Stromson — Helios Kharkiv: Oh hello there (June-Octish 2010)

Hello all, and welcome to the first real update to our new Ukrainian story featuring the (not so) mighty Helios Kharkiv! I’ve been absolutely delighted with the outpouring of support for this story, and it really makes this an incredibly enjoyable hobby. There is no way for me to adequately thank you using the written word, and so I’ll rely on a photo to do it for me:

A gold star for the lot of you!

Alrighty, so let’s get straight down to business. We inherited a rather weak and thoroughly underfunded Helios side, along with some rather lofty expectations from our miserly board. I was forced to rely on free transfers, and actually had to put the entirety of my transfer budget towards wages in order to have any chance of bringing in a quality player or three. While our resulting transfers have put me over budget, their importance to the team cannot be overstated.

Pretty balanced as far as transfer windows go — dead wood/overpaid «stars» on the outs, and a group of grizzled veterans on the way in. I’ve opted for experience in this first batch of signings (it had absolutely nothing to do with there being no half-way decent young Ukrainians available, nothing whatsoever), and I’m counting on their veteran status to help shore up this squad.

Victor Dotsenko is easily the best player I was able to bring on board, and he’s currently defying all laws of nature by IMPROVING at the age of 34. I’ve never seen any players (of any age) stats improve like his, and if I wasn’t witnessing it, I probably wouldn’t believe it to be true. He, along with Anatoliyovch are my biggest signings. Other key players include Ruslan Zarubin, Yuriy Fomenko, and Sergiy Borzenko. My assistant now seems much more optimistic about our chances:

Woot, now that’s more like it! Unfortunately I noticed another minor problem with our current setup…

Erk! As you can probably imagine, we’ve subsequently been having a few fitness issues as the season starts to kick into gear. Twelve games in and with no substantial improvement in our endurance, I’d decided I’d had enough — it was time for a *drum roll* Board Confrontation!

Wow…that has literally never worked for me before…awesome! I haven’t actually managed to find a decent fitness coach yet, but I was just so excited by getting a positive response that I needed to take a screenshot!  BUT! It’s now time for the important bits — how are we doing in the league!?

Bam:

In my humble opinion, there is one of two possible catalysts for this performance: a) I’m some sort of tactical genius, or b) This league is really, really bad. Since we can safely rule out any perspicacity on my part, we’re left with the assumption that the Ukrainian First Division is simply a terrible football league.

As a result of our unexpected form, we find ourselves doing rather well on the table:

Unless I’m very much mistaken, I do believe that’s a promotion place we find ourselves in! Unfortunately there are two caveats that need to go with this table: 1) For the first 10 or so games, excepting Chornomorets (we drew them), we played teams solely from the bottom half of the table, 2) I have 4 starters that are now injured. Subsequently, I don’t really think we’ll be earning promotion this year, and I’m honestly pretty okay with that.

Everything I’ve seen so far suggests to me the gulf of talent between the First Division and Premier League is of fairly epic proportions. I’m nearly 100% certain that an earned promotion would see us almost immediately sent back down to the First Division (hereby known as the Persha Liga, which sounds infinitely cooler). I’d like to spend another year down here consolidating and improving our finances before making our push toward greatness (we need a striker like whoa, nearly a third of our goals are from PKs or dead ball situations!).

In conclusion there is no conclusion, and unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to record an awesome video for you (once our house is ready, I’ll be able to record much more reliably again). I do however, have a super epic, awesome picture for you:

Thanks for reading everyone, as always I’d love to hear your questions, comments, concerns, and inane ramblings (kidding)! :)