Pub Team to Manager’s Dream Part 22 – More Transfers and Season 3 Expectations

The board have informed us of what is expected of us for this season and once again they aren’t giving us an easy ride, which is fine, we have big ambitions anyway. But it also means that they give us no room for slip ups either…The most obvious thing to note is that there is another cup this season on top of the two that we had last season. Just on that point the prize money for winning the Malins Challenge Cup is £33.75k which is much more than the prize moneys from the other cups put together, so this may be an important one to prioritise.  More cups and therefore fixtures doesn’t seem like a bad thing to me as there are plenty of gaps in the season so these gaps being filled by cup matches will make it easier for the team to stay fit and also aid finances through ticket sales and match day intake as I’ve gone deeper into a previous post. Anyway, the long and short of it is that once again the board want us to win everything!

Transfers:

Although you didn’t have to be a clairvoyant to see it coming, as I predicted last time our players have been receiving contract offers left, right and centre. And of course, that has resulted in a number of players leaving the club for pastures new so this is the post that will probably be an annual feature until we attain some sort of professional status for the club.

So here’s this years transfer update as of the beginning of January (The results from this first half of the season will follow in the next post)Last time I went over the transfers that had gone through before the start of the season which was up to the transfer of Goalkeeper James Bransgrove to Hadleigh.

Since then we have lost even more players including many important players that I am going to describe further now.

Starting from the back, Tom Parkinson and Lamce Shehaj were our best centre backs and then Harry Seal and Tom Parkinson were good back up central defenders, so once again we have been slightly destroyed defensively.

In midfield, we only lost one key centre midfielder in Lewis Morgan but again we also lost a good backup midfielder in Karnell Chambers. Jack Barham leaving to Crawley Down, a very nearby team, was another blow to the winger position, more specifically the right wing.

Up front, the only noticeable further loss in attack is Jordan Nuttell, who if you remember was also natural at playing in centre defence, so he is a big loss to the team, especially considering also that he scored 14 goals in 15 games for us last season and was on 10 goals in 12 games so far this season.

So to repopulate the team I had to get busy on the free agents market… again. This time around bringing in young players was tough and so most of the players brought in since last time are in their mid to late twenties. But they are all decent players, perfectly adequate for this level. Bradley Confrey, 20, comes in as a backup centre and right defender and the only young player I’ve manager to bring in since last time. Osa Obamwonyi, 26, Luke Wheatley, 26, and Liam Daly, 30, all come in at centre back to fill the huge gap in the squad for this position. And finally Ieuan Lewis, 30, is a welsh winger who will play mainly on the right for us.

Hopefully the forced mid season rebuilding affects us similarly to last season in that it makes almost no difference and the team continues to perform, but we will see, so I hope you join me in future for that…