mpm2342

End of Season 8 (30/31) Analysis: The team average rating improved by 1.7, improving from 64 to 65.7 moving us closer to England Championship level(68.1 average). We actually declined a bit from mid season due to selling Glasnovic once the Champions league was pretty much finished. A few of the players also declined in ratings, not sure why and definitely something I need to figure out. Getting players with potential and actually growing them is likely the only path to get the target. Reminder that the rating for each of the leagues below is the average of the top 10 rating for each position across the entire league. The appropriate top 10 average for the positions in my tactic are then slotted into the chart and averaged across the 11 ratings. Only a few teams in each league would have a player in each position that ranks in the top 10, so by using this as a target, it provides a measure of when the raw attribute ratings of the team would position it near the top of the league being compared against. We all know that cohesion, morale, happiness etc. gives the human manager the edge, so when my team hits the rating for one of the leagues, I would expect it to be able to win, or at a minimum compete to win, the league. I have seen that team can successfully compete with most of the teams in a league above their rating. This means that once I can get the Lions to the ENG Champ level, we should be able to compete in the Champions League. We now have two positions at / above the target: Left Fullback and BWM. Castro at AP is on loan and leaving us and Dominguez at DLP decided to through a hissy fit mid season and the only way to keep him happy for the run was to agree to let him leave at the end of his contract. We did NOT get a reputation boost this past season even with the run in the Champions League and are still 2 stars, and unlikely to see many candidates at target level. As an example, I have only seen 3 GK with a SK rating of 60 or more and none of them are above 62 and none of them would previously talk to me about transfer or loan. Going to have to use loans and try and find some younger players (like Dominguez) who have potential to grow. I missed the opportunity to lock up Dominguez earlier, so my bad on that one, fortunately AM is a fairly strong position in general so I should be able to replace him. The only meaningful transfer out last season was Milivoj Glasnovic. Luis Castro and Afonso Lee are loans and won't re-up, so are leaving as is Dominguez.

End of the season and we won the league and domestic cups again. Not much drama this season even with a healthy dose of playing backups and youngsters.

UEFA Champions League Knock Out Play Off Round: Next up is Arsenal who play in the English Premier League. England is 1st in the nation club rankings and Arsenal are 18th in the club rankings. Given my unscientific assessment that we can compete with teams outside the top 20 in the rankings, this one might be close, but I really don't think we can play with them yet. I forgot to hit the simulate button, so had to play the first match.... They definitely had an edge on us, but we did keep it close. Next leg at their place and again, we kept it close. We were without out best player - Castro who was suspended, but still kept it close. Positive signs for next season if I can improve the squad in the next transfer window. BONUS! - we got 8.23M for playing in the knockout playoff round.

Our youth intake preview came in a while back. First time for a good rating and first time that everything wasn't an "F".... maybe there is hope for it

UEFA Champions League League Phase - Game 7: Next up is Barcelona who play in the Spanish First Division. Spain is 2nd in the nation club rankings and Barcelona is 1st in the club rankings. We are not ready for this yet, but hopefully can put on a good show. We lost as expected and never really threatened to score. UEFA Champions League League Phase - Game 8: Next up is Borussia Dortmund who play in the Bundesliga. Germany is 3rd in the nation club rankings and Borussia Dortmund are 11th in the club rankings. Don't think we can win this, so we will have our fingers crossed that we make it out of the league phase with 9 points. The score was closer than the game and it took two late goals for them to win. I am definitely happy with that performance,.. and we made the playoff round.

UEFA Champions League League Phase - Game 5: Next up is Bayer 04 who play in the Bundesliga. Germany is 3rd in the nation club rankings and Bayer 04 are 46th in the club rankings. I think we should have a chance given they are outside the top 20 and their squad is stronger, but not crazily so. Nice! A victory on the scoreboard and on the pitch. A narrow one in both regards, but it is a good demonstration of where the team is now. UEFA Champions League League Phase - Game 6: Next up is RC Lens who play in the Ligue 1 Uber Eats. France is 5th in the nation club rankings and RC Lens are 27th in the club rankings. We should have a chance against them as well. Would be very nice to get some points in back to back games, especially since we have Barcelona next. They beat us last time we played, but that was a long time ago. Another win! We are actually in a decent spot now to make it out of the league phase. Nice victory again with the stats showing a relatively even game on the pitch.

