long term) players born in our region.

From a footballing point of view it should be a harder challenge than the others, as despite being a big region Nouvelle-Aquitane only hosts a handful of big clubs who can produce decent players on the long term. We have the obvious big fish in the pond, which is Bordeaux, and some smaller fishes such as Niort or Pau, but beyond that... mostly smaller clubs in the 4th and 5th divisions.

Given the small database I have loaded in Touch (to make the save smaller and allow me to cross-play between the work and home computers), I am curious to see if the region produces enough quality players for my advancement. At the moment I have used a filter for the 69 localities found in-game in Nouvelle-Aquitane and the results returned roughly 150 players, with the top of the pick being those in the screenshot below. 

[Hootieleece]

Your manager for this club should be named Cyrano de Bergerac! 

[Muttley84]

3 hours ago, Hootieleece said:

Your manager for this club should be named Cyrano de Bergerac! 

True 😆 Yeah I've check for people born in the region, but wanted to stay true to the storyline, Guy Roux was an unknown guy when he arrived at Auxerre.

[Muttley84]

Despite what usually happens in FM Touch we do have a healthy number of players. Usually after simulating a season newly promoted sides were sitting around 15-18 players, but we now have between the first team and reserves over 30 players. That would be enough to play the entire season without making any new transfers. there a hefty number of players which are without contract or whose contract is expiring in 10 days (league reset date in France is June 20th, contracts expiring in June 30). That is a blessing in disguise as we can already use that to clear the squad a bit without financial costs (per example Laborde-Turon is the best Gk at the club, but he's on high salary and injured for 7 months, I aint gonna keep him in the reserves that long). I do feel we have an already decent core set of players, but do need the training and friendlies to evaluate their actual level (the stars are fooling no one at the moment).

Another positive aspect worth mentioning for our challenge is that 16 of the players at the club are eligible as being born in Neuvelle-Aquitane, so when we make the decision which ones to keep and which ones to let go, they will have precedence (unless the "foreign" is much more better). We also have some decent players in the reserves (see below), and all those over 20 yrs old are going to be promoted to the first team, where we will assess in the friendlies their role at the club. I want to leave in the Reserves just young players - although at the moment we have nobody with significant potential). In case you didn't knew, this is all I get in FM Touch 21, just a Reserve team, No U21 or U18/19. Probably will be a long way till we make some impact there anyways.

 

[Muttley84]

Guy Roux was never know as a tactical mastermind or genius shifting with tactics and innovating. He is more known for work ethics and discipline. Actually most of his career (which is a pretty damn long one) was spent playing with a 4-3-3 formation. Of course that across the years there were some variations according to the patterns of the decade (like when in the 80' he was playing with a libero behind, or in his second stint at the club switched more towards a 4-5-1). There are not a lot of information about the tactics of Auxerre across the years, although you can find some information here and here. I will try to emulate this as much as I can in my career, so will be confident across all the story - hover long it may be - to using some basic tactics, and I prepared two variations of the 4-3-3 formation. Both have 4 man at the back, 2 in the middle and 3 upfront. The only difference between them is the deployment of the 3rd midfielder, who will be either a DM or AM according to our rooster and strength of opponent.

In the end I will leave you with this beautiful (yet very subjective) best ever formation of Auxerre under Guy Roux. I tried to pick the best players for this 4-3-3, though I might have shifted some positions (Laslandes was mainly a central striker, Dutuel played a bit lower down the midfield) or missed on some known players (like  Guivarc'h or Boumsong per example). 

[Muttley84]

We had a series of friendlies already arranged by our staff before my arrival at the club, mostly against lower league opposition from the region or nearby. Do not care to much about the results per see, as we struggled to find what each player is capable of bringing to the table. We rotated a lot and even brought in some new players (more on that on a latter post). Tried to implement the formation and see where we needed to bring new players.

[Muttley84]

We ended the transfer window with five new transfers in. They are all players born in Nouvelle Aquitane, and we didn't payed a single cent for them: 4 free transfers and a loan. The most important is the arrival of Mathieu Iribarnegaray (surely with Basque roots by the name) who will be our new Gk, Medhi Feqrache will play on the left attacking wing, while Pierre Ducasse and Kevin Clave are option for the middle of the pitch and defense. They are all 4 slight options on our players already at the club. Mike Vicent is a 18 yrs old prospect who I brought as a 3rd Gk and will be moved straight into the reserves. We released a number of players when they contract expired (but for some reason they are not showing on this screen - probably they are counted towards the pas season activity?).

