ChrissBurns1993 - Comments

A major topic I spoke about last time was that of Tourinho and my uncertainty of what to do with him but alas we have another transfer window gone and he's still here as Real Madrid look to be going down their usual long and drawn out transfer process. I was shocked that Tourinho didn't win the Ballon D'or and only made the bench for the World XI, his stats were considerably better than the rest as well. Tony Herd earned the European Golden Boy award though so that was some good news. Now to Europe; I mentioned previously about hoping to avoid Barcelona in the 1st knockout round of the Champions League, did we do that? Nope! I decided that this time I wouldn't treat them so kindly by switching our play like we had done last year, no, we went for it with our usual 4-2-2-2 attacking system. In the first leg it was starting to look like a mistake after 30 mins but we managed to pull one back and make it a respectable scoreline. The follow up tie went so, so, so well for us, we battered them and had a 3-0 lead up until they pulled one back which looked likely to send the tie to extra time but we were awarded a very dramatic late penalty and Tony Herd stepped up to put us back ahead, then following up with another to completely kill them off and sealing his hat-trick. Surely one Spanish giant would be enough though? No? Ok.. Real Madrid next!

We got another nice youth intake this year and have a great young wonderkid youth through our affiliation with Columbus Crew in America; Reese Camm. He has all the potential in the world and has great current ability for a 16-year-old too. His only downside is that he has no flair whatsoever, yet all his other technical, mental and physical stats seem to be really good, we shall see how that fares in game. We got another youth through an affiliate, another young goalkeeper! We have a plethora of those it has to be said. Still, a decent pick up through our partnership with Socheux. Interestingly Celtic dismissed another manager in their hopeless quest to topple me at the top and this time Roger Schmidt was shown the door. Schmidt came in and started really well, played some good games against me and also led Celtic to a first 2nd place finish in 3/4 years but failed to convince the board. Next in was a very close friend of mine, Robbie Stockdale, I brought Robbie in as our reserves assistant manager in 2019 and then gave him the Scotland under 21's managers job during my stint in charge there too. He was with us for six years before making the move to Nottinham Forest to become his own man, he was doing a decent job there too. Now he fancies a crack at me? Going to be gutted getting him the sack! On the plus side another of my former colleagues replaced him; Michael Beale taking up the job after his recent dismissal by Sheffield Wednesday.

Domestically we are absolutely flying as we extend our unbeaten run to sixty-six games. We are just six games shy of beating our previous record of seventy-one games unbeaten. With just seven games left of the league campaign I'm hoping that we can secure a second invincible season under my leadership of the club. We have come close to a further two invincible seasons but had one pesky defeat in each of those campaigns. We sailed through three Scottish cup ties and Hibernian lie in wait for us in the semi finals. Hopefully another domestic treble en route to Ibrox as we have already secured the Betfred Cup by beating Celtic in a thoroughly spectacular game in which we came from behind to win. I also must reserve a special mention for that Aberdeen result, wow! Interestingly Tourinho became the second striker to bag a hat-trick that game yet he actually only came on with twenty minutes to play, a glorious feat.

Now into my eighth season with Rangers (my longest ever with them) I actually don't think I've ever enjoyed a save so much. It has helped that I have been playing it in bursts as I've had a fair few times away from the game this year. I couldn't have started any better as somehow we tore it up in the first season and went on to win the treble! I didn't even add to the team until January but tbh there are a fair few players in the team from the start that you can do a lot with such as, Alfredo Morelos, Connor Goldson, Borna Barasic, Nikola Katic, James Tavernier, Ross McCrorie and Glenn Middleton. Middleton and McCrorie are class young players and perform amazingly right from the off and the same can be said for the rest of them. Lining up with a 4-2-2-2 seemed to work really well and I'm glad as I've always liked playing two striker as opposed to the 4-5-1/4-3-3 everyone seems to favour. Goals, goals and more goals that's what our success was down to. We only improved from there and now I'm halfway through my eighth season with them on schedule to complete the treble again and in the last 16 of the CL. I thought I'd share my team on here as a way of looking back on how the career has gone.

