From Rags to Riches

It was the year 2013 that I, Chris Lloyd, decided to enter into the world of football management after excelling through my Continental Pro Licence exams, passing with flying colours.



Sitting in the lounge chair reading the international football management and coaching magazine, a Job opportunity came up that made me do a double take, a job in one of the lesser known leagues internationally, but the reigning league residing in Honk Kong.. The Honk Kong first division. After doing a little bit of research around the league I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to launch my attack into football management, with the thought of managing my favorite and home team Aston Villa.. how marvelous that would be playing in the Premier Lea - Woah I'm getting way ahead of my self. For the time being my thoughts are with the two teams with openings in the HK First Division, Kitchee and their close rivals Eastern Athletic Association.

The job vacancy being advertised at Eastern was slightly more appealing, with a larger wage budget and a slightly better wage packet, however I applied for both. About a week later I had heard no news, and decided maybe I should be looking to more realistic targets such as my local team or coaching teenagers, until the phone rang, international number. Kitchee had decided to through a bone to me and offer me an interview! Result!

I must have done something right during the skype interview as they rang back the same day to say that they needed a manager desperately due to the current regulations and rules of the HK First Division. I accepted.



During the two seasons with my beloved Kitchee, we had filled the silverware cabinet - Me and the team had lifted two HK First Division trophies, the HK Senior Challenge Shield, the HK FA cup and the Asian Confederations cup. Even though we ploughed through the trophies the second season, the change in management team with my Assistant deciding to leave and run after the money with some reputable club found in the Chinese Super League (Remember this...), and the inevitable release of key players wanting a 'Bigger Challenge' played on my mind, and at the end of the second season I decided to resign and throw my bait into the pond, hoping a bigger fish wanted to come and play..



I know that the first few seasons will be very vague as I can;t find the team sheets or player stats for when I was actually at kitchee, didn't know I'd be doing a story!

It seemed to take forever for the next opportunity to come up, in fact I was starting to regret my resignation from not just Kitchee.. but from my former job as an engineer, money was looking dry and the future was looking bleak. Why had I not found anywhere with my convincing success at Kitchee?

The days turned to weeks, and the weeks turned to months... Finally a job came calling, just under a year after my first resignation, to a place where everything wants you dead. Australia.



The Hyundai A - League bottom feeding team of Melbourne Victory FC had come calling, and the world now looked like a different place. I had to learn the new rules and regulations of the A - League, the ins and outs of the players and had to prevent them from becoming the bottom team all in half a season.. was this doable? Only time will tell..

With the season going very badly, and the pressure piling on.. I was asked by the chairman to either resign with my integrity intact or get sacked and have no hope of getting another job anytime soon.. And so I took the dive into the ocean, again. It was goodbye Australia for now, and in hindsight I will definitely be coming back to exert my dominance and show the chairman exactly what he is missing.

However, with hardly enough time to think about my life and the wolf spider in my toilet as I left Australia I receive a phone call from my old assistant manager of Kitchee, Mario Tot. On the phone my heart was beating faster than before, a bead of sweat dropping down my brow.. I could hardly believe my ears.

The dominant and all empowering Chinese Super League 1st team Guangzhou Hengda had sadly lost their manager to immediate retirement, the great Marcelo Lippi. His retirement cam with immediate effect and it seemed the Guangzhou board were in disrepair... that was until my old friend, of whom I hadn't heard from in over a year had put my name forward to the board. You guessed it, he had bigged me up so much to the board, reiterating that fact of being Kitchee title holders for two years.. I recieved an interview date. Then they approached me..



25th November, 2015, My world changed forever..

I like this! Good luck trotting the world pal, done well with kitchee!

I always enjoy a pentagon! Good start so far!

And so it begins:






Again I apologize for the lack of info in this first season, as again I wasn't intending to make a story, I'll try make the most of the stats I have for it though!

The first season went exactly as planned, joining just before the opening Guangzhou vs Chinese Super League Stars game. This was a great opportunity to deliver the first silverware of the campaign and we duly delivered. The opening season went absolutely fantastic with only one loss the entire time, against admittedly sub par Liaoning.. taking away my first unbeaten season with my new team.

however we still took the title in spectacular fashion!



Alongside this league title, we came first in our Asian Champions League group.. having a hard time against korean sensation Suwon Blues however...



The round stages were also equally as simple, with no major team really coming up against me, the hardest challenge being CSL mid table contenders Jiangsu, of whom we just managed to scrape through on pentalties!




The final was alot easier than I had imagined! With a terrific 5:0 win my boys were up in the heavens. Fantastic way to start at this dominating team, winning what they were expected to plus alot more!

The two most notable performances were my young guns who had vital roles in both the ACL campaign and my domination of the CSL, giving they are only 19 this is great for our young prospects!



