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Adam Chabukiani: Defying All Odds

The story of a young Georgian refugee, born through the chaos of the Abkhazia War to find his feet in the footballing world.
Started on 5 October 2015 by Jack
Latest Reply on 5 July 2019 by Justice
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Justice: It really was perfect! And now we're in the Champions League for next season! :D

mgriffin2012: I'll be trying my best ;)




And that will be that! The rollercoaster that the 2022/23 season has come to its conclusion and we finish the footballing year with a cup double. Despite losing out on the UEFA Europa League in a narrow 2-1 defeat to Bayer Leverkusen, we demolished Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Cup Final with a 4-0 win at Wembley.

On top of that, we qualified for the UEFA Champions League for the 2023/24 season alongside Arsenal, Man City and Everton. Thanks to the new cash inflow that UCL football brings us, we have decided to improve our training and youth facilities (completion approx. 29/12/2023) and expand our stadium up to 30,986 seats (completion approx. 4/1/2024).

In terms of transfer news, a large majority of our development squad have been placed on the transfer list.



















And here is the final Premier League table of the 2022/23 campaign. After hovering outside the top four for the majority of the season, a final, late surge saw us grab our Champions League prize on the 38th match of the season.

We are now a Champions League team along with the likes of Arsenal, Manchester City and fellow surprise package, Everton. Manchester were budged into the Europa League after a final day loss to Newcastle United. Therefore they will be playing alongside Chelsea and Stoke next season. This campaign there were many underachievers like mentioned Man United, but also Chelsea, Tottenham and Liverpool all failed to match the predictions this season.

At the bottom of the table, Sheffield United reclaimed their Premier League status on the very last day with a shock victory over 8th placed Spurs. That meant that Derby County were dragged down into the quicksand of relegation to the second tier alongside Burnley and Crystal Palace - who put up a brave fight towards the end of the season but it just wasn't enough to save themselves.

With the three teams relegated to the Championship, it is Leicester City, West Ham United and Hull City to replace them in the Premier League. Leicester City loaned our reserve striker Roger Pursehouse this season and the forward finished top scorer in the Championship, meaning he has won the Golden Boot on every loan spell that he has been on. Next season Pursehouse will be put in our first-team due to such consistency every season.





After signing for the club at a £45.5M fee from Zenit St. Petersburg, Jurij Dinaburskij deserves nothing less than this year's Player of the Season award. The 42 goals he scored this season speak for themselves about just how brilliant this striker is. Dinaburskij has proved himself as one of the world's greatest number nine's this season. The Europa League Final loss can perhaps be blamed on Jurij's ineligibility to play in the tournament, such is the quality of his goalscoring records.

Dinaburskij took home the Fans' Player of the Season, Golden Boot and Player of the Season awards for this year and rightly so. We will certainly be having to fend off some phone calls for Dinaburskij's talent during the summer, with the striker having a release clause of £48M, we will have to offer him a new contract with a higher clause than that.

Congratulations on earning Champions League football! Great victory over Spuds in the FA Cup final, and very unfortunate to lose by such a narrow scoreline in the Europa League! Dina produced a big season, I hope he doesn't get poached in the summer because he will certainly be your key player next year!
What an amazing season and Champions League nights are going to be amazing! Well done for bringing the FA Cup home mate!
Justice: Thanks man! It's been a fantastic season - the best yet by a long way. After this, I'm looking forward to the next campaign and where it will take us.

mgriffin2012: They certainly will be down at The Avenue! Best thing about the qualification is that we begin in the Group Stages as well, rather than having to qualify :D




It is the 22nd of July 2023, and we will look back on Bradford Park Avenue's summer so far as many changes take place within the club.

Transfers


How can we talk about a footballing summer without discussing the transfers? This summer, Bradford PA have signed up three new players, in stark contrast to the twelve players that had arrived at Elland Road on the same date exactly one year ago.

In total, Chabukiani has spent £11.75M of his several hundred million pound transfer budget on a total of three players. However, all of that money has gone onto one player - a Manchester United goalkeeper - going by the name of John Taylor.

Taylor, 21 years old, joined the United academy in 2014, aged just eleven years old at the time. A scholars contract was signed by the player's agent Andy Johnson aged seventeen. He spent the 2019/20 season on loan at Newport County where he made eight league appearances, conceding seven goals. Successful loan spells at Birmingham and Ipswich followed two years in a row afterwards.

