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With a loss of almost £140k for June you'd think I'd be worried, but I'm not because I'll be selling players in July so I should be able to get us back in the black. I mean, if you ignore that we still have over £12 million in the bank.
As the new season has begun my favorability drops to 88%. Don't worry, I'm still Untouchable.
Also on the 1st, the board opens contracts discussions. I get two more years at £700 per week. I also get a 20% wage increase upon promotion, and my contract extends under the same condition. A really neat feature of Football Manager is that it keeps track of your career earnings. So far, my earnings are £110,000, which isn't a lot for three years but I'll get up there soon enough.
Here is what our Dynamics Pyramid looks like on 1 July. No new movement.
Noah Harding graduates to the Influential Player level on 7 July. Now we need someone to graduate up to Highly Influential.
As I update my spreadsheet on the first of the month I am greeted by some great player development news. GK Adrian Lee's Determination went from 11 to 16 over the summer. I heart tutoring. More to my joy, Mickey Morris' Determination climbed to 14 from 12 in the same time. On the personality change front, Glyn Davies is now Fairly Professional and Bill Taylor is a "Committed attacking midfielder" though I don't know if that's because he signed that new contract. Did his Loyalty increase behind the scenes?
At 8:01 AM on the first of the month Hibbert has the nerve to block access to my office with a demand for a new contract. I'm in a quandary; I want to sell him on or at least loan him out. He is underpaid when compared to kids his age in our league. If memory serves me correctly I think he wants a lot of money. He'll have to live with it.
I do want to extend Kemar but, no shock here, he wants nothing to do with us. I can't blame him. He'll be sold for an exorbitant price but there will be a £10 million buy-back clause so when we get to the Premier League he'll be brought back home. The next day he approaches me saying that he heard that Everton want him. I promise to accept a suitable offer. And time for the bait and switch. I offer him to all EPL teams and Everton for £15 million, with a £15 million buy-back clause. Juventus are also sniffing around but I don't offer to them.
The next day word comes that nobody made an offer for him. Hmmm. His value is £15.75 million so it must be the buy-back clause. That hurts. I'll wait a week and try again. (In the Euros, Germany beat England on penalties in the Quarter Finals. Kemar scored a goal in the 2nd minute but didn't get a chance for a penalty shot as 3 of the first 5 missed their chances. He played all 120 minutes so he'll return to us extremely Jaded. Later in the month I receive word that for the tournament he was voted best young player, sending his value up to £20 million.)
About the waiting a week...Both Watford and Juventus show up with footlockers full of cash. Each are offering £13.25 million and 40% of the profit from the next sale. Watford also add £2.7 million after Kemar appears in 10 international matches, which is going to happen soon. Oh my. I accept Watford's and stall Juve's. Oh how I hope a bidding war starts. Still worried he'll never come back though. On 5 July, Everton, Leicester, and Southampton offer the same value but don't include the 40% profit clause so I reject them.
I totally forgot that you can't put a player who is younger than 17 on loan status. Alan Coates will remain with us until at least 5 October.
Bradford try to underbid again for Thirlwell, starting at £40k but refusing to budge higher than £55k. Two days later they are willing to go up to £85k. Finally on 9 July they offer £100k and I tack on a 20% sell-on fee, which they accept. I don't want to see him go but he's outgrown us and it's realistic he wouldn't play way down in the Conference South. The deal is slightly made easier by the fact that his Determination and Stamina are still single digits. I have a feeling that we'll be switching to a single striker formation. That seems more clear when Thriller agrees with Bradford just 90 minutes after we beat them on 16 July. [Spoiler Alert]
On the Pilcher front, Wolverhampton come in with a £150,000 offer. I add a 25% sell on fee and they accept. That makes nine teams that are in play with only one team (Aston Villa) in the Premier. I'm starting to wonder if I'm undervaluing him. Maybe if someone comes in at 150 again I'll bump it up to 200? On 6 July he agrees with Aston Villa for £100,000, a good choice. He came to us for free from Bristol Manor Farm, who should get a cut of the transfer, and was the first player confirmed to be Premier League quality. Shane. Shane! Come back! Bye, Shane.
Also on 9 July O'Keeffe begins his campaign to get a new contract. With Picher, Thirlwell, and Kemar going or gone, we have plenty of money. O'Keeffe is probably going to be the only player I fight tooth and nail to keep. A great GK is harder to find than DC or ST. He puts pen to paper on 14 July.
Later in the month teams become more interested in Johnstone, some as high as the Championship. None offer anything higher that £4,500 so I deny them.
And so it is at 16:48 on 15 July that Kemar Kirkpatrick of Fairy Hill, Jamaica, of Brixton Football Club, of South London, chooses to move to East London, to be part of West Ham. He leaves his original team to the tune of £13,250,000. Brixton lose a fan favorite, a player who almost certainly will become a world-class striker. It truly is a sad day.
Not a new player per se but I didn't want this to get lost in the long-arse Player Development run-down. McGregor came to us only Accomplished at ML but after one start and one sub appearance he's Natural there.