Jinkun was absolutely sensational, his stats mean that he can play in two very different roles very well, both AMC and DM which is very promising. I'm tempted to train him into an AMC force due to the potential unloading of my old foreign current AMC. He was outstanding and averaged 8.2 across the ACL!



Chuang was also dominating for a 19 year old, however this was more so in the league than in the ACL. scoring on average 1.9 goals per game throughout his campaign. He is unbelievable in his clinical finishing in front of goal, enough so to put out my Brazilian forward who was nominated player of the year last year. However I am not entirely sure how he is managing to retain his lowly potential ability of 2.5 even though he completely dominated the league and is now one of my highest value players!

And so here we are, just finished the ACL and completed my first season with Guangzhou. Deciding to stay to try and retain the ACL is now my mission! I have in the mean time made some good friends among both sky bet championship managers and Hyundai A - Leagues managers.. hopefully these contacts will provide useful in the future as I do intend to return to Australia and of course assert my reputation in a more familiar place on earth, England.

The Story up until now... :



The story has now been (rather rushed) written up until the present day, and will now continue in real time with proper updates Thanks for reading so far!

Thanks mate, I have been keeping an eye on Kitchee incase they start dropping dramatically - however they are retaining a top three position which is good!



Cheers It is essentially a pentagon challenge however I'm not intending to rush around clubs, I've watched a few on youtube or read some on other sites where as soon as the CL has been won it's move continent.. admittedly this was my intention at first but meh I have time to stay!

End of Season Annual Update!

Here is the news update for my first season, great to see that the chairman has faith in me by upgrading not only our training facilities, nor creating trial days for new players but also upgrading our youth facilities! Which is fantastic!



It's time to sort out the team now as we have a couple of older dead wood players, especially foreign players that can easily be replaced with much younger better models.

Season preparations begin well with the presentation of a new contract. I was skeptical at first with the way the board went about offering me the contract, they seemed very reluctant and this played on my mind a little bit. After confronting the board I found that the issue was my reputation increase, they didn't want bigger higher reputation teams to snap me up half way through the season! After assuring the supreme leader Oh chairman Xu Ming that this was most certainly not the case, and I would be there for the long run, well - another season at least, he threw the offer onto to the table and I gladly signed up.



As soon as the pen was to the paper his next agenda, along with Tot's was to assess the next big match. The club world cup, of whom we have drawn a team of which the press, the fans and even Xu Ming have no promise of us winning. Thanks Ming



The match preparations aren't going too well, with a few registered players currently on leave with international duty and a number of our players still hung over and aching from our league and ASL wins.. This will be a very short stint.

Well done on a superb season in China mate! Good luck with the new season and trying to retain it all!

Absolutely gutted.. loosing 1:0 from a penalty that in my eyes shouldn't even have been awarded, I will be having words with Tot to raise this issue among the World Club officials.

Putting the result aside my boys played for their lives, with both Chuang and Elkeson hitting the wood work 5 times between them, alongside young star Jikun who dominated his AMC position, and controlling the midfield at an outstanding age of 19! Leading to a remarkable 56% possession to a team that should on paper be on 20-30%!

Since his rise to stardom and a quiet word with compadre Tot, we believed an increase in Jikuns contract should be done immediately in order to hold onto him - He will be a national star by the time he hits 20-21.. that's if he isn't already!

Awesome story, well written and interesting to read! Will definitely be keeping up with this one! Good luck retaining the trophies!

Well the end of the season didn't exactly go to plan as I had hoped.. After flunking out of the Club cup against Club Africain we played Toronto FC in the 5th place play off.. only to lose 2:0 after some atrocious play from my team. Something that I don't want to see again next season. Oh and thanks worldsoccer.com, I am incredibly sorry I didn't live up to our none existent chances!



Looks like they are now in my bad book of journalists..

Anyway after that thrashing in the World Club Cup, I decided to turn attention to our now annual event of the CSL all stars game, of which we have comfortably won the past 5 years, one of which being under my short command. We went into the game with huge expectations of thrashing them, and we simply did not deliver. In the 2nd minute we suffered a huge blow in which Huang Bowen, a normally level headed and experienced player, lost his cool and committed an absolutely discusting tackle from behind. Off you go Bowen, I will be having words with you later.

Fortunately we somehow managed to drag the game all the way to penalties which I suppose means credit is deserved to my man down team to finish on a score of 2:2.. however penalties loomed ahead, and out of the 6 penalty finals over my career only one of them has been won. Hmmm..



Result! Well... not really a result but I would have hit the fan had we lost. This does not bode well for our next season start, things need to change.. and they need to change now if we have any chance of lifting the ACL once more. Time for a weeks break with the family to nearby Japan, I have some thinking to do.

