Transfers

IN: 10 for £500K (1 ST for £230K, 1 DC for £150K, 1 DC/L for £110K, 1 few other freebies...1 ST/AML, 1 GK, 3 MC, 1 ST)

OUT: 15 for £250K

Summary

After a surprisingly good first season in the Liga Adelante last year, I was very anxious to get the next season started. I went into the off season not really planning on bringing in much, but I had a lot of contracts expire of people that I really wanted to keep around, but the club "wasn't big enough" for them anymore...b*stards!!! 

So, in the end I had to bring in a few more faces than I had planned on, but I always try to keep 'em young and see what happens. The most noticeable of the signings were a total of 3 ST's. 1 of them can play out on the ML though and that is where I was going to use him. The other 2 were to take the spots of 2 that left this off season and I was hoping they could partner my towering Nigerian up front.

That was the plan, but it isn't what happened. My French ST (whom I had high hopes for) turned out to be utter rubbish...horrible, couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat. So, I went back to a partnership up front and had my towering Nigerian and my new £230 Spanish ST to have a crack at it. This turned out to be a good partnership and while we weren't exactly banging them in for fun, we were scoring well enough for me to suddenly realise that we had hardly lost a match this season.

This here is probably the single thing that made this season what it was...just before the Jan window...the board came to me and asked if I wanted to change my expectations as were we highly out performing the Mid Table finish I had promised. I change it to playoff spot and they gave me £200K in return! Sweet, I went out and bought the DC I had been coveting for awhile and now felt I had an absolutely solid back line.

We went on to finish the season on a real high only losing 2 of our final 20 matches...shame we just missed out on 1st though...we played R. Sociedad on the last match of the season for that spot and we lost 2-1...oh well, promoted anyways!!!

League Table

1st Real Sociedad 21-14-7 68F 38A +30 77pts

2nd Alicante 21-12-8 58F 38A +20 75pts

3rd Hercules 21-10-11 71F 44A +27 73pts

A tight top of the table with our fierce rivals Hercules making the playoffs and bouncing straight back into the Liga BBVA

Highlights: Our second half form. We weren't playing bad before hand being around 6th most of the time, but we were almost unbeatable in the second half.

Lowlights: Losing to Sociedad on the last day of the season and losing out on the Championship.

Transfers

IN: 8 for 1.6M (Spanish ST for 875K, 18yo Portugese DC for 375K, 18 yo Argentinian ST for 325K, 1 DLR 20K, 1 MR, 1 ML, 1 DC, 1 DC/DM/MC)

OUT: 8 for 140K (Most left on free...sold ageing DC for 140K)

Summary

An interesting off season here...for whatever reason, I STILL had players that didn't want to resign as they thought we were still too small. Among these were fan favourite ST that I signed a couple of years ago, my solid MC, my new DR, and a couple of capable backups. But, the board did give me 2M to play with in the transfer market. 

I was still able to get some good players for free...most noteable of these was my new MR (current Blackpool French winger) as he was a significant upgrade to anyone I had that could play there. I was also able to get a very good DC/DM/MC from AC Milan on a free as well...he was going to hopefully be the rock of my midfield. I also splurged a little on a spanish ST and brought in a promising looking argentinian ST.

With the success of last season, I figured things would be a little tough in with the big boys. To my surprise, it wasn't all that bad...most of this was really down to our solid defense. 

I should point out that I am STILL playing with my GK that I signed in our last season in Division B3....I don't know why, but it impresses me that he had been a rock through all the promotion. He finished this season up being 34 though so a replacement is going to have to be found soon.

Anywho...it was a rather dull season to be honest. Far better than I would have anticipated, but we were just mediocre in the end and I was ecstatic with our final position.

Notable things...towering Nigerian ST found the going really touch in the move up...however my ST signing from last season was partnering nicely with my new spanish ST...new spanish ST provided 14 assists, but only 6 goals while other ST provided 15 goals.

New rock MC was a star and played the "hole" position for me beautifully...also, 18 yo Portugese DC forced his way into the starting XI and I already have other teams unsettling him with interest, so we shall see how long I can hang on to him.

Also, young Argentinian is looking to be quite shit..I sacked the scout that recommended him...even though he is still young, he doesn't look like he is going to develop into anything more than a leading B ST, which was a waste of money...I tried offering him to other clubs for free and had NO takers....lol....

League Table

1st Real Madrid 28-8-2 93F 24A +69 92pts

2nd Athletic Madrid 28-7-3 95F 25A +70 91pts

3rd Barcelona 26-8-4 89F 18A +71 86pts

10th Alicante 16-8-14 51F 48A +3 56pts

Highlights:Finishing well above relegation

Lowlights: Nothing really...maybe the wasted money on Argentinian ST.

Transfers:

IN:7 for 2.8M (19yo Argentinian DC for 1.3M, 19yo Italian GK for 825K, 20 yo Uruguay ST for 450K, 19yo Spanish ML for 80K, 1 awesome looking 19 yo DR Congo MC for 0K, backup DL for 0K, 1 MC/L/R for 0K)

OUT: 8 for 1.1M (Towering Nigerian for 675K, a backup GK from reserves for 450K, a few others that I didn't want to resign)

Summary 

We embarked on our second season in the LIGA BBVA not really sure if we had overachieved the season before or not. My saviour GK was going to be 35 this season so I had been scouting youngsters for about a year now and found one that looked capable of stepping in if he couldn't handle it anymore.

I also decided to focus a lot more on youth. I felt we had the starting XI to stay up again and wanted to really start to build something from the ground up here. 

So I brought in the Congo MC whom all of my scouts think will be a star and also my young Spanish ML whom they also think will be a star. I am hoping they are both going to be steals!!! 

I did splash out on a DC just because now my 2 DC will have an average age of 20 and should be the rock of my defense for many years to come....actually my entire back line now has an average age of 22 and if we were to count my youngster GK I could have my defense sorted for years.

Anywho....onto the season. We started out not in the best of forms and my fears of overacheiving last season were looking to be true....we just simply weren't scoring...at all. Luckily we weren't conceding either so we were still well ahead of the relegation zones after a couple of months.

I looked at the team and decided we were strongest in the middle of the park and weakest up front...so I changed to a formation suited of this and off we went. Something about this change lit a spark under my Spanish ST arse and he started banging in a goal a game...shame he didn't do this earlier as most of his contributions had been assists.

But, we went on a good run of form and found ourselves in dizzying heights towards the end of the season...4th!! This however didn't last as we finished the season in poor form and dropped to 7th to finish it out...and apparently this qualified us for the Europa League.

League Table

1st Real Madrid 29-3-6 92F 25A +67 90pts

2nd At Madrid 28-4-6 84F 31A +53 88pts

3rd Barcelona 25-8-5 76F 22A +54 83pts

6th Getafe 21-7-10 59F 46A +13 70pts

7th Alicante 19-7-12 55F 41A +14 64pts

8th Sporting 18-6-14 64F 50A +14 60pts

Highlights: Spanish ST finding his scoring boots and qualifying for Europe!!!

Lowlights: None!!!