Taylor made his Red Devils first-team debut in the 2021/22 season when he played a part in two cup matches where he only conceded one goal. However last season he failed to appear in one match all season and the England Under-21's international was deemed surplus to requirements when the club accepted an £11.75M offer for Taylor from Bradford, a deal which could rise to as much as £23M depending on circumstances.

Hamburg striker Daniel Kurczynski and Lorient striker Stanley Williams both joined Bradford at the end of their contracts at their respective clubs, with both looking increasingly promising talents at their former teams.

But it is the departures which have made the headlines on the back pages all summer, with as many as 27 players leaving The Avenue permanently, Bradford picking up a total of £167M from the fees involved.

The exodus began with the opening of the Dutch transfer window as PSV swooped for their parent club's Slovakian midfielder Marcel Nemec in a transfer involving a £2M fee.

This carried on into the 9th June as the English transfer window opened its shutters as a development team trio fled the club for other suitors. José Carlos Monteiro Bessa - Avenue's Portuguese striker - left for £1M to join Championship outfit Sheffield Wednesday. Meanwhile, Gage Tracey and John South both followed each other to agree deals with Swansea City in a combined fee of £5.3M.

Tottenham Hotspur were the next in line for a double swoop of Bradford's first-team players. Spurs grabbed both Scottish full-back Keith Miller for £5.5M, and Nico Elvedi for £22M including installments.

Despite becoming somewhat of a fans' favourite over recent season's, Swiss goalkeeper Yann Sommer was sold to fellow Premier League side Aston Villa for a bargain fee of £1M for the 34-year-old.

Perhaps the biggest transfer of the summer so far involved Chelsea as they had a £19M offer for Croatian star Alen Halilovic accepted by Adam Chabukiani. Halilovic signed a four-year contract with the Kensington-based club and will earn £96,000 per week at Stamford Bridge.

Several failed attempts at gaining a work permit for Brazilian left-winger André left the player shunned out of England for a long while. Now he departs permanently to Málaga C.F. for a sizeable fee of £8M.

Gerardo Giménez followed his South American buddy to Spain as the Argentinian midfielder signed a deal with Granada for £4.5M.

The 1st July was a busy day for Bradford, with pre-contracts agreed with many clubs among Europe, the West Yorkshire side lost seven players this day as transfer windows around the continent began to finally open up. The first departure this day was Callum Slattery in a surprise move to Serie A runners-up AS Roma in a £17M deal.

Abbes Bouchouk - another player who failed to be granted a work permit in England - was signed up by Bundesliga side Hoffenheim for £5M. The Algerian centre-back was a bright prospect failed by the government's resistance to give the player a permit to play here. He spent three years on loan to Olimpic - one of our feeder clubs.

After four seperate loan spells and a lot of surrounding hype, Neto has failed the critics appraisal of himself and has been sent to Bologna for £7M. The full-back never made an appearance for Bradford after loan spells at León, Sporting, Thun and Montpellier.

The Salvadoran national hero José Luis Aguilar failed to make an impact for his club team, despite major success with his national team El Salvador. The 46-time international striker has been shipped off to France as he joins Olympique Marseille for a large £12M fee.

Signed alongside André, Jordan Morrison failed to gain a work permit in the UK and spent most of his contract on loan in other countries and impressing there, too. But this summer has seen the Colombian full-back leave for Stuttgart in a £10M transfer.

Despite high ratings from coaches at Bradford Park Avenue, Victor Quiroz has seen his time in Yorkshire come to an abrupt end as his £8M switch to Sevilla is finalised by both teams and ratified by the league associations involved.

After a career that started so brightly at the age of 17, Bradford PA youth graduate Tony Cooke has been sold to Southampton for £2.5M. Cooke made almost 50 appearances at left-back for Avenue as the club was rising through League One and The Championship but saw himself frozen out as the club looked for better options in the top-flight.

Priced at £14M, Luciano Pesce swaps The Avenue for St. James' Park as the midfielder joins Newcastle for the new season. Given the number thirteen shirt this season, Pesce looks to impress in England after a poor start to life in the United Kingdom so far.

The most recent first-team player to be shot down by the club is Cláudio, who joins Liverpool in a £13M transfer. The Brazilian number 10 saw himself frozen out of the starting eleven as Chabukiani switched to a 4-4-2 formation, excluding Cláudio's favourable position of attacking-midfield.


