European Journeyman: Season 2 in Slovakia
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Welcome back to the latest update on my Journeyman save, If you haven’t caught up yet here are the links:
After our first season at SKF Sered where we secured a midtable finish this season I wanted to push for promotion for the first time in our career, A lot of this would depend on the players the Director of Football could bring in. Armed with no transfer budget and the club in debt and the situation worsening by the day his first move was to make some money.
Record transfer sale
€8,000 comes into the club with €4,500 of it being added to our transfer budget. Armed with this war chest the DOF, went about revamping the squad. Mrva was our best performer last season so he will be a miss at centre back and will need him replaced.
Director of football’s recruitment drive
8 players have joined us this summer,5 loans, 2 free signings and one big fee of €4,100.
Kalman
Kalman was on loan to us last season for the second part of the season and the DOF saw enough to bring him back. As you can see he played 9 games for us as a Defensive midfielder with average rating 6.74 (CM rating was at his parent club). I do enjoy his dictates tempo player trait.
Prekop
Prekop joins us looking for first team football after just two appearances last season, I do enjoy a argues with officials player trait. We will probably now see a shift in the tactic to get him in the side.
Lorinoz
Just 4 appearances last season, he will be our new left back, He must be quick with the player traits. We’ve spent big so I will be hoping for a lot from him.
Bajtos
Bajtos joins us as our newest right back. A 6.80 average rating last season fills me with confidence. He will probably be the more defensive of the two full backs with Lorinoz pushing on.
Kiss
Kiss joins us from the same side as Kalman, hopefully they will form a young energetic midifield for us. With his plays one-twos trait hopefully he moves the ball up the field quick in transition.
Urblik
Urblik will come in as an option to win the centre back spot left by Mrva leaving. After only playing one game last season he is looking for first team football.
Blahut
Blahut on paper looks a steal, free signing, can play on both flanks. His traits suggest he is a quick winger able to play with both feet. Could he be our wild card signing. Last season 25 games and average rating of over 7.
Statch
Our third loan signing from Dunajska Streda is a young 17 year old striker who hasn’t played a minute of first team football yet.
Our tactic
This season, while keeping defensively solid I want to try and be compact and increase the amount of time we have the ball. Last season we would lose the ball with the more direct approach. With the 3 loan signings in the middle I’m hoping they add some quality. Preseason went well using this. We have Lorincz’s pace down the wing to utilise and with Bogi sitting inside he will have space to run into.
Job offer
Half way through the season we got a job offer after a successful interview.
Whilst only 3 points behind us I was enjoying my season with SKF Sered so I turned it down I felt we were better placed for a successful season. The only thing that concerned me was the mounting debt we have here at SKF Sered.
Winter Break
At the winter break we sit nicely placed 3 points off playoff 6 off the title. We seem to start slowly, but in Slovakia there is a shorter summer break than winter. But Since September we have been on a roll. The young players seem to be growing into the side a bit more. Feher has 9 goals already.
Winter window
Just the one player in over the winter window from the DOF as he brought in Habodasz who offers us a more experienced head in the DM slot. Averaging 7.07 in 11 appearances so far.
End of season
Final day
The final day was a crazy one, As you can see by the next two tweets.
I was concerned by their streak so I switched up the tactic and went full Pep overthinking it and lost 3-0! Luckily the other two teams lost too.
CHAMPIONS!!!
50-1 ODDS TO WIN IT!
Arise Sir Andersen!
What a season, it was one of those seasons where nobody seemed to want the title and we actually won it with the lowest ever amount of points won.
We won the title by improving massively defensively. Conceding just 27 goals, down from 41 the previous season whilst scoring the same amount of goals (42). This led to us breaking two more records.
8 defeats is the lowest in our history and 5 draws as well. This meant we improved by 11 points which was enough to secure the title.
The Squad
Goalkeepers
Surovcik kept 15 clean sheets this season, even grabbing one assist with a long ball over the top. It will be interesting to see if the DOF upgrades on him with us going up.
Defence
We had high hopes for Lorinoz, a 7.32 average rating a 4 assists in 23 games from left back doesn’t sound massive but when we only scored 42 that is nearly 10% of all goals scored he assisted. Bajtos and Harsanyi both grabbing 2 assists each means the defence equated to nearly 20% of the assists this season. Two goals doesn’t surprise me as we really struggled to utilise set pieces. Harsanyi and Hornik formered a great partnership following the loss of Mrva in the summer. The starting back 4 all averaging around 5 progressive passes per 90 was pleasing to see, as we changed to a more possession based style this season. Lorinz returned with 7.47 dribbles per 90 and 16.83 sprints per 90 showed his pace down the flank. The disappointment was Urblik, his training ratings were poor and he just never showed anything to make me want to break up the pairing with Zsolt being the back up.
Midfield
We had high hopes at the start of the season for the young 3 on loan, Kalman, Kiss and Prekop. Kiss has been a stand out normally in the Regista role, 1 goal and 6 assists in 20 games. averaging 8.61 progressive passes per 90. Kalman has been less impressive but has been rocked by an injury that saw his season end early. Habodasz and Galovic have filled in when needed in the DM slot with Habodasz performing well. Further forward Prekop returned 2 goals and 5 assists from the AM slot flanked by Bogi (3 goals 2 assist) and Sarkozi (7 goals 5 assists). Blahut was underwhelming, he just could never stay fit, But still got 2 goals and 2 assist.
Strikers
Feher who is mainly a AML ended up being our top scorer. He led the line well and played in others, luckily we also had Cserkuti-Nemeth picking up 10 goals as well. Between the two of them they scored 23 of the 42 goals. Goals will be vital next season and we probably need to look at increasing these numbers.
Looking Forward to the summer.
Priority has to be replacing the 3 loanees in the middle, two defensive midfielders and an attacking midfielder. Ideally I’d like a striker too. I’m looking forward to seeing what the DOF does. A promotion finally on this journeyman is a much needed boost. Next year is survival.
