Hello folks, the Chester story continues. At the halfway point of the season we were in 4th place in the Premier League and still involved in all the domestic cups, plus the Europa League. Although I was happy about this I was a little bit concerned too because my bench was not as good as I would have wanted, and when you play so many games between the league and all the cups you need to rotate the players once in a while… Anyway, let’s see how it went.
In the F.A. Cup we were knocked out quite early, in the 4th round, by Chelsea after a game that we could have won, but that’s football.
I really hoped to get to the final of the Carling Cup but we were not able to defend a 2-1 lead from the firs leg against Liverpool and we were beaten 2-0 at Anfield Road. We had only the Europa Cup left…
… and we went all the way! After four truly heroic matches we knocked out mighty Real Madrid and Chelsea and went to the final!
The final against Newcastle was played at Villa Park and I just couldn’t imagine not winning it. After taking the lead in the 32nd minute I decided to pull back and play on the counter attack and it really paid off. We scored another goal on the break in the second half and that was it, we won the Europa League!
The board was feelink like bulding me a statue, they were quite happy about this remarkable achievement ;)
And now the Premier League. We were in 4th place after 19 games and my goal was to defend that place in order to qualify for the Champions League. It was a difficult task mainly because many of my players were very tired after all the Europa League games and I had to bring in some youngsters from the reserve squad to fill in for my star players. But we pulled it off in the and, the 4th place was secured before the last game but we couldn’t help beating Manchester United 2-0 at the Old Trafford in the last league game! They lost the title due to this defeat, they had the same number of points as Arsenal before that game!
Arsenal won the Premier League, we finished 4th and we were qualified to play a preliminary round for the Champions League!
I’m proud to say that my youngsters are the envy of the League! In the Young Player of the Year award all the top three spots were taken by my players!
My young Greek goalkeeper, Serdar, was one of the heroes of the season, he saved our skin several times with his fabulous goalkeeping reflexes.
My star player was Michael Harper, my striker that is already a key player for the England national team. He scored 9 goals in our Europa League campaign, the most important of those goals being the one that he knocked in during the final against Newcastle. Unfortunately his contract will expire next year and so far he doesn’t want to renew it. Maybe I’ll persuade him somehow…
Our Argentinian right winger, Fabian Cisneros, was another essential player for us, contributing to our cause with several goals and assists. He’s already being targeted by all the big clubs, I hope I can keep him with us at least for another season.
The master of our defence was French youngster Dennis Appiah, he was like a wall in front of the opposition several times. When the game was getting rough he was always there to keep our defensive line afloat.
We finished 7th in our first Premier League season, now we finished 4th, I guess finishing 1st would be the next natural step :) I think that my squad is ready to fight for the title next season, but I’ll have to bring in some new valuable players to have a better squad depth, because we’ll have to play in the Champions League too. Stay tuned to find out how it will go! Oh, and I’ll reveal the new tactic that I’m using soon, don’t miss it!