UEFA Champions League League Phase - Game 3: Next up is Chelsea who play in the English Premier League. England is 1st in the nation club rankings and Chelsea are 8th in the club rankings. We can only hope to keep this one close. The score is better than the match statistics say it should be, so I will take it. It does show we have a ways to go still. UEFA Champions League League Phase - Game 4: Next up is RB Leipzig who play in the Bundesliga. Germany is 3rd in the nation club rankings and RB Leipzig are 17th in the club rankings. We beat them in 2028 in the Europa League, but that was because they played their backups (same as Ajax did). I am not expecting that this time, so doubt we have much chance. This time the statistics were much close than the score. I would estimate from the results that we can compete with most teams except for the top 20ish in the world.

UEFA Champions League League Phase - Game 2: Next up is Ajax who play in the Eredivisie. Netherlands is 8th in the nation club rankings and Ajax are 43rd in the club rankings. We beat them in 2027 in the Europa League, but that was because they played their backups. I am not expecting that this time, so am expecting a very tough match. We lost, but when you consider that we went down a man in the 15th minute and the score was 2-2 from that point forward, the lads played very well and the team can compete.

UEFA Champions League League Phase - Game 1: First up is PAOK who play in the Greek Super League 1. Greece is 13th in the nation club rankings and PAOK are 92nd in the club rankings. This should be a close one that I think we have a chance in. They went down a man early and looks like they barely got the ball after that. We totally dominated them with the extra man.

UEFA Champions League Champions Path Playoff: The playoff round is a rematch of last season's playoff against Shakhtar from the Ukrainian Premier League. Ukraine is 15th in the Nation Club Coefficients and Shakhtar is 42nd in the European club rankings. Last season was a close round against them, so I feel we have a good shot at this one given our improvements from last season. First leg at home and a nice victory aided by them going a man down early. Taking a 2 goal advantage to the away leg is nice. Time to try and hold this one. I will use the more balanced variant of the tactic to try and slow it down slightly in the hopes of a victory. A draw is good enough to get us through. They out played us by enough to win the round based on XG, but the score game in our favour. I will take it as we are on to the League phase for the first time. League phase, here we come, but first there is the small matter of £12.7M deposited into the club's coffers for making the league phase. That should help with our budgets next season. I'm not expecting too much this time around as we are still just shy of our target overall to be competitive. The draw is out and we have a fun one... maybe we have a chance against PAOK? the rest of them are likely a bit much for us (unless of course they underestimate us and play backups)

Lots of roster changes in early August to catch up on. The vultures unsettled 3 of our players, Ferreira, Golliard and Rafael. All three went very unhappy and started to affect the team morale, so I sold them all. Made me a bit sad to let Golliard and Rafael go, but that's business. The team then got upset that I sold the players, so I told them to suck it up. They didn't like that and got madder, but once I apologized, everyone was happy again. I did sign some players to help out at GK, R FB and W, We already have Golliard's replacement on the squad. Got a new GK with a rating of 60.3, so a nice upgrade on Alonso. Chirivella is a strong DLP with a rating of 67 which helps close the gap to the target of 69.7. He will start with Dominguez getting lots of play time. Juninho is a backup winger with a rating of 63.1. Not as good as Rafael, but a solid backup for Abid and Vincent and fast, very fast. Our gap to target takes a slight hit from Rafael leaving. Trolez is on loan at Right FB with a rating of 59.5 and speed to burn. He will be the primary backup with lots of starts to the next player Waidner was an opportunistic signing after I already had Trolez, but with a rating of 61.3, he is a solid upgrade on Ferreira and gets us closer to the target. Current status of needs based on the Championship target: GK Gap: 2.6% - Roll with what we have for the season CD Gap: 1.2%, 2.7% - Roll with what we have FB Gap: +1.1% , 4.5% - RFB could use an upgrade if one "shows up" BWM Gap: 0.1% - We are good !!! DLP Gap: 2.7% - Roll with what we have Winger Gap: 3.8%, 3.3% - Opportunistically look for upgrade - not urgent AP Gap: +1.9% - We are good !!! ST Gap: 2.0% - Roll with what we have I'm done making changes to the roster for now. Will keep an eye on scouting etc for a RFB and winger if a very good one becomes available and willing to join. Otherwise, there is no point in making changes once the key European matches are finished.

UEFA Champions League Champions Path Third Qualifying Round: Next up we play against Slavia Prague from the Czech First Division. Czechia is 20th in the Nation Club Coefficients and Slavia Prague is 79th in the European club rankings. We played them a few years ago and they knocked us out, We have improved quite a bit since then and I feel we have a good shot at this one. Nice win at home to go up by 2 goals. Closed them out on the road with a nice shut out and a good game by our new GK.

