Drum-roll Please . . . Borussia Monchengladbach

So we leave Evian TGFC and move from Thonon-les-Bains/Annecy for Borussia Monchengladbach in Monchengladbach near the German-Dutch border. The club is often referred to as Gladbach and their nickname is Die Fohlen (the foals). Their mascot is also a foal named Junter. Gladbach have a decent history in German soccer. They’ve won the Bundesliga 5 times during the 70’s, 3 of which were consecutive. They’ve won 3 German Cups and 1 German League Cup (which is no longer played). In addition, they were runners-up in the old European Cup (now the Champions League), winners of the UEFA Cup twice (today the Europa League) and the first ever German winners of the UEFA Cup, and they won the defunct Intercontinental Cup, which was played between the best team in Europe and South America (Liverpool had declined to play). Some of Gladbach’s famous players are Lothar Matthaus, Jupp Heynckes, Swede Patrik Andersson, and American great Kasey Keller. Gladhbach also hold the Bundesliga’s record for the top four largest wins — 12 — 0 against Dortmund, 11 — 0 against Schalke, and two 10 — 0 wins. Sadly, this all happened in the 60’s and 70’s. Since the 80’s, Gladbach haven’t had the best of times. It’s now up to me to change it!

I did get offers to manage HSV and Bayern Munich, both of whom are in the Champions League. But I love playing as the underdog, that’s how you learn, and I decided to take the helm at Borussia-Park.

Speaking of learning, I think now is an appropriate time to recap some of the things I have learned. 1) Buy younger players with high potential so that they have room to grow. 2) Never release a player for free if you can help it. Offering them for free is less expensive than releasing them for free, so try to recoup as much of their value as possible. 3) Don’t go crazy on coaches if you don’t have the appropriate facilities. 4) Scouting network. Establish a great scouting network and especially explore in Africa and Eastern Europe for cheap and high potential players who will also play for cheap. 5) Make sure to get players with high determination and adaptability if they are foreign. I think that’s all for now, but I will add to this list, surely.

So enough exposition. Let’s move on to my season. I will be returning to my old format with a slight modification: The pre-season will be included in this post.

Pre-Season

I will also be keeping track of Evian. They are my first club and I think it will be interesting to see how they get along without me; if I had a lasting impact on them.

So, now Gladbach.

Finances were great and since I said I would pull a top-half finish (the media predicts us coming in at 13th) I received a transfer kitty of £4mil and a wage budget of about £14mil a year. The reason I said I would do a mid-table finish is because the squad is pretty disappointing. There are no good central mid-fielders and the squad is pretty old (average age of 26) with many players who have just been around for ages and are in their early 30’s. Change was desperately needed and luckily, the club had some AMAZING scouting in place. Seriously, the scouting set-up was absolutely phenomenal and I barely had to put in that much effort to find the players I needed.

So dramatic changes to the squad and I sent the 5 reserves and 2 youth players we had packing. Let’s take a look at my team for the season:

GK: Marc-Andre ter Stegen and Logan Bailly

No changes here from personnel already at the club. I was pleased with both of them. I think ter Stegen will be my starter.

DC: Anderson Bamba, Dante, Vlajko Nedeljkov, and Jagos Vukovic

Dante is my best center-back and along with Vukovic, will start. Bamba and Nedeljkov, the latter is a hot prospect, will be in the reserves. All except Nedeljkov were already at the club.

DR: Matthias Zimmermann and Felix Echevarne

Zimmermann was already at the club and Echevarne was a player who I had tried to sign when I was at Evian, but he was unwilling to move. Zimmermann will start for now, but Echevarne has loads of potential so he will definitely see his fair share of first team action.

DL: Oscar Wendt and Oscar Carpentieri

Ha, Oscars at left-back. Wendt was already at the club and will be my starter Carpentieri was from the same club as Echevarne, Velez, and is another hot prospect. And the two of them will help each other adjust, so I don’t need to worry about home-sickness.

MC: Dennis Christoffersen, Ive Martinovic, Lawrence Diallo, Vincent Di Stefano, Zeki Soylemez, and Amato Ciciretti

Apart from Ciciretti, all of them are pretty green. But they all have a lot of potential, particularly Ciciretti. He has the potential to be a star. He was on my team in my old Evian save and was doing great, this time around, however, I couldn’t pry him away from Roma till now. I know that my midfield will probably cost me some games but they have such talent that I am willing to gamble. Besides, before I came along we had only 2 central midfielders, I believe.

ST: Fallou Gaye, Joy-Slayd Mickels, Marco Reus, Mike Hanke, Patrick Herrmann, and Peter Juhasz

So surprisingly, not too many changes here. I only brought in Gaye and Juhasz. I am very excited for the 16 year old Hungarian — he is a 5 star recruit. Reus should be a name that is very familiar. He is currently lighting up the Bundesliga with his awesome performances and is linked with a move to several EPL teams, especially Arsenal. He is my best player and I will be looking to him to lead from the front.