[Muttley84]

A nice season debut as we mixt results: 3 wins (Goal FC, Gazelec Ajaccio and Rodez), one bore draw (Concarneau) and two defeats (Grenoble and Boulogne). I am very pleased with us getting 10 points out of the first 6 games, that s a percentage more fit for the upper half of the table not the relegation battle. But let's just don't get ahead of ourselves, it's still early in the season.  bit worrying that we only attract 500+ people at home games, was hoping for a little more but maybe attendance will increase in the season. Not like it matters that much, finances are always a mess in the lower league, but hoping for a good cup run to cover a bit of the losses.

[Muttley84]

This is how we are performing so far in the league, in comparation to the others. Probably the bottom line is, we defend much better than we attack. We are one of the worse in the league at creating chances and one of the best in not giving away goals. We also have more than decent passing, so I guess its something we can build on for the rest of the season.

Edited September 1, 2023 by Muttley84

[Muttley84]

As mentioned before we only get a Reserves team that play with other reserves teams in a special league. On one hand, this is not realistic at all, as pretty much reserves teams actually playing in the lower leagues of the actual football pyramid (like National 2 or 3). On the other hand, this is actually helpful for us, as at least the Reserves have matches all season and I don't need to schedule loads of friendlies to give them youth prospects game time. Not the case at the moment anyway, as we don't own any real youth prospects in reserves, and we only have 5 players there, so no wonder we are dead last. Bordeaux top the league and we are also their affiliate (just for them having the first option of buying players from us).

[Muttley84]

We continue our good run of results in October, with 8 points out of the 5 league games. It is true that we still struggle scoring, only scored 1 in 5 games and just 2 in the other. These results are enough though to keep us in the upper side of the mid-table, just two points off a play-off place. We also managed (with much luck) to sneak past the round of the french cup. 

[Muttley84]

A huge win for us in the French Cup, sure against a lower league club, followed by the disappointment of finding out how much money we actually got for the win - 1.5k Euro.  

[Muttley84]

Another good month, actually the best yet, where we actually managed to score some goals. We won all three games in the league without conceding a single goal, and we also progressed two rounds in the cup. It is true that the draw so far been pretty good to us, only meeting lower league clubs. That was enough to get us our first A+ rating from the board, and things are looking good at Bergerac. I think we can put our relegation worries behind us and actually think about the upper part of the table, and maybe even promotion.

Edited September 2, 2023 by Muttley84

[Muttley84]

Probably not going to get much from the youth intake, both in numbers and in quality. Our level is so low we shouldn't expect to produce any world beaters, but still a couple of decent players would be nice to start constructing a local backbone in the squad.

[Muttley84]

A quieter December as we only had three games, two in the league and one in the cup, and somehow managed to win them all. We actually were the weaker team against both Le Mans and Chartres but somehow managed to sneak past them. Just two weeks of holidays vacation now, with the next match being scheduled on January 1st.

[Muttley84]

Oh crap, we lost our assistant manager to Le Mans who sure is a much bigger club and can pay better, but are actually in the same division as us and sitting below us. Oh well, good riddance, I guess we start the search for a new one (though at this point I am tempted to just place a job advert and wait for the CVs).

[Muttley84]

I guess that six months were enough to convince the board I am the right man for the job, so they gave me a new contract. Nothing spectacular, but nice being tied another two years with the club, with the same club culture of striving to make progress on and off the pitch. As long as we stick within the wage budget anything we get as results will come in as bonus and that should help us solidify our long-term vision for the club.

[Muttley84]

The cup run was good while it lasted, and in the end we actually got some money out of it (think it was like 100k for the win against Gazelec in 10th round), but once we were faced with a top team we could not compete. So we exit in the 11th round (which is decent enough) after losing 3-0 against Ligue 1 club Angers, in front of the biggest crowd we saw this season at Bergerac - 2234 spectators. In the league we won three games, but we were completely annihilated at Grenoble, losing 6-1, the worst defeat in this career so far. Somehow after 20 games we managed to sneak into first place in the league, but its pretty tight at the top, with at least other 5 clubs (Laval, Rodez, Grenoble, Concarneau and Le Mans) battling for the 2 direct promotion spots and the 3rd place which goes to the play-offs. 

[Muttley84]

We still defend better that we attack, don't know if it is due to my tactics or the quality of the players we have upfront. End of season analysis will have to look very serious into this difference for us.

[Muttley84]

Got 7 points out of the 4 games in February, but that was enough to keep us first in the table, still pretty tight at the top. Big last 10 games coming up, if we can hang in there we might get an unbelievable promotion sooner than expected.

[Muttley84]

This is the intake we got this season. As expected from the preview earlier in the season there are no world beaters in this. And we only got 4 players in the intake (which not that extraordinary when we talk about FM Touch). Still, will sign them for the reserves and see how they develop as they are young enough, who knows what happens next season, but by the look of it they don't seem to be getting more chances in the future.