I went with the usual method of bringing in free transfers, bargain buys and potential wonderkids with the view to loaning them out and/or selling them to make loads of money. It's a method I've always followed on FM as I've always had success doing it. I've managed to bring in £1.2bn by selling/loaning players so clearly my team is very rich. When I got into the CL final and lost in the third season and then won the EL in the fourth season I was thinking this is going to be far too easy. So I decided to change my approach and start to develop home grown talent with the intention of fielding an almost entirely Scottish team with maybe a few UK based ones too. I think that was in season 4/5 I started that and now my team is very close to only Scottish players apart from a couple foreign ones. Although I wanted a home grown team I had spent years building and buying a team, or several teams, so it was going to be hard getting rid of all of the players especially since I didn't want to let them go for less than what they were worth. As such, I have kept a select few players over the years like Moritz Hollerieth, Erkan Eybil, Isaias, Vincent Njoku, Alfredo Morelos, Nikola Katic, Svetozar Markovic, Federico Zapata, Yuri Alberto, Alex Bielsa, Roberto Navarro, Matonense and Tourinho. Nowadays Alex Bielsa has Scotland as a second nationality whilst Navarro is less than a year away from the same. That being said I will probably accept decent bids for them unless I get the Scotland job(again) and manage to persuade them to declare themselves for us! Matonense is a really good winger but I'm not really fussed on him for some reason, even though he is amazing. Now Tourinho on the other hand, that's different, he has become a phenomenal player for me and arguably the best striker in the game too. I would be really surprised if he didn't win the Balon d'or this year. I rejected a £100m offer from Real Madrid for him last year as it had too many clauses in the deal and I expected them to come back in with another offer which I would no doubt have accepted. With my young Scottish striker Tony Herd picking up a couple month long injury I decided to just keep playing Tourinho this season and he has been unplayable, completely. So now I'm stuck with a dilemma.. Do I let him leave or keep him as a bonus foreign player? Who knows?! I've stuck his valuation at £200m as Real Madrid have been scouting and expressing interest in him all season so will see what happens I guess. In two more seasons both he and Matonense will also have Scottish nationality so there's that, although both have been capped by Brazil. Let's see where the rest of the season and the transfer window takes us eh?

Sunderland 'til I die

09-07-18

An interview with new manager Christopher Burns

Hi guys welcome to my latest "Sunderland 'til I die" blog, we managed to get the new manager in for a chat over the weekend and I'll be sharing the content of the interview with you all!

Q. Thanks for meeting with us Christopher it's good to have you in for a chat now that the dust has settled ever so slightly after a crazy first week I bet! What do you make of the circumstances surrounding your arrival first of all?
A. No problem at all I was happy to come in, to be honest it has been a crazy week but that's the beauty of professional football isn't it. To be honest, I'm not overly worried about the circumstances you're likely referring to, Jack Ross leaving or whoever else before him, or the relegation itself. I mean that in no disrespect but I've been hired to do a job and going by the interview I had with Stewart Donald I don't foresee us butting heads any time soon. As for the relegation I see that as an opportunity for this club to regroup and go again.

Q. Fair enough. So what expectations do you have then, for this year, do you have a long term plan or just see how things progress?
A. I absolutely have a long term plan yes. Every new manager says this in a new job almost don't they? But, I want to rebuild this club, I want to take them to the very top of the English game. I believe we can get back to back promotions should we make some shrewd signings but at the very least I believe we'll be back in the Premiership within three years. Once we're there we will stay up, more than that we will challenge at the top, mark my words.

Q. Wow that's a pretty bold statement to make Christopher, as a Sunderland die hard myself I can only hope you can achieve what you say! How do you think you'll be able to achieve this given that this is your first managerial job?
A. I've been involved in football since the age of 7, I've never known life without football, football is life for me. So over the years I've picked up plenty of knowledge from my time in the game, from managers and coaches I've worked under, I think I have a really good idea of what I want from the game, this team and my players. I've learned a lot working under Nigel Clough these past few years and I completely admire the brilliance that was Brian Clough as well as Alex Ferguson too. These are the types of characters that stand out to me and the type of manager I hope to be. No nonsense, hard working and incredibly ambitious.

Q. Well it has to be said that you can't aim any higher than that in terms of managerial idols. What do you make of the squad at your disposal at present, what do you make of the players let go and the ones brought in?
A. I'm not going to comment on any of the players that have left as I'm sure there were reasons for the players wanting to go or for the club wanting to let them go. However, I do feel that there are a couple more in the squad that I'd like to move on. There are also a couple that were brought in by my predecessor that I don't believe match the standard of a club like this. I'll win no fans by saying that, I'm sure, but it's just an honest assessment. We may find it near impossible to move them on at this point in time though, conversations will be had and we'll take it from there.

Q. Who are those players if you don't mind me asking?
A. I think there's some conversations to be had before going public with that kind of thing.

