Don't know where I'm going, but I'll get there!

Wild, wild west

Most coaches rather draw 0-0 or 1-1 than losing 4-5, I'm not one of them! Just look at these incredible numbers from last year!

Steamroller

We've just passed the halfwaymark on my second full season at the club. It has with out a doubt been a great season with nothing but an early sorting out of the Leauge Cup to be sulky about, but then again, who cares about it?

The "wild wild west" - theme has not just continued since last year, but has been kicked up a notch, just look at our crazy stats thus far!







It doesn't look good to come in second in the CL-group, but after four wins in our four first games we'd already secured our spot in the knockoutstage, so I let my youngsters handle the last two games which included a 5-2 loss against Sevilla, but once again, who'll care in a a few months...

In the sports end of buissnes I'm only unhappy about one thing - drawing Real Madrid in the first knockoutround, but since a want to be a challanger we still must beat everyone so I guess once again it's not much to sulk about.

Financialy I've still got some problems to sort. Last season we ended up with a profit of ~€40mil, though this included massive selling of players. In totalt i bought for €78mil and sold for €80. At first look this looks just fine, deduct the €12mil differential from last years profit and we're still looking at a good year. The problem however is that I always buy my players at 48months of installments whilst I prefer selling them for straight up cash. This means that I've only piad 25% of last years transfers whilst I've recived most of my money coming in the other end. As long as we keep profiting every year I guess it's okay but we might find ourselves struggeling to pull even towards the summer. This season's total profit is down to about €50mil, but we've been loosing €7-9mil every month thus far so we'll see where it all ends up. In a short term there's no worries at all, if we don't profit will more or less break even any way, and with a €160mil cushion in the bank we've got tons of time to figure out how to go from breaking even to becoming even more wealthy.

Now back to the battlefield, I'll let you know if anything interesting happens

congratulations on the story.

you seem to have the midas touch whereever you go another point of manangement that i like of yours is that u try keep teh club in a financially stable position . which is the most improtant thing besides results .

#47340 toonman8589 : congratulations on the story.

you seem to have the midas touch whereever you go another point of manangement that i like of yours is that u try keep teh club in a financially stable position . which is the most improtant thing besides results .

thanks, hope you enjoy it!

sorry if I disapoint you, but fact is I've been fired no less than three times during this career because of slipping resluts, I also count my resignation from Inter as a failiure as I decided to leave due to lack of results there as well. Personally I think this is good though as a career shouldn't all be sunhine! As far as my financial thinking goes I can't do anything else but agreeing with you. The financial side is the foundation on which you build your club, I don't understand how so many can ignore it more or less...

Hey l3nnart, can I have a screenshot of your history and how you did early on in this career? I'm doing the same sorta story and my first 2 clubs have been failures and this 3rd club might be going that way too...

#47441 CantGetEnoughOfJelavic : Hey l3nnart, can I have a screenshot of your history and how you did early on in this career? I'm doing the same sorta story and my first 2 clubs have been failures and this 3rd club might be going that way too...

As far as screenshots go I guess these are the most relevant ones, though I don't think they'll say much...





To put it down in words my first job at Gimnasia had a few magic moments including the win against River a wrote a little extra about, but the consistensy just wasn't there and in a matter of months got the boot. After that it took years before someone dared to hire me again. The team was Dunjaska Streda in the slovak second division. Here I saw my first success as we managed a promotion into the first leauge. There we did pretty well but never really came close to winning anything. I resigned and moved on to another slovak side in the top leauge but once again failed to but togather any runs worth mentioning. Next was a huage faliure in the dutch seconddivision with RCK, I was once again fired in a matter of months without doing any good at all. Next came my adventure in Africa which I guess you know all about. After that came the glorydays of Anderlecht, I honestly think it's the project I'm the most proud of regardless of what I win here at Liverpool. They way I unearthed gems in South America and made an impact against the greatest teams in the world with a wagebudget that wouldn't cover any other topteam's three highest earners still makes me shiver. Through all these years not staying until we got ourselves a european scalp is the one thing a regret... anyway I moved on to two failed projects in Italy. Personally I'd say Napoli were harsh when firing me but fact is we weren't doing that good either.

