Dorchester Town Story: Preparing For The Championship

Hello folks, welcome to my fifth season with Dorchester Town! As you know our fourth season ended in glory with us winning the League One title and the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy. Now we had to be prepared for the Championship, a much tougher league with far better teams than League One. Let’s see how our summer went…

The board didn’t show too much ambition this time either, they wanted me to battle to avoid relegation and I told them that we could go for a top half finish just to earn a few more pennies for the wage budget. The transfer budget stood at a staggering 7,000 pounds, there isn’t much you can do with that money in football. The club did get 1 million pounds in TV rights for the new season but apparently they have something to do with that money…

Anyway, as you know from the previous post I had already arranged four free transfers so I moved to selling a few players before the 1st of July. I offloaded another six players by the end of August and got a tidy sum into the club’s coffers, 1.6 million pounds. Only 10% of that amount came back into the transfer budget and I eventually decided to move that money into the wage budget.

As you can see from the image below I made only free transfers again and quite a lot of them, 15 new players joined the team plus another one on loan! I felt that the squad needed to be rebuilt almost entirely in order to compete in the Championship and I would have brought in even more players if the wage budget would have permitted that. The fact is that at the end of my «wheeling and dealing» on the transfer market we are almost 20,000 pounds over the weekly wage budget, that’s quite a heavy deficit.

Now let me introduce our new players. My strategy was to bring in mostly young players, under 21 years of age, players with potential that could become good assets for the club both on the pitch and also from a financial point of view.

I found quite a few talented lads in Italy and one of them was goalkeeper Davide La Rocca, a very talented 19-year-old keeper that was being monitored by big clubs like Barcel0na or Manchester City! I managed to snap him up right from under their greedy noses with a pretty big signing on fee, the lad surely bought himself a new car with that money :)

You might remember from last season that I already had a good young goalkeeper, Gabriel Nicolau, and I surely intended to keep him. We received an offer from Italian side Modena though and the board accepted it! I offered Nicolau a new contract but to my surprise he refused both my offer and Modena‘s offer! So he will remain at the club until 2017 when his old contract is going to expire!

Moving on to the defense, our new right back is Nemanja Rnic, a Serbian defender with good experience in the Belgian league where he played for Anderlecht. He seems to be a reliable player and he will have to compete with youngster Eddie Kelly for a place in the starting eleven.

On the left flank in defence we’ll have an Italian prospect, 19-year-old Angelo Rossini from Inter Milano. He already has a couple of youth caps to his name and some good potential for progress. Go to the next page to read the rest of the story.

Go to the next page to read the rest of the story.

I won’t have a backup left back but I will employ centre backs if Rossini won’t be available. The main man for that job would be Wayne Knight, an 18-year-old English prospect coming from Manchester United. I also have Ryan Carolan who probably won’t make it into the first eleven anymore but he could provide backup for the left back position.

Another young centre back joined us from Italian side Fiorentina, his name is Francesco Tosto and he’s 19 years old. He already has decent abilities and the kid is showing some potential, I hope he’ll work hard and develop into a good player.

And now my first choice centre backs… First Ryan Shotton, a strong and experienced defender that joined us from Stoke City. He is a tall and strong lad with decent pace too, I surely hope that he will keep our defensive line in shape.

The leader of our defence will be Argentinian player Fabricio Coloccini, a very experienced centre back that joined us from Newcastle United. He has 32 caps for his nation and loads of experience in various divisions, he should be a role model for the youngsters and an essential player for the club this season. I will also have Stefan O’Brien as a backup in defence, I really hope that he will finally show signs of progress otherwise I will have to let him go.

I also brought in two new wingers to improve our quality in midfield. First there is Graeme Owens from Middlesbrough, a hard working player that could provide great backup on both flanks.

I finally have my own Brazilian in the team, and quite a well know one too: ladies and gentlemen, here’s Mancini! He just turned 33 on the 1st of August but he surely has loads of talent left. I guess he won’t play more that 45 minutes per game but he could well make the difference now and then. There will be fierce competition for the two winger roles in the starting eleven as I already brought in Irish youngster Packie Doolin and decided to keep Tiberiu Paduraru, Matt Richards and Jacob Lensky.

I have made quite a few new signings for the middle of the pitch, two new midfielders joined us on the 1st of July: Jonathan Dos Santos and Javier Vila. I also brought in a Romanian player that I knew pretty well from real life football, Laurentiu Iorga, he joined us from Hertha BSC Berlin. He should make a reliable central midfielder that could also bang in a few shots from distance too. Go to the next page to read the rest of the story.

Go to the next page to read the rest of the story.

The only loan player that I brought in is George Thorne from West Ham, a good strong utility player that could help us a lot during the long and tough season. The only midfielder that I kept at the club from last season is Al Bangura, he had a great second half of the season and was a key man for our promotion.

In attack Omar Koroma will have to team up with new signing Mohammed Tchite, you already knew about him from the previous post. I also decided to keep youngster Peter Singh and brought in another young promise, 18-year-old Welsh striker Mark Simmons from Arsenal. He shows some good skills for his age and I hope that he might develop into a good player if given enough first team football.

The great news is that I finally had a worthy player in the yearly youth intake! Neil Hayter is a 16-year-old striker that popped up this summer and I guess he might see some first team football right away!

So, I have 25 men in my squad plus one on loan plus the youngster from the under 18 team. The squad appears to be on the young side but we also have a few experienced players that could help the team during the very likely difficult times.

Here’s what my assistant manager had to say about the squad. I agree that our weak spot is the left back position but I don’t think there’s much I can do about that right now. We’ll try to hold on until January and then see if we can make some improvements.

The odds are against us again, you get 80 pounds if you bet just one on our promotion :)

The friendly games went very well but most of them were against weaker sides. The only tough friendly was the one against Arsenal and I was very pleased with the team, we managed to fight back from 1-0 and 2-1 down and got a prestigious 2-2 draw!

So there you go, that’s how I prepared my team for the Championship… My aim is to build a solid foundation for the future, that’s why I brought in quite a few youngsters. It is a risk as they might not perform very well right away but I think that we can stay up this season and then try to get promoted next term. I am a bit concerned about the wage budget, as I said we’re almost 20K over the weekly wage payroll and I’m quite curious to see if the board will cause some trouble. As things stand the club has around 1 million pounds in the bank but the board refused to increase the wage budget. By the way, they didn’t find me a parent club this time either…

Thanks a lot for reading, I’m looking forward to an exciting season!