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Bguy32 posted:Thiago is Italian, so you have to put Magnifico or Bravissimo someone on there. Pretty sure that after a season like that, Thiago is Welsh whether he wants to be or not. Like, he's already gotten his new passport in the mail despite never having ever asked for or expected one. The Welsh government just said "You, you're Welsh now, we have the paperwork and everything" and he's all "What the hell are you people talking about? I'm Italian!" "Nope, not anymore. Welsh. Deal with it."
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Jan 15, 2015 13:33
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So how much of the economy of this world's Wrexham do you think is related to football at this point? Heck, you might even be justified in modding the in-game population of the region up by a smidge. As for Thiago's chant... "He's our ace in the hole, Bearing down on their goal, The man we call Thiago! While the other teams curse, He loads their dreams in the hearse The striker named Thiago! Thiago, Thiago, he's a wizard with the ball! Thiago, Thiago, with his boot he'll crush them all!" Sung to the tune of the Zorro theme song.
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Jan 15, 2015 18:03
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I just read all of this over the last few days and it is easily one of the greatest FM stories ever. Can't wait to see how it continues, especially with the upcoming completion of the new stadium.
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Jan 16, 2015 00:29
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Sad no one has attempted to combine Thiago with the Welshest of nouns 'Boyo' in their chant. Big thumbs up Habeus, glad you didn't disappear into the ether a while back.
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Jan 16, 2015 00:49
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Pretty sure that after a season like that, Thiago is Welsh whether he wants to be or not. Thiago's actually a naturalized Italian, he was born in Brazil but took Italian citizenship in order to play for their national team. Poor Brazil, it's Diego Costa all over again!
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Jan 16, 2015 04:30
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habeasdorkus posted:Thiago's actually a naturalized Italian, he was born in Brazil but took Italian citizenship in order to play for their national team. Poor Brazil, it's Diego Costa all over again! And now he has Welsh citizenship thrust upon him. The Welsh Parliament justifies the eminent domain seizure of a footballer as necessary by announcing that, as he has three of them in his name, Thiago's presence is necessary to address the crippling vowel shortage in the Welsh language.
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Jan 16, 2015 07:34
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Aren't player chants supposed to be short and sweet, and possibly based off radio music? Gotta be short and sweet to remain in the heads of an already overwhelmed Wrexham fanbase. "THI-A-GOOOOOOOOOO Take the ball right up the middle! THI-A-GOOOOOOOOOO Te quiero, amor boyo THI-A-GOOOOOOOOOO Oh my God just shoot don't dribble! THI-A-GOOOOOOOOOO Te quiero, mi Thiago, te quiero"
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Jan 16, 2015 07:41
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habeasdorkus posted:Thiago's actually a naturalized Italian, he was born in Brazil but took Italian citizenship in order to play for their national team. Poor Brazil, it's Diego Costa all over again! Yeah, if he played for Brazil he'd already been saddled with "Thiagol" as his nickname because gently caress us.
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Jan 16, 2015 19:16
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habeasdorkus posted:Congratulations Amhazair! You may collect your boon at your leisure. drat, I didn't even remember that I had predicted something, let alone what. I'm tempted to strengthen some of our competitors but really ManU is already as strong as FM teams get so I don't really feel like helping them and the others aren't actual competition anymore.  Did Tackleford survive the Championship season? No single thing I do could actually make them our rivals again, still I might be tempted to give them a little hand for old times sake. But if they did get relegated again they can forget about me wasting my boon on them. If they did survive, could you provide an overview of their current status? (I pressume they're still rolling in cash, but otherwise?) Any idea what's holding them back? (Poor management? Reputation? Obvious holes in their squad?) If Tackleford did get relegated, same question about Arsenal. How badly did the cash disappearance hurt them? Do they risk financial collapse or did the shareholders pitch in to fill in the ditch?
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Jan 16, 2015 19:20
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I still say that you should boost Brown Fils's stats and make him join our rivals in a "gently caress YOU DAD" gesture.
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Jan 16, 2015 23:04
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I've still got a FM 14 save going and beating Man Utd in the semi-finals of the Champions League was satisfying as hell. Still enjoying this LP.
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Jan 16, 2015 23:25
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Dias posted:Yeah, if he played for Brazil he'd already been saddled with "Thiagol" as his nickname because gently caress us. Either that, or Thiaguinho, or something with an "r" in it to please Galvão  Great LP, glad to see it back!
