It is season two with RB Leipzig and we need to be ticking off one of the trophies this year to get ourselves on the road for success of Glory Hunter, the only issues is we need to get past the dominant German forces of Bayern and Dortmund! If you missed season one, go catch up on it here before diving into season two.
Season Preview
This year the board are expecting is to qualify for the Champions League again, however my own personal league aim this year is to win the Bundesliga, or at the very least really push Bayern and Dortmund until the very end. For the Champions League they essentially are just wanting us to be competitive, which I am more than happy with as I don’t believe we have a strong enough squad to go into the final stages of the competition just yet. We have no expectations for the DFB-Pokal this year, but my expectation is that if we are to win one competition, the DFB-Pokal will be it.
The media predict us to finish 4th, behind Bayern, Dortmund and Hertha Berlin, which will not be happening. 3rd at the very least is what I will be expecting come the end of the season. Bayern are outright favourites for the league title again this season, and with the way they ran away with it last season I can see why.
Transfers Out
It is transfer time again, and this summer was a very busy one with big ins and outs!
A lot of players walked out ther door of RB Leipzig this season, with a few major outgoings. The first of those to kick off the window was Nordi Mukiele leaving to join mega rich Newcastle for £24.5m. I was desperate to keep hold of him as he was one of our star players last season, but unfortuantely he had a release clause in his contract (I tried to negotiate it out) which Newcastle met and off he went.
The other couple of big outgoings from the team were back-up centre back Simakan who left for Atletico Madrid for £18m and Yussuf Poulsen to Borussia Dortmund for £16m. Both of whom were not happy with their playing time so pushed for the exit door. Others to leave were all squad players who just wern’t going to feature for me this season. All of these totaling to a huge amount of £101m, adding a large amount to our spending budget!!
Transfers In
So then, we had a lot of money in our hands to spend, who did we bring in… a lot of players!
Our first summer signing was Boubacar Kamara on a free transfer from Marseille. Central midefield, and specifically a defense midfielder was an area that needed strengthing in terms of our back-up options. To bring him in on a free is a very good bit of business and certainly is a big upgrade on the players that we have. Also with the 22-year-old being able to cover at centre back he is a great option to have.
Talking of centre back, with Orban going we needed a new back-up. Welcome Dan-Axel Zagadou. The Frenchman orginally rejected speaking to us in January because he felt we didn’t meet his contract needs, but he had a change of heart in the summer and we managed to pick him up on a free from Bundesliga rivals Dortmund. A pretty typical free signing in this years Football Manager, but one that made so much sense.
With our starting right back Mukiele leaving to join Newcastle, we needed to bring in a replacement and that replacement being Vanderson from Gremio for £15m. One of my policies is to bring in young players who are already a star, but can grow into an even bigger star during my time at the club, so Vanderson fits that bill perfectly. A more than capable replacement and on very little wages in comparison to Mukiele. I am excited to see how he gets on this season.
Next up in the transfer show is Brenner. The 22-year-old Brazilian purchased from Cincinnati for £9.5m. I wanted to improve our squad depth, and up top was one of those positions. A wonderkid in this years FM who I have not tried out so this was the perfect opportunity to bring Brenner in. We have such good quality up top now that I would be terrified if I was an opposing manager!
They just keep rolling in! Our next signing was centre back William Saliba from Arsenal on loan for the season. Very much baught in to be a squad player and back up for if we get any major injuries.
With so much transfer budget at our disposal it was time to look at our squad and really see where we can make some slight upgrades which could make a huge difference in the season. The first of those two in that bracket was goalkeeper Ugurcan Cakir from Trabzonspor for £20m. Gulasci was good for us last year, but did make one or two mistakes, so if we can cut out those mistakes with our new Turkish shot stopper, then that will be £20m well spent in my eyes.
The second of those two signings was Renan Lodi from Atletico Madrid for £27m. Angelino was very good last season, but when looking at the team, that was the one other area I was happy to spend money and upgrade on. Lodi looks like the perfect upgrade and will hopefully prove money well spent at the end of the season. I just worry how Angelino may now react to being out of the team!
Back to upgrading our back-up options, we saw Klostermann leave, who was our back-up right back, so we needed to fill that void. We picked up Kevin Mbabu from VfL Wolfsburg for £8.5m. A very good back up and a great upgrade on Klostermann.
