The Magpies Prepare For The Premier League

Hello my dear friends, the big moment is finally here! After three successful seasons my Notts County were ready for the toughest challenge, a season in the wonderful Premier League! After winning all three championships so far, League Two, League One and The Championship we had to be ready to face much more difficult opponents. Surviving in the Premiership is not an easy task, so I had to be very careful with the transfers…

First the board announced some improvements to the youth and training facilities, I was quite happy about that. They solved our pitch problem too, now we can be proud of it.

Immediately after the end of the Championship Season I received three job offers from Premier League teams, including Manchester United (yes, Sir Alex finally decided to retire). I rejected the job offers, I couldn’t leave the Magpies right before the big challenge.

I also had another reason to stay, the chairman. You already know that he has a wonderful habit of giving the club some money now and then. Well, he did that again :)

The board expected a mid-table position, I found that quite demanding from them. I had to promise them more though, a top half finish, to get more transfer money. They gave me 33 million pounds as a result of that, much more than I expected. I will also have a good wage budget, one million pounds per week!

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I had to do a lot of work during the transfer window with that money, here are the results of it. First, the players that I had to let go… I received good fees for some of them, I only sold the players that I felt were unprepared for the Premier League.

I spent absolutely everything I had on new players, we needed a lot of new talent of experience to face the Premier League challenges. Eleven out of the 12 players I bought will be part of the first team squad right away, that is a risk but I felt that I had to take it.

Now let me introduce the most important transfers. Some of you suggested that I had to bring in a new goalkeeper and after browsing through several options I chose Argentinian keeper Sergio Romero from AZ Alkmaar. He is a world class keeper and he fits the profile of the sweeper keeper that I always wanted.

I also needed to enforce the defense, most of the centre backs that I had in the team were not Premier League material. My second job as manager of the Uruguay national team paid off, Martin Caceres agreed to sign a contract with us although he was wanted by many big clubs. He is a reliable player, I already knew him from the national team games.

I needed another classy centre back and I chose to bring Johan Djourou back to England from Shakhtar Donetsk. I chose him for two reasons: first, he’s a good centre back with decent pace and acceleration. The other reason was that now you have to submit a 25 player squad for the Premier League season and at least 8 of the 25 players have to be home grown. Johan Djourou is home grown because he was raised at Arsenal.

I felt I didn’t need many more central midfielders, so I brought in only one, on a free transfer. The player that I chose is Lucas Biglia from Anderlecht, a creative midfielder that could be a big plus for our team in the middle of the pitch.

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I chose to keep all my three strikers, Pekhart, Szalai and Sburlea, but we needed one more striker. I tried to get Alibec, he played very well for us last season when he was on loan from Inter. Well, Inter agreed to sell him but the lad chose another offer, for some reason he chose to go to play in… Turkey. Maybe it was for more money, I don’t know. I had to find another striker and after very long negotiations with Dinamo Kiev I snapped up Brazilian rising star Guilherme. He will be our star striker, I expect a lot of goals from him.

Those were the main signings of the summer but I will present two more players. First, the most experienced player in my team, Eric Abidal. He is quite old now but he still has the quality to play well at this level for at least another season. He was available for free, so I didn’t think twice, I offered him a good contract and he agreed to sign it.

Last but not least, the best prospect that I managed to bring to Notts County this summer. He is a Brazilian left winger, Agnaldo, a very promising youngster that could shine on the Premier League stage right away. You can find all the player profiles and career stats in the squad pages, I will update them shortly.

I couldn’t bring a new assistant manager though, but I’m still trying. Here’s how he sees the situation:

The friendly games produced mixed results, we lost to Arsenal and Bordeaux but I don’t care too much about the friendly results.

The bookmakers think that we have almost no chance of winning the title… Well, I agree with them :) The media prediction is that we will finish 16th.

We will have only three games in August, but all three of them are as tough as they can be. First we’ll have the Nottingham Derby, Forest got promoted too after the play-off. Then we’ll have Liverpool coming at Meadow Lane and an away game at Chelsea…

That’s about it folks, over to you now! What do you think about my transfers? I would also like you to make predictions about our final position in the Premier League, how high do you think we can go?

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