“What is with this team?” Hans asked. “Have we turned the corner, so to speak?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Maybe,”
Hans looked over the top of his mug, and found Sasha, Ulrich and Joachim staring back at him.
“I don’t want to get my hopes up. Again,” Sasha said.
“Land of perpetual disappointment, Population you,” Joachim replied, smiling at her. Sasha didn’t react, which worried everyone else at the table, more than they let on.
“What’s going on?” Hans asked.
“Rumor has it Coach and Biermann got into a pissing match a few weeks ago. Despite the clubs recent financial success, Biermann and the board are keeping the purse strings tight. Coach wants to improve the facilities, the scouting department, the board keeps shutting him down,” Sasha said, looking glum.
“I realize we aren’t exactly sitting on a huge pile of money, but given what the club went thru to get to where we are today?” Joachim replied.
“They spent it when we didn’t have it, and now we have it they don’t want to spend it.” Ulrich’s statement was met by nods from the others.
“You think he’d leave?” Hans asked
“To where?”
“Koln? Stuttgart?”
“He wouldn’t got to another club in Germany, unless something happened to piss him off so much he’d want to extract his revenge…” Joachim said into the remainder of his drink.
“Could Biermann do that?”
“Maybe he already has, Coach didn’t endorse anyone in the election this year,” Sasha said. This caused everyone else at the table to sit up. Not saying something was often Coaches way of saying something he wanted to say, but couldn’t because it would cause more issues than it would solve. But the last time he did just this, the last club President was ousted.
“Torino. Genoa. Roma,” Hans said, looking at his phone.
“Boavista,” Joachim replied
“Leicester, West Ham, Palace,” Sasha said, looking at her phone.
“Nice, Bordeaux, Marseille,” Ulrich added.
“Lot’s of good clubs looking for a coach of his caliber,” Joachim said.
“Well, lets not put the proverbial cart before the proverbial horse. At the moment, no news is good news,” Joachim said, turning around to order another round of beer.
“I swear, if Biermann does anything to drive coach away…” Sasha said, holding her empty mug.
“Give me a call,” Joachim replied. “My dad owns a heavy equipment company, lots of ways to dispose of a body with those.”
We didn’t exactly hit the ground running, but that’s because I finally switched from the 4-2-4 I had been playing to a 5-2-1-2 formation that I was pretty confident in, and all things considered we got off to a decent start:
The team was still shaking itself out, the formation change came late in the preseason, and while I was not looking for a fast start, something that would leave us middle of the pack would be nice, and we got that.
The close loss at Leipzig was annoying, as we were clearly the better squad. The Quigley brace at Hoffenheim was nice, but then we laid an egg at BMG, and Quigley rescued us with an extra time goal at Wolfsburg. Stuttgart was a nice win, and while 5-3 may come across as a ROFL Stomp, Werder is not a very good squad, but Petrov getting a Hat Trick was nice to see.
Hertha FM’s us with a late goal to claw the draw back, and everyone decided to take the day off against Bayer, like 6.5 was the highest score we had. Freiburg has a very good squad, so losing byu one to them is not as bad as it looks. 1860 seemed to be going thru the motions at the Pokal, so we told them to keep going thru them while back in Munich.
The Petrov brace against Mainz was good to see, the last few games even though he hasn’t scored he’s been visible and present, which pretty much makes him the anti Mile Rodic. Braunschweig is going to get relegated, but they are fighting hard every game, take out the 7-0 thrashing Bayern put on them their goal differential was -14 at the Winter break, and they made us earn the 2-1 win
We shut BVB down after ten minutes, but it was 2 goals too late. Bayern bossed us from beginning to end, the Quigley goal just makes the score look close, but the malaise carried over to the Pokal, where a very game Paderborn squad took us to extra time before we won on peanlty kicks.
The loss at Eintracht I am attributing to the Paderborn game, the players seemed more interested in collecting yellow cards than scoring, or passing, defending was an iffy proposition at times…
We ended strong though, a Petrov goal at Union gave us the draw, Tiozzo had a Hat Trick against Koln, and a very nice Zabukovnik goal gave us the win against Hamburg and we went into the winner break with 7 wins, 3 draws and 7 losses, good for 24 points and solidly midtable in 8th place.
The board thus far has turned down every request I’ve made this season, and our offense really took a hit when this happened:
Then Biermann won the election, and offered me a new contract.
Transfer window wise, I am keeping my options open. More than a few teams have expressed some interest in our players though, but I think I can keep everyone until the end of the season.
Here’s hoping 2032 starts well…
THE FOOTBALL MANAGER BLOG OF FM_JELLICO 