Gladbach — Season 3

Hello friends! I hope I haven’t kept you all waiting too long. College has kept me quite busy so I haven’t had too much time to type up the latest post in my German adventure. So without further ado, here is the third season, 2015 — 16!

Pre-Season

So the post-season awards have come out:

Not included up there is that Allagui was rated the third best striker in the Bundesliga and

And here is the budget I’ve been given:

I would say that’s not too shabby :P I’m just kidding. I am very pleased to see a number that big but I didn’t really use it . . .

So I don’t really know what happened . . . I had received 2 mammoth offers for Ghazaryan and Franzino that I could not say no to. In my opinion, Ghazaryan is going to become one of the best central defenders in the game, but this was money I couldn’t turn down. In terms of transfers that I brought in . . . There were no real stellar names. There are certain targets that I have who I wasn’t able to get, so I decided to dip into the loan market for the first time. The big loanee was Christian Benitez. He was very expensive, I know I got ripped off, but I didn’t want to settle for buying a striker who I didn’t really want. The other crazy thing I did was signing two Indians! I am of Indian heritage and on a whim last season I had sent a scout who wasn’t doing much to India. He found a handful of decent players! I don’t know how well they can/will do on this stage but I decided to sign them anyway. It will be the first time that players from my home country will be showcasing their skills on a large scale like this since the Olympics of the 50’s! You will notice Dennis Wiesner up there, but I will not be discussing him until January, when I bought him.

Here is my squad for the first half of the season:

GK: ter Stegen and David Schalle

ter Stegen has been so solid between the posts. Schalle is a youngster I got for basically free. He supposedly has a lot of potential. I know at 15 it’s a little hard to see, but as my back-up he will probably never be called upon.

DC: Ghazaryan, Horn, Bamba, and Obih

So no changes from last year. I really saw little reason because they were all playing so well. Ghazaryan and Bamba/Obih make a great team and Horn stepped in with great ability. Oh, a point of clarification, Ghazaryan did not leave until January.

DR: Echevarne and Vandam

No changes here as well. Echevarne has really matured, like I expected him to. I am so proud of him. I think he will be my first choice for this season!

DL: Boris and Jiri Kocian

So Wendt who previously served as my first choice left and Carpentieri left even before he did. I promoted Boris to the first team in the middle of last season and the few outings he had, he performed adequately. Unfortunately, I could not find an acceptable left-back, not even loan so I had to settle for Kocian. Quality left-backs are so rare and expensive! I think Boris is better at the moment despite being 2 years younger. I am bothered by the current lack of quality — I know Boris will be great but he is still too inexperienced.

CM: Di Stefano, Mustafizur Rahman Hossain, Stevanovic, Abdulrahman, Soylemez, and Garvan

So Hossain is one of the two Indian players that I am very excited about. He is young and I think he has the potential to be a solid if unspectacular player. In any case, I have a solid midfield. Abdulrahman was my Xavi and while not as skilled he was a great distributor who had an eye for the goal-winning pass. Garvan is dependable and Soylemez will be joining the aforementioned two as a starter. He and Franzino really grew last season and are more than capable of challenging for the first team, which is why I had so much trouble letting Franzino go. Stevanovic progressed well as well and I think I can now rely on him to serve as a regular back-up; perhaps in the future he will earn a first team spot. Di Stefano has been a disappointment. I was expecting so much more from him. Don’t get me wrong, he is a fine player, but he is not fulfilling the potential I thought he had. He will probably leave soon, but for now he will have to deal with losing his first-team spot to Soylemez.

ST: Christian Benitez, Reus, Herrmann, Allagui, Vishal Kumar Prakash, Juhasz

So for Benitez I dropped a crazy £2.2mil, although I only have to pay 40% of his salary. I am sure he will be great alongside Reus and Allagui, who were phenomenal last season. Herrmann is a great back-up, but I am sorry for relegating him to the bench. Juhasz is part of that class of Soylemez and Franzino and he has developed accordingly, which is quite exciting. Sadly for him, I have the brilliant Allagui, Reus and possibly Benitez, so he will not have many chances to show-off. Lastly, but certainly not least, is my second Indian signing. He is better of the two and he has some decent stats. At the moment he will be at the bottom of the striker pecking order but I will definitely look to develop him. In addition, he can play anywhere on the right and the central midfield, while his fellow Indian, Hossian can similarly play all over the left. These two utility players give me some extra depth when I decide to play the Arsenal tactic up on the site.