I have no luck finding a U23 DL but the search goes on. I was real close but then I noticed the guy I wanted was prone to injuries. That and Natural Fitness are things I don't budge on.
We have 10 friendlies in July and 1 in August. Because we are flush with wingers I'm having trouble getting them all Match Fit. Because of that I won't be canceling the last friendly but I certainly want to.
Holy poop! I didn't noticed this at first and I didn't get an email about it but with all that money from the player sales my allowable wage budget is now £299,705 per week. Wow. We're currently spending £22,667 per week. Absolutely bonkers. That ankle injury in the Cheltenham match on 31 July puts McLeish out for 3 to 6 weeks, meaning either we bring someone in for August or we go with the Spade and Shovel and season some youths occasionally.
We are even odds to win the league and 1-5 odds to gain promotion. I wonder what will happen when the game realizes that Kemar, Pilcher, Coates, Taylor, Hibbert, and Pugh are gone? I still think we'll go up but I expect a harder year than the previous three.
On the win bonus front I choose the highest levels for both league play and league cups. If we win the Conference South the squads will receive £195,000 and if they win all four cups they'll split £1,000,000. Yes, the success of selling Kemar on has affected my decision making prowess. :-D
Let us look back two years to see who was starting for us for the first match in our season in the Southern League First Division West, the 2018/2019 year.
GK: Chick Legg. He's still with us, he's still mentoring, he still has the best name ever, and he is no longer the starter. Gareth O'Keeffe gets that honor. Year 1 with us, 40 starts and 22 clean sheets. Year 2, 57 and 38. Year 3 down to 42 and 24. This past year he was snake-bitten, hardly getting clean sheets reliably.
DR: Peter Maguire. He started 46 matches, came on in 11 other, had 10 assists but never scored a goal somehow, even the previous year. He was sold on 10 January 2020. He'd become quite the bit of a nuisance with repeated horrible training performances. This resulted in him being sent down to the U18 on 1 November 2019. He was sold to Cheltenham for £1,500, where he still plays. He had 12 appearances and 1 goal his first year there but this past season he only appeared in 4 friendlies.
DC r: Ricky Spearing. He had quite a career with us in just two years, with 87 starts, 20 sub appearances, and 8 goals. He left us 25 June 2019, moving on to Exeter, a League One side, for the lowly fee of £5,000. He appeared in 32 starts and 5 subs with just one goal for them.
DC l: Robert Carroll. He had a slightly better career with us over two years because he was our only real good left centreback. His stats were 109 starts, 5 substitutions, and 8 goals. Scottish Premiership side St. Johnstone snatched him up on 16 June 2019 for £5,000. Last year he had 44 appearances for his new team but failed to score any goals. That's a pretty good indicator of his skill though as the Scottish Prem is between the English Championship and Premier League in reputation.
DL: Shadi Al-Ziod. He was a great find for us, not just because of his nickname but this prowess on the field. He left on a free for Aston Villa but only had one appearance, a start for a cup match. He remains firmly fixed in their U23 squad. For us, in two years he played 60 and 12, with just 1 goal. (Easy lesson here is fullbacks don't score much.)
MC r: Terry Barlow. He stayed with us until January this year, leaving on the 31st for Mansfield for £3,000. I moved him to the U23s at the beginning of the 2019/2020 season. I didn't have a problem with him, I was just trying to move on from the initial batch. (I know, I know, Smith is still with us...) Terry had 89 starts, 9 substitutions, and 16 goals. He is listed as an Icon for Brixton.
MC l: Connor Smith. He's still with us and was our fourth-choice centreback last year. With Pilcher's departure he's now our third-choice but soon Ferreira will probably overtake him. I like Smith for his versatility at DMC and MC so maybe he'll be the one initial batch player I keep for as long as possible. His performances over the years includes 11 goals from 115 starts and 35 substitutions.
AMR: Steve Pearson. A pretty good winger for us with 69 starts, 11 subs, 35 goals, and 38 assists. He left us on 15 January 2019 for Championship side Brentford for £20,000 but he only got 4 matches in for them. The next season he went out on loan to Oxford, where he got in 48 matches.
AML: Daniel Duckett. Danny Boy is a Brixton Legend mostly because he was an assist machine, providing 64 critical feeds. Along with that he had 37 goals in 84 starts and 21 sub-ons. In the summer of 2019 he moved on to Swindon for £10,000. For them he had 53 starts, 10 subs, 10 goals, and 12 assists.
ST c: Kemar Kirkpatrick. What more can I say about him. I knew we couldn't keep him but I really misjudged the whole buy-back option thing. The cool £13,250,000 will certainly guarantee many continued winning seasons but we'll probably never get him back. For posterity's sake, in his "short" stay with us, he scored 80 goals in 58 appearances, 52 of which were starts. That's 1.45 goals per match! (Trust in my maths. ;-)) I'm really going to miss him and the guarantee of him taking us to the promised land.