Preseason


This preseason, I recommended that we take the team on a preseason tour to China. Not only to get ourselves used to the foreign conditions in the East that we need to get more used to due to our involvement with the Champions League, but also for commercial reasons such as expanding the fanbase outwards to Asia, in a country populated with over a billion citizens.

During the tour we faced the toughest teams that the Chinese had to offer as we played Beijing Guo'an, Shanghai Shenhua and Guangzhou Hengda. We won all of our matches in China, with a 3-1 win over Beijing, 4-1 against Shenhua and our best performance in the final game against Guangzhou where it finished 6-0.

Following that, we proceeded to face two of our feeder clubs in both Ebbsfleet and Woking - both away ties so that they could receive all gate receipts as part of the agreement. We proved our Premier League class in both matches, with an 11-0 win against Ebbsfleet in a match where first-team entrant Roger Pursehouse scored a hat-trick. We defeated Woking 8-0 with Jack Hallahan bagging four, and Jurij Dinaburskij getting a hat-trick.

Still to go in our preseason schedule is a huge friendly against global superstars Real Madrid - who are possible Champions League opponents. We will face Los Galacticos at home as The Avenue expects a large crowd. Following that, we will play another one of our feeder clubs in PSV Eindhoven at Philips Stadion on 2nd of August.

After our preseason, we will have our first competitive match in the Community Shield against last season's Premier League winners Arsenal, followed by our first Premier League match against the same team a week afterwards.

The Job Offer


Admittedly, I was finally tempted by another club. Just a few days ago, I was offered the managerial post at FC Barcelona following Joachim Low's retirement from football management.

I attended the interview with the Barca representatives, including the chairman Juan Manuel Muguruza and I agreed with all the principles they had put forward. I agreed to play possession football which was direct as well.

Shortly afterwards, John Dean held a meeting with me as well as director Gareth Roberts. He tried to convince me to stay by offering me a new contract with the club, which I agreed to initially until I rejected the talks completely.

After the rejection of John Dean and Bradford PA, Barcelona went forward to offer me a contract at Camp Nou. This was where the talks broke down with Barcelona. I am currently earning £50,000 per week at The Avenue (including my yearly wage rise written in the contract). Barcelona would refuse to budge any higher than £49,000 per week. With Champions League football coming our way this season, along with the history that I have shared over the past eight years with Bradford, I saw no point in leaving the club I have loved all my life for absolutely no gain other than a bolstered reputation.

I rejected the offer from FC Barcelona and came out in the press to profess my loyalty to Bradford Park Avenue.

Contracts


The last segment of this article comes with news of the new contracts offered by myself to people involved already with the club.

This summer I have offered new contracts with every single member of the backroom staff at the club, to which all have accepted my offer to keep on at the club.

The first to sign a new contract was Joan Montenegro, the highly talented Argentinian centre-back. He signed a five-year deal until 2028, earning £150,000. However the main reason I had to offer a new deal was that, with Montenegro's valuation at £38.5M, his minimum fee release clause was only £36M. This has now risen to £96M which should hopefully fend off any clubs coming in for him.

Jurij Dinaburskij signed a £120,000 per week contract, with is release clause now set at £127M which will definitely get rid of any bargains for potential offers. He has signed until 2028 like Montenegro.

Finally, Carmelo Troccoli has signed a new contract and in rather dramatic circumstances. Troccoli's release clause in his old deal was £46M, which Arsenal had activated and already started discussing contract terms with the Italian winger. Luckily, we offered a new contract with a higher release clause (£89M) and he rejected Arsenal's approach to sign a five-year deal. This puts three of our most talented up-and-coming players on long-term deals and low-threat of losing them.
Big statement to turn down Barcelona's advances, hopefully one day you can bring Bradford to their level!
2016-09-04 23:13#236863 Justice : Big statement to turn down Barcelona's advances, hopefully one day you can bring Bradford to their level!
That's certainly the dream, but I don't regret rejecting Barca now. We keep getting better every passing year so it can only get even better from here, right? ;)




It's that time of preseason where lots of clubs begin to announce the more commercial news regarding the club, and at this time Bradford have just announced their new kits.

After failing to find a sponsor for the new season, Avenue will be playing this season with no kit sponsor on the front of the shirt.

Nike are manufacturing these shirts for the second season in a row for the Premier League club.