Our final signing of the window was Patrick Cutrone from Wolves for £3.2m. On deadline day we saw Yussuf Poulsen leave to join Dortmund, so he has essentially been brought in as an emergency back up for up top.
One hectic transfer window! You will be glad to read that is all the transfers from the summer. Well I say all of them, that isn’t quite correct, as we confirmed the mandatory signings of Almada and Kelleher after their loans finished.
Starting Line Up
Our starting line-up has had a few changes from the previous season, with Lodi, Vanderson and Ugurcan coming into the team. You will also see that Adeyemi is currently on the injury list, and unfortunately for us it was a long term one keeping him out for the majority of the first half of the season, so Alvarez came into the team in his place.
Bundesliga Mid-Season Update
Goals, goals goals! We have been demolishing teams left, right and centre, with our biggest win coming against SpVgg Greuther Furth, a 7-1 win away from home. Despite our goalscoring madness, we did go through a little sticky patch after being undefeated in our first five games. A three game losing streak; starting off with a 1-0 loss to title rivals Bayern, a 3-2 loss against Mainz and 2-1 loss to FC Koln, two teams who we should be beating and hopefully it doesn’t come to bite us in the bum come the end of the season.
During our mad scoring we managed to pull off a brilliant result against our other title rivals Dormund. Beating them 4-2 at home was a huge result for us, showing that we can compete with the two very best in the league this season.
Where does all that leave us half way through the season then? We sit in 2nd place behind Bayern. Again they seem to be running away with the league unfortunately. Currently 11 points above us, however we do have a game in hand. The other slightly worrying part of the table is that Dortmund are two points behind us, but they have a game in hand on us so they could jump above us into 2nd place. It seems like the league may be slightly closer this year, but at the rate it is going Bayern wiill be the Bundesliga winners again. We need to figure out a plan of stopping them!
DFB-Pokal Update
As expected, we have managed to get through the first two rounds of the DFB-Pokal, beating Bremer SV 9-1 in the first round and VfL Wolfsburg 2-0 in the second. We have been drawn against Mainz in the third round, who are one of the three teams we have lost to in the league so far, so hopefully we can exact some revenge on them in the cup and continue to progress.
Champions League Update
Like last year, when the draw concluded I was very happy with our group and was very confident in qualifying, likely in 2nd spot behind Inter Milan. However, the group didn’t go as I expected…
We demolished everyone! The goals just kept flowing in all competitions, our attackers have been on fire! The most impressive victory of the lot was a very comfortable 3-0 victory at home against Inter Milan, who I really thought would top our group.
Due to going unbeaten in the group stage we topped our group with ease, 10 points above second placed Inter Milan, the most convincing Champions League Group I have seen in a while. Time to find out who we were drawn against in the next round…
We are heading back to the San Siro in the first knockout round as we have been drawn against Inter Milan’s rivals, AC Milan. Hopefully we can take our brilliant performances against one Italian team and put another of them to bed. With the results going how they did in the group stage it has made me a lot more optimistic about how far we can go in Europe’s top competition.
Stats and Data Hub
Looking at our player stats so far this season every single player is perfoming, we don’t really have any player laging behind others with the whole of the first 11’s average rating above 7.0. It all comes from how we are demolishing teams in all aspects, the amount of chances we are creating in games is madness, we usually have at least 20 shots a match.
A player I have been super impressed with so far out of all the good perfomers is Alvarez, he has been banging them in. He came into the starting 11 due to Adeyemi picking up a long term injury and he hasn’t looked back, cementing his place in the team even when Adeyemi does return. 22 goals in 24 games is numbers you love to see.
National Team Update…
That’s right, we are a national team manager! There were quite a few sackings after the 2022 World Cup and we went in for a variety of jobs, most said no but one nation had their sensible heads on and snapped up their new manager…Me! CalvFM!
Sweden have got some top quality youngsters on their books, Isak and Kulusevski just to name a couple, so I am excited to start managing them and see how far I can take them in the Euros.
As I said at this point last season, hopefully we can continue to make progress throughout the season and bring home one trophy to tick off the list, but this time actually do that!
Thanks for reading, I hope you have enjoyed the blog! If you have enjoyed don’t forget to sign up for email notifications and follow me on Twitter at @Calv_FM
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