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It's the off season, a time in which we play friendlies and bring in new squaddies. I've got my eyes on some players (cough)original timeline(cough) and am just hoping for an injury-free month.
Ouch. Between David Caffrey and the tax man, we lost over £620,000 during June. At least I know that we'll probably get some of that money back from the English government as I don't foresee any sales that will drive us to a high profit.
They are still over the moon even though the season has reset and I get no credit for winning competitions. I'm "Untouchable" at 88%.
All this leads to them offering me a new contract. They offer £850 per week and I pump it up to £1,000 for two years and make some concessions to make it acceptable to them. All of this took just a matter of 35 minutes from them proposing the idea to them announcing the deal was complete. Wunderbar!
Hey! I got the speech right when welcoming the players back and saying we should be able to win the title. I'll take this as a good omen.
Ruh-roh, Raggy! Down to only five influential players and only Stephen McGregor should be around next year. Hopefully someone steps up at some point during this season.
It should come as no surprise to me that the Dressing Room Atmosphere is down to Very Good considering that a lot of stalwarts are gone and I put everybody in the U23 into the Seniors for training camp.
Huh. GK Adrian Lee is now rated at 2.5/5.0, a rebound from last month. But I still am not 100% sure 5.0 equals Premier League or just Championship.
Somehow I missed something significant. When I sent AML Nickcolson Garcia out on loan last season he was rated 3.0 blue stars by my AssMan, meaning he didn't even rate worthy to be in the Conference League South. Now, he's two gold stars and worthy of Conference National. Did not expect that and have no idea how I missed it.
I totally forgot to set up Tutoring when everyone returned from holiday. I finally get around to it on 3 July. I've linked up Eddie Macey with Richard Phillips and Chicken Legg with Gael Barbier. I wanted to link David Doran up with Alex Rae but Doran is being a right prat and refuses to be tutored. I believe the French would call him "Le Turd."
Speaking of Tutoring, on the last day of the month the mentoring of Tasos Noulas by McGregor comes to an end. No major changes. Same with the mentoring of Jordan Nickson by Stephen Lemon.
Rory Collopy came back from holiday with his Potential Ability rated at 3.5 now. Interesting. He's still 2.0 in Current Ability but my AssMan thinks he's Conference National-level talent now. Maybe he won't be in the U23s even if Ben Evans signs.
A strange thing happened: Mark Curran's Bravery went up 1 point over the summer. Something must have happened while he was away with the Irish U19s. Speaking of Bravery, Dean Rice's is now up to 10.0.
Sean Peers reported back with a lot of red arrows on his Abilities with some actual drops. I know we are just starting training camp but that is unsatisfactory so I call him in to the office and calmly tell him to step it up. He agrees and promises to do better. The same goes for Nickson. Had he not been so bad he could have overtaken Peers.
So here's the thing. Jose Parker is just too slow for playing central defender. Buuuut… My scouts think he can play defensive midfielder where speed isn't as important. I'm 100% convinced he can replace Gary Ferguson as DMC3. He might be better than Noulas even. Well, I'll start him learning DMC and if no offers come in for him then I have another utility player, at worst. (There are two League One teams and one League Two team interested in him.) One problem though is he reported back from holiday with some unexpected drop in his abilities. Hrrrmmm...
Right off the bat, just before noon on the day the players return, Derby try to pile £45,000 worth of notes on my desk so they can leave with Alfie Barnes. Sorry gents, it's going to take much more to pry him away.
So evidently Charlton is interested in Legg. They are in League One. My AssMan tells me he is only a Conference National talent. If so, why is he drawing interest? Hmmm...
On 1 July Birmingham offer Ben Evans a trial and I'm not so keen on that. A couple hours later he signs with us anyway! I'm quite surprised and pleased. He only waited for 24 hours or so.
Peter Smith takes his sweet time agreeing with us, waiting until 8 July. The downside of this is now I'm going to have to move Ben Pope on. I don't need his mope harshing my mellow.
It took quite a while and a lot of searching but I think I finally found a second right fullback for the U18s. His name is Ethan Foster and he plays for a small-time team called Buxton on a non-contract. I'll keep him around next year for the U23s so I kind of gave him a better-than-normal contract and he agreed immediately; this was on the 10th. He ain't much be he's ours.
I wasn't exactly looking for too many new players but then a guy who is Natural at all wing positions showed up in a scouting report. He's not the most Determined lad but he is Ambitious. Check out Sam Young. Just out there, free for the taking.
What height! I gotta offer a deal. He agrees, just in time for our first pre-season match.
That Dutch scout I mentioned last update? Kevin van Ommeren is his name and I offer him a contract on the morning of 1 July worth £400/week for 2 years plus a 25% promotion wage rise. I didn't like that last part though. He agrees just a couple hours before our first friendly.
