West Ham

Season 2010/11

2010 July-December

Transfers in
I started the 2010/11 season with a squad very short on fire power. With Carlton Cole the only current striker at the club under 30 I looked into the transfer market for a young striker. With the board only giving me 500k to avoid relegation I began my search.
After a few days searching I found a young talent. 18 year old Vaclav Kadlec, possessing amazing pace and a certain eye for goal I had to take some of the wage budget to make the deal complete. Signing Kadlec in a deal worth £1.8 million from Sparta Prague; I also signed Shaleum Logan on a free transfer from Man City as cover for Herita Illunga at left back. Paulo Sammarco was also signed on a free from Sampdoria as a rotational midfielder when the likes of Mark Noble and Scott Parker needed to be rested.



Transfers Out
The first player to leave West Ham since I took over was Manuel Da Costa. He was sold to Sporting Lisbon for £2.9 million. I also loaned out Fred Sears, Junior Stanislas, Jordan Spence and Julien Faubert.

League Cup
In my second round game I beat Huddersfield 2-0 and then got Chelsea in the 3rd Round. Losing 1-3 at home, I was knocked out of the League Cup

Premier League
I didn’t have the best of starts to my premier league career. A 0-4 demolition by Arsenal at Upton Park wasn’t what I had in mind for a first game, what a welcome to the Premier League I had! The second match didn't get any better. Losing to Fulham 3-2 at Craven Cottage.

After our poor start we went unbeaten for seven games, beating Man City away in the process. This took us into the top half of the table, even though it’s early days I was confident of a top half, perhaps europa league qualification finish.

By the end of December we had only lost four games since our unbeaten streak came to an end ( lost against Tottenham,Chelsea,Man Utd and Arsenal). Not bad for a team that were expected to struggle to survive in the premier league. At the end of the year we were heading into 2011 in 5th position.

Good work keeping West Ham afloat, as a Chelsea player in my games they usually bounce back and forth with relegation. Also Kadlec was an absolute steal at that price, that is one talented Czech.

Ahh good start then, who have you got in the F.A Cup and what are your seasonal expectations from this point onward?

# Zamza : Good work keeping West Ham afloat, as a Chelsea player in my games they usually bounce back and forth with relegation. Also Kadlec was an absolute steal at that price, that is one talented Czech.

whenever i start as another team on previous versions of FM West Ham are always the the yo-yo team. It's ridiculous!

I didn't have FM 2010 but I've been told Kadlec was world class on it. just hoping he does the same on this. How is your Chelsea career going?

# Tom_BcFC : Ahh good start then, who have you got in the F.A Cup and what are your seasonal expectations from this point onward?

Better than I expected really. thought I would be around 10th-15th at best.
I have Leeds in the F.A Cup so fingers crossed there's no upset.
My expectations are to hopefully push on from our good form at the start and solidify our place for Europa League Qualification.

# RHawkes11 : whenever i start as another team on previous versions of FM West Ham are always the the yo-yo team. It's ridiculous!

I didn't have FM 2010 but I've been told Kadlec was world class on it. just hoping he does the same on this. How is your Chelsea career going?

I got to 2020 and decided to restart with a larger database since things were getting weird near the end with not enough quality players being added to the pool. Things were pretty ridiculous near the end with us winning too easily.

Season 2010/11

2011 January-May

Transfers In
As I am always looking to strengthen my team with young talent over the older experienced players I went away from my usual approach and signed Tal Ben- Haim after his loan with us finished. I needed him for cover for Matthew Upson and James Tomkins. As Portsmouth are in administration I only had to pay £1 for the player. This was, most definitely, the biggest bargain I will ever get for a player still in contract!
The Next player to join us at West Ham was Brazilian left back Dodo. Paying £2.5 million to Corinthians for a player my scouts said would become an important first team member.
The last signing I made in January was another Brazilian. Left winger Zezinho who also had my scouts going crazy about his potential, signing from Santos for £5.75 million.

Transfers out
While signing many players as future stars one of them was put right in the thick of it from the off after Herita Illunga chose to sign for Celtic for £2.5 million. Illunga had wanted to leave since the start of December so I thought what’s the point in keeping an unhappy player?
Valon Behrami also left for Manchester City. They wanted him from the summer but came back with an offer of £5 million that I couldn’t turn down.
Holmar Eyjolfsson and Marek Stech were loaned out to Swansea and Reading respectively.

F.A Cup
Having drawn Leeds at home in the F.A cup I thought we were capable of going to at least the 5th round of the competition. Beating Leeds 4-1 made me think it was even more realistic if we get lower league opposition in the next round.
In the 4th round we did get Lower league opposition in the shape of Norwich. This time it was an away game. We drew 2-2 and forced a replay back to Upton Park. Not what I had expected after our 3rd round game.
When the replay came around I was expecting a big victory in front of our fans but it wasn’t to be as Norwich scored 2 late goals to win the match 1-2. Our cup runs had been ended early but it gave us a fresher team for the Premier League.

