Ah, preseason where I arrange more friendlies and struggle to find better players on the team. As I pointed out earlier in my previous post though, with a small wage budget, it’ll be very hard to attract players that can push us to our goal of a top-half finish.

Surprisingly, for this country, there is no cup competition so the only prize money would only come in the knockout stages of each stage. Even then, the amount of it isn’t anything to scoff at.

Preseason

Started off with some good news, as I (selfishly) took the chance to upgrade to a Continental C license.

I instantly used half of the club’s money to fund the course.

Anyway, we only had two fixtures so I naturally organised a few more although the selection of clubs were limited and there were no visible opportunities to boost the club’s income.

Judging from the results, it seems that we’re doing all right. We even drew with first division side Chorrillo. Of course, the two huge losses did not help morale but was quickly alleviated by easier friendlies.

Sadly, the board failed to secure any senior affiliate for the club..Meh, it was a long shot anyway.

Staff

As I’ve pointed out earlier, I decided to see if I could replace both my assistant manager and scout. Just look at the available ones…

Hardly an improvement, don’t you agree?

There weren’t any assistant managers available either and even the coaches who could replace mine were demanding wages above £100.

In the end, I decided not to replace any of my staff members. I did put up a cheeky advert for both roles though. Let’s see what happens…

Transfers

As you can see, it’s going to be hard to upgrade the squad as a whole. I mean, we only have two fit strikers!

There weren’t a lot of loan options from the premier division, so it was just the one. Alvarado’s a winger but isn’t a starter at the moment. Another mistake was bringing in Luis Guerra who now currently rots away in the reserves as the last choice striker. Meanwhile, here’s (what I think are) the best transfers so far.

Mr. Sad Face over here only has 7 finishing but his physicals are decent enough. High work rate is always a bonus for me.

Not the fastest or most creative winger but he can play on both flanks. Most likely compete with Alvardo for the right midfield position.

Probably our best central defender. His jumping reach and heading are a bit short but his physicals are decent and he’s only 16! Far from impressive in our friendlies, even from the bench!

Finances

Yeah,I might have signed one too many players but hey, at least the friendlies with the higher division clubs helped to boost the balance somewhat!

The wage budget can easily be reduced though through lower division clubs signing our reserve players (which 5 have already been offloaded) .

Tune in next time where I talk about our performance in the opening stage!