Chester Pre Season 2013 — 2014
Hello there my friends, the Chester adventure continues! Last season we faced the Premiership for the first time in our history and I can say that we had a very good season overall. We finished 7th in the Premier League, which means that we qualified for the Europa League! Now our financial situation is a lot better too, and the board offered me a generous amount of money for transfers as they expected the team to finish somewhere in the middle of the table next season.
The board also offered me a generous new contract for 4 years! I guess they kinda love me a little bit :)
As I said in the last post my first tranfer target was attacking midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum, as his contract was expiring. We had a tough competition to face in order to get his signature but we finally made it, he was ours! I really hope he will be the creative spark that we need up front.
Although our financial situation was great and our shareholders got hefty dividends at the end of the season our board was too tempted by an offer for our young regen right back Jan Petersen. It was however the largest sum of money this club has ever received for a player.
I had to find a replacement for him quickly, and I snapped up Romanian regen defender Daniel Stancu for quite a large sum of money, 10 million euro! I hope he’ll be worth that much.
My next target was a left back, as I was a little bit disappointed by the players that I had for that role. There was an Australian regen youngster that I’ve been following for a few years now, and this year there were better hopes of him getting the much needed work permit to play in England. I signed him for 4 million euro from Pumas and I think he’ll be a great player in the Premier League.
Next up, a striker. I was quite happy with my young strikers but I felt we needed and experienced pacey guy up front to convert our chances into goals. The best option I could think of was Danny Welbeck, he played for us a few seasons ago and he was one of the best players in the club’s history. The board sold him to Portsmouth for an offer they couldn’t refuse (around 4 or 5 million euro if I remember correctly), now I bought him back for 10 million euro!
My next goal was to find a good left winger and I finally decided to go for Brazilian Sergio Mota, a solid left footed winger that could add a little bit more quality to our game. I paid quite a large sum of money for him, 12 million euro, but there were no better and cheaper targets available.
And last but not least we needed a good centre back that could give me more options for the defensive line. I think that I found a good deal in French strong defender Dennis Appiah, signed from Toulouse for 7 million euro.
These 6 players will be important for our team in our quest for Premiership and Europa League glory. I bought another 16 youngsters to build a great future for Chester City, but most of them won’t see the first eleven for a year or two, maybe even three.
We played 5 friendly games and the results looked quite promising for the new season: 5 wins and only 1 goal conceded! The opponents were not world class teams, but… Here’s a list of the friendly results:
Korona Kielce — Chester 0-6
Stockport — Chester 0-3
Chester — Genk 2-0
Bournemouth — Chester 0-1
Chester — AZ Alkmaar 4-1
The bookmakers gave us a 51 to 1 chance of winning the title, which isn’t bad considering that it’s only our second year in the Premier League. We will also fight for glory in the Europa League, our first match of the season being in the Fourth Qualifying Round against Bulgarian side Levski Sofia. Stay tuned to find out how it will go!