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Post by dalenichol on Jul 11, 2020 8:30:03 GMT
Nice season Dale, great to see you rocking it in Thailand! Are there any leagues in particular you'd be interested to manage in? Cheers Dirk. I'm honestly not too sure. That's the current top 7 league rankings, so I guess I'd be looking to jump up from Thailand to one of those, but it'd have to be the right job too. I've just turned down an interview with Al-Sadd of Qatar, they're currently 8th in their league but have won 4 titles in 5 seasons since I started. In hindsight, I maybe should've given it more thought, but oh well. I think I'd maybe like Australia, China or Qatar but anywhere I go it'd have to be the right club too, because I am enjoying Thailand.
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Post by dalenichol on Jul 11, 2020 8:32:10 GMT
Also, I should probably have used my newly freed up foreigner spot for a young, talented player that I could've sold on for big money. I did not. *Shrugs*
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Post by Nick on Jul 11, 2020 10:31:44 GMT
Slimani seems like a solid addition to a team in a league where most players are vertically challenged. Even if you only get a year out of him, he could be a battering ram up top just bullying defenders.
Great to see you back up that first title with another one straight after although I'm not surprised to see you looking around for another job. Realistically, how far can you take a Thai team unless you want to put 5+ seasons into a long term plan?
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Post by dalenichol on Jul 11, 2020 21:42:24 GMT
Slimani seems like a solid addition to a team in a league where most players are vertically challenged. Even if you only get a year out of him, he could be a battering ram up top just bullying defenders. Great to see you back up that first title with another one straight after although I'm not surprised to see you looking around for another job. Realistically, how far can you take a Thai team unless you want to put 5+ seasons into a long term plan? Yeah, that's it. It's a difficult one, because I'm enjoying the save and I'm enjoying the club and we have, once again, started the ACL with some upsets (wins over Guangzhou and Jeonbuk in the group) but the chances of us being able to go all the way are slim, and the league isn't going to overtake any of the big boys, so players are always going to want to leave. I have turned down job interviews at both Al-Sadd and Jeonbuk, but I think I'll definitely be paying closer attention to the jobs that become available going forward.
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Post by chaodck on Jul 11, 2020 21:56:18 GMT
Great to see you enjoying this save Dale, don't mind my banter mate you know I'm happy when your happy and save-hopping is never as entertaining as finding the right balance in one save and just plow season after season. Moving on from Thailand seems like a good idea mate, specially if you dont' see yourself improving enough to challenge in the ACL, I would love to see you back in Saudi Arabia and kicking Al-Ahli's ass left and right.
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Post by dalenichol on Jul 11, 2020 22:02:09 GMT
Great to see you enjoying this save Dale, don't mind my banter mate you know I'm happy when your happy and save-hopping is never as entertaining as finding the right balance in one save and just plow season after season. Moving on from Thailand seems like a good idea mate, specially if you dont' see yourself improving enough to challenge in the ACL, I would love to see you back in Saudi Arabia and kicking Al-Ahli's ass left and right. Haha, of course mate. You should know me well enough to know that I don't give anything I'm not willing to take in return! Going back to Saudi Arabia is definitely not off the cards, I'd love another crack at the league. Al-Ahli have been a bit all over the place, but they always seem to manage to just about claw it back. They spent over £20m this season too, which is just nuts. If the Al-Shabab or Al-Hilal jobs came up, I'd definitely be tempted.
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Post by dalenichol on Jul 12, 2020 0:24:16 GMT
...excuse me?
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Post by dalenichol on Jul 12, 2020 0:34:07 GMT
After 3 years of very poor Thai intakes, this is welcome news after 5 days in charge...
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Post by chaodck on Jul 12, 2020 0:44:49 GMT
Beware of Covid mate, keep social distancing, test often and wear a mask! Great to see you jump onto a favourable situation and that intake looks amazing.