So that’s my time. I am pretty pleased. Our oldest players are Dante and Hanke and they are only 29. We have some great youngsters I don’t see why we can’t mount an effort to qualify for the Europa League. But let’s actually see how we did! . . . On the next page :D

August

Hey, we got a pretty good start. A nice simple first round in the German Cup (Germany has only cup tournament, btw) and apart from the unfortunate loss at HSV, we’re doing just fine.

September

I decided to schedule a friendly over the international break, the team needs more time with each other. I was pleased with the results against Leverkusen and Schalke, both top teams. The game against Leverkusen was notable because both goals were scored by Dante, and the own goal was sadly into stoppage. We were close to having a perfect month.

October

This month was a little disappointing. Wolfsburg was a fluky loss because we didn’t play that poorly but one of their strikers was just in impeccable form with 2 goals from direct kree kicks and one crazy «release the kraken» moment. Hoffenheim, which was the team I really wanted to manage because of their cinderalla story 2 seasons ago, brushed aside with ease and the win against Aue was just shameful. We just decided not to show up and played so horribly lazily.

November

So a much better month. The game against Bochum was frustrating because because they took an early lead and somehow managed to withstand our onslaught. We had 19 shots on target and could only get one goal. After that I lost my first derby in Germany. Podolski was brilliant and provided the spark in a very even game.

December

Ugh, lost my second straight derby (Gladbach’s rivals are Dortmund and Koln). Again, another close game but Barros gave them the extra oomph. I was pleased with our win against a full-strength but very lackluster Bayern side. They have been pretty patchy this season and are at 7th place while we found ourselves in 6th after the game. Sadly, we went from beating Bayern to getting punished by Stuttgart. After going a goal down I was far too aggressive and we got hit on the counter-attack. We played better than the scoreline suggests.

Head on over to the next page for the rest of the season!
January

We made two transfers during this month, Mickels and Vukovic, both who were performing quite well, left. To replace them I brought in Aboubacar Obih and Sami Allagui. Obih actually played for me at Evian so he is a known quantity. Oh, I should take a moment to explain Germany’s rules. There are 2 windows, summer and January, while France had 3 (summer, January, and joke, which was in between summer and Jan., during which you could make 1 transfer from a French team). In terms of squad make-up, again you have to register every player you might even think of fielding because unregistered players, no matter how young, cannot play. Unlike France, however, you can have an unlimited number of non-EU players. I also realize in my writings I haven’t really spoken about my players too much. I was, but the website went down earlier today and I lost what I was working on so I’ve been going for speed over quality. I promise my future posts will be more complete.

Germany’s winter break is almost all of January, while France’s is the second half of December and the first half of January. Bayern got their revenge against us, but we went out kicking and screaming. The friendlies were mostly for money and I decided to schedule an easy one to cap them off so that the team wouldn’t suffer too many defeats in a row. Still, Kaiserlautern got the better of us in another display that could have gone either way. There have been almost no defeats this season that we couldn’t have won as well.

February

The game against HSV was pretty lacklustre at both ends of the pitch and HSV were lucky to get the points. Sadly, that means HSV have beaten us in both games. We rebounded with 2 dominating performances but out momentum was spoiled by a resurgent Leverkusen who are now on an 8 game winning streak.

March

What a phenomenal month. The games were won pretty easily except at Wolfsburg where we were lucky enough to get a penalty that we converted. They controlled most of the game but gave away that vital goal. Hoffenheim was end to end but neither team could convert their chances. It was an extremely exciting game and I am happy we got a share of the spoils.

April

Well, this month was unfortunate. We gave Hertha an own goal and the win and we lost back-to-back derbies again. So we’ve lost all four derbies, and now Dortmund are at the top of the league. We have also slipped out from the top by a bit and now our Champions League hopes are pretty much over. We could still get a Europa League spot.

May

Ouch, Bayern gave us quite a drubbing. I was shocked to see my team playing so poorly. With this loss the last Europa League spot is out of our grasp. We still did well, better than what the media said and we received almost £17mil for our position in the league.

We were only one point away from Europa League qualification. Next season I really think we can qualify for the Champions League with a little strengthening here and there.

We’re fine financially; doubled our balance.

Lastly:

10 players broke 7, with Bamba leading the way. Reus and Herrmann finished as joint top-scorers and Reus was our leading goal creator.

I hope everyone enjoyed this post. I hope the next time I speak to all of you I’ll have some silverware to show off :D Happy New Year! And as always, I look forward to your comments.