Q. Ok fair enough. Do you think you'll have funds to bring more players in, do you have any targets?
A. There are funds there yes. I do have some players I have my eye on but with the size of the squad we have just now I think we would be quite foolish to bring players in without letting others leave. As I said, the funds are there, I just believe that's it's prudent to be aware of our wage structure and not to abuse it like we perhaps have done previously.

Q. So you won't be throwing the checkbook about then?
A. Absolutely not, no. I want to develop our young players and keep a strong core of UK based talent in the squad which we actually have a fair amount of right now.

Q. To be honest that would be really nice to see, we've done well with our youth in recent years. Who would you say you'd like to build a team around based on the current squad?
A. I'm really liking Bali Mumba, he is really going to go far with us I think, I think he'll be a mainstay for years to come. I'd like to see Duncan Watmore reach his potential as he has it in abundance but has struggled with injuries so will need to try get fit and stay fit. George Honeyman and Max Power are both great central midfielders too and could from a great partnership although I'm asking George to adapt his game a little bit as I believe he likes to play behind the striker which isn't a tactic I plan to use.

S.T.I.D: Mumba does look really promising it would be good to see him become the next big thing out of the club. I could go on all day with these questions but I know you're a busy man so I'll let you get off and get our team thriving once again! Thanks very much for coming in for the interview, see you again soon.
C.B: Thank you for having me, see you soon.

01-07-18

As speculation ran wild as to who the next Sunderland manager would be the Black Cats board must have been working hard in the backround making sure their new man's name wouldn't be leaked as of all the names linked Christopher Burns certainly wasn't one of them. That being said, Christopher Burns is the, second, man Stewart Donald has appointed for the season and let's see if this one sticks! Burns has been a coach for around five years now and has been working with Nigel Clough at Burton for the past couple years as first team coach having worked his way up from youth coach. He has slowly but surely been building up a very good reputation in the game as a young up and coming coach with plenty of ideas and a keen fondness for attacking football. Burns has mentioned a couple of times now that Brian Clough and Alex Ferguson are two of his managerial icons which could perhaps stand his new club in good stead. Having worked with the legendary Brian Clough's son Nigel he will surely have picked up some passed down traits from the former as well as picking up some hints and tips from Nigel himself. Glasgow born Burns grew up a Rangers fan but failed to make the grade as a player there in his youth although he did manage to make it in the game and went on to play for the likes of St. Mirren, Motherwell, Hartlepool and Sheffield Wednesday before injuries grabbed hold of him and he decided to pursue a career as a coach, instead of crippling himself further, and hung up his boots at 25 years old.

26-06-18

As seen on the last episode of "Sunderland 'til I die" Chris Coleman was relieved of his duties as manager having failed to save the club from relegation. First team coach Robbie Stockdale was named caretaker manager once again and led the team to a 3-0 win over Championship winners Wolves in the final game of the season. The search for a new manager was on once the new owners were in place and the choice of Stewart Donald was Scottish manager Jack Ross. With a two year deal signed and all the niceties exchanged what could go wrong so quickly?

Jack Ross dismissed from Sunderland after just one month in charge, a month in which no games were played! It is alleged that Ross had been knocking heads with the board almost immediately after joining, he was apparently unhappy that so many of the clubs star men were allowed to leave meaning that he had to build a squad from scratch almost. The biggest gripe was the amount of money coming in for these players and only a fraction of the fees being handed down to the manager to recruit. You couldn't make it up, Sunderland are now looking for their 8th permanent manager in just three years, a truly abysmal statistic and just the latest shambles from the hierarchy of the club.

Over the past two months the club has seen a major overhaul in the playing squad as thirty-eight players were sold, released and loaned out. Fabio Borini, Billy Jones, Jermain Lens, John O'Shea, Paddy McNair, the controversial Jack Rodwell, Jason Steele, Marc Wilson, Joel Asoro, Wahib Khazri, Callum McManaman, Papy Djilobodji, Didier Ndong, Josh Maja and Lamine Kone were some of the bigger names departing over the summer. Of course, with so many players leaving Jack Ross had to get recruiting and so nineteen players were added to the squad. Tom Flanagan, Chris Maguire, Jon McLaughlin, Alim Ozturk, Dylan McGeoch, Glenn Loovens, Jack Baldwin, Luke O'Nien, Charlie Wyke, Max Power, Grant Leadbitter, Will Grigg, Jimmy Dunne, Lewis Morgan and Kazaiah Sterling all signed up for Ross' revolution. Or so they thought.

