The season is underway. The summer was quite lively, as sugar daddy gave us a 31,5M transfer kit and a wage budget of little over 3M to avoid relegation. Also, to the merit of the previous managers, Aston Villa made Pablo Castro an offer to coach their team. Pablito declined.
The transfers I made with a 4-3-3 tactic in mind. (4-5-1 in FM, the midfield: DM-MC-MC-AML-AMR)
Unfortunately
Marcus Berg arrived with a 3 month injury. To add more Preier League experience to the frontline, I purchased
Berbatov, who had been in Man Utd's reserves. Even though his transfer sum is little, he makes 350.000 euros a month.
Chris Kirkland is brought in to replace Ole Soderberg, who is now our 2nd goalkeeper.
Eke Simon is a talented Nigerian RB. He's only 19 years old, but a regular in Nigeria's NT.
Ezequiel Munoz is a 23yr old CB from Bari. He's a familiar face in FM.
Michael Johnson only played 7 Premier League games for Manchester City in 5 years. Quite pathetic, but a decent midfielder for Chelmsford.
David Alaba's story is similar to Johnson's. Alaba spent 2013-2014 playing for FC Bayern's second team, but at Chelmsford he shall rise from the flames.
Shaun Wright-Phillips is brought in for depth on the wings, for which I also bought
Menezes from Internacional, who spent one season on loan at Levski. He's only 18yrs old, but together with Kevin Drysdale he should light up the flanks for years to come.
Leandro Somoza is our veteran starting DM, brought in for a small sum as I was out of transfer funds aswell as wage budget.
The rest was sold to create budget space and because those were the players I could get rid off.
We play in a different stadium for the season, because our actual home is in progress of an expansion (an extra 9500 capacity seat terrace). We play our home games at Fossett's Farm, a 22,000 capacity all-seater in Southend-on-Sea. We rent this stadium by paying 5% of our gate receipts to the owners, Southend United.
Opening Day was against none other than Chelsea. Unfortunately I had to miss Kirkland, Fontaine, Johnson and Berg to injuries. I decided to go with an offensive line-up, starring Merida and Dos Santos in midfield. These were the Opening Day line-ups:
Over 20,000 attented the home game, a new record. It ended in a 0-0 draw. Vinet lit up in the second half, but couldn't score his two clear-cut chances. But man, he's fast!
This is it for now.