[Muttley84]

It was enough to have a slightly poor month and we slipped down the table. In March we only won one game, draw two and lost one. And we find ourselves now 4th in the league (outside even of the playoff place). We are 3 points behind the top two, so therefore anything can happen with still six more games left in the championship. Fingers crossing we finish in good style...

[Muttley84]

We played two more games - so only four left in the league so far. Nothing decisive has happened, anyone can promote or miss promotion. Its between Grenoble, Rodez, us and Laval. And we all pretty much have the same schedule (pretty easy). The key element is this battle for us will be the home game against Le Mans, if we win that one following a hopefully slip-up of Rodez at Laval we can maybe jump to the second place. If we lose that one we might even lose 3rd as Le Mans is just 4 points between us. Oh, nail-biting end of the season.

[Muttley84]

We finish the season in style, winning all the league games till the end. Not only did we gain promotion, but in the end we managed to win the league also. Finished with 72 points and Rodez is going to join us in the Ligue  2. Grenoble slipped in the end with 2 draws and therefore is only going to fight in the playoff for the last promotion place. It is a pretty unbelievable achievement for a newly promoted club, and I cannot take that much credit - we selected just standard tactics and made use of the players at the club. End of season review to follow soon. 

[Muttley84]

Good news as the next day after winning promotion the club turned professional. This is good news and one of the objectives of the career, but in the same time we should be careful on how we go with the contracts in order to not put to much burden on the finances. The Board has also set the initial budgets for the following season, which is 1.35M in salaries and 1.93M in transfer. Most likely we will be shifting much of the transfer money into salaries and try to attract free transfers and maybe loans. 1.35 salary just doesn't seem enough to survive in Ligue 2, so a lot of work to be done this summer to strengthen the squad considering the limited options of players from Nouvelle-Aquitane. Also, as we achieved promotion, despite me signing a new contract just a couple of months back, the club has already offered me a New Contract, which extends my stay to 3 years and also set the objective of Fighting bravely against relegation from Ligue 2. Exciting times ahead and a lot of work during the summer.

[Muttley84]

I guess it's true what they say, that attackers gain the public and defenders win the championships - this pretty much sums up what kind of team we were this season.

[Muttley84]

This is the best eleven of the players who brought promotion to Bergerac. One can notice firstly that thy are all players contracted to the club, although some of them are getting old and surely not Ligue 2 quality. Mehdi Feqrache was top scorer with 15 (and so glad we signed him at the beginning of the season) while most assists came from Victor Elissalt (8). It was another fresh signing of us Mathieu Iribarnegaray who was very important in our defensive performance, while the fans player of the season was Hicham M'Laab (who I have checked and is also in real life one of the most important players of the club - wearing the #10 jersey). 

We only managed to fill on average 67% of our small stadium. Our merchandise sales were a joke (7.65k for the entire season - 96 shirts sold), together with other sources of revenues (125k sponsorship, 30k match day commercial and retail or 11k from corporate and hospitality), We got 186k out of prize money. 

[Muttley84]

The board decision of constructing a new stadium is not the kind of decision I would have liked to see in this summer. Much more I would have preferred if we made just a small upgrade or even play for a season in a stadium nearby, than this. There are two reasons of my dislike for the new stadium: firstly is on obscene money considering our club stature, 10M is just huge for a small club like us and secondly I am unsure if it doesn't affect our possibility of having a decent stadium when (if) we reach Ligue 1. No sure how much this new stadium can be expanded, but would be hurtful if we cannot expand it or build a new one. Oh, anyways, still a long way to go till we get there, now just curious if this new stadium plans will go ahead an where we will play in the new season.

[Carambau]

Congratulations on Promotion! Step one taken  Turning Professional... Step Two taken  

Edited September 6, 2023 by Carambau

[Muttley84]

Some more upgrades of the club. First just a disclaimer, in FM Touch these things are even more out of the control of the manager than in the full version. Per example I had no role in choosing the feeder affiliate club. The management did a smart choice there, picking a local Nouvelle-Aquitane club - Trelissac (not sure how helpful that is on the long run as they are in the unplayable leagues at the moment, but maybe if they get promoted to National 1 we can send some players on loan there). Also, the scouting range was upgraded to continental level (not very helpful considering we only want players from the region). We also received the announcement that we will get ~5M for the TV rights of Ligue 2.

[Muttley84]

This is the group of players with which we will attack the first season of our club in Ligue 2. We made over 10 Transfers in while spending 425k (on average paying 30-50k for a player, while we also had 2 free transfers in and 1 loan in). We put the rest of the transfer money in the wage budget. It is worth underlining that all the players brought in this summer are born in the Neuvelle-Aquitane region, so we are a step close in achieving a full squad of players from the region. We are now struggling with transferring out the players which are unwanted, but it would seem that no one wants them (not even on free transfers), so we will explore options such as mutual termination of contracts or loans. For those who won't leave they will be put in the reserves together with the youth intake. With some spare change we have I am now looking at bringing 3-5 very young players (16-17) with decent potential to see if we can nurture them into the first team or sell them for profit. 

