After the delicious treble in my first season I decided to clean out the fringe players at the club, a large amount of whom had just returned from loans. The most notable of which included a £4.6m switch to everton for Nicklas Bendtner. A lot of youngsters that had no future with me were sent out free and Diaby had to settle for a loan in germany. Also managed to shift the £70k/w of Andrey Arshavin to PSG.
With Carlos Vela returning from loan I immediately got him back to my first team, he was always an excellent player in FM11 and was looking forward to seeing him do more of the same, I managed to poach Adam Johnson from man city for just £2m but other than that it was more hot prospects that i had taken onboard.
More of the Same
The season started well but I did manage to lose the Community Shield to Man Utd 1-0, only newcastle could beat me until January and once again we were heavily involved in the title race and league cup. Despite a few shakey results in the Champions League group stage we did win the group ahead of Valencia and drew Roma in the first knockout round.
Winter Shopping
Just the one player at christmas for me, Uros Lalatovic, a very promising youngster. Had a shock £10m bid for Ryo Miyachi from Barcelona which i couldn't turn down, he was promising but not that much :P
Also offloaded Bjorn Kopplin for £4.8m to Valencia and Fabianski to Wolves for a better than expected £4m. Ended the season +£16m on transfers.
Struggle for Power
January saw me face Manchester United, City & Spurs all in one week due to the Carling cup and the 2-1 loss away to City had really tightened things at the top of the table and i could feel it slipping away.
However winning both carling cup semi final legs against united lifted my spirits and we went on to beat Spurs at home. 2 cheap draws with Villa & West brom had settled us in 2nd 4 points behind united as we went into our Champions League Knockout game with Roma, once again, away first. We lost 1-0 and morale was starting to dip and i feared it was all going pear shaped. Next up was a home tie with peterborough in the fa cup 5th round and a 3-0 win did wonders for morale before beating Chelsea midweek 2-1 after extra time to lift the carling cup for the 2nd year running! 3 days later Chelsea got their revenge with a 2-0 win over us at stamford bridge in the league though.
We managed to win the home tie vs roma 4-2 and progressed into the Quarters for the second year running and yet again got drawn with real madrid. We notched up 5 straight league wins before a 2-0 loss away to man united which looked costly in the title race, but they had big fixtures coming at the end of season.
The quarter final started well, at home, and we were coasting with a 3-0 lead at half time, i could hardly believe it. All good things come to an end and madrid pulled 2 vital away goals back and it finished 3-2. Beating portsmouth in the league 8-2 in between; we travelled to madrid fearing a repeat of 2012 and we weren't wrong, madrid dominated the game and went through on a 3-3 aggregate away goals win. 3 days later we lost our FA Cup semi final with Manchester United on penalties after 1-1. Things weren't looking good. But 7 straight league wins helped us to lift the title again and stopped a season of near misses to end without a major trophy!
Gallery
Final League Standings
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