A Bear in Portugal, Fall of 2012

Hello everyone, and welcome back for the first proper installment of The Bear’s Portuguese adventure. I’ve been tossing around a few ideas for an update cycle, and haven’t been able to settle on anything solid. As a result, I’m beseeching you for your input in this matter. Here are the ones that jump to mind:

1) Full Season updates — Probably my least favorite option. Too much information to convey in too short of a time.

2) Quarter Season updates — By which I mean to say I update every 10 league games (30 games total in a year), plus an offseason update (for 4 a year)

3) Whenever — No rhyme or reason, just an update whenever the mood strikes. Could be for an individual game that was awesome, or could be a gap of 10-20 games between updates.

Thoughts would be greatly appreciated (and if you have a different idea, please let me know).

So anyway, with that said, let’s take a look at the opening third of the season. First things first, here’s how my first full week in charge went:

Hmm, okay.

Is that like jungle fever?

Oh boy, here we go…

Alrighty then! I suppose as far as take-overs go, it was a fairly painless affair, and at least I kept my job! With the transfer embargo lifted following Machado’s election, I could get down the grisly business of trying to build a squad. Our non-existent finances meant I would be looking for freebies, and my existing players’ lack of quality meant I couldn’t offload them without taking a financial hit from releasing them (which I ultimately was forced to do).

Here are the best players I was able to bring in:

Yeah, he’s old, but he’s still a fine keeper for the Portuguese third tier. I probably won’t keep him longer than a year, but I’m glad to have him on board.

I’m using him as one of my centerbacks, and while I’m a little worried his stats are already starting to decline at 31, he’s been solid thus far in the season (it’s not hard to be solid at this level).

My token Brazilian striker! He’s pretty much at the peak of his career, so hopefully I’ll be able to get a few good years out of him. Early signs point to him being quite productive.

My right winger. He’s not super impressive, but he was one of the only solid wingers available to me (seriously, I’m STILL looking for a decent left winger).

And finally, here’s the whole squad all together:

We’ve had a few injury problems to start the year off, but we had a pretty grueling stretch of games as well. We have some solid starters, but almost no depth to speak of. Thankfully the team is gelling nicely, and we’re already out of the Taca, so there won’t be any extra cup games to bog us down. I’ve also been trying to force my preferred 4-2-3-1 onto this club, even though I don’t really have the players to support it just yet (in fact, I don’t have anyone to support the left side of the pitch at all). I’ll be once again trolling for a left winger during the January window, and hopefully I can track down a decent leftback while I’m at it.

With 10 league games played so far, here is how we stand:

Perfect! I couldn’t have asked for a better standing at the 1/3rd point. I should emphasize that there is no way we’ll go up this year. Fatima and Esterla V.N. are way better than us, and there’s simply no way we’ll be able to catch them up. Honestly though, I’m 100% okay with this. Dezembro is in no way ready for the Liga Orangina, and I’d like to spend at least a year or two down here consolidating and rebuilding.

That’s it for this run, thanks for reading everyone!