Very nice!

Tough start but positive signs with the last game

It wasn't great Johno & KEZ_7, but the West Brom game gave us hope.


I was going to post at the end of December, but once again I got a bit carried away and went a few games too far. I should probably just post monthly from now on.

Anyway, as you can see going back to our old tactics has worked a treat! We are now back to our high scoring best, as you can see in the Fulham game, and Kike is having the season of his life so far. We suffered three defeats in games I expected to win, but we also managed to come away from away games at Liverpool, Spurs & Chelsea without losing. Not a single clean sheet in that run of games, but we seem to be coping with that as we have only failed to score once in that same period.




That good form has seen us rise up the table and we now currently sit in 12th place, 9 points clear of the relegation zone. If we carry on like this, then I don't see why we couldn't push for 8th place and maybe even 7th if Liverpool continue to struggle.

Amazing Kike

Just had this pop up in my inbox. What makes it so amazing is the fact that we are still only in January!

January Tansfer Window

Not much went on, still no affordable GK worthy of buying. Just brought in one striker on loan, i'm sure most of you will have encountered this guy at some stage. Kike was attracting interest from most of Europe it seemed. Monaco, Wolfsburg, Schalke & Benfica were just four of the clubs to show an interest in him with Benfica having 3 bid rejected. I got worried he'd force his way out, which was why I signed Bonazzoli.




Our good run of form has dipped slightly, although we have only suffered two more league defeats. The Leicester game wasn't great because we were 2-0 up and threw it away and the Man Utd was just plain awful.




Despite the many draws, we have risen up 3 places to 10th in the table. A finish here would be good, although I will be pushing as hard as possible to climb the table further because I feel QPR are still catchable.

Am now going to update it monthly.

Just three games in March, but they were three of our best performances this season! Brentford are struggling at the bottom of the table and I could see why as we walked to a comfortable 5-0 win with Kike getting three. Fulham have a habit of getting thumped this season, as we showed by putting seven past them earlier in the season, and this time we scored six. Thats 13 goals this season just against Fulham. The next game was always going to be tougher. Spurs are in the top three and going strong at the moment. I would've taken a draw but then we went 2-0 up in the first half. They brought it back to 2-2 and I thought we'd blown another two goal lead. But then Ayala stepped up with the winning goal on 68 minutes. A rare sight of a win without Kike scoring.




Those great wins move us up to 9th in the table. 8th was my ultimate target, but 7th place is just as achievable and with six of our last seven games very winnable, i'd say we can do it!

Bonazzoli is some player, he was great for me at Inter in year 1 so it'll be great to see how he's developed in your game

I'm sure you can catch Southampton

KEZ_7 thats good to know. I'm currently in mid April and hes only had 8 minutes as a sub in the FA Cup so far, Kike is just too good to not play!

Thats the plan Johno although anywhere in the top half would be a decent finish.

Big End of Season Update

We had a nice end of season run in. I thought we could win every game except the away match at Man City. It started well with an easy 5-0 win against Swansea, but then we had a little blip picking up just 2 points from Wigan, Norwich & Liverpool. We got back to winning ways against Villa and followed that up with a surprising 4-3 victory at the Etihad having been 3-2 behind with 5 minutes to go. The season ended with a comfortable win over QPR.




If it wasn't for that poor start, we could've stolen that last European place away from Arsenal. 8th place is still a good finish though and we'll look to improve on that once again. We also finished up as leading scorers in the league again, scoring 5 more than last season. Our defensive record was much improved though as we conceded over 20 goals fewer than last season.




The board have given me a very generous amount of money to spend over the summer






We pretty much cleaned up the awards. I won the manager of the year which surprised me, but Deulofeu and Kike winning the others was well deserved. The record for most league goals in Premier League history was 34, but now Kike has pushed that right up to 44 after his incredible season. He actually scored as many as Aguero and Costa put together. Unsurprisingly Kike was also named in the team of the year, Deulofeu made the bench. It will be hard to keep hold of those two, but i'll do my best to make sure they go nowhere!

Outstanding season, Kike and Deulofeu bossing it!

You've got a decent budget to strengthen the team there too so it should be a good summer

They did boss it indeed KEZ_7! My transfer budget got a further large injection of cash, but not from where i'd want it to come from...


The new season is underway. We had a decent pre season with some good results against the likes of Bilbao and Juventus but it was all about our opening day fixture at Anfield. That has been a somewhat special ground in this career for me so far. I have visited three times with Stoke and Boro coming away with a 7-6 loss and 5-5 and 3-3 draws. Plenty of goals but could we win this time? Nope, a 4-3 loss to start the season. Thats 36 goals in my last four visits to Anfield now. The other games in August were wins against West Ham in the league and Doncaster in the league cup.




Not too much to report on the standings, but we are in 8th. 7th or higher would be great although I will be aiming for a European place of some kind.






With Harry Redknapp retired, it was down to Borat to do the drive through interviews on deadline day!


We had initially been given a good transfer budget to play with and strengthen our squad. We did just that with Neto and Wimmer but then had another large amount of money come in not far from deadline day and we went out to get a couple more players in. Sounds good, right?




Well it wasn't good. That extra money came in from the sale of Deulofeu to PSG for £24.5m. That was his release clause in his contract. I had offered him a new contract with bigger wages and an increased release clause of £35m that was agreed with his agent, but a week went by without him accepting or rejecting. Then PSG came in a took him away. I tried to get Grealish and Redmond but neither of their clubs would agree a fee. Then I found Salah going for £8m less than his value and snapped him up. At least we held on to Kike!

