Well, it’s about time we moved. Too bad it’s not into a new home. We go to Craven Cottage, a 25,700 capacity stadium and Fulham’s home. Considering our previous rental dwelling had a capacity of just under 9,000, this move was necessary just so we could have a good day at the gates when we had a Premier League match.
Speaking of a new home, this also happened:
Kingstonian Stadium will be open in 3 years, with a capacity of 22,114. I cannot wait – it’s going to be a long three years full of impatience. This was the very first goal I had for this club and the reason for the save. It’s only right to get a club befitting and ready to make that new home full of special memories. So let’s see our transfers.
Transfers
Juma Mbaga is back after an absolutely splendid first season as the first-team goalkeeper. He’ll be joined this year by Kevin Rodrigues, a $300,000 pickup from the Portuguese Liga NOS.
But the big-time move at goalkeeper was to arrange for the transfer of 17 year old Czech wonderkid Jiri Baranek. He won’t be available to move to the team until the summer so here’s a look at his ratings by the end of the season, at 18:
The anticipation and composure is not quite where I want it but the rest of Baranek’s attributes are nearly equivalent to Rodrigues and Mbaga. With these three, I’m basically done with shopping for goalkeepers for the foreseeable future.
The defense has been difficult to solve since getting to the Championship, let alone the Premier League. There just aren’t a lot of promising youngsters out there. Manchester United probably has the best of the bunch, an English 25 year old who has 13 tackling. Yeah, that’s what I mean – it’s rough out there.
It took some time but after digging through all of my scouts’ reports throughout the past season, I finally found a central defender worthy of my attention. He hadn’t been labeled a wonderkid yet but by the time the transfer window opened, he was. I was nervous that his price would skyrocket but thankfully, it stayed at a measly half a million. Meet Mateo Gauthier.
Good height and jumping reach, with superb tackling, anticipation, and concentration. Plus, look at that acceleration and pace. Add in that he prefers his left foot and we have a budding superstar in the making. He’ll do quite nicely. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find another central defender so the other spot will be a committee of Liam McCorkell, Lennard Dvorak, Juan de Dios Ballester, and Mario Sobral.
For the fullbacks, Ansel Brown will be one of the two starters and we have a plethora of good backups in Matisse Dewulf and Jack Cole. So I search for a left wingback and find José Antonio.
I definitely feel like I overpaid here. Wages are the highest at the club and the transfer fee was $10 million. But when you look at the other options, there just aren’t any at the level between $1 million and $35 million. You have to either make due with 2.5 star caliber players or spend your entire transfer budget on one left back. Antonio knows this too. Or at least his agent does. He wouldn’t sign a deal longer than 2 years. Which makes me even more nervous about how much I spent. Still, there’s a lot to be excited about Antonio and I’m hopeful his technical skills improve.
With Antonio in, I work to offload Cole and arrange for him to leave on a $4.7 million transfer to Portsmouth. Pretty good business to move a third-stringer.
Let’s head to the midfield where Kurtis Butler and Gary Corness remain. Not a lot of central midfielders want to join the club and I am absolutely gobsmacked that my options are so few. Still, I did hit on both of my signings, Alessandro Marotta and Radim Ditmar for a combined $16.75 million.
Marotta looks like a less speedy version of Danny Johnson and Ditmar is one of our first midfielders in many seasons to actually be good at tackling. With his 18 passing, Ditmar will play balls from a deep lying role. Marotta will be a box-to-box this season and likely move to a mezzala role next season when I can find another fast midfielder.
Speaking of Johnson, he’ll be around the club a lot this year. He was signed by recently promoted Fulham, who spent $125 million last season and another $188 million this season. Funnily enough, Roco Rees was also signed by Fulham to sit on the bench so I’ll probably plan on grabbing drinks with the two of them frequently throughout the season. Unfortunately, Johnson’s release clause is $129 million so I don’t think I’ll have a chance to get him back to the club for another couple of years.
To the wings we have some excitement in another French wonderkid.
At 18 to start the season and 19 as you see from the image above, Mayverick Cornelie-Julan is an impressive talent. He will start from day one, as much as it pains me to tell Rajee Isaacs that he’ll have to take the bench. Speaking of right wingers, I don’t think I mentioned him last season because he simply did not perform at all but Yari Binchi, an Italian with 16 acceleration and 14 crossing and dribbling, was sold for $3.8 million. Which helped me get Mayverick, or rather, Maverick, as I now call him, for $525,000. Both Maverick and Gauthier are PSG products and I have to say, if they gave up these guys from their academy, who else do they have that’s better???