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Jan 17, 2015 01:53
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 Board Votes(Confidently): This was a banner year for the club, accomplishing exactly what we set out to do. This success leads to one issue, however- our players are going to get quite a bit more expensive. We have seven players going into the final year of their contract, including starting 11 regulars Scott Shirra, Ed Hammatt, and Shahed Parr. The others are backups: Callum Allan, Matias Mercado, Lajos Kocsis, and David Maloney. We also have promised to offer our starting fullbacks, Steve Reed and James Loseille, new contracts. All told, we're looking at something like an additional £565,000/wk (£29.4m/year) to extend the lot of them. And that's ignoring that next year we have to renegotiate with Bailey, Cirjak, Quiboulaz, and Thiago. There's also my own contract to consider. After the 2021-2022 season I signed a contract that paid me £100,000/wk, with escalators for winning the FA Cup, the League, and the Champions League. Over the next four seasons I delivered three league titles, two Champions League trophies, and a FA Cup, bringing my weekly salary to £129,000. Suffice to say, I feel that I've earned a raise. As always before we vote we should look at our finances:  We've got a lot of money in the bank, over £94m to be exact. We're still awaiting the final tranche of Champions League TV money, which should be an eight figure sum. Unfortunately, we've also got a lot of debt. On top of the £93m stadium construction loan, we have a short term £34m loan from two winters back that I expect our board will want to repay given the healthiness of our current bank account.  We actually spent less this season than last, entirely due to funding expenses for our new stadium. Even so, our player salaries have remain fairly constant, with our bonuses paid jumping due to our success in all competitions. Note that if we were to extend all of our players our wages paid would increase by a full third, from roughly £90m a year to £120m, while Loyalty Bonus and Bonus expenditures would also be impacted by the new deals.  The jump in our bottom line year over year income is courtesy the fact that we sold £217m worth of players. I don't foresee us having that type of windfall again, so we'll have to hope that our merchandising income continues to grow 20% a year. Question One: Consolidated Wage and Transfer budget. (Numerately) Last year the board granted me a £157.5m Consolidated Wage and Transfer budget, which was further augmented by player sales to currently sit at £286.4m. Obviously, I expect that total to decrease when you set the new budget. We spent £105,000,000 on salary this past year, well behind Chelsea (£116m), Manchester City (£121m), Arsenal (£125m) and distantly behind Manchester United (£159m). That said, we stand eighth in the world in salary, ahead of the likes of AC Milan and Bayern Munich. You should take into account our need to address nearly half our squad's contract status, as well as the financial health of the club, which currently carries £21m in net debt. Please list a sum between £120m and £200m for our player spending in the 12 months to come. Question Two: Youth Recruiting or Junior Coaching? (Musingly) We have the choice between expanding our Youth Recruitment Network from Established (15 Attribute) to Well Established (17 Attribute) or improving our Junior Coaching from Excellent (17 Attribute) to Exceptional (19 Attribute) for an increase in monthly expenses. A) (Convincingly) A better recruiting network can find us the next Shaun Davies, potential is more important than how good they are at 15. (Increase monthly expenses by some amount, improves the potential of our yearly academy class) B) (Convincingly) If we bring in players who aren't very good at 15 but have a lot of potential they'll never see the pitch for us and could come back to haunt us when they're 26, fully developed, and playing for Swansea or Everton. Why do their job for them? (Increase monthly expenses by some amount, improves the current ability of our yearly academy class) C) (Miserly) Didn't you just say we have to spend a lot more money on our senior team players? (No improvements made) Question Three: My contract. (Aggressively) My contract ends at the end of next year. In order to ensure stability at the club it is necessary to renegotiate my contract now. I am currently earning £129,000/wk, or £6.7m per annum. The next highest paid managers are Paolo Goncalves of Manchester City at £100,000/wk and Bruno Santos of Chelsea at £97,000/wk, or about £5.1m per annum. Despite this, I am seeking a raise. I believe I have proven over the past four years to be the greatest manager alive, and perhaps of all time. My demand is a four year, £180,000/wk contract. Please submit a sum between £90,000 and £180,000 for my weekly salary. Be warned, if the sum is too low I will reject it. If it's way too low, I won't negotiate a new one during the winter window and you'll have only one chance next April to sign me to a new deal. If we're in the running for another triple, expect my demands to increase. Voting will close at 12:00 am EST, January 21, 2015
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Jan 18, 2015 08:54
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Amhazair: Tackleford stayed up in the Championship. Their whole team could use improvement pretty meh, and they have plenty of money in the bank (56m)
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Jan 18, 2015 08:56
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150k week salary - a healthy raise and 50% more than the next highest paid coach. Chuck in a 1 million quid bonus for per win of anything of significance, as part 10 year contract indexed to whatever CPI is in the UK (4%? a year). Bonus clauses should be indexed too. That has to be more than fair. If you could offer it, I would also include a board seat. 180 million salary + transfer cap - I'm actually guessing, what I want to know is, what is the equivalent Man U cap? Then whatever that is, plus 5% extra. take BOTH youth recruitment opportunities fundamentally a huge chunk of our revenue is from developing and selling prospects that don't quite work out. So... let's keep doing that? If I have to pick one, pick A but really do both.
