“Can we reboot this year?” Sasha moaned again. It was a common theme, and not just for her.
“I don’t know what the deal is with the Rodic kid…” Theo sighed, finishing of his drink. They were at the bar, trying to drown their sorrows. Given the shellacking they just suffered at the hands of KSC, it would be awhile before any of them stopped treading water.
“He’s weird,” Heinrich said.
“You can’t that,” Sasha replied. “It’s not nice.” She noticed the others at the table had stopped their drinking and had looked at her.
“So what’s a nice word for weird?” Tobias asked.
“Mercurial.”
“Eccentric.”
“Screw it, he’s weird,” Sasha said after a few moments of thinking. “Who else gives up an open shot on goal to try and pass it to a guy with three defenders around him?”
Mile Rodic does. On more than one occasion. It’s been frustrating because he will make such a nice move, make a great pass, but it’s almost as if he was afraid to score. Good thing Theo Berdayes is there to pick up the slack.
The transfer window was pretty quiet. The big move was Luca Belardinelli leaving for St. Gallen, he really wanted to go play in Switzerland, and for a good defender we got on a free, I am OK with that.
I did a lot of searching for players to bring in, but those I really liked didn’t want to come here, or if they did they (or their teams) wanted too much money. I did find a couple of players who I think are going to be able to contribute though.
Mikael Björk is Belardinelli’s replacement. A solid CD, the injuries susceptibility doesn’t bother me that much, and he’s been a solid performer for us.
Mamin Sanyang is a wingback wo can’t jump, or a Advanced Mid that can’t cross. I’ll be using him at wingback, and we’re going to try to make him a passer first.
January and February were BRUTAL.
I am not kidding when I say if we had lost to Ingolstadt, I would have walked away from the save. I had no idea what was going on, I hadn’t tweaked the tactic, everyone, save Theo’s hamstring, was relatively healthy, but our defense was horrid. It was the sort of defense I wished we played against every once and awhile.
Theo got back into scoring form, Mile actually scored (cue Owen Wilson voice “Hey, I scored….wow….”)
If there was a saving grace, it was that Bielefeld, 1860 Munchen, Kaiserslautern, Magdeburg, Ingolstadt, and Rostock were doing worse than us, and we played 5 of them our last 9 games. The most frustrating game in all of this was the Munchen game, we dominated possession to the tune of 8 shots, 4 on target, with an xG of .51; they counterattacked to the tune of 17 shots, 4 on target and an xG of 1.63 Part of me says the teams give a damn done broke because we had staved of relegation, were safe, and they didn’t want to do anything to hurt themselves. Theo scored every game, in the hopes of getting a move away from, his parent club most likely, and as we limped to the end of the season, we in 12th place, having Won 10, Drawn 8, and losing 15 with a -13 goal differential. For which we received €9.95M in prize monies.
Theo Berdayes ended the season with 19 goals, which was the most in Bundesliga 2. I tired signing him, he went to Dynamo Dresden for 575K.
The good news is that we have a decent payroll of €4.7M p/a, and a transfer budget of €2.45M. Bad news is I still have a roster thats comprised mostly of players overachieving, and I can improve in so many positions it’s not funny. That said, Lavalle was respectable in goal, his stats were about the same as Pavlovich’s, he let in a few more goals, but as bad as our defense was the second half of the season I am willing to give him as pass on that.
Rodic ended up with 7 goals, I don’t remember any of them…
That’s the roster, and its deceiving. There’s talent, Dohrmann, Ott, Bjork, Okekre all have potential, but I think its more the 120-130 potential than it is the 150-160 variety. Rodic, well, he’s…Rodic. The rest of the team is roleplayers, and you need them, but they need to be able to do the job they need to do, at the level they need to do it, and I don’t know that I have that.
That means spending time looking at players, which means scouting. Fun times ahead.
The room was quiet, all three of them men present staring at the names on the whiteboard.
“OK,” said Coach Schmidt, “What is the reality of us signing any of those players?”
“We can try,” the GM said. “There’s no harm in trying.”
“Look, we can’t expect to hit on 100,000 to 1 odds every time,” Stock said. The new Chief Scout had adapted pretty quickly to his role, and had very few problems working with the two. “We can ask, but we’re going to get turned down. A lot. We aren’t big enough to attract a big name player, we can’t pay them enough even if they do want to come here. At the end of the day, players are realistic, they’ll take less money for a guaranteed spot, but were-“
“We’re the place they play to get noticed by bigger teams. We give younger players looking for a chance to play, and if they do well we do what we can to keep them here, if they move on good for them.” Coach stood up, went to the whiteboard, and started erasing most of the names on it. “Plan for next year, build for the future. Speaking of which, I need to make an appointment about upgrading some facilities.”
THE FOOTBALL MANAGER BLOG OF FM_JELLICO 