I also picked up another left winger on loan, Benjamin Gerard, and a few young strikers (Eoin Barron, Ray Cavanaugh) who were backups and not worth talking about in detail. But the big prize was from Barcelona’s youth academy: 20 year-old Spanish striker wonderkid Marcial Zaragoza.
The above image is an end of the season look at Zaragoza and he improved in a lot of attributes. Coming off of a five-week injury for sprained knee ligaments, Barcelona’s damaged goods became our star striker. You’ll hear more about Zaragoza soon.
That makes 3 wonderkids on the first-team this year (Gauthier, Maverick, and Zaragoza) and one coming next year (Baranek). 7 more to go?
Season Results
After a preseason trip to New York, USA (our past two seasons, we went to Scotland and the Algarve coast in Portugal), we were matched up again with Watford at home to start the season. And immediately, the new kids made their presence known. Maverick made some incisive moves, quickly dashing past defenders and swerving past them in the box like no other player I’ve seen before. He nearly scored several times but instead, Zaragoza was first on the scoresheet this year, having controlled a ball over the top with a deft first touch and timely placed shot past the keeper. Let’s keep playing Watford to start the season, it seems to be a good matchup for us!
We then lost disappointingly against fellow relegation candidates Bristol City, giving up one of those wretched last minute goals. I had been changing our tactic to go more defensive because of all of the late goals over the years but I think this is one of those young player problems, not a tactics or mentality problem. As long as I stick with youngsters, I’m going to have to live with them not finishing every match.
This put us in a precarious position at home against Manchester City, the champions of Europe. But a sweet shot by Maverick put us in the lead in the 24th minute and a red card foul in the box against Luca Innocenti gave us a 2-0 lead. We then scored a third in the 66th minute and I started to believe. But City was not ready to give up. Tony El Bahraoui scored in the 70th minute and Brown was sent off in the 72nd, meaning it was 10 versus 10 for the last 20 minutes. Thankfully, we held on and the team was in a good mood.
This mood continued on as Zaragoza scored his first Premier League hat trick against Crystal Palace but then stopped as back-to-back away defeats against Manchester United showed us how much further we still had to go to be considered contenders.
We unfortunately were not able to take care of a distraught Chelsea club at home, who used their victory over us to climb out of the relegation zone. Nor were we able to stop Alexander Lemmens, who this time scored 4 goals against us.
Danny Johnson and the Battle for Craven Cottage occurred at the end of October and I desperately wanted to show him the error of his decision. But, alas, it was not to be as a tough 1-0 defeat came instead.
We were in a bit of a bad form but this was largely due to the quality of the big clubs we were facing all in a row. So we unloaded against West Ham, with 6 goals, 4 of them from Zaragoza, 1 from Maverick, and another from Ditmar.
A frustrating loss to open December as we had been up 1-0 after 9 minutes and looking good. But Ditmar and Gauthier were sent off on straight reds by the 23rd minute and we were lucky enough to get a second while only giving up three.
The defense picked up from there as we managed two solid wins against teams we have been very successful against in the early days of our time in the Premier League, Wolves and Norwich. A draw against Arsenal and surprise win over Leicester with a brace by Ditmar showed the progress the club had made from last season.
We then lost the plot against Aston Villa and Fulham took advantage of their home game while wearing the away kit, defeating us for the second time at Craven Cottage this season.
But January was a bright spot, even though we didn’t score many goals. First, the news came out on the day of the Liverpool match that Zaragoza, with 13 Premier League goals to start the year and 11 from his time with Barcelona’s B squad, had won the European Golden Boy award. Then came the Liverpool game itself.
We managed to hold Lemmens to a single goal, which only arrived right at the end of the first half. Maverick struggled big-time in this match and was having some fits and possibly fatigue by playing too much. I subbed in Isaacs in the 73rd minute and he miraculously found the tying goal 20 minutes later. Without time to reply, the ball was barely touched again when the whistle blew and we had secured a huge result considering how good Liverpool had whipped us to this point. This then led to four straight league draws and two FA Cup wins.