On 17 July Queens Park Rangers offer one of my U18 Coaches to be their U18 Manager. I have the option ask him to stay but QPR are in the Championship so it seems to be a foregone conclusion he'll leave. And sure enough, two days later he's off to see the Rangers. But that's alright, I went looking and found an Italian who is slightly better plus has a 20 Working With Youngsters attribute. He's a bit more costly but he's worth it and that's not even counting the scouting knowledge of Italy he brings. He signs late in the evening of 21 July.
Let's kick some booty!!! Let's integrate Caffrey and Pat Lawford. Let's show the world what Brixton are made of.
I went with the 4-4-2 Diamond Attack for the matches against lesser foes, the Cudgel against Swindon and Blackburn. I'll probably stick with the Diamond until Caffrey is Natural at DMC. I'll probably go with the Spade or Front 424 until Smith is Natural at AMR.
For some reason only known to Odin and Wikipedia the FA Cup Final took place on 7 July. West Ham beat Chelsea 3-0. Kemar Kirkpatrick had one of those goals.
To avoid a spoiler in the Player Matters section it is here I talk about Pope's departure. He was so pissed at me that the game wouldn't allow me to talk with him. So right after Smith signed with us I put Pope on the Transfer List. Prior to that he had no teams interested in him. Afterwards, 19 teams wanted him.
The last of The Original 16 are gone. They served their purpose but I wanted to bury the past. I'm sure I'll check in on them from time to time.
Gareth got into three matches in the Euro U19 Championship Group play, rating 7.2, 7.7, and 7.1, conceding zero goals. Also in the U19 Euros there was some crazy news: Wales beat France 3-0 with two of the goals coming from Morris. Will he start drawing foreign interest now? Oh. For sure. On 18 July Wales destroys Holland with M-I-C-K-E-Y scoring 4, yes FOUR!, goals as a halftime substitute. Oh boy. Wales is on to the next round. Something is wrong with the save because as Holland was going under, England was dismantling Italy, 7-1.
Morris' awesomeness came to a grinding halt when he faced O'Keeffe in the semi-final. Morris was on target on 3 of 6 shots and O'Keeffe took care of them all. England beat Wales 6-0 and will face Russia. Morris and Doran will return home, I think. Gareth then got to help England defeat Russia on 25 July, 3-0.
On 13 July I got an email about the England Trial Day. I send my scouts to drool - er - look over the available wares. Nobody was worth signing mostly because of outrageous wage demands.
On 24 July I'm required to submit the squad numbers, something I didn't have to do in previous seasons. I'm not sure why SI programs FM this way, that only the top five tiers of the pyramid get to have jersey numbers. I don't see how this would be a memory hog. The match engine will display numbers anyways so it's not a graphics thing. The mystery will go on.
Anyway, I research the traditional numbering scheme in English football for the 4-4-2 formation and use that as my basis. So, the numbers will be: 1. O'Keeffe, 2. Lawford, 3. Curran, 4. Caffrey, 5. Angelino Ferreira, 6. Barnes, 7. Smith, 8. Glyn Davies, 9. Marshall, 10. Morris, 11. McGregor. Only Morris got his preferred number. I didn't use 33 as that is my favorite number and I'm reserving it for my son, should the game ever spit one out.
We're in a new competition this year, the Carabao Cup. Also known as the League Cup, it's supposed to only have teams from the top four leagues but all of Conference National are in it somehow. To please the board we have to reach the second round and in the first round we host League One team Coventry. We probably won't make the second round.
I think we are set for a very good season. I know we won't get far in the Carabao Cup, FA Trophy, and FA Cup. We should win the Conference League Cup and the Conference National League.
I am surprised by the lack of pursuit of our players. Yes, we sold off O'Keeffe but not a single offer for Pope. When I first transfer listed him he had 19 teams interested. Now, the last day of July, there are only four but all of them have "major interest."On the other side of the coin, we added three new players, plucking them out of the unemployment queue. Two of them just might be Premier League players and one is an insurance wing-sub should anybody make a bid for Gary Leary.
Jose Parker. I never devoted much time to talking about him at first, during the 2019 Youth Intake, as he didn't look like much of a win. I did spend a lot of time talking about Kevin Jenkins but I should have talked about Parker. He's already League One-worthy but at the beginning he looked like only a 2-star prospect. Back then he had 9 Heading, 12 Marking, 8 Tackling, 11 Positioning, and 12 Jumping Reach. Now those stats are 12, 13, 11, 13, and 14. That's really good for this level but it's that pesky 11 Pace that makes me have zero interest in him as DC. Dammit. I mean, considering he started at 7, he's come a long way. Let us just hope that he makes it as a DMC.
So I think we can get back to the Consistency things as we have some, but not many, data points. Ferguson, started at 8 and now is 8. He got into seven pre-season matches, rating 9.0, 7.3, 6.8, 6.6, 7.1, 7.5, and 7.2.
Lee Beirne started at 11 and now is 11. He got into four matches in the pre-season rating 9.1, 6.9, 7.4, and 7.9. Not exactly consistent but consistently good.
Fergy has more data and I'm not seeing any movement. The study must go on.