UEFA Champions League Champions Path Second Qualifying Round: Next up we play against Slovan Bratislava from the Slovak First Division. Slovakia is 27th in the Nation Club Coefficients and Slovan Bratislava is 101st in the European club rankings. We played them a few years ago and beat them, so should be able to do that again. Good game and nice to come home with a 2 goal advantage. Closed them out with a clean win. Will have to watch the goals against versus XG against as we are giving up a bit more than we should right now.

UEFA Champions League Champions Path First Qualifying Round: First up we play against KF Vilaznia from the Albania Superleague. Albania is 44th in the Nation Club Coefficients and KF Vilaznia is 559th in the European club rankings. We should not have any difficulty with this matchup especially since I am playing the main squad to get them into match shape for the harder matchups to come. The score was closer that the game stats, but a good warmup game Playing a few of the backups to get some game time in and it didn't affect the outcome. Good start to the campaign.

Fast forward to the end of June and Gibraltar continued to improve it's rankings in the Nation Club coefficient thanks to our strong run and came back a bit more in the world rankings, the HC keeps hanging on and we keep feeding players into the team, not looking great for that position to come available soon. The league moved up 11 more spots which has been helpful in getting players. Our club ranking improved a little bit, and we now have 2 stars for reputation. We are seeing more players willing to play for us or come on loan, still not the best ones, but a definite improvement. The board came to me at the season changeover and asked me if I wanted the training facilities upgraded ... this after saying no to me the last 4 times I asked. Upgrade to the max rating is now underway. No option anymore to upgrade the youth facilities unfortunately. We have a very healthy cash balance which is being spent on the training upgrade, but the board gave me a generous transfer and wage budget. I leveraged the transfer budget to increase the scouting budget and start scouting at the world level to go fishing for youngsters in South America. Signed one player and got 2 more really strong players in on loan to address three of the needs. Konate is a left FB and his rating is 66.9 which is above the target of 65.8. Signed him for 1.5M. Luis Castro is the highest rated AM - AP that I have seen so far. He wouldn't come on a transfer, but he did agree to come on a loan. His rating at AP is 70.3 which is above the target rating of 68.4 Afonso Lee is a good upgrade at CD with a rating of 68. Not quite at the targget of 69.2, but definitely an improvement. He also came in on a loan. We have an offer out to a GK who gets us pretty close to the target there. Current status of upcoming Season needs based on the Championship target: GK Gap: 6.7% - Need an upgrade - Urgent CD Gap: 6.0% 1.2%, 2.5% - Need one upgrade - Urgent - Opportunistically look for upgrade - not urgent FB Gap: 6.6% +1.1% , 6.5% - RFB could use an upgrade - Urgent BWM Gap: 0.1% - We are good !!! DLP Gap: 6.2% 4.8% - Dominguez moves here - Need an upgrade - Urgent Winger Gap: 2.7%, 3.3% - Opportunistically look for upgrade - not urgent AP Gap: 3.3% +1.9% - Opportunistically look for upgrade - not urgent We are good !!! ST Gap: 2.0% - Opportunistically look for upgrade - not urgent

Upcoming Season based on the Championship target: GK Gap: 6.7% - Need an upgrade - Urgent CD Gap: 6.0%, 2.5% - Need one upgrade - Urgent FB Gap: 6.6%, 6.5% - Both positions could use an upgrade - Urgent BWM Gap: 0.1% - We are good !!! DLP Gap: 6.2% - Need an upgrade - Urgent Winger Gap: 2.7%, 3.3% - Opportunistically look for upgrade - not urgent AP Gap: 3.3% - Opportunistically look for upgrade - not urgent ST Gap: 2.0% - Opportunistically look for upgrade - not urgent