25-06-18

Due to the exposure and openness the extremely popular Netflix series "Sunderland 'til I die" gave the fans there has been growing demand for the same kind of exposure to the clubs day to day dealings by fans both old and new this season too. Although there will be another series commissioned for this years League One campaign the fans want more. As such, we will be keeping all of you eager fans up to date with our more frequent blog whilst you all wait patiently on the latest Netlfix series. Just click subscribe to get notified of all the latest goings on with the club.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmLAFhyimsE

Just come across this and although I haven't read back you seem to be doing well on this all of you! Any chance I could join?

Whatever suits you really, works either way.

It's fair to say that out performances over the festive period were shocking and I'm not scared to admit that it saw me seriously considering my position as manager of Queens Park Rangers. To have sailed through the Europa League with five wins out of six games, drawn with Chelsea and beat West Brom easily enough.... to four unbelievable and unforgettable matches which saw us conceded thirteen goals and score just two. It was astounding and although losing six nil to Arsenal is by far our worst result of the four our failure to beat Sheffield Wednesday in the quarter final of the Capital One Cup was more gut wrenching as we yet again failed in a domestic cup. An month long injury to Jesse Lingard affected us too but worse than that, when he returned from injury Thorgan Hazard broke his leg and was ruled out for the remainder of the season, a timely return for Lingard for us but heartbreaking for Hazard who was having an incredible debut season for us. Loic Remy picked up an injury which kept him out for two months of the season too and as a result we terminated his contract, brought Steven Naismith back from loan and signed Christian Benteke. Now just six or seven months after he had chosen to sign for Manchester City over us for £17m he joined us for £5m and a significantly lower wage than we initially offered him, a good deal all round for us it would seem but his spell with City has seen his ability drop quite a bit, the hope is that we can get him going again. Four goals and three assists in nine games isn't spectacular but it's a decent start. When things weren't going well for us for a spell we decided to switch up our formation again so that we weren't so predictable any more. A plain old basic four four two worked wonders for us in our first match using it as we thumped league leaders Liverpool three nil! The goals started to come again for Jordan Rhodes who seems to enjoy playing alongside Benteke when they're up top together and thrives when we go with the lone striker as the competition is fierce. The performances of John Stones have been excellent too and the fact he's been grabbing some important goals as well definitely helps. Still, none of that mattered as we crashed out of the FA Cup yet again and it was yet again to a lower league side and that only points to one thing; complacency, something that can't be tolerated at a big club such as ours. On a more positive note, our league form has been great these past couple of months and we've climbed up to fourth position in the league thanks to a nine game unbeaten streak. We also progressed to the last sixteen of the Europa League after a five one aggregate win over Lille and we now face Anderlecht in the next round. It would seem that sacking season is in full swing around Europa as no less than seven top club managers were sacked at the tail end of February, Manchester City's Diego Simeone unsurpring

With the season a third of the way gone I thought it would be good to have a look over how our season has gone so far. As we enter December we sit seventh in the table but to be fair we're actually quite close to second place as there's only seven points separating us and Chelsea who surprisingly don't occupy first spot. We're progressing as a club massively and in almost all of our matches this season we have been the better and most dominant side. What we're struggling with this season is a world class poacher who'll score for fun. Jordan Rhodes has done well for us the past couple of seasons but it doesn't appear to be happening for him this season. Loic Remy has a few goals too but the performances from both players have been a bit sub-standard. One player who has been a big stand out for us this season is Thorgan Hazard who we bought last year for £3.5m then immediately loaned him to Hamburg for the season. When he came back to join us for pre season I wasn't entirely sure what we going to do with him but I decided he deserved a chance to prove himself. Initially we played him in the Europa League and the Capital One Cup but after five games, three goals and two man of the match awards he forced his way into the starting eleven in the Premier League for us too. The matches that have cost us are the ones against the bigger teams as we're struggling to make our match performances count, by that I'm saying that we've been the best team against the bigger teams we've faced but we've lost out due to our insatiability to score, something we need to address soon. With all the big clubs sniffing around Marco Asensio lately I made the decision to give him a new five year contract as he had less than two years on his previous one and with the big clubs circling trying to make him unhappy it was vital we tied him to a long term deal to ensure that he doesn't leave on a free transfer. Jack Robinson and Jordan Rhodes were awarded new deals as well although both players were told that if they are to remain here for the foreseeable future they have got to improve their performances. We've done particularly well in the cups and in Europe this season as we saw off both Hull and Nottingham Forest in the Capital One Cup and we sit top of our Europa League group despite losing our opening game. That opening game was a big, big disappointment but one we moved on from quickly as our fourteen game unbeaten streak across three competitions showed. With the transfer window opening up soon we'll definitely be in the market for a player or two should we have the funds to do so. Although we signed Steven Naismith this month he isn't going to be a first team player for us and in actual fact he's been bought so that we can sell him on again. A strategy I firmly believe in, and with him not being able to feature for us in the next couple of months Blackburn have agreed to sign him on loan for three months and will pay £300k a month. Our fans are absolutely loving the brand of football being played by us this season and our attacking quartet of Adel Taarabt, Jesse Lingard, Marco Asensio and Thorgan Hazard are the main reason for that. All four lads have fantastic dribbling, vision, flair and technique which has been causing havoc to the opposition defend time and again. Now to climb that league.....

