Notts County 2015-2016: Player Transfers

Hello my friends, welcome back to a new season of my Notts County Football Manager 2010 story. We managed to defend the Premier League title and claim it for the second time in a row, we also won the Carling Cup but we missed the opportunity to play the Champions League final as we were knocked out by a superior Juventus side. Now I had to make the right choices in order to build a team that could bring in more silverware with the main target being the Champions League. But before delving into the transfer market I had two important games to play with England.

The most important game of the European Championships qualifying group was coming up, we were welcoming Switzerland at Wembley. They were the only team that looked capable of challenging for the first spot of the group, we couldn’t afford any mishaps. Wayne Rooney was back in the team after missing the last games due to injury, I felt confident when I saw him walking on the pitch. The first part of the game was pretty rough, lots of fouls and no clear chances to score. A corner kick helped us to break the deadlock, Welbeck flicked it on from the near post and centre back Michael Mancienne headed it home, his first goal for England! Switzerland tried to react immediately but they left some space behind, Danny Welbeck broke through and finished the counter attack with a powerful shot from 25 yards out. We were in control of the game and Chelsea‘s Sturridge (in for Welbeck after half time) made it 3-0 with a superb move, he dribbled past an opponent and powered it in. Switzerland were trying hard to get back into the game but they didn’t have any real chances to score. On the other hand Rooney had a couple of big chances on counter attacks but it wasn’t his day.

We had another home game coming up, an easier one against Malta. The game turned out to be a lot easier than expected, we scored freely and never looked like losing control of the game. It was a big moment for Rooney, he scored his 50th international goal and beat Sir Bobby Charlton‘s previous record of 49 goals for England! Ryan Shawcross netted his first goal for the nation while Steven Gerrard probably scored his last one, he’s rather old now (35 years old if I remember correctly) and probably he won’t have too many chances to play for England in the future.

We were top of the group with five wins out of five and no goals conceded!

We have three more games to play, I reckon we only need a draw in Switzerland to wrap things up. We’ll also have a tricky friendly with Belgium just before the away game in Estonia, we have to focus and avoid an upset there.

Back to Notts County then, the board was quite generous after I promised them another title, they gave me 77 million pounds to bring in new players.

And I did, there will be 6 new first team players in the squad. I sold 12 players instead, mostly backup players and youngsters that were showing less progress than I wanted them to. I got quite a lot of money from the sales but the club only gave me back 20 percent of that for new transfers, I surely hoped for more. Go to the next page to read the rest of the story.

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

Let’s go into details then. I didn’t really need another goalie but when I saw Rene Adler on a free transfer I just couldn’t resist. He is as good as Akinfeev in my view so I guess more competition for the first team spot couldn’t hurt anybody. I will probably rotate the two guys to avoid making them unhappy.

I surely needed a new centre back after selling Martin Caceres and after chasing several targets I chose Colombian player Cristian Zapata from Udinese. He is an experienced player, strong and pretty quick, I guess he’ll team up well with either Kjaer or Nordtveit in the middle of the defense.

Moving on to midfield, you already know about the Spanish regen called Carlos Abad, he joined us for free from Real Madrid. Since I sold all the backup central midfielders I felt I had to bring in two more CMs because that is by far the most demanding position in my tactical setup. You know that Jonjo Shelvey was one of my targets and I was pleased to sign him, Stoke let him go for only 15 million pounds. He is still young and I think that he can serve the club for years to come.

I wanted another CM and I had narrowed down the options to two players: Jack Rodwell and Fabian Delph. Chelsea didn’t want to sell Rodwell, I stopped negotiating when the price rose to 50 million pounds. Aston Villa wanted 40 million for Fabian Delph but I managed to get the price down to 30 million plus 50 percent of the next sale, I doubt there will ever be a next sale :) He’s a talented and hard working player that could add some spice to our attacking moves.

I also wanted a new striker to rotate with Sobis, Guilherme and Gadi. My initial target was Edin Dzeko but the price tag was pretty steep, I didn’t want to spend more than 25-30 million. It was a good thing actually, I think that I found a better and younger player than Dezko: Italian regen Andrea Romano from Aston Villa. He is strong, pretty quick, hard working and quite talented. Last but not least, he can still improve as he’s only 23 years old.

The friendly games went pretty well despite the fact that six of my first team players were away with their national teams at the Copa America. I was quite pleased with the wins over River Plate and Rangers, the team looked fairly solid at the back and explosive upfront.

The bookmakers tipped us as favorites to win the Premier League, that never happened before. They think we’ll have to battle with Manchester City, we’ll see about that.

August will start with two big matches, the Community Shield with Manchester United and then the Premier League opener with Chelsea. I’m quite confident that the team will perform well in those two games, I’m more concerned about the complacency they might show in the games against lower reputation teams.

That’s about it my friends, remember that you can have a look at the whole squad in detail in the current squad pages (will be updated shortly). Thanks for reading and for all your transfer suggestions, I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts about the new faces in the squad.

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