The home shirt seems to be very inspired by the Glasgow Celtic jerseys, with green and white hoops horizontally surrounding the shirt on the front and back of the shirt. Instead of the thick collar which was present on last season's shirts, this season's collar has become a lot thinner which should make the shirt a lot more comfortable up top to play in.

Supporters spokespeople with the club claim that the fans are very happy with the new home shirt, and particularly without a main kit sponsor. They commented that the lack of income that the club won't receive is made up in what seems an attempt to protest corporatism within the game, and they feel that the shirt means more to them than a company trying to get their name out there in promotion.

The away strip seems to be a typical Bradford Park Avenue throwback to the olden days when the local rugby club used to be more popular in town than either of the Bradford football teams. The rugby teams traditional colours were yellow and black stripes or hoops, which is what is denoted on the new away strip. Old-school fans are said to be delighted with both home and away kits this season.

And finally, the third kit. The alternative kit for clubs around the world is seen as a right to use more artistic license, rather than sticking to a football club's traditional principles in colour coordination, and that is shown with Bradford's third kit this year.

Still in the hoops design, the third kit's colours is shared equally between the colours grey and a violet shade of purple within the hoops. As usual, not always the best received with the veteran supporters, but the kit's wackiness attracts the attention of the younger generation or even kit collectors and is used more of a marketing ploy than a kit designed to be played football in.

With the kits this season being a great success with supporter response, the squad numbers for the forthcoming season have been announced by the club in correspondence to the kit unveiling.

Taking the number one jersey this season is the club's new £11.75M goalkeeper John Taylor, signed from Man United after the sale of Yann Sommer to Aston Villa earlier this summer.

Among the defence, young centre-back Ian Byrne has surprisingly taken the number four shirt which suggests that the former Brighton man may play a big part in the defence alongside the likes of Joan Montenegro and Luke Lloyd this season.

With most of the midfield unchanged in terms of numbers, it is Rémy Cabella who has taken the number fourteen this year instead of last season's number 22 - now taken by Silvan Widmer. Carmelo Troccoli has taken the number 7 jersey this year.

With forwards, Jurij Dinaburskij sticks with his number nine shirt, but Matthew Fletcher takes the number ten shirt with fellow strikers in the first-team Aldo Ríos and Roger Pursehouse taking the number 17 and 19 shirts respectively.

Big season for Dinaburskij, can he break goalscoring records?
2016-09-05 11:19#236871 Justice : Big season for Dinaburskij, can he break goalscoring records?
He's certainly got himself off to a good start in doing so! But with Matt Fletcher back in the team and scoring goals he will have to fight long and hard for it :D




A long preseason summer is beginning to come to a close as we enter August and play our first competitive match in just a few days. It has been a hectic couple of months to get through, starting with international fixtures against South Europe sides Gibraltar and Malta, which we both won and remain top of our group in the European Championship qualifying stages.

Back to Bradford Park Avenue, the departure side of transfer dealings this summer seem to be all but over unless a shock comes through and a huge bid is made for one of our players. However, we haven't had to add too much to our first-team because most of the departures were deadwood anyway. Our only permanent change in the first-team is the arrival of John Taylor from Man United.

We had an absolutely fantastic preseason with the club, taking the squad out on a tour of China where we played three of the nation's top clubs and defeated them all which hopefully caught the eye of potential new supporters in East Asia. When we flew back home, fixtures were arranged with three of our feeder clubs as well as a glamour friendly against Real Madrid. We won every single game of preseason comfortably, meaning we are more than prepared going into the new season where we are favourites for the Premier League title.

























Jack Hallahan kicks off the 2023/24 season with the club's first Player of the Month award for the July month. The Irish winger has kept his place in the team easily by impressing in every match he played in this summer. He scored seven goals in preseason which included four goals against Woking, plus another six assists all in the space of the seven game period.





Despite the Barclays Premier League season not even kicked off yet, I thought I would show you all the shape of the league for the season, including some media predictions.

We start our league campaign against the current holders Arsenal - just six days after we face them at Wembley in the FA Community Shield match on Sunday 2nd August. We play three league games throughout August against Arsenal, Aston Villa and Newcastle in the final match of the season.

As Derby County, Burnley and Crystal Palace dropped down into The Championship, it is Leicester City (champions), West Ham United (2nd place) and Hull City (Play-Off winners) who replace them by promotion from the second tier of English football.

