Celtic — Season 1 — Pre-season, Transfers, & More…

Hi there!

As promised this post will be all about pre-season and anything to do with that time of the footballing calendar so if you’ve started reading you’re in for the long haul so I suggest getting a drink and going to the toilet if you need too since I have a lot of screenshots to pack into this post!

So without blabbing on about any previous stuff let’s just dive straight into it. When I joined Celtic they had a wealth of backroom staff, however, not all of these staff members were useful and some of those who were useful were employed in the wrong job…

As you can see many more people joined the club than left which is unusual for me, but this is because I just signed a number of staff back on different contracts. I decided to allow my assistant to go, bringing in Ricky Sbragia as his replacement…

Ricky Sbragia — Assistant Manager

While his level of discipline could be better I feel he is better than who I had and his judging potential and tactical knowledge could be invaluable when it comes to promoting youth and those tricky European matches. Elsewhere we had a couple of useless physiotherapists, a rubbish scout, and a Goalkeeper coach whom I sacked but then regretted it a little. My main problem in the backroom was I had no Fitness Coach, that’s right, apparently Celtic don’t see fitness as that much of an issue in the modern game. Anyway, once I had finished my revamp my backroom staff looked like this…

I’ve made full use of my allowance of coaches filling every vacancy to it maximum…

And here are some of the people whom I brought in to mould my team into the footballing machines that they will hopefully become in the following seasons…

Roy Aitken — First Team Coach

Ludek Miklosko — Goalkeeper Coach

Miodrag Krivokapic — Fitness Coach — Promoted from Youth Coach

Aitken and Miklosko were drafted in alongside Sbragia to fill holes which couldn’t be filled by promoting other staff members like I did with Krivokapic and all that hard work led to my training schedules looking like this…

Senior Training Schedules

Youth Training Schedules

My senior training is slightly better but as long as everything is 3 stars and above for the moment I’m happy. I’ll look to increase the stars of each category as I go season by season.

With coaching staff out of the way it brings me to my next topic, scouting. Everyone loves this part of the game since there’s nothing more satisfying than finding the next Maradona (although you’d probably be better looking in the NBA for the next Maradona ;) ). All my other staff members I signed were scouts and I think that 2 of them will be incredibly useful in finding special talents…

Dimitar Penev — Eastern European Scout

Rob Walker — North American Scout

Finding Eastern European and North American scouts is difficult when you’re a team with a massive reputation so to get 2 when I’m Celtic is a real coup and will help increase the clubs scouting knowledge of the world. I’ve singled out 3 areas I want to improve the clubs knowledge of…

I feel as though improving our knowledge of Oceania, Eastern Europe, and Western Africa will give us access to certain talents that would otherwise go unnoticed. Plus with attribute masking enabled it makes sense to have as wide a knowledge as possible of the footballing world. Affiliated clubs also help and this is what Celtic has at it’s disposal at the moment…

Oostende’s value to our club cannot be underestimated since they’re our work permit club which will allow me to sign those difficult Eastern European and African players that are always turned down. Ujpest and Santos Laguna will help with scouting knowledge while Albion and Rochdale are simply our lesser feeder teams that each club has.

So at this point your probably thinking, ‘I’m sure this post was titled PRE-SEASON!’ well I’m just getting to that bit now so scroll down and you’ll see how things went…

Pre-Season Results & Goalscorers

We started off with a dodgy result against Stenhousemuir but that was not my fault since I forgot to set the game to start in Scotland so the game kindly blew that one for me. Next up came Everton, and to be honest I’ll just let the screenshot do the talking…

Failing to get our shots on target cost us and despite having equal possession we were taught a footballing lesson on Merseyside. Other than a crazy 7 minutes in which we conceded all 3 goals we weren’t that bad but if we do that in Europe then we’ve got no chance have we…

Next up came a much weaker Brentford side and determined to make amens we flattened them 7-0 before moving onto Middlesbrough. I chose the Teesiders because I figured they were about as close to a good Scottish team as I could get without actually playing a good Scottish team. In the end it was a great game…

Very even and although we lost the battle for possession our strikers made their chances count this time around with Bangura and Hooper destroying the home team with their dribbling and passes.

We finished pre-season against Wycombe and recorded another comfortable win, only letting the opposition have 1 shot on target while we enjoyed over 20 shots and 60% of the possession. So with pre-season out of the way we’ll move onto transfers…

Disappointingly only 3 players have came in while a lot have left. Greig Spence was not in my future plans at only 2.5 stars so was sold to AFC Wimbledon. Samaras and Cervi were both in the first team but only 2 stars so were both sold (I’m happy to say) on or above value. Loovens probably could have stayed in the squad but the offer I received from Peterborough was too good to turn down while James Keatings was farmed out on loan to get some experience. Lazovic I’ll explain a little later…

Players In

Liam Polworth — Attacking Midfielder (Centre)/ MC (Centre) — 16 Years Old — £625k

I paid quite a lot for this kid considering his age but I feel that as he grows he could become a great Scottish playmaker and with 4 potential that thought is not to be sniffed at. He already has great stats for his age and a lot of 10s which will hopefully grow to 14s or 15s as he develops. Polworth will definitely be seeing some game time this season despite his tender age.

Darko Lazovic — Attacking Midfielder (Right)/ MC(RC), AM(LC) — 20 Years Old — £1.5million

The story behind this guy is complicated. I spent a lot of time bartering his price down to what is still a large amount considering my transfer budget. I also signed him on the precept that 4-4-2 would be my main formation, however that has now changed, and to top things off he failed his work permit application meaning he now must spend his time out on loan at Oostende until he is 23 years old. But all is not lost, for the next 3 years he is guaranteed 1st team football sine Oostende aren’t that good, plus the fact that he is naturally an AMR doesn’t matter since he can play central midfield and his best role is an advanced playmaker. What at first seemed a disaster may not turn out that bad.

Marco Materazzi — Defender (Centre)/ SW — 36 Years Old — Free Agent

Sure the guys ancient in footballing terms but his stats are still great for the league I’m in. Only signed on £2k a week and a 1 year deal so this is pretty much a no lose situation for Celtic, although he did want a 1 year extension should he play in 15 games so we’ll just make sure 14 is his limit :)

So after that my team report looks like this (I’ve removed the positions I’ll never use for my 3 formations)…

Clearly we’re best in central midfield and it seems that our reputation has already increased since many players have dropped down half a star. We still need to desperately strengthen the left back position and I’m contemplating a £4million bid for Forster (if the board will do it for me) to activate his buyout clause.

Well that’s everything for now. A decent pre-season, a transfer period in which I’m not quite finished, and sound finances. Next post will be about our start to the season but I’m not sure whether I’ll be doing 2 monthly or 3 monthly updates.

Thanks for reading!