Thanks! Hopefully this season will start better than my last one ended.. need to do a lot of reshuffling!



Appreciate it! I was skeptical of my writing as I never really did well at school in English aha

After a long talk with the coaches and my right hand man Tot, we decided to mix around the tactics a little bit.. This being after our friendly loss against Stuttgart, whom in all fairness are a decent team and we would have had to of played magnificently in order to beat them!

I decided to attend one of the teams training days along with Tot, and through watching the players I suddenly realised that they were much more capable than my old and beloved club Kitchee. Their ball control, passing and first touch was miles ahead of any team I'd seen before in both the Honk Kong league and the Chinese league. I noticed how easy it was for capable youngster Jikun and golden oldy Elkeson to unload long direct balls and initiate attacks, conduct wing runs and crosses. This made me think that maybe due to the high level of the players, other teams would not be able to handle the directness of the team.

Through many hours that evening we devised a more direct plan of action, further cementing youngsters Jikun and Chuang into the forefront of our goal scoring capabilities. With a few friendlies coming up before our annual Super Cup Final against Beijing, it was time to test the waters - and test the waters we did! Turning around our miss fortune at Stuttgart into countless goals and comfortable wins. This newfound passion for goal scoring and play making was then set in motion upon close rivals Beijing in the Super Cup.



2:0 was the final score. Absolutely elated with how the team played, with Chuang hitting the post twice during the last 15 minutes to deny him a hatrick. The concept was simple, short passing through the defence and direct passing in the final third. Both goals were superbly masterminded wing runs created by unloading direct balls from Jikun and Gao Lin therefore bringing both Elkeson and Chuang into play. I must admit I felt sorry for Chuang as he more than deserved his hatrick, however after the game he simply said to me - 'It's a team game boss, we won it as a team, not individuals'. Summing up my expectations for this season.

Bringing in some more good news, our group draw in this seasons ACL seems to have been fairly kind to us, with previous groupies Hiroshima present, of whom we dominated last season, Adelaide United - who having looked at their current form aren't doing too well and we should be able to pick apart. With the only concern being Jeonbuk who are constantly in the top 3 of the K - League Classic.. slightly worrying.. We do get to test out our tactics against next game though in a nice friendly. Here's hoping.

Wow the goals flew in pre season after changing the tactic and thats an insane amount of money to have!

I know mate! It really had made a difference, hopefully this will be applied to both league and ACL games! The transfer/wage budget is absolutely insane, only problem is that there aren't any decent Chinese players that I haven't already got to spend it on aha!

Just a quick update... I completely forgot that the friendlies were managed by Tot in order to make them go past a little faster.. clicked proceed then went to grab a drink... came back to this.



Not only did we completely THUMP our main rivals in the ACL group, but Gao Lin managed to bag a hatrick and of course Chuang scored the final goal with an absolutely beautiful long range finish.. and I really done mean beautiful as I replayed the highlight about five times to see!

Great progress so far, congrats on all the trophies. Keep it up.

Called into the Boardroom this morning, wasn't sure what Commander Xu Ming wanted to talk to me about.. but I was feeling slightly anxious after my response to the renewal contracting being late.. Hopefully he still wants me!

Well that went better than planned, it seems he wanted to praise my efforts in both the league and the ACL! What a surprise! He's handed me his report on the fixtures including the tables, and considering I haven't even checked yet through fear of wasting time that could be spent coaching - I believe it's time to have a look through!



There we go, top of the ACL table with a comfortable 6 point lead. Two hatricks were scored in the games including commanding veteran winger N'Doumbou and of course the inspirational inside forward Gao Lin. The only game that we had trouble with was the away game at Jeonbuck, now considering we were voted as the team to lose in this match up I think we played bloody brilliantly with Elkeson leveling the game after just 10 minutes, at which point we dug our heels in and parked the bus!



Onto Ming's second report, the overall fixtures results. The results went the expected way in both the league and the ACL, with dominant wins over teams that aren't considered top of the league. The two most notable performances were the Renhe and Baxy games.

In the Renhe game we collapsed a 2 goal lead all down to complacency, I absoluted grilled the team in the dressing room after the game because of this lack of discipline and concentration we dropped 2 points from what should have been an easy game to win against a bottom half form team, not a happy bunny with that complacency. To make matters worse Gao Lin was injured with a suspected back fracture, fortunately the diagnoses of the Chinese doctor was incorrect and he suffered with a minor pulled trap, only being out with the physio for around a weeks time.

After the grilling I gave the team, they seemed to have listened with an absolute demolition of upper mid table team Baxy.