[Muttley84]

The friendlies did not go out as planned this summer, as we were pretty poor across games. But I hope that is only due to the high number of changes occurring in our team and never lining up the same formation, although we did not faced any top clubs. But we need to pick things up, and do it fast, as the official games are starting next week with a visit to Caen. Hopefully we will recover fast. 

[Muttley84]

We signed another striker and that is the highest wage we are paying at the club at the moment. 239k per year is not much compared to the big boys, but represents a significant upgrade for a club to make in a single summer, from a part-time club to a professional one. Just hoping we can now make a transition year in which to stabilize as a Ligue 2 club.

[Carambau]

Rocheteau should be a good striker, going by the name. Is he the son of Dominique Rocheteau maybe? 

[Muttley84]

We started the season with a draw away at Caen, which gave us hope. That was fast reduced by the following two losses - at home to Rodez and away at Amiens. The first win of the season came at home to Le Havre,  clear and well deserved 2-0, followed by another draw against Paris FC. Five points out of five games is a decent start for a team predicted to finish dead last.

[Muttley84]

4 minutes ago, Carambau said:

Rocheteau should be a good striker, going by the name. Is he the son of Dominique Rocheteau maybe? 

It would seem that it is not "S’il avait touché un euro à chaque fois qu’on lui demande s’il a un lien de parenté avec « L’Ange Vert », Dominique Rocheteau, le Dunkerquois aurait pu louer tous les kiosques de la plage de Malo, cet été. « On a dû me le demander des milliers de fois », s’amuse l’attaquant. Le joueur de l’USLD est né en Charente-Maritime, comme l’ex-Stéphanois, mais aucun lien de famille." - from here.

[Carambau]

4 minutes ago, Muttley84 said:

It would seem that it is not "S’il avait touché un euro à chaque fois qu’on lui demande s’il a un lien de parenté avec « L’Ange Vert », Dominique Rocheteau, le Dunkerquois aurait pu louer tous les kiosques de la plage de Malo, cet été. « On a dû me le demander des milliers de fois », s’amuse l’attaquant. Le joueur de l’USLD est né en Charente-Maritime, comme l’ex-Stéphanois, mais aucun lien de famille." - from here.

Nice 

At least both were born in the same departement  

And an ok start into the season! 5 points in 5 games is respectable!

Edited September 7, 2023 by Carambau

[Muttley84]

Just three matches in September but a very good performance as we got 6 points out of them. Both victories were close ones, 2-1 at home to Grenoble (in a matchup of newly promoted teams) and a surprisingly win 1-0 away at Orleans. Of course, we got destroyed away at Dijon, but we will have to learn to suffer this season also.

[Muttley84]

We had a hard reality check in October, getting a single point (following a 0-0 draw at home to Sochaux) from the five league games. Following loses with Valenciennes, Toulouse, Guingamp and Clermont, we are 16th in the league, just one point ahead of the play-out place. Oh guess, I guess we were expected to battle relegation, that start we ha probably gave us false hopes about how good we really are for Ligue 2.

[Muttley84]

As the first team is struggling in Ligue 2 the Reserves team is struggling in their league also. True, they have a bit more success, as we managed between the rejects of the first team who couldn't be sold or loaned, the youth prospects transferred in this summer and the youth intakes to actually developed a playing squad. Still not sure how the reserves leagues work, as with 3 wins and 4 draws we have ... 23 points! Will need to read more carefully the rules and also to keep track of the youth evolution, as we are looking to copy the Auxerre model of developing a strong youth academy promoting players for the first team (and not only for ours). 

[Muttley84]

It was critical that we didn't lose the regional derby with Niort, and we did just that, winning it 2-1. We followed with a tight lost game at home to Nancy, before winning with lots of luck against Chambly, in the 92 minute from a contested penalty. This is enough to keep up above the relegation places as we enter into a busy month of December. 

[Muttley84]

Not looking good for the next youth intake at all. But I guess that was to be expected, still some years till we can produce our own, we will need to rely on poaching from other clubs now.

[Muttley84]

My first offer from another club, but even if I did not have a long-term project here at Bergerac, why would I be leaving Ligue 2 relegation battle to step down to National 1 relegation battle?

[Muttley84]

Decent in the cup run, below mediocre in the league run. That pretty much sums up our December, where we only won the cup games, the second one against Rodez on penalties. In the league only three draws and two loses to make us sit 16th in the league as we passed the half of the season. Fingers crossed for the second part and maintaining our place above the relegation spots.

[Muttley84]

Ups, that is not good. Although to be honest, we were not planning for big moves this winter transfer window. Hopefully this gets sorted out as soon as possible.