Ballack's Back

My Arsenal save got a bit stale so I have decided to try something new. I am going to holiday through the first season and evaluate clubs league position and take into consideration cup runs/net transfer spend/board reputation for sacking to choose my club (if the manager has not been sacked). I have selected a host of top divisions.

League Loaded:


After the game has holidayed until 31st May 2015 I will post up my shortlist of 4 with a short summary. The only restriction on team selection I will impose on myself is they cannot be a side I have managed before.

Cheers mate. They didn't have the greatest season last year. Pep Guardiola was sacked and Manuel Pellegrini took over, I imagine they'll spend big this year.

On another not of our 50 league Stefan Kiebling, incredibly, scored 26 of them. He will be vital for us this season. Son Heung-Min who was sold to Real Madrid in January only managed 2 goals in 14, a great piece of business at £27.5 million. However I have just over £5 million to spend this season.

The squad is incredibly thin and the finances are terrible. After the few who are leaving (retiring/end of loan) we are left with just 21 first team players. Andre Ramalho was agreed before I joined the club. I agreed the deals for Gael Kakuta and Pavel Savitskly, when the window opens I would like to bring in a right winger if the right deal can be struck.

Great news! Not a massive budget but about £5 million more in total, that should make improving the squad slightly easier.

While creating my tactic I read an interesting article - the opening post of someones blog/store actually - about setting up his tactics. Well the base shape of his tactics anyway. The article can be found here and this is the line that stood out to me.

"The best tip I read somewhere was to look at the natural position of your stars and plug them into the tactics screen one by one. From there you would be able to find a basic formation."

Now it seems obvious but this isn't something I have ever really done. I have always went in with the mindset this is the formation I will play and the players will have to adjust. So I knew I wanted to play some variation of the classic 4-1-4-1, thankfully the squad allowed the with some slight adjustments to allow my key players in the natural positions.

This is what I have at the moment. I have and idea of the other roles for the other positions but I will leave it open until the end of the transfer window. As you can see, no defenders. Thats because based on last seasons performances I don't really see any of them as key players yet. In the midfield I don't feel like I have the right winger or a workhouse. Lars Bender and Stefan Kiebling are causing me an issue too as Bender is making noises about a move to Real Madrid and Kiebling is 31 so a long term replacement will be needed.

For pre-season I decided to cram a bunch of games onto July, we hosted clubs from Germany, Austria and then Belgium. The campaign ended undefeated with 5 wins and 5 draws. Julian Brant impressed me most over the fixtures, racking up 7 goals from 8 games. The fixtures gave me a chance to tweak my initial ideas and instructions. Which is still a work in progress and I probably won't post it until a few weeks into the season.

The BayArena was a busy place during the pre-season. The first thing I done was get rid of all the players too old to play for the u19 that weren't part of my plans, either loaning them out or selling them. Andre Ramalho was brought in by the previous manager, a welcomed addition at centre back, dubbed the new Diego Lugano, speaks German and has experiance of European football with RB Salzburg. Gael Kakuta joined form Chelsea on the same day after a few season out on loan to various sides, he offers and extra option across the midfield.

The squad was missing a 3rd striker, this is where Duvan Zapata comes in. At 24 the guy is a machine and potential long term replacement for Stefan Kiebling. He was on the transfer list at Napoli so I was able to pick him up at a bargain price. Eder Alvarez Balanta - boring signing I know - was my only signing from a non-Europan club. When Phillipp Wolischeld handed in a transfer request I had no choice but to look for another centre back and Balanta was the same mould. Pavel Savitskly also came in on a free but was loaned out for the season.

All these transfers leave me with a squad of 24 - ideal squad size 25 - that I am happy with and more importantly confident can't at least qualify for the Europa League. From now on I will follow the 'moneyball' rules, not to the letter but for the most part and at a squad size of 25 operate a one-in-one-out policy. If I look to strengthen any position in the near future it will be either right back or the right wing.

The idea I have in my head is to adjust as new players come into the club but always try to work the system around my three best players. Right now it is Lars Bender, Julian Btandt and Stefan Kiebling. It has worked well so far, but that was only pre-season, hopefully once the Bundesliga kicks off I get some good results.

