Dressed To Kill

“I don’t have time and it’s Friday Night, been sleeping with two eyes open looking for you, for you”

Hello and welcome back to our Football Manager 24 Beta save, Sunderland Till We Die. When we last left you we had just secured promotion to the Premier League and had all but been crowned champions. So let’s see how we finished the season.

Was a good end to a remarkable season. The team had outplayed themselves all season, producing some amazing performances, and ultimately showing their class. So here is how the table looked at the end of the season.

We ran away with the league, 118 points being a new league record, along with the record number of wins and goals scored. So all in all it was a remarkable season, in which the team outperformed even my wildest dreams, and set us up for a massive season ahead.

Now I got a bit carried away with the transfer window, and didn’t realise I hadn’t updated my progress at the end of the season, so I am missing quite a lot of the usual information you would have at the end of the season. So we will jump straight into the transfer window, and see if we have strengthened the squad enough to survive the Premier League.

The first bit of good news is the board gave me a new contract.

I was never going anywhere but its always good to get a new contract and see the board values me a lot. There was also a surprising contract extension which threw all my plans into panic mode.

Thats right, Patrick Roberts realised that this was the place to be! Actually it was more no one was interested in signing him and he sort of U turned on the contract front. I don’t care though as he is a brilliant player and it means we have some well needed experience in our squad. Now the board gave us £35m to spend and a massive wage budget compared to what we had and I may have gotten carried away, we signed a few players so bare with me as there will be a few to show you.

Brandon Williams comes in for a free and I believe that is a steal for a player of his level. He can play on both sides of defence but we will use him mainly as a LB.

I mentioned in the last post that we had signed Joe Aribo for £2.2M from Southampton. He was signed as the replacement for Patrick Roberts but now will fight for that AMR place, as well as be cover for other positions in midfield.

This man showed up on a scout report for £2.9M and I snatched him up straight away. He has bags of potential and will be one of our starting CB.

Allan Campbell was signed to be our starting DMC, he just has more about him that Luke O’Nien. He did cost us £7.75m and this is where i began to be a little silly with the transfers.

Karlan Grant was signed for £7.25m as the back up striker. Now I know we are a Premier League club, and that isn’t a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, but it is a lot for a back up player.

The marquee signing of the window, Adam Wharton was signed for £17.25m from Blackburn. He is touted as a wonderkid and I am excited to have him in the squad. He will start in the middle with Jobe Bellingham and hopefully make a great partnership.

We signed the son os Paolo Maldini, Daniel. He was once touted to be a top winger and at 22 he can still make it in my eyes. We got him for free which was an actual steal. He will give Jack Clarke competition on the AML, and I am excited to play him in this squad.

Arthur Okonkwo was signed to be the back up keeper to Alex Patterson, and we will play him in the cups as well to get him game time. He has a lot of potential and to get him for free was amazing.

Our final signing was Marcel Ratnik, he showed up on our scouting reports and I had to go for him. He cost us £1.5m from Olimpija and he will be our other starting CB along with Marsa. We struggled to sell players during this window, so we had to look for bargains and I think we done well. We also struggled because of our reputation, losing out to loads of other teams for players we were after. The ones that annoyed me was players that went to Leicester and Leeds instead of us. So here is the complete list of the players we signed.

So that was the incoming transfers, £38.85m spent in total and I feel that is some good business. The problem came when I saw the wage bill and instantly panicked. I was struggling to offload the players I didn’t want and no one had came in with a good bid for any of my top players so it was time to start panicking. Here is how we got on with the outgoings.

The only deals worth talking about were Rusyn for £4.4m, Ekwah for £3.2m and Aouchiche on loan for £1.8m. Luckily all of these deals managed to allow us to adjust the wage budget and still have a little in the transfer budget to get by. Only time will tell if we had a good window or not and I am quite excited to see how we get on. Let’s see our first set of fixtures in the Premier League.

It’s not the hardest start but the period between Chelsea and Tottenham will be a massive proving ground for us. I hope we can stay clear of the relegation battle and maybe even have a cup run this season, as these players all deserve to do well, but that’s not how the Premier League works. Plus the media don’t have high hopes for us.

It is a bit of an insult to not even have us close in the relegation fight, but maybe they know something I don’t. Hopefully when we come back it hasn’t been too bad and we have proved everyone wrong. Thank you for dropping by and listening to a bearded man rambling on Football Manager.

“I’m dressed to kill and if I don’t, somebody else will. Like the glass that’s glued to your hand, baby, I’m gonna be your man”