TheNapalmNerd

Golden times at the board.

I had to threaten with leaving the club to get this...

Our loan farm: I've gone out and spent my budget on younger players every season and they're finally joining the club. We don't have space for all of them in our sqaud and their progress is better administered elsewhere. In three seasons time we should be able to go through the Champions League group stages if these players continue to grow prosperous. We've got many more coming in in the future..

We're once again in the market for a new keeper: Linde will be 32 at the start of the next season and with a record fee incoming, I thought we should be able to replace him decently with a bosman player, and use this money on new talents. I'm having a dance on left two left feet with my board at the moment as they won't give me a higher transfer budget because we're losing money every month, even though we're up 12M euro this season.

My defenders are also rather slow and when they're set up against world class strikers they will be making mistakes, so I've spent a lot of my budget on new central defenders come summer: I'm pretty excited about Okoli. He should be able to tank most of the forwards coming at us.

Heartbreaking scenes: We FM'ed them big time and got a fantastic result in italy, only to find out Porto had beaten Atletico Madrid, securing their third position. Them feels though! With that our european campaign is over for this season and we'll be working our way through to the next qualification. We have a transfer window coming up, and I'm looking into potential replacements in the squad but so far, we'll just sit it out and see who turns up on the transfer list.

The difference one day makes! This Is who's available to us on the transfer list on November 30th And here we are on the 1st of december. Christmas is coming and I'll be looking into potential replacements up front and in defence. So far none of the players available seem like good options.

The win has given us a huge boost in reputation: This is the first time we've got one star reputation. It's a slow progress, but we're moving forward!

WE WIN!!! fantastic performance against Porto at home, great comeback and a relief when carraro scored the third goal! This means we actually have a chance of getting third place. We only just ahve to get a result against Milan... Still. This is wonderful. We've done well this season and a win is much more than I'd expected in this group.

I decided it was for the best to let him leave, as we have plenty of players in central midfield, and I want more consistency which we're not gonna get with him, as he'll be annoyed until he signs a bosman. We bought him for 500K, so a small loss, however we have 30% of profit from next sale, so I'm hoping his value will explode in Brazil.

Another loss We were actually on the edge of getting a result here. We've given away penalties in all four matches so far.

Palacios extends his contract! He's by far our best player in the squad, so this is a huge deal for us. We still have a few contracts to go though. Baldursson wants away and I made the stupid decision to promise him he could go if someone bid 1.7M. Tedic up front was signed on a free and I forgot I promised to get a fellow countryman in, and he wants to go as well. Baldursson is our best central midfielder, but we'll easily cope with losing him, so I might end up selling him anyways. Tedic will be missed, so we're gonna have to find a new striker or two. We've got youngsters coming in, but I'd rather lend them out to get some gametime and bigger progress.

7 We still have three matches left.

I miss the Europa League Another penalty given away at a crucial point of the game. We were not lucky with this group and we only have one home game left. I don't think we'll get anything away from home.

Loss in Portugal THey were just a better side than us. What worries me the most about this match is the continuing tendency to give away penalties in european matches.

Every cloud has a silver lining: "worth reading"

Our Champions League campaign is already a succes A draw at home against Milan, in a match where the teams were quite even, but every time we went ahead, they pegged back almost immediately. Great result though and chapeau to Gradit who took a red card by preventing a free run in the dying seconds of the match. the replacement, young Jose Mario, passed the ball back to Linde who was surrounded by two Milan players and my heart stopped in that second only for Linde to blast the ball out of the park.

Transfer deadline: Kill your darlings The summer transferwindow is over, and we've seen lots of changes in the squad. We've said goodbye to some of the players that were pivotal for our early succes in the game, and had new faces come in, to try and take us further. This has resulted in our starting 11 now looking like this: This means we've said goodbye to Michael Fabbro and Alex Lopez up front. Alex Lopez was responsible for our europa league quarter final in the second season where he scored 76 goals in 53 matches. 21 of those were in our european campaign. He's become a legend at the club. Alex Lopez has been replaced with Alex Millan, who is a younger faster version of Lopez: In midfield we're still going with Baldursson and Palacios even though their contracts are running out this season. Palacios doesn't want to renew his contract due to us not being big enough for his ambitions. Baldursson was upset by others bidding 200K euro. He agreed a price of 1,5M but has since been upset we rejected lower offers (all of them want us to pay half his wages). I think there's a chance Baldursson will renew his contract. With palacios we'll be keeping him and let his contract run our if we have european football after january. Otherwise we'll try to sell him. If we sell Baldursson it won't be the biggest loss, as we have taken in Kiernan Dewsbury Hall, who will be decent cover for both positions and might end up challenging for the starting 11 soon once he's fit: In defence we got in Denys Bain on a free transfer this summer. He's just better than Meroni in every way, so it was a no brainer, even though it's short term. We're still playing with Julien Serrano at left back and were on the lookout for a replacement, but we'll save that for January. In goal we have replaced Andrenacci with Andreas Linde. It just made sense as he's a much better and more experienced goalkeeper: Overall we're stronger in that position for now. He doesnt like big matches though. Let's hope he gets around that trait. He's bought for the big stages in europe. Still his stats would imply that he's better than Andrenacci, and he's already done enought to justify the 1.1M euro we paid for him. Those were the biggest updates for now. We might have a better squad, but i doubt it'll make any difference in our group. Unless of course they underestimate us, like we've seen happen earlier. We'll find out in a few weeks when we start at home vs. Milan

Our finances: With the latest injection, our economy is better than ever, so of course i've tried to get youth facilities and a higher transfer budget: We got the most important thing.

Well... Maybe we'd have been better off in the Europa League after all... It doesn't seem like we have much chance of progressing and I'm hoping we can at least get a draw in one of our homegames.