Golden wonder Gao Lin scores yet another hatrick and picks up my personal Man of the Match Award along side N'Doumbou. However the highlight of the match personally for my was Jikun's run from his secondary position of DRC through the whole Baxy team until the 30 yard box, smashes it into the top right corner of the goal.. due to the shear skill of the goal from Jikun, defender Yanfeng went ape at his own team member and was subsequently yellow carded!

That goal right there is why Jikun is going to be huge, he can play three roles naturally now including DM, DC and his favoured AMC making him one of the most versatile if not THE most versatile player in the Chinese Super League.. All of that at 19. Fantastic.

Wow its all looking good so far mate, scoring for that!

Great work in winning the Champions league! Great career up to now! Some brilliant wins! 8-0

And so the hard part begins.. could I possibly retain the Asian Champions League Trophy and hold onto the Chinese Super League title?

It's going to be incredibly tough.. but I have faith with my team. This run to the end of the season will determine what happens to my career, whether I stay or whether I go.

This years Champions league had to be the most nerve wrecking, tense set of games. All of me, my family, Commander Xu Ming and Marion Tot were given a nail biting run, with highs and lows.. fear of being knocked out - OH and the good old extra time win in the quarter finals.



As you can see from the report my friends.. We almost lost out on our deserved final place. The injuries that hit on the 22nd October were disastrous. Not just one, not just two but three of my key players injured for at least 3 weeks. I thought that was it, I thought the call will come from Ming, that I was a goner.

But we preserved, and we are in the final! After rushing around, stressing and losing my mind over the ACL games, I haven't even checked our progress in the league.. I honestly have no idea - Apart from the odd glimmer of hope that I catch on the Chinese news channels.. I'm in the dark.

But before the final comes the league, Tomorrow. It's judgement day.

The fans are singing my name, It's the last game of the season and I'm nervous as hell.. After checking over and over the league results, tactics fixtures and rivals I knew it came down to this game. Our league run this season was far from the dominance we showed last year, however we were still on top - 1 point in fact on top, ahead of possibly the most deserving team in the league, not us, but Shandong.



They thought it was all over... it almost is now!! Han Jikun, the sensational 20 year old who deserves no less than young player of the year sets us on our way to clench the League Title, a second year in a row. It was the most hard fought League I have experienced, loosing two games towards the end of the season really knocked our confidence.. I thought it was over but we held on. Key mentions to N'doumbou, Jikun, Elkeson, Chuang and Gao Lin for helping secure the title for me. Their futures, along with mine, are all but unknown. Elkeson being the only player out of the golden boys wishing to end his football career in Guangzhou and retire at the end of next season.. What happens to the others I'm sure depends on the ACL Final. Who knows.



What a fantastic result, not only the league title - was thrown a glorious party and brought to tears by my club.. in knowing that this will possibly be my last league trophy I lift in China. Again tomorrow decides my career, the big one. I give full kudos and respect to every single registered player for me to get this far, they have done me and Tot proud and I wish them all the best in the final. If I thought the league's last game was judgement day.. God knows what tomorrows ACL Final is.. can I win it?

The game starts off at blistering pace, Han Jikun once again asserting his dominance against the older more experienced footballers from Naft Tehran.. he showed no fear, no pressure - something I wish I could do at this moment in time. Then BANG 4 minutes into the game, Chuang scores a sensational floating header that seemed to be in the air for hours, straight over the Naft goalkeeper - the pass of course from Jikun, directly placed into Chuangs run path, perfectly executed.

1:0

The half time team talk was quite simply 'You have done me proud getting this far, but just think of the reception you'll get off the fans if you win this Final, think of it for a few seconds, imagine it - You can do this, you will, trust me again,'

41 minutes into the game we missed an absolute sitter, right wing sensation N'Doumbou of whom celebrates his Chinese citizenship today, skews a shot on open goal under no pressure. I say no pressure, I mean under the pressure of most Chinese football fans. The oldest player for Naft at 28 secured the equalizer, with a long range effort from around 35 yards hitting Hao on the back and deflecting straight into the top left corner.. Nothing could have been done to stop that. Oh crap..

1:1

Huang Bowen retrieves the ball after a huge mistake from the Naft center back and captain, he dribbles along the 30 yard box, minutes to go.. then heads back towards the center ... ' GO FORWARD' I yelled onto the pitch, not that it made any difference under the roar of the Guangzhou fans. Suddenly Bowen pivots, hit's it with his weak foot.. the world seems to stop as the ball is in the air.. I feel faint.



Was it a dream?

Fitting that it was your 100th game in charge! brilliant season in the league and champions league mate! top work

Good work so far! Defending the ACL is no easy feat.

I know mate, unfortunately the 8-0 changed the team, but in the wrong way as you'll find out soon



Pretty funny actually! Shame that it could possibly be the end of a Dynasty!



It was definitely harder the second time for a number of reasons that you'll find out soon :o