“Did he even stay a calendar year?” Sasha asked around a mouthful of food? The bar was actually a bit more crowded tonight, which was odd because there wasn’t a practice, there wasn’t a game, and the weather was nice. Noone seemed to mind too much.
“No, 330ish days,” Heinrich replied.
“Talking about Mirko leaving again, eh?” Klaus said sitting down, shaking hands with those around him.
“Yes,” sasha nodded.
“Mans a professional mercenary. Twenty Euros says he’s at Monaco less than a year.”
“Deal,” Heinrich and Sasha replied.
“You think he’d ever come back?”
“Coach would take him back in a heartbeat I bet,” Klaus said, thanking the waitress as she set a beer in front of him.
“Coach might, the board wouldn’t,” Heinrich said. The table stopped what tehy were doing and looked at him.
“Like you said, he’s a mercenary. Yes, I’ll admit his press conference he said all the right things, did all the right things, and Coach has nothing but good things to say about him, and none of the team speaks poorly of him either, but everyone knew this was going to be a short stay for him. If he had wanted to stay, he would have.”
“So who’s the RUMINT to replace him?” Sasha asked.
“McClennan, from Lille,” Klaus replied.
“What?” Sasha asked around a mouthful of food, eyes wide open.
“Berg thinks he could be something, and he could be right. Look, he was never going to get playing time in Liverpool, not with Salah, and them Martinez and Nunez in front of him. He’s had some good loan spells-“
“Lille picked him up on a free, and he was mediocre for them last season,” Sasha said. “Whats French for mediocre?” she asked Heinrich.
“Shockingly, it’s mediocre,” he replied with a smile.
“Admittedly, after last season the board is a little wary about spending money,” Klaus said.
“Will they let him spend more next season when they finish top four?” Sasha asked, then stopped with a mouthful of food a few moments later when she saw everyone at the table staring at her.
“Seriously?” Heinrich asked.
In response, she reached inside her purse, opened up her wallet and pulled out a wad of Euro’s.
“Top 4, of Klaus shaves his beard,” she said with a smile.
“What-” Klaus started to say.
“Deal,” almost everyone else said, opening their own wallets to lay money down on the table.
A lot of frequent flyer miles spent scouting, new regions opened up, new scouts hired. and this window was one of the quieter ones, but not for lack of trying.
First in is a player who probably won’t be in Berlin at all this year, Jean Cedric Baffouman, from Excellence d’Adjamé in Cote d’Ivoire. He’s young, with good potential I think, but in order to get him to develop I think it would be better for him to go out on loan a few times and get some good first team playing time. As crowded as my midfielder is, I don’t think he would get it here.
Fabio Neiva is a versatile youngster, who is going to play primarily at D(L) for us, but they fact he can play anywhere on the backline is a huge plus for us. We had him on loan last year, and he did a good enough job for us that exercising his €4.5M fee was not a doubt.
Francis Koto I brought in for depth purposes more than anything else. A natural DM who can play D(C) and M(C) the only thing that bothers me is the fact that at 6’3″ tall, his heading ability is so poor.
With a huge transfer budget it was possible to spend €40-80M on a Striker, but I am always wary of doing that. In my experience, the difference between say a €10M Euro striker and a €60M Euro striker is reputation and what they have done at higher levels. Alexander Petrov is a prime example of finding a capable young striker for cheap, and hoping he develops. Did Tottenham make a mistake by buying him for €74M? To early to tell IMO, but it’s possible he doesn’t hit, and Tottenham is out that money. Now a Big 6 club like Tottenham can recover from a mistake like that every so often, but we can’t. So instead of spending €75M on a young striker with potential, we spent €8M on Dylan Maclennan, a 25 year old Irish international who I think can do a good job for us. If I do have a owrry about him, it’s his personality. Ambitious isn’t something you see on a regular basis, and it could be trouble down the road.
Rodolfo Herrera is the personification of ‘No Nonsense Center Back’, who is versatile enough to play fullback on either side if you don’t expect them to be bombing down the flanks. A bench player, I would feel comfortable for him starting games as needed, but in the meantime he provides experienced depth, which is what we need IMO.
Cezar is an interesting player, in that in looking at his attributes, he can be one of those players who in the right system scores 20+ goals and gets a handful of assists, or he will never crack the starting line up because he is not any better than any of the players you already have. I signed him to be a back up, because he is quite versatile up top, and as readers will know, I am a fan of a guy on the bench who can play multiple positions, and for €500K, he’s a bargain IMO.
On the OUTS, I don’t think there are any surprises here really.\
Santiago Barros had all the potential in the world, but despite the training and number of games he got on loan and on the II squad, he never got any better. Despite first team playing time back home in Uruguay and here, and despite being a stalwart of the II squad, despite all the training, he never improved. Could be a bug, could be a PBKAC error on my end, but I don’t think he will be long for Derby really.
Vfl Osnabruck wanted to give me €79K for Roger Puigvert, who I picked up for depth reasons for the youth squad. He will never be a starter here, and I couldn’t click fast enough to send him out.
Eesa Quigley is a good player, and had some very good games for us. The problem is he is at best maybe a 125 PA player, and he wants first team playing time. I countered with a squad contract, he declined, I put him out there, and Bayer snapped him up. If we were in the Bundesliga 2 I have no doubt he would be a dominant Striker there, but he’s just not good enough to be one in the Bundesliga. He could prove me wrong of course, but that’s a risk I am willing to take.
Iacopo Zappasodi and Josue Levy were the odd men out in the rotation, players who are good enough to get the occasional start and bench appearance, and that’s about it. Now, my rule is if a player comes to me and wants to go out on loan to get some first team playing time, as long as they haven’t been an idiot (IE getting a ton of cards, or coming to me demanding a Star Player contract when they are clearly not a Star Player, I will do what I can to send them out on loan, if only because it increases their visibility and the opportunities for me to move them on later.
I am confident about this season, the more I look into last season, when I don’t get nauseous I think we just had a run of bad luck that even Job would be like “Dude, sucks to be you.” I think a top 6 finish is well within our reach. It will be a few years and transfer windows before we are challenging for the top spot though, but this year I feel good about.
Or that could be the Chinese food talking back to me…
THE FOOTBALL MANAGER BLOG OF FM_JELLICO 