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Jan 18, 2015 09:50
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$185M salary/transfer budget We want more Aaron Ekblads and less Mark Jankowskis, so increase the current ability of youth players.
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Jan 18, 2015 10:03
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Dale Ouise posted:
It's like most free agent situations, I want to be shown respect! And by that, I mean a fuckton of money! eta: The biggest manager contract I've seen is the one in the Pro Vercelli LP, where the Milan coach was getting something like 250k euros a week. The salary does have an impact ingame, in that a higher salary makes me harder to fire (which is not going to happen at this point unless I decided to actively hurt the club by playing our youth squad in every game) and in that the players respect a manager who makes a lot of money (it's hard for a player to say "i'm more important to the club than the manager" when the manager is making more than him). habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 13:48 on Jan 18, 2015 |
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Jan 18, 2015 10:44
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200M salary/transfer budget, principally to push the average up. A, send the talent flocking to the Dragon Hatchery. One (1) fuckton of money. Take literally whatever you want, with the provisio that you guarantee Wrexham your services for as long as possible. This is a blank cheque. Any and every means to retain your services. You have earned it. Together, Wrexham with Scott Brown at the helm shall become the greatest football dynasty the world has ever known.
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Jan 18, 2015 13:31
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190 m budget, make it rain A Blank Cheque Weekly Salary, Keys to the Town, Unlimited Access to the
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Jan 18, 2015 15:21
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175M in the budget A) Let me bake you two cakes. (Blank cheque)
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Jan 18, 2015 15:26
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AJ_Impy posted:200M salary/transfer budget, principally to push the average up. Echoing this
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Jan 18, 2015 15:43
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180M. A. 180K. It's all coming up Scott!
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Jan 18, 2015 17:43
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130m A 140k/wk Someone has to push the average down.
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Jan 18, 2015 18:12
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From: Dreamsicle, Former Wrexham Fan Trust President, Lead Singer of Frizzy To: Scott Brown, The Game, The Cerebral Assassin, The King of Kings, Wrexham First Team Manager RE: Voting Congratulations on the treble! Hopefully the team can continue on its path to glory and attain more trophies. Now on to buisness. Last year I voted for a consolidated wage+transfer budget of 195 Million Pounds and will do so again. As bringing players to their potential is fairly easy for you at this point, I will vote for option A. However I will not give you a full 180K wage as you already manage the USMNT. A raise is still in order so I'll vote for a 153K a week salary. To Victory, Dreamsicle
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Jan 18, 2015 18:30
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200m, A, and an alternative. How about 140k a week in salary, but with big performance bonuses? Say 250k for the CL, 200k for winning the league, 150k for the FA Cup, 100k for the League Cup? It would be better for the club to not have the recurring costs on a monthly basis (and potentially get into a position where we need another loan) and instead pay bonuses to the coach when they are paid from the competitions and we have a positive income statement.