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Post by dalenichol on Jul 12, 2020 8:49:26 GMT
Beware of Covid mate, keep social distancing, test often and wear a mask! Great to see you jump onto a favourable situation and that intake looks amazing. Haha, thanks buddy. Annoyingly, the jobs came up at both Melbourne City and Al-Hilal (I really wanted that one!) but whether it was a bug or just a really drawn out recruitment process, neither of them offered me an interview or any sort of acknowledgement until after I accepted this job. So here we are, it's going to be an interesting one
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Post by dalenichol on Jul 12, 2020 9:34:40 GMT
Wuhan Zall FC - Takeover 2025 As I mentioned in my previous post there, this was actually my third choice job behind Al-Hilal and Melbourne City, and I delayed accepting it to try and give myself time to get a response elsewhere, but it never came and I decided that I'd bite the bullet and head to China. This is going to be a difficult league and a difficult club, I can tell, and I'm going to have to reevaluate how I approach almost everything, but I'm quite looking forward to the challenge...until I inevitably get sacked. The club play their home games at the 60,000 capacity Wuhan Sports Centre Stadium and have great training facilities, alongside good youth facilities, good youth recruitment and average junior coaching. I'm going to be trying to get the board to improve all our facilities, given the amount of money in the bank. Wuhan have been a fairly average, mid to upper mid table side since the start of the save, finishing as low as 8th and no higher than 5th. Former Everton and Sheffield United player Li Tie was the last manager, lasting only 350 days in charge before being sacked, despite finishing 6th. The board have only asked me to consolidate our position as a mid table club, so I'm going to focus on that for the time being. So I've taken over during the middle of what seems to be a summer break between late May and early July, so no games played or to be played for a little while yet, but we do play BJ BSU and Meizhou in my first 4 games in charge, so that's somewhere we'll definitely need to pick up some points. Outwith that, it's actually fairly hard to see where we're going to make real progress against some of these big teams and get ourselves back up towards the top of the table, but I guess we'll just need to set up correctly and make the best use of the transfer market. We are already out of the cup, so that isn't something I'll be judged on and honestly, it'll be nice to only have to worry about one competition for a little while. Playing talent...or lack thereof
As is fairly standard in China, our real talent lies in our foreign players. I wasn't expecting much from the domestic players, but I was definitely hoping for a little more than we have. These four, along with 36 year old Axel Witsel further down, constitute our foreign players and the main bulk of our talent. Katic is off to Burnley for £13m (his release) and Witsel should be off to either Qatar or Saudi Arabia. Both Nteka and William are wanted by other clubs and could conceivable leave before we start playing again. I'm not overly upset, as we have the money to replace anybody that leaves and I'll maybe be able to better spread the depth around the squad a bit, as we desperately need a good striker. I'm going to get that sorted as soon as the Katic or Witsel deal is confirmed. Outside of the foreign players, Xu Peng is arguably our best domestic player, followed by Chen Jian. Hardly making me super confident, but there doesn't seem to be many better players, even in the National Team, so I guess we'll just have to make do with what we have. I might have to spend big on domestic talent to strengthen some key areas, but I'd like to make it through at least the second half of the season without too much upheaval. That said, I have made two signings since taking over (at least confirmed for when the window opens) Wu Yulong: Recently called up to the national team as a backup to the first choice keeper, he's better than anybody I have and had a £6m minimum fee release clause, so I couldn't say no to that! Nebijan: Isn't going to set the world on fire, but he has CSL and NT experience and as a free transfer, I won't complain. Will add some decent depth to the centre of midfield. So that's it for now. Will hopefully get a bit stuck in to this save today!
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Post by Nick on Jul 12, 2020 12:54:39 GMT
That's a nice move Dale. I'm interested to see who you can bring in, especially with that kind of money. Wuhan have spent a couple of years in the second division in my save but other than that they've done alright.
Which foreign players are kicking about in China in your save?
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Post by jawzy on Jul 12, 2020 15:20:22 GMT
All this China league updates is making me wanna give it another whirl.
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Post by dalenichol on Jul 12, 2020 16:45:31 GMT
Cheers lads. It's difficult, Nick , as you know yourself, because of the foreign player restrictions. We got rid of Witsel and Katic and brought in Federico Seoane from Liverpool for £14m after Kelechi Iheanacho turned us down for Leeds. We also spent a combined £22m on Wu Long and Chen Jiayu because China.
There's not a lot of players that you'd consider stars still sticking around in China, but there are the likes of Manuel Herrera, Cengiz Under, Matthias Ginter, Harry Winks, Joao Mario and Nicolas Pepe are probably the bigger names.
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Post by chaodck on Jul 12, 2020 16:58:19 GMT
That's a decent starting setup Dale. Specially as there's a lot of money and some deadwood to sell. Good luck in bringing a few key foreigners to boost the squad.
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Post by dalenichol on Jul 14, 2020 22:20:42 GMT
Wuhan Zall FC 2025 Season Review So if you cast your memory back a bit, I took over the club in 11th place and on 16 points from 13 games. The club were in poor form but there was potential there. We managed to put some decent results together, albeit inconsistent for the most part, but we did manage to finish 7th, which is an improvement on their previous season and the mid table position made the board happy, which is all I can hope for at this point. We didn't lose to any of the teams below us, which is good, and we got some decent results against some of the bigger sides too, but we were let down by draws, particularly by that run of 4 0-0 draws in August/September. The board are nice and happy with me, which is excellent, and more than I can say for poor Savo Milosevic, who was just sacked by Guangzhou Evergrande for finishing 3rd. I'd like to think our 3-1 defeat of them in September was the catalyst for that sacking. It's going to be a short update as there's really not much to say at this point. I kind of rushed through that half season to see how we'd get on, and I talked about the transfers etc back then. I'm heading into next season with £258m in the bank and about £500k per week in spare wages and £168m transfer budget, which is just insane, but due to foreigner restrictions etc there isn't a whole lot I can do with that money. I've just got the board to agree to spending £15m upgrading the facilites and the junior coaching budget/youth recruitment, so that's nice. Basically: So yeah, next season should be interesting. I'm going to try and attack more, as we're currently playing counter attacking, which is working well against the bigger teams most of the time, but I don't think we're good at breaking down smaller teams and we're not scoring enough, as evidenced by no player scoring double figures. But it's late, I'm tired and I have no idea what my plan is...so yeah.
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