Notts County Story — The European Debut

Here we go again my friends, thanks for coming back to read the updates to my Notts County Football Manager 2010 story! You already know that we finished our first Premier League season in 6th place and got a ticket for next season’s Europa League. I had a few signings in mind to strengthen our team but our transfers campaign depended on the amount of money that the board would be willing to spend.

I expected to be given around 30 million pounds but, to my surprise, the board was willing to give me around 19 million to get an European place at the end of the season. If I would have accepted a title challenge objective the increase to the transfer budget would have been rather small, only a couple of millions, so I chose not to take that risk.

With that financial position I had to sell most of the fringe players in the squad and we received a nice amount for them, around 40 million pounds. Not all of that went back into the transfers budget though…

I brought in nine players, one on loan to buy and five on free transfers.

Let me introduce them in chronological order. You already know about Thomson and Moreno from the previous post, they came on free transfers in June. We also settled the deal for Havard Nordtveit in June, we only paid 4 million pounds for him as that was the fixed fee in the loan to buy deal. I managed to bring in another three players on free transfers, I was quite pleased with that considering the low transfer budget. First, another striker. His name is Demba Ba, Senegalese international that has a home grown status in England because he was raised at Watford. He’s a strong hard working lad that could add depth to our attack and also to our left wing.

The other free striker that I snapped up is a talented Brazilian, Rafael Sobis. His great technical skills could help us a lot in certain games while his experience could also be useful.

The last free transfer is a central midfielder, Belgian international Steven Defour. He’s both a hard worker and a creative player, he could team up well with Lucas Biglia in the middle of the park.

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

The difficult part was still ahead of me, I had to find a left back and a centre back and it wasn’t easy at all. After long and painful negotiations with Aston Villa they finally agreed to sell regen left back Joe Barton for 17 million pounds (they asked for 25 million at first). He’s a very talented youngster that could solve our left back problem in the following years. I also brought a Brazilian left back, Dodo, on a loan to buy deal from Manchester United, so I guess we’re pretty well covered on that flank.

After solving the left back problem I focused on finding a centre back but it was quite difficult with the amount of money that I had left in the bank. I’ve made several offers for British centre backs but eventually had to find a foreign target, Danish international Simon Kjaer. He’s a player that I admire a lot, a professional guy that could wear the Notts County shirt for years to come. The problem is that we signed him late in July and I wasn’t able to insert him into the squad that had to be registered for the Europa League. I hope they will let me insert him later on…

I would have wanted to bring in another right/left winger but I had to give up because there was no money left. The bookmakers believe that we are among the top teams in the league but I can’t tell you if they are right or wrong yet, I’ll have to see the first matches and then have a better idea.

Let’s see the friendly games now. Since we had to play in the third preliminary round of the Europa League I thought that three friendly games would be enough, we could use the two Europa League games to build up the fitness and match form. It was a risky decision but I felt that having too many friendlies besides the European games could cause some injury problems.

The team that we had to face in the third preliminary round was Swiss side Young Boys Bern, not an easy opponent at that stage. The home game began quite well, we put the opponents under heavy pressure in the first half but lacked precision upfront. We even missed a penalty kick just before the break. The second half was quite difficult because of the fitness problems but we could still have won it. A poor clearance from Djourou gave us a 1-1 draw instead but I was fairly confident for the second leg.

In fact, the second leg was totally different, my players already had some match form in their legs and they thoroughly proved to be the better side. Right winger Bonetti scored the opener from a corner kick that was flicked on by Demba Ba. Then Biglia doubled our lead by finishing a team move but Young Boys clawed one back right after the break, a nice goal from Romanian winger Gangioveanu (one of my favorite players in real life, he plays for my beloved Universitatea Craiova). Senegalese striker Demba Ba missed a truckload of chances throughout the game but he finally found the way to the net in the second half, he slotted in a quick hat-trick to put the result beyond doubt. I was quite pleased with the performance, I can’t remember any of my teams creating 14 clear cut chances in a single game before!

We have one more round to pass until the group stage and the draw pitched us against a Romanian team, Rapid Bucharest. They have a good team but I guess we’ll be able to beat them. We’ll also have three Premier League games to play by the end of August, I guess we’ll know more about the team’s strength at the end of the month.

That’s how the pre season went, I think that we have good squad depth overall, I just wanted one more winger but I guess I’ll have to wait until January and hope for some money from the board. I’m looking forward to read your views about the transfers campaign and about my squad, you can always view the full details about my players in the current squad page (I’ll be working to update it right after finishing this post). Thanks for reading!

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