If there's one major stand out thing that I've learned in my two years of football management it's this; expect the unexpected. In my first season we were expected to be relegated, we finished sixth. Next season, expected tenth place finish, fifth. Yet that's not even what I mean by expecting the unexpected what has surprised me more is how you can be really content with the squad that you have and not have any real intentions of buying anyone yet one bid comes in for one player and it can change everything! That's happened this summer and after wrapping up a deal worth £11m for Nathaniel Clyne I received an offer of £12m for Lucas Silva which of course was laughed out the door. Manchester United were determined though and came back and asked how much I wanted so I told them £28.5m, £2.5m after one international appearance for Brazil and fifty percent of any future transfer he may make, to my surprise they accepted and off he went. Before that I had no intention of letting him leave but for the fee? Why not, he's replaceable. A player I didn't want to let leave is Marco Asensio and I turned down sever £50-60m bids for him from Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool. If they bid £80m then he's theirs, until then, no deal. Before Silva left there was a departure before him and surprisingly it was Winston Reid who left and he left to join the team he joined us from! West Ham paid £7.5m for a player they let go for free last season... Reid wanted to leave as he was unhappy he played so little first team football last season, sixteen starts and nine sub appearances, and West Ham bid £3m for him but I managed to get the fee up for him and we've made one hell of a profit on that one. Tomas Kalas is another who was well sought after and we received bids from both Manchester City for Tottenham and after rebuking their derisory offers we set an asking price of £15m for him. Neither team matched that fee but Spurs offered £8.5m up front and £2.5m after fifty league appearances plus twenty percent of the profit on his next transfer fee. So just to make this clear we spent £8m on all three players and received £47m up front and or in installments with potential returns from any future transfer fees too. Now that is unexpected. The departure of thirteen players in total raised £69m for the club but we reinvested that back into the squad of course and brought in nine players for just under £50m. I'm extremely happy with the squad at my disposal for the upcoming season and I look forward to us potentially breaking into the top four this season, that's my main aim.

Our stature within the game is steadily rising which has meant that we've been able to attract the biggest names to our side the past couple of seasons, not THE biggest but world class players no less. We have went from the one hundred and ninth best team in the world to the fortieth best team in the world apparently a study has shown. As well as that we went from the forty third richest team in the world to the nineteenth. With our stature growing in the game I made a fair few request's to the board and it was quite a lengthy meeting. I asked for Tony Fernandes to upgrade our youth and training facilities, upgrade our junior and youth recruitment, find us a commercial feeder team to enhance our reputation worldwide and for more scouts and coaches. We brought in three more scouts, two more coaches and a new assistant manager when that one was confirmed. We had a bit of a raid on Udinese for those staff as two of the scouts came from them while Dejan Stankovic joined as my new assistant manager as we had to replace the retired Bruno Demichelis, Antonio Di Natale becomes a coach for us too after hanging his boots up as a player with Udinese at the end of the season. Real Madrid legend Raul joined us as a coach too. Further to those requests I also pushed it and asked for a higher wage structure as our finances couldn't stretch to the signings of Christian Benteke and Aleksandar Dragovic as Manchester City stole them from under our noses. They even had the audacity to come in for John Stones after our bid was accepted and thankfully Stone elected to sign for the better club. I guess they can't get the scouts over their way so they just use ours! Suffice to say Manchester City are becoming a bit of an irritation with their desire to spend inflated sums on players they don't need or want but hey I'm Queens Park Rangers manager not Manchester City's right?