And a barnburner against Watford. I talked a lot of smack before this game with the press. I was pretty dang confident we were going to beat them. But I seemed ready to eat my words when Marotta walked off the pitch with an injury and the score level at 1. But then, hope! Bajrami, who had been having a great resurgence of a season serving as Zaragoza’s backup and starting on the left wing as an inside forward, scored in the 87th minute to give us the lead. It was all too good to be true, though. A brilliant 23 year old French striker, Sicomarou Sacko, scored his second goal of the match a minute later and then in the 8th minute of stoppage time scored the winner. Sacko had absolutely outclassed Sobral who had tried defending him.
8 minutes of stoppage time! Clearly, the match was fixed. I struggled to contain my temper after the game and luckily the FA only gave me a warning. But Sobral was not so lucky. He was immediately placed on the loan list and was off to Moscow.
I should also mention that Dvorak was gone. Eintracht Frankfurt wanted him for $14.25 million, which would grow to $16.25 million after a few appearances. Considering that Dvorak was not in my long-term plans and I hadn’t been satisfied with his performance this season, I packed his bags for him.
Also, with Marotta injured, I thankfully had picked up a good replacement. Florentino from Real Madrid joined us on loan through the end of the season just before the winter transfer window shut.
I had targeted him since last season but he was badly injured in April and wanted to stay in Madrid to heal. By January, he was finally all better and I guess Real Madrid wanted to see how he was recovering before loaning him to us. He would give us 10 great games, with a 7.24 rating, including a brace against Leicester.
We had made it to the FA Cup fifth round again and should have advanced. Innocenti scored a penalty in the 109th minute and Birmingham had only 10 men after the red card that led to the penalty. But they scored literally less than a minute later and I knew the rest of the game wouldn’t matter. We were destined to lose that one, so sayeth Sports Interactive programming.
But no matter, we could focus on the league and Wolves/Norwich again saw us triumph over them. Also, Everton saw us at our best all season. 5 – nil, with a Zaragoza hat trick and a brace from Bajrami. Maverick was starting to get back in form after I had focused on him through individual comments during team talks the past two matches.
I also had moved Dewulf to a starting role as a central defender even though he was really a small fullback. Dewulf’s speed, concentration, and determination were needed after de Dios Ballester, McCorkell, Sobral, and Dvorack had all failed to impress me in their various auditions throughout the year. I am sure that we would have challenged for Europe had we had another good central defender.
The tactic and team worked until we played Manchester City, who was playing at home for a win which would secure them the league title. We watched them lift the trophy that day and I hope it was a good learning experience for the lads.
Then came one of the best results of our season. A 4-2 win versus Manchester United. This meant Liverpool was the last of the big three we hadn’t yet beat. Bajrami, Florentino, Maverick, and Antonio all scored while Zaragoza and Marotta provided the assists. We even looked like the better team. Now, this may have been due United’s disappointment at City winning the league the matchday before. But I didn’t care. This was a big win for our reputation. And for our final position in the league as the last match of the year got away from us.
Crystal Palace has an amazing 22 year old French striker named Gabriel Rio.
With Rio, Sacko, and Maverick, and Gauthier, the French are loaded with talent under 24.
Rio scored a hat trick against us and he was probably the only player on their team that played well. He was massive and singlehandedly won that match. Those three goals gave him the goal scoring lead for the Premier League, one more than Lemmens and Sacko, five more than Zaragoza.
Season Recap
We ended up 11th again for the second year in a row but were nine points better and +6 instead of -6 on goal differential. Chelsea managed to salvage their season after being in the relegation zone for more than a month. Fulham, with Danny Johnson’s help, just slipped into Champions League football. Grr, yes, I’m bitter about that.
Best XI
I’ve got two years left to win the FA Cup. It really comes down to the second central defender next to Gauthier. Also I tried all of May to get Florentino on loan for next season but Real Madrid wants to try him in the first team. Butler played out of his mind at the end of the season and likely beyond his true ability. So another midfielder would make me rest easier.
Bajrami really took to the left inside forward role and was our best player for the second half of the season. A lot of our players are foreign and finished up their English language courses this season so maybe there was just better communication going on the pitch. Speaking of, I need some good English players to pass Premier League rules for homegrown players. Johnson sure would be nice; let’s see his asking price.
And our transfer budget for next season?
Well, then. Do I buy one player or eleven?
The Kings of London 