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Jan 18, 2015 18:30
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C. Everett Koop posted:
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Jan 18, 2015 18:41
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120m C 135k/wk
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Jan 18, 2015 18:46
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Epilogue: Taken 4, Taken Again. May 25, 2016-June 10, 2016 This will take us right up to the start of the World Cup, and we have three friendlies to play as we finish our preparations to play host to the world.  There goes the second of our starting centerbacks. Yeesh, at this rate we won't have anyone fit to play come the actual games.  Now I can finally accomplish my real goal, destroying Wrexham from within! Chester forever! :unsmiggh:  That Mercado has declined is no surprise, he's 34 years old, but Mujkic and Ünsal have slipped is concerning. Meteor is only 28, and Ünsal only 26. I'm guessing this is because of their injuries, if you remember Mujkic missed three months with a damaged Achilles at the start of last season and Ünsal missed three months between damaging his hip in November and breaking his arm in late April. Hopefully they can both rebound next year, though it's certainly not like Mujkic was anything less than brilliant down the stretch for us. The dude was the Premier League player of the year and had an average rating of 7.86 from March through the end of the season.  We have a lot of Wrexham players going to the World Cup, so I've set our pre-season to begin as late as possible. That means we'll have about a month to get into playing form before we contest the Community Shield against Manchester United.   Some final bookkeeping from the Champions League sees String win Champions League honors, his goals against United in the final placed him just above Thiago for the Golden Boot with 13 goals to the  Meanwhile, we are the team of the tournament.  I have no clue what Argentina's coach is thinking. Mercado is old but he's relatively fresh and was dynamite off the bench for us all season. He's still a world class player even at 34.  It seems that Justin Bailey isn't the only snub on the English team.  Tate has good reason to feel aggrieved, he missed out while uncapped Callum Allan was kept on the squad. I like Callum Allan, but Tate is a starter on a great team while Allan is a backup. Los Angeles, United States 11pm, May 25, 2026 (COACH and three young Americans, MICHAEL ENRIQUEZ, XAVIER HUGHES, and ANDREW PAREDES, are outside the home of BRENT WOODS)  : Ok, let's see. Enriquez, you jammed the cell tower? : Aye aye, boss.: Hughes, you got the security system? : Uh, I think so.: Paredes, is that stun-gun charged? : Coach, is this legal?: Don't worry about it. : No one says no to me.(The AMERICANS climb over the fence into WOODS' driveway, then COACH unlocks the side entrance) : Coach, why do you have a key to this house?: I have keys to all of my players house, Paredes. Makes it easier to drop in and say hi.: Wait... does that mean you have keys to our houses too?: Don't worry about it.(Upon entering the home, the alarm starts to beep) : Damnit, Hughes, I thought you got the alarm!: I'm a 20-year-old soccer player, what were you expecting!?: We're going to have to do this the hard way, then!(The four barge into BRENT WOODS' boudoir, where he is groggily awakening)  : What in tarnation?: Zap him, Paredes!: Ahh!(PAREDES frantically jabs the stun gun into WOODS' side until the older man passes out) : Alright, Paredes and Enriquez, carry him out to the van. Hughes, you take the decoy and drive off when you see the cops show up. Get them to chase you, then after a few minutes pull over and surrender.: That wasn't part of the plan!: The plan was for you to cut the alarm system! Don't worry, I'll have you bailed out and make sure Woods drops any charges.A Shipping Container, Los Angeles Docks (Later that night) (WOODS is tied to a chair under an arc lamp, facing the COACH) : I'm sorry about this, I just wanted to have a chat with you.: You are loving crazy, do you know that?: Yes. I am crazy. But I'm also the best goddamned coach in the world. And I want the best goddamned American player of a generation to step up beside me and help me make some noise at the World Cup.: That's what this is all about?!: What else would it be about? Come on, don't you want to advance out of the group stage for once in your career? How long did you spend working for coaches who lost to Trinidad and Tobago?: Heh, that happened more than once...: This is your last chance at glory.(COACH pulls an armband out of his pocket and offers it to WOODS) : Don't you want to show what you can do, captain?  He came around, but he's still not happy with me.  Woods coming into the fold marks the time for us to make final cuts. Some of them will be easy, like our trio of helpers Enriquez, Hughes, and Paredes.  Let's hope I made the right choices.  -2.png) Lang is the last cut, and it was a hard one to make.  .png) Daniel Bennett also just missed out to Scott Dolinsky for the final striker spot. .png) Chris Ramirez and Scott Stevens get a ring to let them know that I wish they could be playing for me, and to tell them not to worry about their positions on the squad. I also called Xavier Hughes to tell him I'm looking forward to seeing his progress over the next four years, but apparently he hasn't made bail yet.  You could form a hell of a club with our cast-offs.  I thought for sure when I read the headline that he'd torn up his leg while training for the World Cup, but he's perfectly fine. He also wants to talk to me about a new contract, so nothing has changed.  Team USA has three friendlies before the World Cup starts on June 12. We play host to Iran, Wales, and Sweden. Wales is in the World Cup, facing a tough group of England, Uruguay, and Honduras. Iran and Sweden missed out, but will get to come to the United States anyways to tune us up.  That was not a good result. We required a last minute own goal to scrap a draw, and while we create three clear cut chances we failed to capitalize on any of them.  Club football doesn't rest while the World Cup is coming, and a brilliant striker I've been keeping a close watch on just signed a new deal with Chelsea. I was tempted to go after him as a rotational striker in large part because he was born in Wales.  Ok, one, why the hell are most of the games being played on the West Coast when the northeastern corridor will have a population of near 60m in 2026? The only two stadiums on the entire Eastern Seaboard are in Philly and near NYC, meaning that whoever is playing there has at least a flight halfway across the continent to Chicago, Dallas, or Houston for their third match. But more importantly... HONOLULU?! That's madness! Hawaii is a five hour flight from Los Angeles! By way of comparison, that's about the same as the flight from Boston on the East Coast to Seattle on the West Coast. At least we don't have to go their. Our matches are being played in LA and Phoenix, the only thing I'd change is when we have to travel to Phoenix*, the Coliseum in LA is a 20 minute drive down the 110 from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. *(and play in the desert where the average June temperature is 104 degrees Fahrenheit/40 Celsius, I don't care that the stadium is domed and air conditioned, who the hell thought that would be a good idea?)  Might as well make it easy for our players and I to get from the World Cup to training camp. I'm expecting to be out of the tournament when training camp comes, unless we've done something crazy like made the Semifinals.   Sure, let's get our international scheduling done now.  Good job, board! Our training jersey sponsorship is now worth almost as much as our actual kit sponsorship... whoever negotiated that a few years ago really duffed the deal as we're getting paid like Swansea instead of Manchester United.  drat you, George Osbourne! That comes atop the £17m in taxes we'd already paid to the Crown.  Huh, I didn't know the board could do that as a fan trust. Our 200,000 members get a payment of about £105 each... or the board just embezzled some serious scratch under everyone's noses.  I've never seen this happen, but it's not surprising considering that City just spent two years without any Champions League money while running one of the highest payrolls in the world. It certainly gives a leg up to their competitors, including us.  That's not stopping them from shopping for reinforcements, though. Darby is going to cost somewhere around £25m-£30m, and it's going to be at the higher range because I plan on bigfooting City if they move for him.   That should put the cap on the Premier League season, as the final monthly awards are given. Enrique did very well during Loseille's absence, but I'm just not sure how far a defensive player with a 1 Bravery can go no matter how good their other stats.  Let's hope Collins doesn't show us up right after signing his new Chelsea deal.  We did well in the first half, and poorly in the second. Mario Carroll might have just played himself out of the starting job, he missed on two easy chances and denied us a victory.  De la Fuente, on the other hand, has almost certainly locked down the starting keeper job after a stellar performance between the sticks.  50-1? I'd put a tenner on us for that.  Hey, when FC Barcelona calls, I have to take the interview. Especially considering my current contract situation.    I was never going to leave Wrexham for them, and their refusal to bow and scrape to my every demand is one big reason why. I was hoping they'd give me a gigantic contract offer, though, which I could take to the board and use as leverage.   That got your attention. Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere.   As soon as the board signs off on the budget, you'll be getting a new deal. You're our Golden Boy, and that will be the truth once I back the dump truck up to your door.  Bruno Santos is the luckiest man alive. Manchester City's financial woes keeps them out of the Champions League, and means that Chelsea qualifies through a back door for the third straight year.  This is going to make things harder. Jimenez is our starting left back, and he's not going to get into a single match. We have an acceptable backup, but unlike Jimenez he's entirely defensive minded, and seeing as scoring goals is a real problem for this team we needed all the offense we could get.  Sweden are the easiest of our three warm ups, I wanted to make sure we took a good attitude into the real thing.  We outclassed the Swedes in every way but the scoreline, and that's because there's a decided lack of finishing on this team. Until Dolinsky scored in stoppage time to salvage a draw we hadn't scored a goal off of a US foot or head since last October.  There were positives to take away, though, such as the inscrutable Bobby Padilla putting out a man of the match performance, his best performance in a US jersey in several years.  String also racked up 22 assists, making him a deserving winner... but it still frustrates me that Thiago is ignored after a season where he scored 61 goals and picked up 14 more assists. It's not like he's been a slouch for his nation, either, Thiago's netted 7 goals and an assist in 8 appearances with the Italian side.  I mean, just look how far out ahead of his opposition he was for the European Golden Boot.   The award goes straight to Stringel's head, but since he just got a new contract last year I'm in no mood to give him a raise.  I wish I could be that optimistic, but our inability to put our shots on net is concerning me. Our defense has been solid, at least.  It's that time again.  Time for me to welcome all of our new youth players to the club.  Time to count up our jersey sales, and wonder why Mujkic isn't in the top five while marveling at the number of Minami jerseys Japan ordered.  Time to complete the sale of one of our former youth prospects who never made good.  Time to prove that the United States is so a good soccer playing nation!  I've proven that I can build a winner from nothing, but success in the World Cup is a whole other animal. I can't bring in talented young stars from all over the world for Team USA, so I'll need to use every last ounce of my motivational skills and tactical nous to overcome opponents fielding far superior teams. Trebel or not, I still have critics to silence.  Remember that the Board Votes will be open until 12:00 am EST, January 21, 2015
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Jan 18, 2015 20:14
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£165m (Let's outspend Man U, if only barely) B (Have we gotten anyone worthwhile ever from our own recruiting? Better off investing in coaching staff to train up those promising youths we keep buying up instead) £165 000 (A shiny contract to match our shiny player wages)
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Jan 18, 2015 20:39
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I'm still a little uncomfortable cranking up the spending too much with that stadium payment hanging over us.
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Jan 18, 2015 20:45
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Any chance we can see the stats for the new youngsters?
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Jan 18, 2015 20:48
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Hopefully we were able to get a better quality Player of the Season board. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsWUhhzz6LY
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Jan 18, 2015 21:11
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Julio Cruz posted:Any chance we can see the stats for the new youngsters?  Palma is the highest rated prospect of the bunch, but he's yellow-bellied and that's going to keep him from being great.  Hubert is another attacking midfielder, he's currently out injured with a broken leg.  I made a mistake with Leandro, signing him when he was a youth in Brazil. Brazilian minors under 18 can't sign with foreign teams, so we had to wait two years before he could come to the club. He's still a good prospect, but he'll need more than a year in our youth system to have a shot at cracking our starting eleven.  Mo is a striker with serious promise. If he develops physically he's going to become a monster.  Mattuschka is the right back version of Yilmaz, he's already got a great head for the game but needs to fill out physically before he'll be able to play at the top level.  Cooke is our best Youth Academy player, five years ago he'd have four or four and a half stars for our youth team. I don't know if he'll ever play for our senior club, but he's worth keeping around for several years in the hope he develops more than the scouts presently think he will. We also added a handful of other youth prospects from our academy this year that we would have been elated to have just a few years ago. We're now regularly releasing guys that can turn into decent or good Premier League players because they'd ask for more money than it's worth giving them when it comes time to sign a professional contract. Like this guy:  He was worth £2.1m, but I couldn't find a buyer for him over the winter. He had three star potential when he first joined our youth program, but that degraded to two stars as our club got better and better. Our youth program is definitely showing promise, though. Along with Cooke are other two and a half and three star talents, and don't forget about the goddamned Bat Man:  Bale is almost certainly our starting right winger of the future, and he's a product of the academy.
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Jan 18, 2015 21:32
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Appendix: The Year in Football/Futbol/Fußball/Calcio/Soccer, 2025-2026 June 10, 2026 Wrexham  What a team! Even our backups like Callum Allan and Matias Mercado had huge numbers, and every single player rated an average of 7.0 or better. Really, I couldn't be more chuffed. England  City's disqualification is Chelsea and Everton's joy, as the former will be back in the Champions League and the latter gets into the Europa League.  Tackleford stays up! They're a mediocre squad, but they have plenty of money and appear to have reached a new level of performance. I'm hoping they build on it so we can start pushing them around twice a year.  Hull City pops right back up to the Championship, they've fallen a long ways since the start of the game and it's now a dozen years since they were relegated from the top division.  It's rather shocking how few top teams made it to the late rounds of the FA Cup, as of the quarterfinals there were more Championship clubs in the running than Premier League ones.  Stoke will be in the qualifying stages of the Europa League next season, if they get through to the group stage they'll be looking at a wildly crowded schedule between their 23 first half league matches, their League Cup title defense, and the Europa League group stage. Europe  Real Madrid wins La Liga for the 40th time, while Barca will have to go through the playoff to get to the Champions League group stage.  Napoli are quickly becoming a dynasty. This is their second title in a row and third in five years. Southern Italy finally has a powerhouse. In other news, Bologna's Chilean copper bazillionaire has succeeded in getting to the Champions League thanks to a head to head tiebreaker over AC Milan. Bologna will be in the same playoff bracket as Barcelona this coming August.  The title chase was more boring than it looks, Bayern had wrapped up the title a week before the end of the season.  I hate PSG. They spend more than any other team, and they still regularly underperform in a mediocre league. They're the worst. If I were spending £190m a year in France the minimum acceptable season would be going undefeated.  Nice work, Braga! That's the second time they've upset the big three of Portuguese football in five seasons, they have more titles since I started coaching than Sporting.  Despite selling one of their stars to Flamengo, CKSA Moscow still won the title.  Ajax backed into their title, they drew with Heerenveen 1-1 on the final day, but PSV blew it by falling 3-1 to Feyenoord.  Belgium's wacky split divisions comes into play again, with Anderlecht getting the shaft and missing out on the Champions League despite losing only two matches all season.  Galatasaray is one of my favorite football club names. Actually, I'm a fan of most of the big Turkish club names. I'm not sure why, but back when I knew nothing about club soccer I thought that Galatasary, Besiktas, and Fenerbahçe were all much bigger clubs than they actually are. On the other end of the table Samsunspor barely avoids relegation, a sharp decline in fortunes considering they won the league two years prior.  The old firm is back in force. I don't expect to see any club outside of Glasgow sneaking into the top two any time soon.  Our defense was sublime and our offense unstoppable. We never trailed our opponents on aggregate in any of our knockout ties, and only trailed for five minutes in any individual match throughout the whole damned tournament, including the group stage. Those five minutes came between 21st to 26th minutes in the second leg of our Barcelona knockout round match when we down 0-1 in the match but up 3-1 on aggregate.  Real Madrid did not take kindly to being knocked out of the Champions League, they cut a serious path of destruction through the lesser lights of Europe. Asia  27 is an odd number of matches to play, I guess each team plays the others three times a season. I'm not sure how that works out given the power of home field advantage, but Melbourne doesn't care as they hoist the trophy for the first time in two decades. North America  Data point one million and three for the axiom “the playoffs are a crapshoot.” The Chicago Fire (that name still makes me shake my head) barely made the playoffs. So of course they won the MLS Cup.   Atlas and Tigres are heckuva good, guys.  MLS has surpassed Liga MX as the most reputable competition in North America. That's probably in large part thanks to DC United winning the CONCACAF Champions League. South America  Sao Paolo wins their first title since 2008, with Gremio not far behind.   Boca wrapped up the Apertura handily, while Velez had to defeat Racing Club in a playoff to seal their fourth trophy since 2023. These two have won ever single time since 2021's first stage.  Palmeiras returns the Libertadores to Brazil, overcoming teams from Argentina and Chile along the way. International  Oh what could have been. Losing to the World Cup favorites is no shame, but I would have loved to nab that trophy for us.  Similarly, we were dead tired and had several players hurt going into the final against Argentina, but it would have been sweet for our kids to get used to the taste of victory.  At least we defended the Gold Cup.
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Jan 18, 2015 22:05
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I'm not completely clear on the abbreviations, but did Stoke seriously win three of their final four Cup matches with penalty kicks?
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Jan 18, 2015 22:18
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Yeah, with the fourth coming on away goals. That's pretty clearly a team of destiny situation.
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Jan 18, 2015 22:37
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The young'uns look good. More importantly, farming children appears to be a very profitable sideline.
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Jan 18, 2015 23:30
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Woop! Colwyn Bay all the way up in Sky Bet 1!
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Jan 18, 2015 23:58
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Wow, Colwyn Bay has come far. Did they get a boon a while back? How are
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Jan 19, 2015 00:10
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Yeah, Colwyn Bay got a sugar daddy back when they were in the Conference Regional, or I think perhaps even a level below that. Chester is down in the Conference Regional, they had a brief 2 year stay in the Conference Premier but that's as good as it's gotten for them.
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Jan 19, 2015 00:15
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