Cambridge United: 2013 — Building for the Championship

Hello friends and welcome back to the latest chapter in my Cambridge United story which sees The «U’s» preparing for life in The Championship following a dramatic promotion at the end of last season.

After the euphoria of getting promoted the board handed me a bad piece of news that there was no budget to fulfill my earlier  request to upgrade the youth training facilities…

…even though they had just been handed £325,000!

…after that I didn’t bother asking about stadium expansion or upgrading first team training facilities!

I may have come second in the league but I was top of the table when it came to League One managers!

June 2013

As soon as possible we made loan bids for Nuno Santos and Chelsea’s Conor Wickham who had no intention of joining us and as for Santos Man City snapped him up and then refused to loan the young Portuguese star. By the middle of the month myself and  assistant Warren Neill hadn’t done that well in terms of filling 5 spots that we felt needed attention and  were shocked by the news that the club was looking at a financial crisis.

If that wasn’t bad enough Will Keane didn’t want to come back for another season at The Abbey Stadium.

As the month drew to a close it was time to meet the board and set out the season’s expectations and after receiving a nice TV package of £2,600,000 my hopes were quite high of a decent transfer budget like last season.

The board offered £350,000 regardless of what I chose so I told them we would avoid relegation which would at least increase my salary budget by around £16,000

The bookies didn’t give us much hope of mounting any kind of title challenge.

July 2013

So we turned the corner and on into July with as usual things getting very frantic in the first two weeks with lots of players departing and arriving at the Abbey Stadium. Here’s a look at the full transfer activity which saw Victor Palsson return to his native Iceland in which we made £100,000 profit on him (free last season) and Will Packwood heading off to Bradford City. There maybe a couple of familiar names there of whom I decided not to renew their contracts.

Now for the exciting part and a look at the Cambridge squad with all the new players and their roles.

Goalkeepers: No change here other than 20 year old Mehmet is handed the Number 1 shirt. Both him and Rigoni had offers on them all through the summer but I managed to keep them for now!

•   Mehmet — Rigoni — Hansen

Back Four: The centre positions will once again be dominated by Wootten and Bennett with Fernandez and Berchiche inter changing in that all-important left back position. On the opposite flank Irishman Brendan Moloney will start and will be backed up by new signing Julien Tadrowski. Sead Hajrovic who we signed from Arsenal will come up from spending last season in the reserves joining Oliver Nicholas in rotating those centre back positions.

• Fernandez — Berchiche

• Wotten – Bennett – Hajrovic – Nicholas

• Moloney – Tadrowski – Brown

Midfield: This is now a two man area, one defensive and one supportive in nature. On the defensive side the incumbent Gabriel Gomez is supported by Spaniard Imanol Eslava whom I’m profiled last season and new recruit Sunny who was released by Valencia.

• Gomez – Eslava – Sunny

The supportive midfielder is Shane Williams who has been with Cambridge from our old BSP days and will share this role with Conor Newton who has moved into to middle from the right side and seems to be enjoying the new role

• Williams – Newton

Attacking Midfield: The right flank is now filled by 20 year old Jonny Gorman who was released by Wolves and he is joined by Javi Lopez who has enjoyed three great seasons in the Spanish lower leagues. The centre is spearheaded by Davide Petrucci with Julien Gorius and Rasmas Falk in the rotating and back up roles. On the critical left side Jacob Walcott will lead the charge with former Norwich City player Josh Dawkin acting as a more than suitable back up. Alex Smith is the «floater» between defensive or attacking duties.

• Gorman – Lopez

• Petrucci – Gorius – Falk

• Walcott – Dawkin – Smith

Strikers: With Will Keane not wanting to come back I had to go hunting for at least two strikers as I wanted three in total to be able to rotate through the one man up front role. Nadir Ciftci is remaining at the club but is third choice behind Spaniard Baston Borja and Darko Bodul who had three decent seasons with Ajax.

• Bodul – Borja — Ciftci

That completes the review of  the first team squad and after some of those signings had been made I had gone over my salary budget by a few thousand pounds. So I thought nothing ventured nothing gained so I asked the board for more money and they said why not! The weekely salary budget has now gone up to £82,000 from the initial £72,000 at the start of July.

Tactic:

We finished off the last couple of months of the previous season playing a 4-2-3-1 formation which proved quite successful. The fundamentals are still the same as my old Wrexham tactic that builds with «defender collect» down the left flank which also utilizes long throw and free kick capabilities of my two Spanish full backs. Having said that the ball does not exclusively travel down the left side and all area’s of the field are open to create scoring opportunities.

Youth 2 Gold:

At the time of writing this I have only one player to report but will hopefully have a couple of more to show next time around. For now here is young Italian left back Fabio Cirillo who we picked up on a free.

Finances:

Although we took a hit from the new year up until early June we seem to be back on the road to recovery which is probably down to some good gate receipts and the selling of Victor Palsson.

The pre-season fixtures went far better than expected as we picked up four wins against a variety of teams as well as a thrilling  That completes this report so thanks for taking the time to read this and see you soon!3-3 draw with Scottish giants Celtic who had to come from behind to avoid an embarrassing defeat.

The season will start with two road games before taking on West Brom in our home opener.

That completes this report so thanks for taking the time to read this and see you soon!