With such an open ended, closely fought Champions and Europa League fight so late on in the season our next two games were crucial ones. First up was a home tie against Liverpool who were sitting sixth and we were sitting eighth before kick off. At half time that remained the same as Luis Alberto had given our opponents the lead. A fantastic display in the second half from our players ensured that wasn't how the match would finish though. Goals from Munir, Will Hughes and late substitute Jesse Lingard gave us a three one win. Going into the final match of the season was a bit of a déjà vu moment as like last year we could get fourth but also miss out on Europe with an eighth place finish too. A miserable draw with Manchester City left things pretty open on that front but did we manage to go one better than last seasons sixth place finish?

We did, what a fantastic season that turned out to be as our league form was so inconsistent and we actually sat in the lower half of the table until our twenty fourth match of the season when we eventually climbed up to ninth place. We were predicted to finish tenth by the media and my chairman wanted a top half finish, it's fair to say we exceeded both of those expectations. Our big disappointments came in the cup competitions as we could only reach the quarter finals of the Capital One Cup, reach just short of the quarter finals in the Europa League and failed spectacularly with a third round exit to Bristol City in the FA Cup. Although not much was expected from us in those competitions I expected better. On the end of season awards front Marco Asensio won the players young player of the year award while Tyler Blackett, Jesse Lingard, Adel Taarabt and Asensio made it into the seasons best XI, Blackett's second season doing so. A great achievement for a couple of our lads and the awards were well deserved. In terms of everyone else Eden Hazard claimed footballer of the year, Diego Costa claimed the players player of the year and top goalscorer award with Hazard falling just short of him with a goal less, Jordan Rhodes was third top goalscorer on twenty two goals in thirty appearances. Jesse Lingard's fourteen assists in the Premiership this season made him the most creative player in the league as he finished ahead of Jordan Henderson, Costa and Hazard. The award winner for the Golden Glove this season was Hugo Lloris who finished ahead of Thibaut Courtois and Wojciech Szcesny with his seventeen clean sheets outdoing Courtois' sixteen and Sczesny's fourteen. Jose Mourinho won Manager of the Year for the second season in a row. Jordan Rhodes finished as top goalscorer of the Europa League with thirteen goals in eight games and had injury not have kept him out of the final four games of the season he may well have finished top of the Premiership goal scoring charts too.

Suffering the consequences of poor seasons at their respective clubs Hull's Steve Bruce, Manchester United's Louis Van Gaal, Southampton's Javier Aguirre and Manchester City's Roberto Mancini were all sacked upon the seasons end. Van Gaal's was a big shock as he has guided United to two consecutive second placed finishes which isn't too bad a record when you consider the class, guidance and ability of the current Chelsea side. Manchester City's decision to fire Mancini once again comes after he was re-hired immediately after last seasons dismissal of Manuel Pellegrini following a seventh place finish. This seasons eight place finish though is completely laughable and shows that it was the wrong move by the City board. Harry Redknapp resigned from his position at West Brom and retired from football altogether too.

After a run of poor form these past few months we put a lot of work in on the training ground to come up with a better tactical alternative to our four four two diamond shape and eventually plumped for a four five one or four one two two one depending on how you look at it. It seemed to go well for us against Crystal Palace as Jordan Rhodes' double saw them off, their late strike made our comfortable win appear hard fought yet it really wasn't. A couple of injuries meant that we used a slightly weakened team against West Ham but fortunately it worked well as Richard Tipple scored in just his second start to become our youngest ever goalscorer in a competitive match, back up centre back Tomas Kalas also scored the winner after West Ham had equalised. April was a horror month for us as injuries to seven players meant that our second string had to step up big time which wasn't too terrifying a thought except for the moment news came through that Jordan Rhodes was ruled out for three months with a hip injury and had to go see a specialist, that was when we started to worry. Rhodes had practically carried us this season having scored practically half of our goals! It's a real shame that his season was over as he was having an absolute stormer. Despite our injury problems we went on to have a fantastic month as we racked up five wins on the trot with our last three being our most comfortable due to the clean sheets kept and eight goals we managed to score. Fernando Pacheco was initially brought in to be our back up goalkeeper but after rotating with Alex McCarthy a lot this season the Spaniard has claimed the No1 position as he's played two games more than McCarthy but conceded twelve less and kept four more clean sheets. I'm thrilled to see Charlie Austin getting among the goals again too after a bad season of injuries have limited his appearances although strangely enough he's only three goals off of last seasons tally yet he's played nineteen games less which points to a more prolific run of form. Another player continuing to impress late on in our season is Richard Tipple who was named young player of the month for the month of April, an impressive feat for a fifteen year old. The managerial award of the month also went to myself. Having occupied eighth position at the tail end of last month we now go into our final two matches of the season sitting in seventh. Our next two games against Liverpool and Manchester City are vital as both teams occupy the two positions directly ahead of ourselves. If we're to finish any higher than seventh then we need to win at least one of those matches but two would be excellent as that would ensure we finished ahead of eighth placed Everton no matter what.

