Right after winning the champions league Carlos Vela who had scored 33 that season wanted to have a chat with me, he felt he'd achieved all he can with me and wanted to move on. I couldn't refuse as he had been a great servant and so he moved on to PSG for £10m early on. I then decided that with van Persie turning 32 soon I'd need either another striker or to change my tactics to use 1 striker. At first I looked into other strikers but none were really worth the £30m-£70m i was being asked to cough up, although I would of snapped up Jovetic for £30m if his agent wasn't a plum and asking for ridiculously high fees! I decided I'd be better off changing to a 2-3-1 in midfield/upfront and went searching for another allround midfielder like Willian/Wilshere to head up on the left side. I'd narrowed it down to Ganso/Lucas Moura/Douglas Costa all of which would of cost in excess of £50m so i was really struggling to know what to do. On deadline day I had a scout recommend Gylfi Sigurðsson from Hoffenheim and I agreed, had a £28m offer accepted and managed to sign him just before the window closed.
I'd also decided to offload Arteta due to age for £2.5m to Roma & Frimpong to Napoli for a modest £3.2m, Wellington Silva parted for £2m and Keiran Gibbs to Lyon on a free after I refused to pay him £90k/week.
So after all that panic my strongest starting eleven now looked like this
Strong Start
After holding onto the Community Shield at the expense of Man United and winning the Super Cup over PSG, I started my first 5 league games with wins before a draw away at blackburn before winning 10 of the next 11 and holding top at christmas. Through all this I'd won the World Club Championship final against River and won the CL Group but had lost out in the carling cup in the quarter finals to Newcastle, who incidentally go on to knockout Man City and win the trophy while in the relegation zone.
Photo Finish
Man City however were also dropping very few points and were just one behind after i lost to manchester united and i managed to not concede for 9 games running including an 8-0 win over blackburn before a draw at stoke cost me the top spot. A few weeks later I held City to a draw in their back garden but it wasn't enough and I could feel the title slipping away. Further draws with Liverpool and Birmingham would see me 4 points off the top in march. City did have a slip at Chelsea and Man Utd themselves and I managed to go a point clear going into the final few fixtures.
The FA Cup was going well, Gillingham Swansea, Aston Villa, West Ham, and Hull in the Semi Finals meant I had a final with Chelsea to look forward too, 3 days after i play them away in the league.
Champions League had me playing Inter in the first knockout losing 2-1 away winning 3-1 home.
Genoa waited in the Quarter Finals - A Routine 4-0 Aggregate win.
The Semi Finals had drawn me yet again against Real Madrid - the other semi being Man City vs Lyon. Home Leg first - it wasn't as good as i needed it to be and finished 3-3, 3 away goals for real, I didn't think i had a chance to win this one but in the second leg i took a 2-0 lead and still didn't feel confident. Real pulled one back but we held on and made it to our second consecutive CL Final to face City once again.
So the final few weeks of this season are far from easy with the schedule looking like this...
I could win another Treble, making it 6 trophies in total for the season or I could lose them all against these more than formidable opponents.
No comments:
Post a Comment