So there is my team. Very similar to last season but so much better! And here is what the press think they are capable of:

OK, so at least we’re acknowledged at having some shot at the Bundesliga. And my Champions League predictions are at least not as bleak as Johnny’s ;)

July

We played easy teams and got the appropriate results, sadly we have a lost Allagui, Abdulrahman, and Juhasz for about a month each to injuries :(

Go to the next page to check out how the first half of our campaign fared!
August

We started by wrecking semi-professional Lunen. I only fielded my youngsters and they did not disappoint. I was happy Schalle kept a clean sheet but more than that, Prakash scored a brace! The next game against Hannover was not much of a competition either. Reus opened his account for the year as did the magnificent Ghazaryan. His aerial reminds me of Vidic (congratulations to my favorite team’s captain on being included in the FIFA World XI). The goal Hannover scored was an own goal by Obih. Sadly, we need to add Ghazaryan to our injury list after he was mauled by an opponent. I cannot explain our next game against Stuttgart. Most of the time last season whenever we lost it was a close defeat but Stuttgart completely dominated us. Our defense looked lost without Ghazaryan, and the midfield was completely outplayed without Abdulrahman, while our attack lacked any sort of bite without Allagui (we didn’t have Benitez yet). I hope I don’t ever have to see the team play like that again. It seems my harsh team-talk after the game helped and we soared once more against Hoffenheim. Abdulrahman was back and made an immediate impact. He might be our most important player, over Reus. Horn, the promoted player last season and part of the Boris/Stevanovic class, scored his first goal for the club after coming on as a substitute. I would like to hope that he will develop aerial dominance, similar to Ghazaryan. The last game of the month was our season’s first derby. Reus scored a brace and Soylemez proved that he can play just as well as Abdulrahma, and he got on the score-sheet in the process. Reus’ second goal during the game is indescribable. He essential decided that he felt like scoring and just barreled through opposing defenders, odd considering his light build, and fired into the bottom corner. It was such a brute-force goal; I hope he scores more like that! Also, hats off to Mphela for scoring a bicycle kick on us during that game.

September

The first game of the month was another tense one for me, especially because this time we were beaten at home. Wolfsburg employed a very frustrating tactic of peppering my goal with shots and naturally some slipped by. They had 24 shots, 11 on target. That is insane! We held a little more position, but any time they would get the ball, they would fire off a shot; didn’t matter from where. Just like last time, we had a complete score reversal and against the mighty Benfica as well! I was shocked by absolutely ecstatic to kick our first Champions League campaign off with a win. It was Allagui’s first game back and he scored a goal, as did Benitez. Soylemez added to the tally as well. The next game was very even, with Bamba scoring both goals :( We were the better team in the game versus Nurnberg, but we needed an own goal from them to win. Reus drove us to victory in our second Champions League game with a brace. We are sitting at the top of our group now!

October

Allagui hurt himself during training before the match, but Benitez and Reus both scored. I was pleased to win the game even though Boris got sent off. Reus continued his incredible form with his first hat-trick of the season against Bremen. The next match was against defending Champions League winners, OM. This was a scrappy game, with OM receiving 7 yellow cards after 15 fouls. It was a little frustrating and the ter Stegen scored an own goal which caused OM to tie up the game after their dirty performance. It’s good to know, though, that we almost beat the best team in Europe (and probably the World).  The draw against Bayern proves we are legitimate. They scored within 5 minutes because we were still warming up to the game but the rest of the match consisted of Bayern being on the back foot. We had 60% possession, but Bayern is still Bayern, so we had to settle with a draw from Ghazaryan’s header from a corner. We ended the month with solid wins againt Nurnberg in the cup, during which Benitez and Soylemez made it to the score-sheet, and Leverkusen in the league.

November

So our first month of November was our Champions League game against Champions League holders OM. We couldn’t find a win but the game was absolutely fantastic to watch from a neutral’s perspective. Reus and Benitez scored while OM benefited from the unreal ability of Loic Remy. Cue 3 easy wins against Freiburg, Schalke, and Benfica. Reus and Benitez scored in each of those 3 games and after the Champions League win, we qualified for the knockout stage with a game in hand! I was also very proud of the win against Schalke because they were league leaders at the time. Our next game showed us that we can’t get complacent as Frankfurt won a game that we clearly dominated. We gave away 2 penalties that allowed them to take all 3 points.

December

So the last game of the Champions League group stage was a joke. Since us and Marseille already qualified, both PSV and I fielded weakened teams. I was quite pleased with how my youngsters played given the average team age was a little under 19.

I can hardly believe it! We made it to knock-out stages on the first try and we supplanted the current holders along the way! I was expecting this to be a group of death given the pedigree of the other three teams, but we were just too much to handle.

We followed that up with 2 more dominant displays and then an absolutely shock defeat at Kaiserslautern. We had the far better stats of the two teams but we conceded a late goal on the counter because I was too aggressive. We ended the first half of the season with a great repeat win over Schalke, which sees us go to the quarter-finals of the German Cup! The friendlies were quite simple and were to mostly keep up our fitness.

