Revenge of the Bloods!

I'll have to excuse myself for the lack of updates during the weekend, this is due to communication issues, but rest asure there is still full activity in Droylsden Stadium!

Last season was, just like the last couple of years have been, a bumpy ride proving how hard it is to really become a regular CL-feature on the isles. My EL adventure ended in the second round against Villareal last season. The departure came way to earily and (atleast in my opinion) in very unfair fashion... or maby unfair isn't the right word, because Villareal did beat us fair and square, but we did have more CCCs in the first half of the first leg then Villareal had shots over the 190+ minutes put togather. And the story was pretty much the same during both games, but ey, you win by scoring more goals then your opponent which we failed to do so there's nothing more to say. The story repeated it self over the intire first half or so of the season, unlucky bounces and losing every 50/50-situation there was. Around christmas I took myself some time to think about what to do in order to start winning again and I came to the conclousion that it can't just be bad luck destroying the season when 30-40 games have passed, there has to be something else wrong. For the first time in a long time I decided to make some though choises and take a bit of a chanse selling my star-striker Radebe who had been MVP during my winning season but who just hadn't been consistent enough to rely on since. Once again the profit was huge as he was brought in for €90k and sold for €16.25mil after 6 years of loyal service. To cover the gap I spent almost all the cash I had just recived to bring Michele Preto from Birgmingham and The Championship. He's a well-rounded 23-year old who I see great potential in! (I've already recived offers around €30mil for him which I've rejected).

I also decided to change up my tactics a bit. The basic idea was still the same, having faith in the strong squad I've managed to put togather over the years, letting them solve problems as they see fit and making sure the crowd had reason to reyoice! The style of play reminds a bit of modern-day Barcelona except for my players being more powerful and using the ocasional thorughball from deep instead of always relying on getting there through the "short-game". These changes along with some young talents seizing thier opportunities to take a spot in the starting-eleven got us back on track pulling back 12 points on 4th placed City in the latter stage of the season and thus brining us back into CL! During our last 4 games we smashed dominant champions Arsenal as well as high-flying Liverpool with a combined score of 7-1 (4-1,3-0). Here's the final table:


When the transfer-market opened again during the summer I could only think of replacing my left full-back Moreno, not because he hadn't delivered but because he was the only player who didn't fit perfectly into the new system. But he's still a class-act and when I couldn't find any replacements ready to take over right away for a resonable prize I decided to keep him as my starter for now. I ended up buying no more then one talented midfielder during the summer transfer-window who's currently in the reserves (which was the idea). I've been buying more and more young talents to place in my youth- and reserve-team to watch them grow. I see the trend as a sign that we've found a solid foundation without the need for big transfers into the starting-elven and it pleases me alot! Here's the summary of last years signings:


Thus far my plan has worked out perfectly as we cruised by Galatasaray in a 4-1 aggregate in the CL-qualifiers, but even more impressive is our demolishing of powerhouses Liverpool and Chelsea as well as strong-going Sunderland with a combined scoreline of 10-0 in the opening stage of the leauge. Might add that only the game against Pool was played on our own ground!

All'n'all the start is with out a doubt positive, but I've seen how fast things can take a turn for worse at any time, so I'm not going to take anything out in advance, even though I'm incurably positive!

If you've managed to make your way through the intire post I'm very impressed and thank you for taking an interest, feel free to comment!

I must say that I'm really happy about the rep I've built up and general view people have of me

There is something very special about this season...

Some much needed sunlight in an otherwise dark autumn

One part of my career that I've left out of this story are my international adventures. I started off with trying to get Sweden back amongst the top nations in the world. However the experiment was an utter failure and as I fell out of love for the project I decided to step down.

About a year later the world cup was played and I once again felt the urge to be a part of the international tournaments. As it was a known fact many managers are let go at the end of the big tournaments and I decided to jump upon one oppurtunity in particular (and just think I've just copied Johannes3000 on this): England!

We've toyed our way trough the qualifiers and this summer the European Championship awaits!

I just thought you should know, but for now all focus lies in finishing the leauge in a good fashion and bringing home the CL-trophy!

And so we're here once again, this time facing another spanish team as Barcelona will be our opposition, I'm hoping for better luck the second time around but I've got no idea what to expect!

90 minutes away from the biggest game in the clubs history!

Come on Droylsden!

I've haven't been this proud of my boys since the legendary comeback against Blackbrun that pushed us to the top of the table in the final 45 minutes of the 20/21 season! I'm extremely excited to once again test my strength against Marseilla who have built a firce squad over the past seasons. I played them in the groupstage in my first CL-adventure. We picked up a draw at home and a loss on the road, but to be honest they were the far better side during both games and the point we picked up at home was not deserved at all. But it's a completely diffrent Droylsden this time around and I hope it'll show!

This was, without a doubt, the single most nerverecking game I've ever experinced! I knew their main strength was in their magnificant CBs who posses pace, power and hight, as well as there world-class MCs who trashed me last time around with some insane long-shots and perfect passing!