I brought in one more player and I reckon that will be me for this window, unless I need to sell. Right back Micah Richards joined on a free and is the perfect example of a 'moneyball' singing - a free transfer that had huge potential and no one wants. It also brings a better balance to the squad as I had three left backs and just one left back, Kostas Stafylidis has been loaned out.

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I will explain my transfer strategy (more so that I have something I can refer to when making any further signings). First off all I am not happy with the amount of Germans I have in the team. There is only 8, ten if you include dual nationality. That will have to change. I would like my main striker to be German, or at a push central European. It just seems right.

I also want to end up with a German player in every position. So over the next year I will only bring in one central European and one from the rest of the world, all of the others will be German. The plan is also take have a net spend of less than £1 million per season.

So in summary:
1. German players, then central European and then RoW.
2. Be able to line up a full German XI
3. Net spend of less than £1 million
4. Unhappy players will be allowed to leave
5. Players won't be offered out (excluding loans)

I brought in one last signing, Jason Denayer joined on loan from Man City. His contract is up at the end of the season and is a real talent so hopefully I can tie him down as he fits with my transfer strategy. So I think I have had a pretty good transfer window, the squad is definitely stronger then the one I inherited.

The league got off to a shaky start but I am confident that once things click we can go on a good run of form. I don't want to tinker with the tactics just yet as a few wins in a row could put us in the top 6. The fight back to secure a win over Dortmund shows that there is quality in the side.

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We had a great run of form going... until conceding 4 against Schalke in the first 20 minutes. Don't know what happened, however we managed to cling on and stop it becoming too embarrassing and pulled two back in the second half. Progress has been made and we are climbing up the table, if we can maintain the current for a 4th place finish isn't too ambitious.

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Form was up and down, but I was only three points shy of my target for that run of games. A lot of work is needed during the winter break to improve the squad/tactics.

Made some changes to the squad, first of all I broke the rule about offering players out. However Andre Ramalho wasn’t my signing and Duvan Zapata was awful. Omer Toprak and Josip Drmic followed when bids that were just too good for fringe players came in. All of the sales had 20% of any profit clauses attached to them and none of them are German.

Bringing players in it almost got the stage I was willing to overpay for German players. I instead dipped into the English loan market and found some players who will do for now on much cheaper deals. Javier Hernandez – who’s contract is up at the end of the season – joins until the end of the season, I am hoping for at least a goal every other game from him. Then came Aiden McGeady from Everton to offer something else on the right wing. Finally I found a decent German player at a bargain price in Lasse Sobiech.



I even managed to sign a couple players on pre-contract, a marquee signing too.

We had a terrible end of the season and I'm glad its over! We just managed to grab a Europa League spot. Hopefully we can build on it and sneak a Champions League spot.

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All the players sold were transfer listed excluding Hakan Calhanoglu, he had a fantastic season with 15 goals and 11 assists. I knew rejecting Inter’s bid would have left him unhappy so I negotiated a pretty good deal including 30% of any profit they make. Not much to mention on the other sales other than they were all just squad players, only one of them was German.

I manage to pick out a few bargains IMO. Thorgan Hazard, Asmir Begovic and Javier Hernandez will all play a part this season, however the crown jewel is Theo Walcott. Max Meyer was loaned in so that I can try and convince him to sign, same deal with Jason Denayer. I only paid a transfer fee for two players, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang returns to the Bundesliga after his exchance with Roma and new record signing Leon Goretzka is a direct replacement for Calhanoglu.

Goals for the 2016/17 season
- Champions League qualification
- DFB-Pokal semi final
- Europa League last 32

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It's been a while since I loaded this save. Here is where I got up to when I left off. Not a great start to the league but I am happy with the holding Dortmund to a draw. However we did reach the Europa League group stage, drawing against Lille, Legia and Aarau.

Form is still inconsistent but we are climbing up the table and doing well in the Europa League group. We are 3 points off where I would like us to be at the end of the season. I think we could to the Europa League group and make a good run towards the later stages.