Football Manager

[Lanteri]

England beat Argentina 1-0 to win the 2014 World Cup. Ashley Cole, of all people, had the goal in the finals, his first, and only.

Capello retired after the victory. I've applied for the vacancy, and have been named the manager of England.

[Lanteri]

Andreas Lindergaard owns my team's soul. Every time we play Man U he turns in ridiculous performances, the latest keeping a clean sheet against us at St. James picking up Man of the Match honors, and an 8.3 rating. We battled Man U all game and lost 1-0. Had 9 saves.

Ughhhh.

[Lanteri]

Balotelli is really shitting the bed this campaign. 1 goal in 13 games. He's attempted 43 shots, and has put just 14 of them on target, and it's been 611 minutes since his last goal. Gameiro has 6 in 12 games, but hasn't scored in the Premiership in 7 games.

Not surprisingly given those 2 guys sucking balls, we've slipped all the way to the 13th in the table 12 games in with 5 wins, 1 draw, and 6 losses, despite a 22 to 16 goal differential.

[Lanteri]

lol

[Lanteri]

Ughhhhhhhhhhh.

A 2-2 draw away to Blackburn on the final day of the season cost us a spot in the Champions Leauge. We were 4th in the table heading into the game with 68 points. The draw dropped us to 6th with 69 points, and both Manchester City and Tottenham leapfrogged us with wins in their final matches. We'll have to settle for the Europa League with the 6th place finish.

[calgaryballer]

Inspired by Lanteri, figured it was time to start my yearly NUFC game. Nothing else had caught my eye. Only a game in to the season (0-0 home draw vs Sunderland, probs should have won).

Three signings so far -
Bryan Luiz (AML) £12.25 mil (backloaded)
Jo (ST) £4.0 mil
Fausto Pinto (DL) £1.9 mil

I tried to get Papiss Cisse from Freiburg, and they accepted my offer, but he decided playing first team football for Freiburg was more important.

Running a 4-3-3 with Krul in net. Williamson/Colo are the CBs. Ryan Taylor is the RB (really want an upgrade), Enrique on the left with Pinto backing him up.

Tiote is holding mid, Nolan is a B2B/auto CM, Ireland in an advanced playmaker attack role. Ruiz on the left, Ben Arfa on the right and Jo down the middle.

Still have £9.5 mil of the £20 mil they gave me to avoid relegation. That shouldn't be a problem. Another CB, plus an RB are the two primary objectives

[Lanteri]

One thing I didn't mention was, after this upcoming season, I'll be losing Balotelli outright. His wages are too high for anyone to make an offer, and his contract expires in one year, and they won't let me match his wage demands, so I'm kind of screwed in that regard.

[Fappin Raptor]

My new Everton save didn't start out so well. First three games we lost to Liverpool 1-0, Newcastle 1-0, and West Brom 2-0. After that I decided to change up my tactics and have since won 6 straight, one of them being a road win against Man City.

[Fappin Raptor]

Awesome, I was able to capture Romelu Lukaku. He won't be able to join us until January but it'll be a big upgrade at striker. We've scored 13 goals in the EPL and only 1 of them comes from a striker.

[Lanteri]

Oh and Newcastle fans, or well at least Archer I suppose, will be happy to know that I've brought Shay Given back to the club in the capacity of goalkeeping coach.

Starting XI for the 2015-2016 campaign:

GK: Benaglio
LB: Baines
CB: Jones
CB: Howedes
RB: Coleman
DMC/AMC: Roger/Kaka
CM: Yaya Toure (signed on a free, still very good despite being 32. Hasn't lost his pace, still at 16 for pace, 16 for stamina, great B2B)
CM: Jack Cork (signed for £6.25m from Villreal)
AML: Iker Muniain (Signed for 1/2 my transfer budget as my replacement for Balotelli for £20m from Athletic)
AMR: Adam Johnson
ST: Nicklas Bendtner

Subs: Matt Gilks, Mario Balotelli, Lorik Cana, Milen Kikarin, Steven Taylor, Kevin Gameiro, Sergio Oliveira
Unused: Silvestre Varela, Oguchi Onyewu, Kevin McDonald, Scott Parker

I'm using two formations, the AMC one mainly for home matches, and matches where we're heavy favorites, the DMC one for away matches, or underdogs.

[Lanteri]

Got a fairly comfortable looking group draw as a 3 seed in the Europa League:

Zenit
Malaga
Newcastle
Apollon Limassol

[Lanteri]

Group Draw for the European Championships with England:

England
Holland
Russia
Poland

[Lanteri]

Knockout Round draws in the Europa League:

Newcastle vs. Lille against Chelsea vs. FC Gronigen

[Lanteri]

In 7th place in the table at the January window. 9 wins, 7 draws, 4 losses, 39-23 G.D.

Muniain is leading the team in goals with 12 in 15 games. Balotelli has 5, 4 each for Toure and Johnson. Bendtner only has 3, but has 7 assists and a 6.98 avg rating.

Not making any moves in the January window as I only have 1.5m in transfer funds.

[calgaryballer]

Summary of my transfers as the window closed

Jo £4.4 mil from Man City
Bryan Ruiz £12.25 mil from FC Twente
Fausto Pinto £1.9 mil from Cruz Azul
Eren Derdiyok £8.5 mil from Leverkusen
Nicola Nkloulou £7.5 mil from AS Monaco

Players Out
Nile Ranger £6.25 mil to Man City - Ranger's attributes in this game are just not very good. And I can probably buy him back in 2 years for 500k after City let him rot on the bench. It did suck to sell him, because I love the guy