With us playing catch up in terms of games in the Premier League we were a couple behind the team around due to our participation in the Europa League. Our match against Everton was a big match for us as with them sitting in seventh place and four points ahead of us we had to close the gap on them. As is the norm these days, we went one nil down to them after Tyler Blackett's own goal. Thankfully though, Jordan Rhodes and Marco Asensio netted two second half strikes to secure a fantastic win for us. Our Europa League encounters with Bayer Leverkusen weren't great as we fell to a four one defeat in our first league as Stefan Kiesling caused a riot with his four goals. The second leg fared slightly better although a Rhodes hat trick and three one victory wasn't enough to see us through and we were eliminated from the competition. Our two other matches of the month were in the Premiership, our only focus now, and they did not go well. Bournemouth and Hull should have been winnable matches for us as both sides are relegation favourites. We didn't produce any sort of performance against either side though and we were humiliated with our consecutive league defeats which slide us further down the table. The only positive to come from the month of March was the emergence of our now youngest ever player to feature in a competitive match; [link name=Richard Tipple]http://gallery.neoseeker.com/chrisburns1/photostream/1349915336[/link] from our youth academy. When I watched the lad play I was really surprised to find out that he was just fifteen as he had all the ability in the world! I gave him his debut against Bournemouth and it was perhaps a bad game to give him his first start due to the result in the end but hey ho, he'll improve as will we.

February was an extremely short yet somewhat productive month for us. we had just four games to play, three in the league and two in the Europa League. With two of our league games coming against Arsenal and Chelsea it was expected to be a tough month for us. Arsenal took a two goal lead against us, twice as Tyler Blackett scored with the Gunners two nil up to reduce the deficit only for Alexis Sanchez to put them three one up. We fought back excellently in the second half though and Jesse Lingard made it three two before Oliver Giroud got himself sent off with five minutes to play. That may have been the turning point for them as Jordan Rhodes struck a late equaliser for us. We dominated Arsenal from start to finish despite the first half score and our equaliser was long overdue. Lingard produced another nine out of ten performance in our next match against Fulham as he, Jordan Rhodes and Winston Reid netted in our three nil win. A Rhodes inspired performance led to a four one victory over Maribor in the Europa League and it was the Scotland striker that netted all four goals. We had some false hope in our match against Chelsea as Will Hughes put us one nil up after ten minutes and we went in at half time level. Chelsea blew us away in the second half though as goals from Diego Costa, Eden Hazard and Willian added to Leanardo Bonucci's opener to secure a relatively easy four one win. A dominating performance in our final game of the month against Maribor had a bit of a shine taken off of it as we scored just the one goal. A major positive from that though is that Charlie Austin netted the goal after making his return from his four month multiple injury lay off.

Queens Park Rangers finally get their man

After what seems like an eternity of reporting on this transfer saga Queens Park Rangers finally managed to convince Derby County manager Ian Holloway to sell Will Hughes. This has been a long time coming after Christopher Burns initially expressed an interest in signing Hughes way back last year, last January to be precise. Holloway booted out bid after bid for the player including several £10m+ offers. At one point a £12m transfer fee was eventually agreed between the managers back in August but for some reason or another Queens Park Rangers pulled out of that deal. Hughes has not been a happy man at Derby ever since Burns announced his intention to sign him and he had put in a transfer request which was rejected in the summer. There have been several bust ups between the player and his now former manager which may have finally got to much for Holloway. The twenty year old's lack of form pointed to a real unhappiness in his game as he played twenty five games, coming on as a sub six times and scored just two, assisting three and had a distinctly average overall rating of 6.48 in all competitions so far this season. A bid of less than £6m was accepted at the start of January and this could be the best solution for all parties. The fee is much less than Derby could have got for him initially but in the end there's no point in keeping an unhappy player hostage and it was the best move for the club to cut ties with the midfielder.

