Chester Season 2013 — 2014 Part One
Hello there my friends! It’s been quite a long time since the last post, I know… I’ve been very busy with my job and didn’t have much time to play my favorite game, Football Manager 2009. I still don’t have much time, but when I need to relax I start the game and forget about all the problems for a few minutes or hours.
In the last article you read about the pre season, about all the transfers and preparations for our second season in the Premier League. We were also qualified for the Europa League, an absolute novelty for our small club, Chester City.
Right after the beginning of the season I felt the need to sign another striker, a pacey and technical one. I immediately thought about Brazil, and went through the scout reports. Finally I decided to sign Choco, a young but very talented Brazilian striker from Sao Paulo. I signed him for 15 million euro, the highest sum we ever payed for a player. But I guess he was worth it because he can play also as an attacking midfielder and even as a central midfielder.
And now let’s see how our season went so far, competition by competition. First of all, the Europa League. After knocking out Bulgarian side Levski in the preliminary round the draw put us in a difficult group, with two strong teams, Feyenoord and Sparta Prague, and with a smaller but good team, Levadia.
We managed to get great results though, 4 wins and 2 draws.
We finished first and we were drawn to play Espanyol Barcelona in the first knockout round in February. I guess it will be a tough encounter.
In the Carling Cup things went very well too: we reached the semi finals after knocking out mighty Manchester United in the quarter final! Unfortunately our next opponent will be Liverpool and maybe we don’t have too many chances of reaching the final, but we’ll give our best!
And now the most important competition, the Premier League! We played 18 games until the end of 2013 because one of our games was postponed. The results were quite good, we managed to beat Chelsea and Manchester United!
We were in fourth place at the end of the year, with mighty Liverpool and Chelsea behind us in the Premier League Table! If we could manage to keep that fourth place we’ll qualify for the next year’s Champions League and I think that would be a remarkable achievement for or small club.
I want to highlight two of my players. The first one is young regen striker Michael Harper. I bought im in 2012 from Bournemouth for 500,000 euro. My scouts believed in his talent and I signed him as a possible star for the future. One year later he was already our star and gained his first international cap for England! Now all the big clubs like Manchester United or Chelsea are desperate to get him. The latest offer was 17 million euro from Chelsea! I hope to be able to keep him at least for another year.
The other young regen player that is slowly becoming essential for us is Australian left back David Wilson. My scouts were following him for a few years now and this year I was finally able to get a work permit for him. I signed him from Pumas for 4 million euro and he really is a great player and a wonderful prospect for the future. His pinpoint corners and free kicks created a lot of goals for us so far.
That’s about it, stay tuned for the second part of our wonderful season in the Premier League!