POSITIONAL REVIEW CONTINUED (I have highlighted homegrown players in blue in the charts) I have also been messing around with ways to show player progression, so I will include that for key/interesting players. FB - Champ Target = 65.8 All the FB's played well. Chiab and Ferreira were starters and played well. Britto was the main backup at LB and Hartjes at RB and they did ok. Whitbread and Leyland are two youth graduates. Whitbread was on loan until he got a huge injury, so I brought him back for our medical team and he got one game in, Leyland got a few games in, but not enough to really develop him. Whitbread was developing nicely, then got a 5 month injury and now has a 3.5 star PA. Leyland is a 16 year old from the recent intake who has a 52 rating and a 4 star PA. Neither developed much last season, so will be bench players and relocated to other Gibraltar teams shortly. Chiab is rated 59.2 and Ferreira is 59.3. They are not developing much at all, so they will not they hit the Champ target, FB is a hard one to find, but I need to keep looking. Plan - start Chiab and Ferreira and find two upgrades who are close to the target. BWM - Champ Target = 71.0 The BWM stats aren't great with our tactic, so I lean towards the match ratings to give additional insights. Blasco started, Angong played a fair bit and Hartjes filled in for about half of the mins listed. Angong's rating stabilized this season, but his contract expires. El Azzouri comes back off loan and is rated 61.4 as BWM and decent at DLP, so he will be the backup. Plan - Blasco is the starter and at target. Opportunistically find depth. DLP - Champ Target = 69.7 Dominguez and Caneles split time with Marcos the primary backup and they both played well, though Dominguez did better. Parker did not play at all and is now retiring. I would bring him on staff, but he has no staff attributes. Marcos is still growing steadily, but will not make the target, so is only a squad player at this point. Dominguez is rated 64.2 and Canales 63.5. Plan - Find an upgrade and start Dominguez until then. Dominguez and Canales can hang around as depth. Winger - Champ Target = 69.6 Rafael and Abid are the two starters with Vincent as the next man up. They all played very well, with the two starters having the best numbers. McClafferty is a very good backup with position flexibility. Negrette was resigned to fill out the 8 homegrown and provide a deep bench. McClafferty's rating hasn't changed in 2 seasons, but is a useful squad player to keep around and continue to try and develop for the national team. Rafael isn't developing much as a winger, but is playing well, and is close to the target. Abid's rating improved to 66.3 and he played well. Vincent dropped off a tiny bit, so we will keep an eye on him. Plan - start Rafael and Abid with Vincent and McClafferty as backups. Opportunistically see if we can find a transfer or loan at target level as well. Advanced Playmaker - Champ Target = 68.4 Again, Golliard had the best statistics of the AP, with very good match ratings, so he is the clear starter. He didn't score as much this season, but sure was dishing out the passes this year. Marcos played 7 games as AP and scored 3 goals, 4 assists and a match rating of 7.66 in those games. My assistant coach likes to sub Carrasco in as the first sub in at AP, not my choice, but I don't know any way to stop it other than playing the game myself. He did ok in the backup role. Golliard is regressed this past season, so I no longer think he will make the target, so I am going to see what options there are. Dominguez is rated at 65.1, so closer to the target than Golliard. If I can find an upgrade at DLP, Dominguez can start and see how he goes. Plan - start Golliard and have Dominguez/Canales/Marcos as backup. Look for an upgrade. Advanced Forward - Champ Target = 68.2 Meireles was the starter and scored 28 goals. Carrasco scored 13 goals in nine games at ST, but that was against weaker opponents. Scutt is from the youth system, so gave a chance to see how training with the senior squad and playing mostly U23 would go. Very small sample size, but he did ok. Meireles' rating is 66.2, so pretty close to target. Carrasco fills in nicely. Scutt declined over the season, so will fade into obscurity. Plan - Start Meireles with Carrasco as first backup.

POSITIONAL REVIEW (I have highlighted homegrown players in blue in the charts) I have also been messing around with ways to show player progression, so I will include that for key/interesting players. GK - Champ target = 62.9 Alonso is the clear starter but performed worse than last year. Sidibe was signed last season and has a lot of potential, but he didn't play all that well. He mostly played in the league matches, so had easier games than Alonso who played all the European matches. Alonso's rating declined last season, so he definitely wil not grow to the Champ target. It is unfortunate, as he has been with us for a while, but it is time to move on. Hopefully, I can shift him to another Gibraltar team. Sidibe has 4.5 star potential, so theoretically, can grow to the Champ target, he just doesn't play to his rating. I am pretty sure that is due to his low agility score, which is improving, but at a 7, isn't going to get far enough. There are no young GK in our youth pipeline, so I will keep him and continue to try and develop him. Hankins didn't play at all because of Sidibe. Alonso took citizenship and became eligible for the national team after being here for 5 years. He has taken over for Hankins on the national team, so there is no need to continue to have Hankins Plan - Sign a replacement and once that happens, move Alonso to a team in Gibraltar. Give Sidibe playing time to grow. Let Hankins go at the end of the season - to Gibraltar if possible. CD - Champ Target = 69.2 The numbers from the central defence declined from last year. Albiach and Glasnovic got most of the matches. McClelland is decent in the air. Morata was so so as a backup. We lost our last European matches to 4 goals off headers, so am going to look at the Hdr % as a key stat. Albiach has a 3 star CA and now a 4 star PA, so I'm guessing he won't make it to the target. This last season, his rating dropped last season, but looking closer, he only had the slight drop arrow next to JUM and PAC, so I suspect his pace attribute is at 57 (one point up will move it to 12), so we are seeing some "wobbling" of thee rating and his trajectory is still positive. Having said that, he is not likely to make it to the 69.2 target. McClelland has nice jumping and heading, but didn't develop much, so backup is his future at best. There is nothing of note in the youth pipeline. Plan - Start Glasnovic and Albiach. Need to upgrade Albiach and potentially Glasnovic if I can get luck and find 2 near the target.