I've also had 5 national teams, not sure if I've even mentioned all of them but making a long story short I've never qualified for a big tournament so there hasn't been anything to say... I might get to a championship with the french side I'm currently managing but I'll only get into it if we make it there.

All'n'all I guess the conclusion is that you'll have up and downs regardless of what. I've had 15 diffrent jobs in this career counting the international ones, and I honestly don't consider more than 4 of them a success (earning the promotion with Dunjaska, capturing Africa with Maritzburg, the glorydays at Anderlecht and lastly this Liverpool-job that's going to bring fruit shortly, trust me)... so me message to you is to keep fighting... there are many factors that plays into your result, it's easy to miss one of them, that will ruin your game, but it's bloody difficult to get all engines working properly in the same time and that my friend is what you need for success. All you can do is to keep searching for your flow until you find it, learn from your misstakes and even more importantly learn what works, that is the way to success!

Thanks man!

You should give my story a read and see how I am doing!

You win some you lose some

I know it's not a mantra that should be used in the top of professional sports, but it's the only fitting title I could find to this post. We've had an outstandig year overall scoring no less than 167 goals in just 58 games while conceding as little as 59. We more or less sercured our top spot in the leauge when beating second placed Tottenham in the 30th round of play as it saw us widening the gap between us to 12p. We managed to pull through an insane semifinal in the FA-cup against Man City despite finishing the game with 9(!) players and later moved on to win the final. We danced our way through the CL-group, got playback on mighty Real in the first knockoutround, finished off the supreme french force of Marseille in the second and then... and then... we played one bad game to f**k up this amazing season. We were denied by the post no less than three times and my heart ached as we saw Olympique Lyonnais snatch a 3-1 win in our on house!!! our own damn building! We went down to France for the second leg knowing that it wouldn't be the least bit easy to turn things around but we had to try. We managed to pull one back but as we were forced to push forward for another deuce towards the end an experinced french side had no problem to conter and kill the game.

Okay, that's just my thoughts about this season in an unundersatandable mashedup paragraph, here's something more comperhensive...

Our leaugeplay has been strong and stable through out the entire year, we even managed to meet my goal of keeping a goalavrage above three, a huage number for a strong leauge like PL. Here's the final table:



The biggest diffrence between this year and last however is not the insane offensive but the sturdy defence that was second best in the leauge statswise. It gave us the stability we needed to run away with the title.

As I said our CL-play came to an abrupt end when Olympique Lyonnais came to England and stole the first leg with a huage portion of luck on their side. We had a few attempts that came close, but the absence of our new topstriker Thongthanit was way more visible than I would have wished for. Also our crazy schedule had a big impact. In the 35 days leading up to the second leg against Lyon we had palyed both legs of the quaterfinals against Marseille, the decisive "leauge final" against Tottenham, three prestigeous leaugegames against United, Chelsea and Everton, the crazy FA-cup semifinal against City that went all the way to penalties, the first leg against Lyon and a basicley meaningless leaugegame against Birmingham... in hindsight I can't understand how this is even possible! Most remarkable about all of this is an example form my first few months at Liverpool when we had THREE GAMES IN THREE DAYS! Must be a bug...



Looking past our CLrun and focusing on the domestic cups we've got one tiny catastrofy and one giant showing of heart and dedication. In the Leauge Cup we were eliminated in our first game against Barnsley, I baiscly played my thirdstring team, so it's maby not as bad as i sounds, but we shouldn't be losing against Championshipsides regardless of what team we field. The FAcup was the contrary of this faliure with it's peak in the twice mentioned semifinal against City... this is how we finished the game:



There is a downside to this story as we let a 3-1 lead slip in one half of football but I choose to focus on the fact that we managed to fight our way to a shootout where we ultimatley stod victorious despite two red cards and and injury after we've already made our 3 subs.

