Afan Lido: First taste of the Champion’s League + Major January shakeup

Good evening my friends. I come to you tonight with small success and grave news. Not all is well in Afan Lido land, and my time as their manager may be short. Before we get to such disappointments though, let us first go over all that has occurred in my little corner of Wales.

As you were surely aware (if you’ve been following the story that is), we were due for our first ever taste of Champion’s League football! I was extremely excited going into the fixture, as not only was this a club first, but it would also be a personal first. I’ve never before taken a club into the Champion’s League at any stage, and I was pumped to see how we would due. Unfortunately the draw was not kind to us, and we were handed one of the toughest teams we could’ve faced in the Second Qualifying Round:

Red Star Belgrade.

Crap! While the quality of Serbian football has degraded since the fall of the Soviet bloc, they are still former Champion’s League (then the European Cup) winners and a damn good football team. Predictably, we went into  the home leg as heavy underdogs:

Well I’ll be, we were downright competitive! Red Star was clearly the better of the two teams, and scoring 3 away goals all but guaranteed them advancement, but I was still duly proud of the squad. We showed we can’t be brushed aside without effort, and we mean business. Of course there was still the second leg to play out, and I was just hoping we wouldn’t be embarrassed in Serbia:

While many might consider being dropped out at the first asking a failure, I’m (and I believe rightfully so) proud of our scrappy 5-3 aggregate loss. Success against this club was never in the cards, and we fought bravely. The lads could hold their heads high after this one, that’s for sure. As an added bonus, we received almost 300k in price money; enough to wipe out our debt entirely (only for us to accumulate it back again by January)!

League Play: 

Following our semi-successful Champion’s League outing, we headed into league play. As with last year, we jumped out to a quick start and were top of the table immediately. Unlike last year, however, several other clubs (TNS, Llanelli, and Airbus) were keeping pace with us. This set up an epic early season showdown with TNS, where the winner would take first place and hold a major advantage on the title race. I have to admit, I was crushingly disappointed with what I saw:

Yeah, we won, and comfortably at that. But look at that attendance! 69! SIXTY-NINE! Only 69 «fans» could drag their sorry butts out to see a thrilling winner-take-all match against one of the best teams in the league!? I was (and still am) completely livid, and this caused me to go back and take a look at some of our other home attendances (Champion’s League excluded):

Home against Neath:

Home against Prestatyn:

League Cup Semi-Final against Neath:

Home against rival, Goytre:

Bonkers, just absolutely bonkers! The only time we’ve come close to a respectable showing was against uber-ultra-mega-arch-rival (think Man U — Man City) Port Talbot, where roughly 180 fans showed themselves. These are numbers I was able to live with in our first season, but deep into my third seasons I was expecting to see *some* kind if improvement. Our season ticket sales have been at 25 for the past three years, and there’s been no indication of them going up. *fume*

ANYWAY, enough ranting about my complete and utter lack of attendance. In an attempt to improve my mood, I thought I’d ask the board to think about turning us into a fully professional outfit. Unfortunately, that wasn’t really an option:

Ah…well then. I suppose that’s out of the question for a while. How about we move on to transfers.

Transfers:

During the off season I left the starting eleven virtually unchanged (in which I mean to say, I didn’t change a damn thing). I off loaded a few bench players who had no future with the squad, and signed a single prospect for the Under-19 team. I was content with the squad I had, and all indications were that the rest of Wales was still far too weak to challenge us. Unfortunately, I may have been wrong.

While we continue to dominate the domestic league, I found myself beginning to turn into a paranoid despot. I was starting to see threats from everywhere, and with each 2-1 or 1-o victory, it became even worse. They were onto us, of this I was convinced. Drastic action was going to be needed come January, and drastic action there was:

And just like that, my two best players were gone. Javlon Campbell had been making noise about wanting to move to a bigger club all season, and when Koln came calling with a 65k bid (along with another 15k if he scores 10 or more goals), I accepted. Marlon, on the other hand, was a much more painful departure. He was perfectly happy with where he was, but his £500 a week salary was really starting to put a cramp on my ability to develop for the future. With that, he was off for 35k. Rodrigo Astudillo was a similar case, and was commanding a £300 a week salary just to sit on my bench. I let Bath have the 36 year old for free, and was content just to be rid of his salary.

All told, I reduced the wage budget by roughly £1000 per week, which will give us a bit more wiggle room the rest of the way home.

Boardroom Shenanigans:

With my player sales reducing our debt by nearly £100k, and our team flying high, I thought it would be a fitting time to ask the board for an extension to my contract. I’ve been running on single year deals since I started, and I wanted some long term security in reward for what I’d done for the team. The conversation didn’t exactly go how I’d planned:

This is a family website, so I won’t say what I was thinking, but the word «livid» comes to mind. That ignorant little *censored* says I don’t deserve an extension? I’ve led his team to Europe (twice now), I’ve won him the league, the Welsh Cup, and am on the way to winning him the league again. Afan Lido has NEVER known success like this, and he says I don’t deserve an extension? It’s on like Donkey Kong little man…

I will break you Adam Nash. I will destroy your team, and I will destroy your finances. I will sell, no, I will GIVE our best players to our biggest rivals. And when I’m done? I’ll resign in a blaze of glory. Forget the Champion’s League, forget improving the Welsh League, this story now exists for one purpose, and one purpose alone: Destroy and humiliate Adam Nash.

Goldblum out. 

P.S. — I thought this was pretty funny: