Welcome Back. The first half of the season has been a good one, we are challenging for a Champions League place and have all but secured our place in the next round of the Europa League.
One issue that I have is money, or lack of. We have no transfer budget available and no spare wage budget available. This poses a bit of a problem, we have a squad of 25 players but three of those are 17 years old and another two are 18. These players shouldn’t be in our first team yet, perhaps with the exception of Ortega who at 17, is forcing himself into the first team. He is rather good though!
The finances at the club are not bad, we have a balance of £22.7 million but the board will not give me any extra funds which means no transfers to strengthen the team so we will go into the second half of the season with the squad we have and hope injuries and suspensions are kind to us.
January & February
The New Year started with a 3-0 win over Cadiz, goals from Villodres (2) and left back Cardona secured the points before we made it into round 3 of the Spanish Cup by beating Soucuellamos 5-0 with a heavily rotated side.
A massive game against Barcelona followed and we held our own until the 65th minute when Lewandowski scored the only goal of the game. We restricted them to just 4 shots on goal but we only managed 7 and couldn’t beat Ter Stegen. Just 2 days later we faced Espanyol in the Spanish Cup so we fielded a heavily rotated squad and came away with a 2-1 win to make it into round 4.
A really good performance from the team as we went to Ibrox and beat Rangers 2-1 in the Europa League thanks to goals from Villodres and Abaida and we followed that up with a 3-1 win over PSV as we qualified for the round of 16 in the Europa League.
We had to fight hard for a point against Levante as they took a 2-0 lead in the 60th minute but we showed great character to come back as Cucalon in the 62nd and then Cardona in the 82nd minute earnt us a point.
We safely navigated our way into the quarter final of the Spanish Cup as we beat Las Palmas 3-1 before we beat Girona in the quarter final 6-1. Braces from Fernandez and Torre along with goals from Enriquez and Sanchez secured our win as we will face Gijon in a two legged semi final.
The first leg, away in Gijon, couldn’t of gone any better for us as we won 4-0, goals from Trilli, Mota and two from Abaida gave us a big first leg lead. A game against struggling Atleti followed and we put in another really good performance as we comfortably beat them 3-0. We fully deserved the win as we outplayed them for a vast majority of the match.
A 79th minute winner from Fernandez gave us the 3 points against Betis as we won 3-2, a poor back pass from Cucalon allowed them to take the lead before Ramon Enrique equalised. An own goal by Juande gave them the advantage but Abaida and then Fernandez gave us the win.
After the game we had the draw for the Europa League round of 16 games and we have been handed a tough draw.
I guess at this stage of the competition, there are not many easy games so a big test against Aston Villa awaits in March.
We continued our good run of form as we beat Espanyol 3-1 thanks to goals from Fernandez, Cucalon and Torre before we put in a professional performance against Gijon in the Spanish Cup semi final second leg as we won 2-1 to make our way to the final 6-1 on aggregate where we will face Real Madrid.
Our final game in February was a decent result for us as we went away to Sevilla and picked up a point in a 0-0 draw.
We are sitting third in the league and still in the mix for a Champions League place.
March & April
Our Europa League game against Aston Villa didn’t go to plan, we lost the first leg 2-0. We were on the back foot for much of the game but had our chances but we failed to take them and have left ourselves with a mountain to climb in the second leg. We faced 6th placed Villareal next and a brilliant performance from the team saw us win 4-1 and pick up a very valuable 3 points.
Our Europa League run came to an end as despite giving it our best effort, we lost 1-0 on the night and 3-0 on aggregate. We bounced back with a good 3-0 win over Zaragoza before back to back defeats against Real Madrid and Almeria put a big dent in our quest for a Champions League place.
The end of March saw us receive our youth intake and it looks like we have some very special players who could, I hope, develop into some world class players.
April started with a brilliant 5-1 win over Las Palmas as we looked to put our poor run of form to bed and we picked up a massive 3 points in our race for a Champions League spot as we beat our closest competitor, Real Sociedad, 2-0 thanks to goals from Abaida and Fernandez which set us up nicely for our Spanish Cup final against Real Madrid.
We knew we would be up against it but this team has character and we held Madrid to a 1-1 scoreline after 90 minutes. Into extra time and both teams had chances to win it but failed to capitalize so we headed into a penalty shoot out. All the penalties had been scored until our fifth penalty taker missed to hand the trophy to Madrid. Despite the defeat, we can take a lot of confidence from the game, holding the best team in the league to a draw after 120 minutes shows we are progressing as a club.
We bounced back from our cup final heartbreak with consecutive 1-0 wins over Alaves and rivals Granada before we thumped European hopefuls Valencia 5-2 with Villodres and Fernandez both scoring twice as we rounded off April in style.
4 games remaining and we look like we will qualify for the Champions League next season.
May
We started May with a dull 1-1 draw with Pamplona, we didn’t play well and hardly created anything so I guess I can be happy with a point. If I thought we played poorly against Pamlona then the 3-2 defeat against Getafe was a disaster. We didn’t play well and their striker, Enes Unal, scored a hat trick as he caused us all sorts of problems.
Before our game with Vallecano, it was confirmed that we had indeed qualified for the Champions League for next season.
The board have given us our provisional budgets for next season and I have to say, I’m pretty underwhelmed.
The wage budget is only around £50k a week more than I have now and the transfer budget was less than I had last season. I don’t expect to be able to strengthen the squad that well, if at all, with those budgets.
A dominant performance against Rayo Vallecano ended with a 4-0 win for us and we rounded off the season with a 1-0 win away at Cadiz as we secured 4th place in La Liga.
Confirmation of our 4th placed finish and qualification for the Champions League.
I think we can say that that was a successful season, a 4th place finish in the league and beaten finalists in the Spanish Cup. All in all, I’m very happy with our season.
Now, the difficult thing this summer is how do we improve on that given we have only £9 million to spend and about £70-£80k a week in wages once the end of contract players leave? And do we look to cash in on some of our players to bolster the transfer kitty and hope we can replace them with better players?
These are questions I will attempt to answer in the next post.
Thank you for your continued support with the blog, if you’ve missed any of the story so far or are interested in anything else I’ve written, then you can check out my blog page here and follow me on X to keep up to date with the latest blog releases and ask any questions you have.
Until Next Time.
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