Forever the bridesmaid never the bride?

When I left you last we had just been pipped to the title by 1 point by Galatasaray after we led most of the season, calls of bottle job were heard all over Turkey!

The following season we did it again! We were leading the way coming into the final straight and unfancied Genclerbiriigi overtook us on the Home straight, the shouts of bottlejob were getting louder, then after losing the cup final after a mammoth penalty shoot out the chants were deafening!

So here we are for the 3rd season in a row leading the league coming down the Home straight with Galatasaray behind us I decided to stop and look into where I think it went wrong previously to try to avoid making the same mistakes.

Player Sales

in both windows I’ve lost big name players and maybe haven’t replaced them with the same calibre of player.

Pavelka left the first time we bottled it and we replaced him with a 21 year old Suat who wasn’t ready
The second time round we lost Minamino & Ghaibe who were both star men, Bum-Kun came in at 18 years old wasn’t no where near ready and Zahovic also came in but never hit the levels required and he moved on again 8 months later.

 Over training & over resting

In FM18 I’ve used the rest player from training option more than ever before but where is the line? Can you over rest? If we have had an 8 day break at the backend of the season I’ve given them 7 days off is that too much? Would 3 be enough and then get them back to training?

Rotation & the bleeding of youngsters

My long-term aim is to have a very Turkish identity to the team but Turkish players cost a premium so I’ll have to train my own so I have been guilty over maybe over rotating to ensure game time for some youngsters which seems to have paid off long term but did it come at a price short-term?

So what am I going to do about it this season?

Micromanagement is the key, rest days for only players who need it, Rotation for only players who need a break. Game time for the younger players will have to be if and when needed. I will try to put my strongest 11 out for every game. We are into the semi finals of the cup which is a 2 legged affair so they can have some game time there.

Also not sell any key players in the window, Bruma left because Leverseken met his release clause and he was our best player so far this season but I believe we can cope with his loss due to Cengiz Under and the emergence of Ercan Kanoglu.

You can’t win anything with kids?

We will have to if we are going to win the title, in my earlier posts I mentioned my plan to get a good scouting network in place ASAP and we are seeing the planning pay off already.

Minamino bought £1.3m sold £7.5m

Ghaibe bought £300,000 sold £4.1m

Bruma bought £2.6m sold £4m

Hizarci bought £0 (Free) sold £3m

al-oBud bought £1.9m sold £4.3m

Sinan Gumus bought £1m sold £4m

just shy of £20m profit from 6 players which in return we have used to invest in the future and the scouts have found these potential stars

we have our eyes on many more, when I joined we had 14 FGN which filled the allocation, many were loans.

In just 4 seasons we are title challengers, Rich with £30m in the bank. Everything has been upgraded bar the stadium we have the 16th biggest stadium out of the 17 in the league which has annoyed me, we regularly sell out and have the highest filled capacity at 99%. 7 leagues in the league below us have bigger stadiums! After many attempts the board have finally agreed to expand. We will go from 16th to 11th biggest and this will need to be expanded again in the future.

Silverware is next..

despite 3 and a half seasons of continued growth on and off the pitch we are still yet to life a trophy this will have to change going forward, I set myself a 5 year target so if we fail again this season then next year has to be the  year. I’ve promised a few players we will win something this season so they could get restless if we don’t.

Thank you for reading and please feel free to join my slack channel #WelcomeToKasimpasa