Sears — FM11 Terek: Adapting To Russia Well 14/15

Hello folks and welcome back to my FM11 journeyman story. As you know, I resigned as Queens Park boss and was later installed as the new manager of Russian side Terek. My new board gave me a generous sum of £11.5 million to spend, along with a wage budget of £155k a week. My new club were underachieving in the league and I’ve a two year plan to get them promoted. We are just seven points behind second spot and they are sixteen fixtures remaining. Promotion this season may be one step to far, so I was hoping for a strong finish and get promoted next season. Anyway we’ll begin the post with my new signings.

I won’t go through all my new players, as I signed quite a few. I thought this was required considering the lack of depth at the club. Here are my new players:

I spent just £4 million on these players and I’m pleased with most of the players I purchased. Some aren’t good enough, but I bought them anyway to add depth, which was our biggest problem. When I arrived we just had 16 first team players, now we have a gigantic squad of 27 players! I won’t show you all of my new players, but I’ll post up the good ones. Here they are:

Jiri Kilmek:

Jiri joined me on a free transfer, which is quite astonishing considering his attributes and the fact that he played in the Czech Republic prior to being released. Anyway I snapped him up for nothing and he became my new right back. His physical attributes and mental are impressive but his technical attributes are rather poor. He’ll undoubtedly be at the club for a long time!

Samuel Okoro:

Okoro is a 18 year old regen I managed to find hiding in Macedonia. I parted with £750,000 to bring him to Russia and he will play on the right wing in a 4-4-2 formation or a 4-5-1 formation. He certainly has potential and will defiantly become a key player for the club in a few years time.

Milan Stakic:

Stakic was signed for just £120,000 and was probably my best purchase in the transfer window. Prior to his arrival in Russia, he played his football in Serbia and Slovakia. He’s determined and brave, which I like, although he needs to become stronger if he is to play in my defensive midfielder role.

Evgeny Gapon:

Gapon is a talented left back with fantastic physical attributes. He’s still only 23 years old and has time to develop into a better player. he cost £350,ooo and I’m pleased to have a player of his quality on board.

I sold one player for £100,000 but I managed to raise £7 million without selling anyone. How did I do this I hear you say? Well, two years ago, Barcelona bought an extremely gifted youngster from Terek for £12 million. One of the clauses in the deal was that Terek would receive 25% profit if Barcelona were to sell him. They didn’t sell him, so I offered Barcelona a chance to buyout the clause and they agreed, I don’t think they’d a choice to be honest! Anyway, it’s just an easy way to make money :-)

Who is Schneider?

Schneider is a 20 year old wonderkid regen from Brazil. This kid is unbelievably amazing with tons and tons of potential. Just look at his attributes, Finishing-19, Drbbling-18, Heading-18 and Technique-16. Hard to believe that he is still only 20 yrs old!

That concludes my transfer activity, I spent £4 million but amazingly made a hefty profit and our finances now are extremely secure with a cool £10 million in the bank balance. Oh, and there is £14 million remaining in my transfer budget :-) :-)

August results:

My first game in charge of Terek was a total disaster. I actually had to holiday it because we didn’t have enough players to play. I’d 4 injuries, with another player slightly injured, also bearing in mind that 3 more players were goalkeepers. I tried to use a 4-4-2 tactic and but unfortunately I couldn’t field a proper team. none of my youth players could play either because they had a match themselves. Consequently I holidayed the game and we lost 1-0. By the time of my next game, I had previously signed a few players and managed to field 11 players :-D Thankfully we won 4-1 with Chilean Fierro netting an impressive hat trick. Afterward we defeated Volgar 2-0 in a relatively comfortable match. Our decent run was halted by Dinamo Bryansk as they inflicted a painful 2-0 defeat upon us. We reacted well to win our following fixture 2-0.

September results:

September began with the Russian Cup as we faced Rubin. Regrettably we lost 4-2, Fierro scored twice for us but through out the game Rubin dominated and ultimately Rubin deserved to prevail. We bounced back to win 3-1 against Zhemchuzhina. We lost away to Luch 2-1, but I felt we could have won if Fierro hadn’t been sent off after just 15 minutes… After that defeat to Luch, I changed from an 4-4-2 tactic to a 4-5-1 tactic. This seem to have done the trick as we comfortably won our remaining two games of the month 3-0 and 4-0.

October + November results:

We were around 3rd or 4th spot heading into the lingering two months of the campaign. The title was almost secured by Krasnoder with two or three teams battling for the last promotion spot. October started with a fine 2-0 win over Kuban, which was followed by a 0-0 draw away to Volga NN. With the season nearing the end, we had to win our remaining games to stand any chance of securing an unlikely promotion prior to my arrival. Already relegated Avangard were easily dismantled 3-0 at home, then we overcame another relegated team 2-0 away. Center back Burlak scored twice from set pieces to win 2-0 against Sibir. He also netted the winner against Rotor in our last game of the season. Incredibly, that was our 8 consecutive clean sheet! The new 4-5-1 tactic had done wonders since I introduced it!

League table:

That was an pulsating end to the season and guess what….. Were going up!!! Yup, I’m delighted to announce that Terek have been promoted to the Russian Premier Division.  I guess it was inevitable considering the form we hit during the latter stages of the season. In just 16 games, I turned an 7 point deficit into an 6 point lead. Considering that there was 48 points to play for it wasn’t the most daunting of challenges and defiantly doesn’t emulate the success I endured with Queens Park.

That’s it for today’s post guys, my short stint as manager of Terek has proven successful thus far but we will need to heavily strengthen during the summer if we are to be competitive in the Premier Division next season.  Thanks for reading and feel free to comment.