After finishing 3rd last season - seven points away from 1st - we are predicted to win the league this season at 6/4 odds, shortly followed by Manchester City who are priced at 7/4. With five players in last season's Premier League Team of the Year and us keeping relatively the same squad as last season with the exception of an arguably stronger goalkeeper, the bookies seem to favour us over any other team of winning the title.

Sheffield United - who scraped survival last season - have been deemed the favourites to finish bottom of the pile come the end of the season, followed up by Aston Villa (17th last season) and the newly promoted Hull City are also expected to drop straight back down into the second tier.

Currently, Leeds United sit at the bottom of the table despite not playing a match. That is because the club violated the Financial Fair Play rules inserted by FIFA regarding wage rise restrictions during last season. They start the season with a handicap of a five point deduction from the very first game.





After winning the FA Cup and Capital One Cup last season, Bradford Park Avenue have continued their marvelous feat of trophies by winning the FA Community Shield.

The trophy, usually coined as the season's curtain raiser for the new year of league football, was won by Manchester United last season against their rivals Man City.

With Arsenal coming in as the favourites on the basis that they entered this game as the Premier League title holders meanwhile Avenue came in as the FA Cup winners.

It was a competitive debut for Avenue new boy John Taylor as his first match was staged at Wembley in front of a 90,000 crowd - no pressure on him for sure! Taylor played very well, making a total of six saves during the game.

The match turned out to be a very heated affair in truth, especially for Bradford who were making their first appearance in this competition. Arsenal had Brendan Galloway on a booking, but Bradford had six of their players on yellow cards after 90 minutes.

The game was fairly even up until just before half-time when Jurij Dinaburskij opened up his account for the season with a goal in the 44th minute. Luke Lloyd passed the ball to Rémy Cabella on the left before he switched the ball over to the right where he found Tobias. The Brazilian found Jack Hallahan down the right who hit a first-time pass into Dinaburskij, which the Russian striker hit first-time into the left hand corner.

Avenue went in leading 1-0 at the break thanks to Dinaburskij's strike which meant Allegri had to tear up his half-time team talk notes.

But Arsenal struck back at their opponents well into the second half of the match. A hopeful Fletcher long ball towards Dinaburskij was headed away by Galloway, finding Ross Barkley. Barkley gave it short to Lemar who split the defence in two as Álvaro Morata ran in one-on-one with Avenue debutant John Taylor. Morata calmly slotted the ball into the top-right corner to equalise on 67 minutes.

The game remained deadlocked until normal time was over, and even during extra-time the added thirty minutes wasn't enough to split the two sides up. This meant a penalty shootout.

William Carvalho was the first to take a penalty on either side. The Portuguese midfield engine was denied from the spot by John Taylor who tipped the ball out to his left.

It was then Jurij Dinaburskij's turn to take his penalty. The Russian missed his only previous penalty for the club last season so now was his chance to make up for that mistake. He did so, and perfectly and put Bradford 1-0 up in the shootout.

It was Silvano Gnucci who put Arsenal back on level terms by powering a penalty into the right hand side of the net. Jack Hallahan followed this up with another goal, making it 2-1.

Lemar, who assisted Arsenal's equaliser in normal time then took his teams third penalty of the afternoon, which struck the post to the dismay of The Gunners' fans. Tobias capitalised on Lemar's miss by scraping a goal after the ball went under Scuffet's body.

Jason Denayer finished his penalty well to give Arsenal a chance of coming back. This chance was enhanced when Bradford youngster Richard Webb was stopped from the spot by Simone Scuffet.

However, the responsibility was laid on Ross Barkley. The English midfielder had to score to keep Arsenal in it. If he missed, Bradford would win. Barkley slowly ran up to the ball, giving John Taylor enough time to study Barkley's positioning. Not only did Taylor go the right way, but the keeper caught Barkley's shot from the spot! On his first ever match for his new team, Taylor became a hero - a fantastic way to introduce yourself to the fans.

This win means that the Community Shield is Chabukiani's seventh trophy in his career. He won the FA Trophy in 2017, the League One and Championship league titles in 2019 and 2020, the FIFA World Cup in 2022 with Switzerland, followed by last season's double of the Capital One Cup and the FA Cup.
Brilliant results with Switzerland, and congratulations on the FA Community Shield victory! Hopefully that'll be the first of many trophies to return to Bradford this season!
I just finished catching up to the story (started yesterday night believe it or not), and it really has been a great journey. Just wondering what's happened in Adam's personal life. Other than that, awesome story and can't wait for more. Will this finish towards the end of FM 16?

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