End of Season 7 (29/30) Analysis: The team average rating improved by 1.2, improving from 62.8 to 64 moving us closer to England Championship level(68.1 average). Reminder that the rating for each of the leagues below is the average of the top 10 rating for each position across the entire league. The appropriate top 10 average for the positions in my tactic are then slotted into the chart and averaged across the 11 ratings. Only a few teams in each league would have a player in each position that ranks in the top 10, so by using this as a target, it provides a measure of when the raw attribute ratings of the team would position it near the top of the league being compared against. We all know that cohesion, morale, happiness etc. gives the human manager the edge, so when my team hits the rating for one of the leagues, I would expect it to be able to win, or at a minimum compete to win, the league. I have seen that team can successfully compete with most of the teams in a league above their rating. This means that once I can get the Lions to the ENG Champ level, we should be able to compete in the Champions League. We definitely made progress in a few areas, but in reality, only BWM is not a need. Given we cannot fix everything in one go, we will definitely focus on the red positions below and opportunistically improve the others. We got a reputation boost and are now 2 stars, this should help us attract players closer to the target. As an example, I have only seen 3 GK with a SK rating of 60 or more and none of them are above 62 and none of them would previously talk to me about transfer or loan. The only meaningful transfer out last season was Andre Oliveira who was being chased by a few European teams, I made him mad by refusing the deals and then Lynx came in with a cheap offer that he was interested in, so I sold him to them. He will make them much better which will help the league and country - hopefully.

End of the season and we won the league and the cups. We did not clean sweep the league as we lost one and tied 3 when I was aggressively resting players and playing youngsters. No prize for winning every game except person pride . Better to try and develop youngsters (my rationalization).

Youth intake for this year could yield a decent player in Shaun Edwards. He has good physicals and technique and outstanding determination, so hopefully he develops well. The rest below will get signed to see if any develop.

UEFA Europa League Knock Out Playoff Round: For the playoffs, we drew Sporting CP who play in the Portuguese Premier League. Portugal is 6th in the nation club rankings and Sporting CP are 56th in the club rankings. Tough draw for us, I do not think we can win this over two games. Defeat in the away game, not enough chances for us, but an expected result. A draw at home is a promising result for the future and brings to an end our European journey for this season.

UEFA Europa League League Phase - Game 7: Next up is Qarabag who play in the Azeri Premier League. Azerbaijan is 24th in the nation club rankings and Qarabag are 84th in the club rankings. We should win this one. We beat them both times we played them previously and I expect the same. Nice. A clean, simple victory. UEFA Europa League League Phase - Game 8: Next up is Partizan who play in the Serbian Super League. Serbia is 19th in the nation club rankings and Partizan are 58th in the club rankings. This should be a close one that I think we have a chance in. Ugh. Not good. We outplayed them and got killed on the set pieces. 1 goal off a free kick header and 3 goals off corners. We made the playoffs, so hopefully we can get an ok draw.

UEFA Europa League League Phase - Game 6: Next up is Olympique Lyonnais who play in the League 1 Uber Eats. France is 13th in the nation club rankings and OL are 126th in the club rankings (and in pot 4!). This is a tough team to draw out of pot 4 - they are way better than their rankings and have a huge budget and a very good first team. We will be hard pressed to get a result from this game. We got out played and lost. No shame in that, but would have been nice to keep it closer.

UEFA Europa League League Phase - Game 5: Next up is Olympiacos who play in the Greek Super League 1. Greece is 13th in the nation club rankings and Olympiacos are 47th in the club rankings. This is one where we should have a chance based on how close last season's games against them were and the poll agrees. Not sure, but I am beginning to think the polls are quite random I like posting them for the added colour though. We won another one! Pretty even match where it looks like we finished well and Alonso had a great game.