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Millership2017-09-14 16:10:17

The pre-season financial situation repeated: the club has less than 100M negative balance, mid-pre-season the board decides to set the preliminary transfer budget to about 70M and zero transfer revenue (means that whatever money the club acquires through selling players, they won't be added to the transfer budget), I try not to spend, move all the transfer window money to wage budget, when season starts proper we receive 150M from sponsors, the board decides to not change the budget and Real Madrid sits on the fence through the summer window with an empty transfer treasury. Again.

But…

This season was a bit different, in that I had an unhappy Keylor Navas in the squad, whom I managed to sell to PSG for 37.5M. That's about the biggest fee I could receive for a goalkeeper in this stage of his career: he's already 32 years old, which means he's young enough for his market value to not drop due to age, and old enough for his competence to make him worthy of the money spent in the eyes of the interested club(s).

Then I went and did a stupid thing again. Well, not then, actually, but a season before: I didn't re-negotiate Martin Ødegaard's contract. He'd got a 14.25M release clause in his original one, so AS Monaco capitalized on that and swept away the potentially club-grown wonderkid. Whoops.

To be completely honest, I didn't resist the transfer as much as I could: for example, nothing prevented me from trying to negotiate a new contract for the Norwegian while he was considering the Monégasques' offer. The reason for my inaction was Sebastian Driussi, who was on my radar from the times when I was searching for a second striker. While I was busy unsettling Morata, Sevilla got to him first in the previous season, giving him a chance to get the invaluable on that stage of his career first-team experience (which he wouldn't get in RM), earning the "World-Class Striker" moniker in the process. A world-class striker with a 37M release clause. Mwahaha.

That left the young Butenko out of work. He was promptly loaned out to Los Rojiblancos themselves. So they've got the money and an equally talented (but still green) replacement for free. I think I might have something to learn from this.

The last signing was Jose Gaya from Chelsea. He was transfer-listed for some reason, and I went "what the hell, I can have a full, 25-players squad for a change" and bought him for 13.75M.

To sum up, I've sold an unhappy, aging goalie with no chance of playing for a large sum, a home-grown wonderkid cheaply, thus opening a spot for a world-class striker, whom I signed relatively cheaply, bought a decent young Spanish left-back and, in the end, finished the window with profits. That went quite well.

The squad at the start of the season was as follows:

• Three competent goalies, two of them (Donnarumma and Rajkovic) have not reached their full potential yet.
• Three interchangeable world-class centerbacks – Ramos, Varane and Meré; Llorente (who got his Achilles tendon torn in pre-season, ouch) and Zakaria (who is a midfielder anyway) backing them up.
• Three left wingbacks – Marcelo, Coentrão and Gaya.
• Two right wingbacks – Carvajal and Henrichs, both of them can also play on the left flank and the German can play on a couple of other positions as well.
• Two anchormen – Casemiro and Zakaria, with Meré and Henrichs backing them up.
• Five central midfielders of various roles – Kroos, Kovacic, Modric, Isco and Asensio, with the two main anchormen being able to play that position as well.
• Five people who can play an attacking midfielder – Ronaldo, Bale, James, the aforementioned Isco and Asensio; also Kovacic and Modric if needed, Driussi as a backup, and Benzema, who was retrained to CAM.
• Three world-class strikers: Benzema, Morata and Driussi, The Prophet, The Lord and The Hunter, judging by their ages and playing styles. Also Bale and Ronaldo, if push comes to shove.

But there are also potential problems:

• Ronaldo is 33, the oldest player in the squad. He doesn't show signs of physical decline yet, and I think he still can play on the highest level at least for a couple of seasons more (this one included), but the club pays him 675K per week, and if the general level of his performance will drop low enough, I might have to consider to reduce the wage bill at his expense in some way.
• Modric is 32, his age is starting to show and he is injury-prone. Being a CM, this is not that problematic, but still…
• Marcelo and Coentrão are both 30 years old. Again, this is not a problem, but I signed Gaya also because there needed to be a younger person providing backup for the left flank of the defense.

When you have three equally good center forwards in the squad with only one vacancy for them in the starting eleven, it means that someone getting unhappy is inevitable. In my case, this "someone" was Diussi. The first-choice striker was Morata, whose statistics were staggering: 13 matches, 13 goals (they've made something of a duet with Ronaldo in three matches when they were together on the pitch – Morata scores four goals, Cristiano scores that much; Morata scores two, Ronaldo is keeping up, almost like Puskás and Di Stefano back in the fifties), and I didn't have much reasons to use the other two on that position. Then Driussi started complaining, I decided to let the 37M signing a chance (he didn't become a regular because his first five matches were goalless), and he, too, didn't disappoint. That left Benzema out, who, saying that he needs a new challenge, decided to get transfer-listed. Whoops.

Apart from the string of three away matches against tough opposition – Barca, Sevilla and Atletico (1-1, 2-2 and 2-1 defeat, respectively) in the La Liga, the domestic competitions were uneventful.

The group was interesting: Tottenham, Fenerbahçe and Monaco. Keeping in mind the previous season trend, I half expected Ødegaard to score in those two matches, but he wasn't the first-team choice. And Bale didn't score against Tottenham. Fener was the only who gave us trouble, 4-4 at Şükrü Saracoğlu.

The season goes well so far.

• Brexit happened. Gibraltar decided to stay with team EU. Starting from the next season, EU-nation players will have to apply for a work permit in the UK (apart from those who are already playing there). And the work permit is mostly given to players who have international caps or were transferred for a really high fee. While the top clubs in English Premier League won't have that much problem with that (Arsenal and Manchester United will have even less problems, since their club academy and youth recruitment systems are among the best in the world), the rest of British teams are pretty much fucked in the long run. There are not many quality British players in the EU, though (they'll count as foreign there), but there is a chance of increase in movement of such players between the EU-national clubs. I might be playing this game for a bit longer than expected, since it will be interesting to see how things will turn out.
• Ronaldo doesn't seem to age.
• Juanjo Garcia became a club-grown player.