The game was closely contended from start to end and there were no surprises when over-time was declared, Berbeitos got two chanses during the game but failed to capitalize on either one of them. The OT was stiff and penalties seemed inevadable, when suddenly, in the 121st minute, like lightning from clear skies, Martin did what he does best and picked out a pass no one else in the intire stadium saw. Suddenly Myers was in the clear and made no misstakes as he sweept the ball into the back of the net with one, perfectly executed, touch. In a matter of seconds the ball had made a journy from the safty of the midfield to the back of the net with no more then two touches! I yelled with my hands in the sky when once again, as painful reminder of the old days on gritty parks far from the glamour of CL-football, the déjà vu-moment of the yellow and red flag being raised and the referee's witsel going off, not to point towards the middle of the park to declare a goal, but to raise his arm and call the offside! I was devestated! But at least the re-play showed that the decision was correct and I'll rather lose fair and square then win dirty (like Barcelona...). The most important thing though, which I forgott for a few seconds, was that the game was far from over. Ahead of us awaited the single most important seconds of our careers, with no room for error what so ever!

I decided to make some changes, moving my best penelty-taker Myers from pole-position the 5th so that I had expreiced shoulders taking on the most high-pressure situations.

The intire plan seemed to backfire big-time right off the start as my new lead, Opoku-Ware, missed the very first penalty. Marseille refused to miss so from there on every penelty was vital. At least up until the fourth round when we got a break as newly subed Romero didn't even manage to place his shot on net! Even though we were back in the shout-out I didn't feel comfortable at all since Mwanza was yet to make a save and my remaining shooters were young, inexperienced and to be honest uttalented penelty-takers. A couple of rounds past with both sides scoring, when suddenly, it was all over, I just couldn't belive it! In front of me stood a 32-year old striker who had played 168 competetive games of elite-football, scored 102 goals, represented the french national-team and lifted the CL-trophy 5 years eariler, but who had now lost his battle to a 19-year old central defender, who alongside the 29-year old goalkeeper whom just made his first save of the shot-out, had become the heroes of the best team in Europe! The 32-year old was Ishak Belfodil, the heroes El Mrini and Mwanza and I'm the happiest man in the world !

Nice one!
Wrong picture though.

thanks for the heads up!

Moving on from the wild paties following the CL-victory it's all back to buissnes, even eariler then I'm used to, as I'm packing my bags and traveling down to Italy with the English nationalteam. Here's our group:

This is definetly not what I had in mind! After dancing our way trough the group we were to face Denmark once again in the play-offs. We were weakened by some suspensions but it should still not have been a problem. But loosing Myers up top proved to be more then our offense could handle as we also lacked a real playmaker we didn't come through enough. And of course, as always when you dominate without scoring, Denmark got a shot off from god knows how many yards, Smithies didn't move and all of a sudden we were down. A wild chase began but getting denied by the crossbar twice was as close as we came, and just like that it was all over...



I'm not sure if I'll continue at the helm of England until the WC in two years, but I won't quit before I find another nationalteam to lead, so we'll see what happens!

So I guess it's time to sum up yet another year at the helm of Droylsden.

Looking past my recent failure in the EC with England (which isn't that hard for me since it was more of a side-expreiment to my main concern, Droylsden. I even let my assistant take care of all my qualifiers) the first thing that comes into mind is obviousley the magnificant CL-triumph! We didn't have much luck in the draws either which makes me extra proud of making it all the way!



The leauge is harder for me to evaluate, because on the one hand we did make a huge improvement from last year where we barely made into CL, as to this year where we were never close to lose out on an instantqualification-spot. On the other hand though, we had a lead of seven or so points half way through the season, but then came a bad run of form and we lost points we never should have lost due to sloppy defence and lack of concentration in our finishing. This did not just give United the chanse to catch up, but get a gap of their own which continued to grow as we weren't consistens enough. By the end of the year, as you can see, United ran away with this one uncontended.



The Leauge Cup victory is easy to forget as the adventure in Europe has consumed most of my mind. But getting my revenge on Villa, knocking 'em the f*** our early on was a great feeling. We had to beat most of the top-tier teams as we only dodged Arsenal and Pool of the last decades giants and yet we dominated all our games, so I'm definetly pleased!



The FA-cup was going well until we were drawn to play Arsenal away during the time we played our worst football of the year! It proved to much and we never really had a chanse.

As far as the future goes I'm very optimistic as no less then 7 (!) of our starters are 24 our younger, and there are more coming. Though I'm a bit dissapointed as none of these players are products of our academy. But fact is we're yet to see one single player with the potential to really be a professional footballer at all, despite our efforts and work put in to the youth-system. So I guess there's nothing I can do except making sure to develop our facilities and networking util some rough diamonds start showing up.



Financialy we got back on track as well after making a ~€10mil loss last season. Ironicly the upswing is mostly due to the very same "last season" as we managed to qualify for CL once again. We totalled a profit of €11mil which isn't alot, but as we managed to fill up the stadium most of our games for the first time since our last expansion, the board decided to expand it once again bringing our new capacity to ~35k.

As far as transfers go I did make one with some impact in January, his name is Beto. A extremely giften technichan and passer who will make life hard for every defender for years to come! He was an instant success in the leauge totaling 7 assist and 3 goals in 10 games. If all things work out as planned, he will be the engine of my offense moving the ball around and roaming to get it back.



Aside from Beto I've brought in emensly talented goalkeeper Yacoubou and DMC/MC Vilho who I'm not as sure about but who didn't cost me anything, so a gamble on him made sense as he does have some potential. The main focus however was on selling payers as the squad has grown over the last season and I know how many millions can be waisted if you keep uneeded players and let their value detoriate into virtually nothing. It made me a couple of millions so I could balance out last years financial shortcomings.

Hitting the transfermarket I will only look to replace Moreno out of my startingplayers, but just as last year it's no rush as he's got a couple more years before he'll start showing signs of age. And of course, as always, prospects for the future are always welcome.

Beto looks class. Hope he performs.