Financially it proved to be a great year, atm we show a profit just above €61mil though I expect it to drop down around €40-50mil brefore the season is officialy over. With such a prosperous year behind us I've got the confidence to make big signings this summer to grant us that extra edge we need to win it all.

Overall the season was definetly a step in the right direction. I honestly think that no team in the world would beat us present day when both teams are fully rested over the course of a few games, but as we all know, that's not how you win that damn CLtrophy, so I'll have to find even greater depth for our team so we can move forward. I'll be looking to strengthen the defence, our to starting cb's are both worldclass acts but also also pushing 30 so new blood will be requierd. I'll also be looking to find some flexible wingers as I've often found myself in situations where we've got lots of central strikers but few choises at the flanks.

Well I'll let you know if something sick happens during the preseason, if not, I'll get back whenever I feel there's something to tell, until then I hope you've managed to get through the monstreous post

congratulations on winning the premiership title. let's hope you win that cl trophy and maintain the premiership title next year good luck, cheers mate

On schedule

And so the first game of the year has been finished. We played last years runner-up Tottenham for the Community Shield, a trophy with no prestigue what so ever, but a game against one of our top rivals will always get your balls tingeling.

After barley mustering a shot on target in the first half I gave the team a f***in' good kickin' in the lookerroom, it worked. The lads decided they wanted to win the game and before I knew it we were up 2-0 seemingly effortless. Before the game was over we'd managed a third goal as well and I had nothing to complain about. It's always great to start things off with a win.



During the summer I made some moves and slpashed some cash to remould my defence. I didn't dare to sell my two star cbs but I brought in their replacements, who many might find a bit unfitting. The old guard consists of huage vicious serbs whilst my new cb's have taken a completly diffrent direction, small, fast and mexican. They're both below 6¨tall and the heaviest one of them weighs 76kg. The reasons for this are two things: first of all they're both very brave, which in my experience is enough to compensate for height provided that they have the requierd physique. Secondly their speed will hopefully erase one of our biggest weaknesses from last year - counterattacks. Since we always apply (at least at kick-off) an attacking mentality and play all our homegames on a maximumsized pitch there's alot of room behind the defence. When teams have found a way to use it they've often been able to hurt us, though our insane ability to score has compensated for that more often than not. If things works as expected we'll be even harder to beat in gameplay, though I'm not sure how it will effect us at set piecses. On the one hand size is always a factor, but also the speed, agility and bravery is a part of the equasion... I guess only time can tell.

Other than our cb's I've invested in two fresh rightside WBs. The predecessor was pretty good but pushing 30 and wanted a wagehike dispite his already ridiculous €100k/w. What's crazy about his replacements is the fact that none of them have more than twostarred abilityratings and only one of them have a potentialrating above three stars. Basicly one of them is not good enough to play here, he's only saved by one thing - his position. There's literally only one WB operating on the right flank in the world who's younger than 26, considered good enough for us (showing a threestarred CA) and is willing to leave his current club for the one ranked as nr 3 in the world (us). Unfortunatly this man has just finished his first year in superrichoilscum PSG and will cost me around €50mil to bring here plus a salary around €150k/week, twice as much as I like to play my topplayers. So in the end a player with 2starCA and 3,4starPA will be my first chiose and a 2starCA/2,5starPA second choise. Against Tottenham many attacks came down this flank and that causes me some headaches, but right now there's just not much to do other than staying on the lookout in the transfermarket and hoping for the best.

I've also brought in some talent as always, we'll see if any of them makes an impact in the near future.



And on goes the parade!

Closing shop

If I had some doubts about swapping my serbs for the tiny mexicans at the beginning of the season they've killed every last reason for it right off the top. It took no less than eleven competetive games until anyone dared to score on our new defence! Iroincly relegationcandidates Hudderfield had the honors of getting a shot by Uribe, but it all sends clear signals, I'm on to something! I'm so convinced that I've already arranged for my serbs to leave in january, one of which to Arsenal, which does scare me a little but it should all be fine. Offensivly we're not as hot as last year thus far, but I credit it to having our three (!) best striker out at once. The responsibility has fallen onto the young guard of brazilian wizkids, french poachers and halfassed englishmen for now, but I think we'll be doing just fine as long as the rest of our strikers stay healthy.