Premier League
I started the New Year with a 5 game unbeaten streak, finally losing to Wigan.
Taking 9 wins, 3 draws and 6 losses in the tail end of the season I ended up finishing 4th in the league and qualifying for the Champions Cup! I don’t know if it was somebody having an extremely poor season or us playing well above our expected position but for now I couldn’t care less. Most notable victories came against Man City, who I did the double over, and Liverpool who I beat on the last day of the season to secure 4th place by a point over them.

High Points
The high points of the season were definitely qualifying for the Champions Cup. I would never have thought it possible with the squad I have.
Signing Vaclav Kadlec. He was my top scorer with 16 goals in 31 games.

Low points
Being knocked out of both national cups so early was frustrating but helped in the end with our league finish.
Losing to weaker teams such as Blackpool, Wigan and Bolton

The season overall
I believe we pushed well above our weight in the season and hardly expect to qualify for the group stage of the Champions Cup. Next season I would not expect a repeat performance, but if we do then great!

I see no screenshots yet, so you must have some trouble with that. I suppose I should rearrange my priorities for the site and come up with a decent tutorials section first.

By the way, congrats for a successful season with the hammers! The 2 Brazilians you signed are among my favorite players from this country and I must admit I rarely sign any Brazilians.

I think people would want to learn more about your tactics, staff choices, training and financial handling; so in fact further talk about your thoughts regarding the overall management would be nice. And then some pictures of course.

# stam : I see no screenshots yet, so you must have some trouble with that. I suppose I should rearrange my priorities for the site and come up with a decent tutorials section first.

By the way, congrats for a successful season with the hammers! The 2 Brazilians you signed are among my favorite players from this country and I must admit I rarely sign any Brazilians.

I think people would want to learn more about your tactics, staff choices, training and financial handling; so in fact further talk about your thoughts regarding the overall management would be nice. And then some pictures of course.

I'll try to upload the screenshots tonight if i have time as i saved them but didn't get round to uploading them.

Thanks for the tips I'll put that in at the top of my next entry.

Fantasticly well going , getting a Champions League spot with a team expecting to get relegated really takes some good signings.

Hope future seasons go well for you too mate

2010/11 Tactics

For my 2010 season I used the following tactics:

Philosophy- Rigid
Starting Strategy- Attacking

Playing Style
Passing style – more direct
Creative freedom- more expressive
Closing down- press more
Tackling- more cautious
Marking – Man marking
Crossing- drill crosses
Roaming- stick to position

I used a high defensive line, narrow width, slow tempo and focus my passing down both flanks. I also play on the counter attack.

Transfers In
At the start of the season I told the board they could expect a top half finish and they gave me a whopping £26 million to spend on players.
I started the season by spending over half the budget on a new striker.
Andy Carrol signed from Newcastle for £15.25 million.

I signed a youngster called Pajtim Kasami and a more experienced left back in Jose Angel.

I had a number of free signings also. No less than 8 players signed for nothing.

Transfers Out
The start of the season marked my first major transfer cull. I felt it was time to start letting experience go and build up youngsters so I have an established squad for years to come.
I started by loaning out Fred Sears again as I feel he can contribute later in his career.
I let Benni McCarthy go as he is old and useless to me now and just sitting in the reserves taking his wages. Kieron Dyer also left on a free along with youngsters Jordan Brown and Andrea Zola.
I loaned Ruud Boffin to my feeder club, Portsmouth, and sold Tal Ben-Haim to Valencia for £1 million.



League Cup

This year’s League cup was better than the last. We beat Blackpool in the third round 2-0. We then played West Brom and won 1-4. In the quarter finals we played Nottingham Forest and won on penalties after a 3-3 draw. In the semi-finals we faced our rivals Tottenham. In the first game at home we were outplayed and lost 0-3. The return leg was much the same as we lost 0-2, 0-5 on aggregate.
It was hard to lose in the semis especially against Tottenham! But I am proud of our performance in the cup this season.

Champions Cup

This was the time all our fans had been waiting for, our qualifying match for the Champions cup. We drew HSV in the qualifying matches and I was anxious to see how we did against a very different opposition.
In the first game we were beaten 0-2 in Hamburg and our dream looked over but even though the deficit looked great we won 2-0 back in London and then won a penalty shootout to qualify for the group stages!
We were put in a group with Sevilla, Zenit and Bordeaux. We won our first match against Sevilla 3-0 then lost against Zenit and Bordeaux. The return matches we beat Bordeaux and lost to Sevilla before thumping Zenit 4-0.
Even though we took 3 victories it wasn’t enough to qualify for the knockout stages but we went into the Euro Cup.

Premier League
The start of the season was poor. After a very good pre-season we were trounced 1-5 by Liverpool on the first day of the season. We picked up our first league win of the season on the 24th September, in our 6th game. The rest of 2011 didn’t get much better. We finished the year with 6 wins, 6 draws and 8 losses. We were sitting in the bottom half and looking like the team we should have been LAST season.

# LFC El Nino : Fantasticly well going , getting a Champions League spot with a team expecting to get relegated really takes some good signings.

Hope future seasons go well for you too mate

All I needed was a quality striker and Vaclav Kadlec fits the bill perfecttly!