Good start to the season, a close lost to Liverpool. Brilliant to see you managed to keep Kike \o/ 24.5M for Deulofeu is a fantastic business

I reckon we could've got about £35m though Johno. But I had signed him on a free 12 months ago so to sell him on after just 1 season for £24.5m is ok I suppose.

I suppose you could have if you didn't have 25M minimum release clause But it's a good business for the club.

September

September was a nice month. None of the big boys were to be seen and apart from the bad result against Wigan, everything went well. Kike starting this season as he finish the last, hitting six goals from four games.




Only six games in, but all the big teams have started well and are all in the top half. Its looking as though its going to be a tough season trying to break into the European places. Our fixtures for October aren't too kind. Southampton and Wigan are the only teams still unbeaten.

Cracking start to the season Not surprised to see Kike banging goals in already

Its been a good start Johno, but our fixtures are about to get a lot harder.


October

This month was a lot harder than September. Norwich (our bogey team), Man City, Arsenal and Wigan were our fixtures. The first game against Norwich wasn't great, although when you look at their squad, you can see why they are doing so well. They have Robin van Persie, Branislav Ivanovic, Martin Skrtel, Adam Lallana, Joao Moutinho & Nick Powell in their team. Man City was always going to be hard to get anything from but we did manage to pull off a 4-2 win away at Arsenal. The result wasn't the only pleasing thing there, we dominated the whole match from start to finish and could've had about 8 goals. Salah has been a superb replacement for Deulofeu so far. We finished October with another defeat to Wigan, this time in the league cup. I'm yet to go beyond the 4th round of a cup with Boro so far.




As you'd expect with that poor form, we have slipped down to 11th. Southampton are still unbeaten.

Not a good month


Wow, have Norwich been taken over? with those players in their team

Nope, no takeover at Norwich. Think they just managed to get them all on the cheap.

November

Just the three games in November. The Fulham draw wasn't what we needed but at least it wasn't a loss. Everton game was a fair result. Going into the Hull game, I had a couple of players moaning at our poor league position and also had Tony Mowbray questioning Boro. I think I can safely say we shut them all up with a total demolition of Hull, Salah being the star of the show with 4 goals.




We've fallen away from the European places a bit, but if we can string a run of decent results together, we can climb back up the table and compete. Arsenal have capitulated since we beat them and are falling down the league. They've actually lost the last six domestic games.

8-4

If you think thats mad, wait until you see the game against Chelsea. I don't understand how Boro vs Chelsea produced the scoreline it did. Will update that when I reach the end of December.

This was pretty much my reaction:

Wow, crazy game against Hull

December

December had some tricky games in store for us. Well thats what I thought anyway. We started the month with draws away at Stoke and home to Southampton, thats not too bad. After that we easliy beat Burnley and drew away at Newcastle with a Salah treble. The last three games in December saw us face Chelsea, Spurs and Man Utd. Two of them were at home so I had hoped to get at least two points from these three games. By the time the Man Utd game came around, we had already got 6 points from Chelsea and Spurs. That softened the blow when the red devils eased passed us 5-2 at home.

The Chelsea game is listed below the fixtures because its so mad that it deserves a spot of its own. I will also say that on the day of the Chelsea game, Man City vs Norwich also saw an incredible scoreline with Norwich coming out 6-5 winners at the Etihad!




Prepare your eyeballs for the best victory i've ever had on FM. I don't know what else to say...



The race for the top four is on. Six points separate 4th and 10th and with Wigan, Southampton and Norwich also joining me in pursuit of the big boys, we could potentially see Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Man City all miss out on Champions League football!

WHAT?! How the hell you manged to put so many goals against Chelsea

I don't know, i've never seen anything like it! My tactics tend to throw up some weird results from time to time but that one beats all of them.

EDIT: When I get a mad scoreline, I save the matches. The only one of these games I wasn't involved in was the Man City - Norwich game.

Looks like Chelsea have some real problems at the moment. They just got another hammering, this time from Man Utd.

That is insane!

January Transfer Window

The only incoming players were a couple of promising youngsters from Argentina. Signed both on a bosman.



A few outgoing loans and the permanent transfer of Chantome to Lorient. That deal could rise to £400k with add ons. Acosta went straight out on loan back to Argentina but it wasn't so easy with Martinez. He still needs a work permit to play in England and the only team interested in taking him on loan was Ipswich. Bamford did go to Ipswich and backup keeper Mark Bunn went to Fulham. Hot midfield prospect Cooke has been loaned out to Premier League strugglers Burnley.




After those great wins against Chelsea and Spurs, confidence was sky high, depite a defeat to Man Utd. We played Liverpool on new years day and its a good job we stuck nine past Chelsea because Liverpool gave our goal difference a good battering scoring seven against us. The rest of the month was a bit easier with a draw against Forest the only game we didn't win. Salah continues to impress and scored seven goals this month.




The top four have pulled a small gap on everyone else, but with 5th and 10th separated by three points, any slips ups by the top clubs will most likely result in them moving down the table. Boro are in the middle of the chasing bunch in 7th place.

February

Our good form continued into February as we only lost one game. That was in the FA Cup 5th round to Manchester United. That is the first time we've made it beyond the 4th round of wither cup since I joined Boro. Norwich usually beat us so it was nice to actually win against them for once. The result of the month is definatly the away win at Man City. We went 1-0 down early on but came back to win 3-2 and make it two seasons in a row we've won at the Etihad.




That unbeaten run in the league coupled with other teams slipping up has elevated us all the way up to 5th position in the table. Man CIty losing all four league games was a nice helping hand. It will be tough to stay there with Arsenal, Everton and Chelsea close behind but we will give it our best. Southampton look as though they are too far ahead of us to catch so this is going to be a battle for the Europa League places.