Here's our record so far:

Bursting the bubble

So it took 19 games but our perfect runt has now come to an end. Looking at what I had avaliable though I can't really be upset...



What's even more bizzare is the fact that my seven (!) best strikers are unavailable for the next game... wtf!?

Also I'm not sure if I should be happy or sad that the only player who's managed to bring us to our knees thus far is a protogé of mine - Jorge Alvarez, from my days att Anderlecht, who's now a unitedplayers... bagged both their goals in our 2-1 defeat...

Drawn to the edge!

After the bad beat against United, Man City managed to become the first team in over 18 months to claim the top spot from us in the leauge. It came at a bad time as we were just hitting our thoughest couple of week of all season. After losing my third (!) Mersysidederby we had the CL-quaters against PSG and a leaugegame against United within ten days, followed by though leaugefixtures against Chelsea and Tottenham, just to walk right into the CL-semifinals against City and FA-cup semifinals against Charlton.

We're about halfway through this month of hell, after beating PSG in great fashion and watching United snatching the win just three points separated City, Tottenham and ourselves. We all knew the game against Chelsea would be vital in order to put pressure on the other teams. Our conditions however could have been better with both our top striker and defenceman out and to make matters worse my replacement up top recived a very questionable red card (courtesy the delightful Mr Webb...) after less than 30min... however it seemed like whoever was up there taking a dump in my face during the unitedgame decided we deserved some retribution so despite dominating the game thuroughly Chelsea just couldn't get the ball past the post (they got it passed our keeper all the time but somehow were denied anyway, and before we knew it we had bagged not one but two goals and we were back on top of the table as City also got to taste defeat against United.

With the table looking like this our game against Tottenham can be the decider.



Despite our though schedule I figure we have an advantage though. Within eleven days City are to play Chelsea and Tottenham in the leauge as well as batteling for the CLfinal against us while Tottenham are to play Arsenal, City and us. We on the other hand do not have a single team from the upper half of the table left on our schedule except for Tottenham and the game is played at Daglishs Arena so I really like our chanses. If we can also put a dent in Citys confidence by knocking them out of the CL both titels our well within our reach!

I can see Tottenham showing wsup to the others in 2028

On the yellow brick road

So here we are, five games away from a historical season. After winning against Chelsea, Tottenham and Leeds in the leauge we're three points ahead of secondplaced City. We also have superior GD to fall back on which means we only need two wins to secure our second consecutive leaugetitle.



More important to myself was the CLsemis against City. For the first game I wasn't sure what to expect, our topgoalscorer was just coming back from an injury I didn't dare playing him to risk getting an halfassed 45min out of him now instead of a solid 90 in the second leg and our top defenceman was suspended. After a pretty good game we found ourselves in a decent position after a 2-1 loss. It might sound stupid but knowing that Thongthanith and Ruibio were both returning made me sure about winning. Boy did they prove me right, Thongthanith scored 1-0 and 2-0 more or less on his own while Rubio got right down to buissnes with his mexican partner and closed up shop early. A concern before the game was that three of my keyplayers risked suspensions from the final if they were to recive a yellow card but as we scored our 3-0 goal after 70min I picked all of them off the pitch and it could all be avoided. As things look now we're only going to miss Odur, the Kenyan MC, but I brought in a great rotationoption for him this winter so I have no doubts about him doing a good job as well.



In the final Sevilla awaits, a team we beat away from home in last year's groupstage and later lost to (though we fielded a reservesquad as we were already through). However they seem to be on fire this year losing only a single game in the leauge and outedging powerhouses such as Tottenham and Lyon in the CLknockoutstages. It should prove to be a great game!

Lastly our reserveteam managed to beat Charlton in the FAcup-semis so now a potentially epic final lies ahead between us and Everton. They've also had a great year as you can tell from their position in the leauge, though I'm not sure if I'll field my best team or rest the stars for the CL-fianl, I guess well see