European Journeyman – New Year New Job

Yes you’ve read that right, A new Job! “But Dan when we left you were only a few games in?”

So what’s happened is over Christmas I had that bug that’s going around and just couldn’t get a blog out, so today In this post we are going to round up the rest of the season, then see how the Director of Football revamped the side over the summer. Then show you what happened the following season.
Following on from last time we have completed our first coaching badge as we completed the National C License course.


In the final 4 games we won two and lost two which saw us finish the regular season one place outside the relegation spots, we now enter the 6 team relegation playoff where we play each team in the group twice. The board was happy enough to offer me a one year extension. I was happy to sign and decided we will reassess where we are in a year’s time with our next step in the career.

During the intake the staff highlighted 2 players they thought were elite talents. As we move into next season we will keep an eye on their performances in training and the U19s.

The relegation playoff period didn’t go well at all and on the final day we were in trouble. We needed a win and for Dalum to slip up to ensure survival.

Luckily we pulled off a win and they could only draw and the job was complete. Keep FA2000 up.

A disappointing bit of news followed as the club decided to revert to amateur status. Hopefully the DOF will be able to deal with some wheeling and dealing of non contract players to revamp the side.

Squad overview

Goalkeepers
I’d be surprised if any of these were still at the club starting the new season but when we joined Thomsen lost his job straight away to Yndeheim for 2 games before the DOF decided to upgrade by bringing Bank in on loan. Bank kept 4 clean sheets in 14 games.

Left Back

Antonsen became first choice here, he averaged 5.40 progressive passes per 90, 0.39 created chances per 90 but only one led to an assist. The other 3 never impressed when given a chance.

Centre backs
Hogh and Bache became my favoured pairing but they really struggled against pace so as the season went on Peitersen saw more gametime. Centre Back is somewhere I really hope my DOF addresses this summer.

Right back

Hassan was clear first choice here, adding 2 goals and assists. Whilst being defensive minded I do expect more from my full backs offensively.

Left Midfield
Rimmen was the star of the team and the DOF can not get him to sign a new deal. 7 goals and 10 assists marks a good season for him in a team struggling.

Centre Midfield
Jonssen and Kaiser formed the partnership here, One of the main issues we found was they lacked offensively (seems to be a theme here) 6 goals and 9 assists between them isn’t enough when Rimmen did more on his own.

Right Midfield
Clausen got the chance following Simonsen leaving and returned 3 goals and 4 assists.

Strikers
These 3 rotated all season, between themm they managed to get the returns expected of one striker 27 goals and 5 assists.

Overall we need to work over the summer. Looking at the match stats we’re creating chances but not finishing them. I’ll see what the DOF brings in but we probably need to be more aggressive next season offensively and tighten up defensively.

Summer transfer window

The DOF brought in 8 players over the summer really trying to revamp the squad, A new Goalkeeper in Samuel Andersen, Right back Martin Damsbo (signed end of last season). Left Back Christian Olsen. Centre back Patrick Bjorkli. Left midfielder  Rasmus Kristensen. Right Midfielder William Pozo-Venta Centre midfielder Thomas Liene Ness and the one I’m most excited about is Magnus Schou, our new striker. His stats show he is a goal scorer and that is what we need.

We will start the season with something like this and see how we get on.

I’m really keen to get more bodies forward this season when we attack. We switched to a 4141 in the hope of being more compact and countering as a unit

Not a great start to the season but we did shock top of the league.

As you can see we were much better after the winter break missing out on playoffs by 5 points our slow start cost us.

But we topped the relegation group so we are moving in the right direction. We finished off 14 points better than last season. Hopefully as we assess the stats we should see improvements in our returns too.

Goalkeeper
Ever present Andersen kept 8 clean sheets this season, He felt more solid in the goal than Banks last season.

Left Back
We wanted more offensively from our full backs, Goals increased from 0>2 and assists 1>2 WE DID IT!

Centre backs

The metric that impressed me the most this season was the increase in possessions won per 90 from our centre backs

Right Back
Right back we managed to get 4 assists from Damsbo

Midfielders
I’ve collected the midfielders under one header as they all rotated around the midfield 5 throughout the season. The disappointment was Pozo-Venta no mtter what role etc he hardly delivered or performed yet when he went on international duty he scored and assisted loads! Clausen stepped up and replaced Rimmens returns and we managed to increase the amount of goals and assists from the rest of the midfield aswell. Krog one of the highly rated players from the last intake broke into the first team squad as well.

Strikers
We needed a goal scorer, our DOF got one 19 goals and 5 assists from Schou this season with Jorgensen getting 8 and 2.

Following the end of the season my contract ran out and there was no new offer from the board so our time at FA2000 came to a end. We then went job searching and had a few interviews and we were offered a job.

We’re heading to Slovakia to take over SKF Sered, They’ve offered us a one year deal and the club is a professional full time standard. in the second tier. They just survived against relegation last season and the board want me to keep them up as the main objective.

Some nice new kits made by the newest member of the site Paul

As you can see the staff is threadbare but we have a DOF so he will have his work cut out.

A small squad of just 16 at the club. Jano can’t play until he is 16 aswell so we will need some recruitment from the DOF to fill out the gaps but based on what we have I’ll be starting with this tactic.

The plan is to be a fast direct counter attacking side with 7 bodies back to cause the natural low block.

This post has been long in updates but brief in information because we had a lot to cover, next time we will dive more into the save and the information. Hopefully Slovakia works out better than Denmark. Thanks for reading