As  you can see, we knocked Schalke off their perch and we are holding onto the top spot going into the break thanks to Reus and Benitez’s crazy form. Reus has scored 15 goals while Benitez has scored 9. Reus is also the top scorer in the Bundesliga with 10 goals. Bayern seem to be struggling a bit but as seen from my previous two seasons, Bayern seem to have starting trouble before they start dominating everyone. I was also quite shocked to see how poorly Bochum and especially Diusberg are doing on the other side of the table.

Transfers:

So like I stated, Ghazaryan left during the January window after Barca tabled a £12mil bid for him. Evian actually put up £10mil for him but I had to reject it in favor of Barca’s larger offer. I also let Juhasz go because he was whining about first-team football. I wasn’t too bummed out because he didn’t unlock his potential like other high-profile youngsters, like Soylemez and the now gone Carpentieri (full-back from Argentina), Ciciretti (Italian midfielder) and Franzino. In their places I broke Gladbach’s transfer fee by bringing awesome youngster Dennis Wiesner, who can actually play across the whole back, and Nikki Lewis on loan from Manchester City. I am surprised I was able to get him because he is such a great youngster. I will definitely look into keeping him permanently because he could challenge for a first team role right now!

I think this is also a decent spot to discuss how Gladbach are doing in real life. In the Bundesliga, the team in 16th place faces off the team that came in 3rd in the 2. Bundesliga. Gladbach were that team and they just managed to best Bochum. This season, however, Gladbach find themselves in 4th place, one spot outside the automatic Champions League places, and only 4 points adrift of leaders Bayern Munich. Currently it’s the winter break but hopefully they can keep up their form. If they do make the Champions League, however, they will be without Reus because he has agreed to go back to his childhood club and Gladbach’s rival, Dortmund, on the first of July after Dortmund activated a €18mil release clause in his contract.

Go to the next page to check out the second half of our season!
January

So just 2 games. We dominated Hannover as the scoreline shows but Stuttgart managed to go toe-to-toe with us at home. We were down for most of the match and it took a stoppage time own goal from them to hand us the draw.

February

February was not a kind month to us. To their credit, Hoffenheim played well and held us back. We had a penalty on the 89th minutes, but Di Stefano mucked it up and we lost 2 potential points. After that we lost in the derby against second tier Koln in the quarter-finals of the German Cup. We will have to wait a little longer to win it, but I will not leave Germany until I do. We thrashed Dortmund in the other derby, with Reus scoring a second hat-trick of the season, but were shown a masterclass by Celtic. I did not think Celtic possessed that kind of ability, but in front of their Bhoys, they schooled us. I think our CL campaign might be over . . . Luckily we rocked the last 2 games of the month, with Lewis bagging his first goal in the close-ish game against Wolfsburg.

March

So another poor month. We started off with a loss at Nurnberg after Warner Horn received his marching orders and we were down a man. Like I predicted, after the next game we were knocked out of the Champions League. Celtic were too much for us to handle. I guess the team is still developing its mentality for «big games.» Nothing to talk about in the next two wins against Mainz and Bremen apart from Reus scored more. The last game was against Bayern who are languishing in 6th. We played evenly and made a breakthrough right after they had a player sent off early in the second quarter but they managed to equalize a little after 70 minutes. We shot ourselves in the foot after we gave away a penalty in the 87th minute and Lahm smashed it home, earning them all the points.

April

Ah, green circles what I love to see. We had a draw after Dortmund’s new signing from Man Utd, Paul Pogba’s stoppage time strike gave them the win. On its heels, during the busy month game an easy win against Frieburg and a monumental win against Schalke, whose title challenge is effectively ended. I guess the team talk I had after the draw with Leverkusen has spurred them on. Frankfurt were the better team in the next game, but super-sub Allagui finished them off for us. Reus scored yet another (his third or fourth) in the next game against Diusberg. After this game we WON THE BUNDESLIGA!!! We did it with 2 games in hand. It seems after that loss, Schalke just collapsed and no other team was able to adequately step up. Gladbach’s wait for a title is over!

The last match of the month was a victory lap, highlighting the scoring prowess and partnership of Reus and Benitez.

July

Just one game. A revenge win against Kaiserslautern. It didn’t matter because we already won the Bundesliga!

A decent 7 point cushion we earned :P I am so proud of these boys:

13 players breaking 7. Just phenomenal. Reus, off-course, had the season  of his life and scored the most goals and had the highest rating. Abdulrahman once again led the team in assists. Let’s see how they stacked up with the rest of the league:

We led in goals, assists, and MotM awards! Not only that, but we dominated average rating!

Finances are looking terrific as well. I can’t wait to see what our budget is next season. Yep, I am staying for at least one more season at Gladbach. I said I wanted to win the main cup and the domestic league in the five biggest leagues in Europe and so far only half that objective has been completed in Germany. So next season expect to see me focusing on the German Cup and Champions League the most!

That’s all for now. I hope everyone enjoyed reading about my season. I look forward to all your feedback!