January was supposed to start with an 'easy' win over Bristol City but who wants to be predictable? Not Bristol City that's for sure, they took the twice against us but thankfully we had enough fight to pull back level twice and draw the match. Not the result we wanted but we avoided defeat which was a relief. After taking a two goal lead against Hull we looked to be in cruise control but Robert Snodgrass' goal before half time changed things and Hull went on to score two more goals in the second half to secure victory over us. Another disappointing defeat was inflicted upon us by Manchester United next. Crucially it is worth noting that Tomas Kalas was sent off with just minutes to go until half time and prior to his sending off we had equalised and actually looked to be in control of the game. Wayne Rooney and Angel Di Maria killed the match off with their strikes though. Our FA Cup replay went a little like this; one nil Bristol City, one all, two one Bristol City, three one, three two and then four two was the half time scoreline. Despite our best efforts in the second half we just couldn't turn the tie around and City progressed despite Winston Reid's best attempts at mounting a comeback but his goal proved to be merely a consolation in the end. Our match against Newcastle wasn't worth mentioning too much as a one all draw was played out to a disappointed crowd who must have been bored the whole much. Darren Fletcher thought he had got his side off to a dream start when he scored the opening goal in the seventh minute for his West Brom side, they had got off to a great start but it didn't last long. New boy Will Hughes grabbed his opportunity with both hands and netted a fantastic first half hat trick while Jordan Rhodes also netted to give us a four one lead at half time. Early goals by Saido Berahino and James Morrison in the second half gave their side a glimmer of hope which was promptly crushed as Matt Phillips put the game beyond them with his strike. A red card given to Lee Cattermole proved to be a big difference in our game against Sunderland as he was sent off just ten minutes into the game. Despite that Jermaine Defoe gave his side the lead five minutes later but Sunderland couldn't keep us at bay for too long and before they knew it the final whistle had blown and a four one victory for us was confirmed.

We completed the month of January undefeated in four games after a one nil victory over third placed Tottenham and we'll be looking to build on that in the coming months. An impressive first couple of appearances for [link name=Will Hughes]http://gallery.neoseeker.com/chrisburns1/photostream/414493135[/link] led to a well deserved young player of the month award for him. Will's a player I've been chasing for at least a year and I'm glad to finally have him on board. Charlie Austin and Patric both picked up injuries which rule them out of action for a couple of weeks and both will miss our next match against Arsenal disappointingly. With Austin ruled out we looked to be a bit thin up top with just Rhodes, Guidetti and Munir so we added [link name=Nelson Oliviera]http://gallery.neoseeker.com/chrisburns1/photostream/1874041177[/link] to the squad on loan and already that looks to be a great piece of business as the big man has a goal, two assists and a man of the match award to his name already. We're paying Benfica £36k a month for him and we also have the option of signing him for as little as £4m at any point during his loan deal. After our poor run of form of six matches without a win I got fed up with the poor performances of our rotated team. I like to try give eveyone a chance to shine but that led to too many poor performances and as a result I decided to terminate the loan deals of Sergi Roberto, Edgar Le and Zakaria Bakkali. Alex McCarthy, Nelson Oliviera, Tomas Kalas, Leroy Fer, Paul Dummett and Hermann Kayembe are the players who miss out on our Europa League knockout stage due to our registration difficulties.

Well done with this mate, been a pleasure reading.

Lucas Silva hits out at Christopher Burns

After being fined 2 weeks of his wage after his red card against Manchester City, his second red of the season, Lucas Silva has been letting everyone know exactly how he feels about it. Having complained to Christopher Burns about the fairness of his fine the QPR manager is said to have told him that it was justified and he had better get on with his football. Which is fair enough considering it was his second red of the campaign and a lot more is expected from him given that he is the joint top earner at the club. Silva is having none of it though and his latest outburst is sure to rile his manager even more as after just 6 months at the club the Brazilian midfielder has publicly demanded a move to a 'bigger team'. Now with no teams currently interested in the defensive midfielder it may be a 'come and get me plea' to anyone willing to do so. A big stumbling block could be a transfer fee as any team willing to sign him will inevitably have to stump up a £15million+ fee. Burns has so far refused to be drawn on the speculation.

Right so I've got a new laptop and at this present moment I can't get on to my other laptop to get my saves so unless anyone could help me out a bit and give any advice on whether my saves would've went on the cloud? If not then I'll have to close this and start up a new one, possibly even a new story.

Be good to see you at Rangers!

Brilliant start to the Premiership mate, look forward to seeing how you get on.

Just caught up on the last 6 or 7 pages of this and it's as interesting as ever! Wheni came across your retirement i was right to believe it wasn't over as there were an extra 3 pages thankfully! Been good reading both yours and Shedender's careers, can't believe how many seasons yous have done!