2015-2016 Exeter City Season Start - koszak27's Dynasty

koszak27's Dynasty Blog

2015-2016 Exeter City Season Start

Posted on July 16, 2016 at 11:53 AM.

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Exeter City started the 2015-2016 Season with high expectations from the board of owners. After we finished 14th last season, a mid table finish and reaching the round of 32 are expected from us this time.

The end of the last season saw 5 players leave the club with expired contracts:

Rasmus Ingeman, 56 OVR (RB)
Nicky Hunt, 52 OVR (RB)
Emrah Tuncel, 59 OVR (GK)
Kevin Thomson, 59 OVR (CM)
Santiago Castano, 57 OVR (GK)

With the limited funds, I had to use the transfer money to focus on youth talent rather than re-sign some of the older players that had been selected by the randomizer. Most of them were unhappy and dropping in overall anyway but if I had the money I would have at least re-signed Castano and probably Ingeman for some defensive depth.

After those players left and last season's loan players went back to their teams, Exeter was down to only 20 players on the squad with 4 players in the youth academy. All 4 players had hit the May bump so they were promoted to the team for some needed depth. By the end of the 1st transfer window, 5 youth players had been called up in this 2nd season:

Seul Chan Jung, KOR 62 OVR (RM)
Danny McGillivray, AUS 50 OVR (CF)
Samuel Hadler, ENG 55 OVR (CDM)
Liam Ognevoski, AUS 60 OVR (CDM)
Do Heon Kim, KOR 67 OVR (CM)

In addition, I decided we needed to sign our young loan player from the first year, Sebastien Romero from CD Cobreloa in Chile. In the 10 games that the CF played in last year, he had 5 goals and his 4 star skills looked like they made a difference to the players' form around him. He was a big part of the late season surge so we enquired about buying him after the loan expired. Surprisingly, CD Cobreloa came back wanting only $20,000 as a transfer fee(?). So we quickly signed him and put him into a starting striker role.

With Romero coming in and some depth on the bench, I decided one of the better ST players needed to be sold. This would help bolster the miniscule transfer budget of $325,000 and $1,500 in weekly wages that the board assigned us. McDonald was the first to receive an offer from Brentford. We asked for $530,000 and they agreed to take him off our hands. Not only did this give us some much needed cash but it also helped with one less forward wanting playing time in our 2 striker formation.

The last few moves were just to get some more back ups into the squad for cup games and in case of injuries. I found Fabien Danic, a 55 OVR French CB in the free agent list which helped the defensive depth. We also loaned in a 3rd goalie, Liam Roberts (54 OVR), from Walsall for the season.

We were now up to a much healthier 29 players in the team by the end of the 1st transfer window. I can already foresee Smalley being sold in January because he is unhappy with his playing time and will not make the starting squad without a couple injuries happening. We do have an empty youth squad at this point so our Norwegian youth scout needs to step it up. Selling McDonald has meant he can finally scout countries in Europe again after spending most of last year having to scout Asia and Australia because of our low funds.

Below is our depth chart after the 1st transfer window. The last row, LF, is actually the 2nd CB position in our 4-4-2.

Exeter City Depth Chart - 2015
	STARTER	2ND	3RD	4TH
G	Pym (59)	Bonmann (60)	Roberts (54)
RFB	Schimpelsberger (66)	Arias (60)
MLB	Duffy (63)	Won (57)
LFB	Davies (62)	Arias (60)
ROMF	Dezi (66)	Brough (56)
RDMF	Davis (61)	McEleney (60)	Smalley (59)
LDMF	Ledson (64)	Kim (67)	Ognevoski (60)
LOMF	Naumoff (59)	O'Brien (59)
RF	Romero (63)	Nichols (59)
CF	Sikorski (63)	Schoenfeld (61)
LF	Grainger (64)	Danic (55)

I will sim all games for the season except for the FA Cup games because of the great payout for winning those games. The other tournament games I will sim with the back-up squad because our focus is on a mid table finish this year.