2017-2018 Season Start - koszak27's Dynasty

koszak27's Dynasty Blog

2017-2018 Season Start

Posted on August 12, 2016 at 11:06 AM.

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- Exeter City, England

Exeter City began the 2017-2018 season with their first ever appointment to the FL Championship. Coming off an amazing finish in League 1 where the team only lost once after February 1st, Exeter was confident they would be competitive right out of the gate. After an unusually quiet first month in the summer transfer window, the opening game would be in the Capital One Cup. A close match resulted in penalties where The Grecians would narrowly scrape by 5-4. The euphoria would end there however, as Exeter City's inaugural 4 Championship League games in August all resulted in losses.

The final game of the month was another Capital One Cup match where Exeter City managed a 2-0 win but it was not enough to overshadow the team's poor first month in the new league. By September 1st, the team was in the relegation zone already with 0 points. Exeter City's board expects the team to be competitive and stay up in the Championship this season so the team will need to quickly turn things around.

Several transfers were made in August but none were very significant. Disgruntled goalie Christy Pym would leave for Morecambe FC for $150,000. CB Richard Duffy left for Millwall after three years as a Grecian which sent $575,000 to Exeter City in return. The only transfer into the team was Damian Robak, a CB from Brighton who cost $15,000.

With Pym sold, the team was left without a single goalie. Management decided to loan in replacements for the starting position after the search for a first team quality goalie proved to be too costly. Archimede Almici (63 OVR) from Atalanta, Soon Hyung Lee (49 OVR) of Sangiu Sangmu and Jhon Nunez (54 OVR) from Envigado were the players brought in. These three may be trying out for a future spot on the first team now that they are the only goalies on the roster.

The team is starting to add depth mostly through the youth academy because the transfer budget has not been high enough to make significant changes. 4 players were called up from the academy this summer to join the senior team and fight for playing time:

Jordan Aina (ENG) - 68 OVR CAM
Mat Garner (ENG) - 58 OVR CF
Jack Vyner (ENG) - 58 OVR LB
Lorenzo Curiale (ITA) - 63 OVR RW

With the team now through the first month of the season and having taken no points, relegation back to League 1 is a real possibility. The next few months should really test the players on the roster as any changes will need to come from within now that the transfer window is closed.

Manager's Notes:
Well we couldn't have had a worse start to this first season in the Championship. I spent 2-3 hours searching for a first team quality goalie only to find that I just did not have enough money for one. The board was nice enough to ask us just to avoid relegation but they gave us a measly $650,000 budget and $2,350 in weekly wages. The weekly wages alone for a 70-72 OVR goalie are at least $15,000 and I couldn't even squeeze that out.

I put several players on the transfer list including most of the original youth academy crop like Jung and Ognevoski who were in their last year under contract. I ultimately had to loan in another starting goalie in Almici and then a couple back ups because we sold our original random starter in Pym. He was the last GK on the roster so we are left with three loaned in players for the year. I took Lee from a Korean team because he's 6'8" and 200+ lb. so I wanted to see what he looked like on the pitch (regen). Selling Duffy helped increase the budget but it was still not enough to buy a first team goalie.

We are down to 12 of the original 27 random players left on the team. The majority of the team is youth academy players at this point with a total of 14. Two of the most recent call-ups look very promising. Aina, a 68 OVR CAM, went through the May bump at the end of the last season but has good passing and shooting skills. The Italian RW, Curiale (63 OVR), has the potential to be special and immediately came out of the academy to help with the attack. If he doesn't develop he should at least sell for a good profit.

The only game I played was the 2nd Capital One Cup game where we won 2-0. The team was out of form from losing 4 straight but they seemed very cohesive and played great defense. I'll need to experiment to see where our flaws lie but I think another formation tweak and some benchings will be coming down. I'm confident that I can at least get us to finish out of the relegation zone but it is very disappointing to get such low transfer budgets all the time. Trying to supplant that budget with youth players has worked a few times but I was hoping to focus on the original players more. With my small budget it is just so much cheaper to bring in a youth player on $500/week than to pay a transfer fee and inflated wages.

This is the current squad depth chart as of the end of the summer transfer window:

Exeter City Depth Chart - 2017
	STARTER	2ND	3RD	4TH
GK	Almici (63)	Nunez (54)	Lee (49)
RB	Schimpelsberger (69)	Arias (62)
LCB	Grainger (65)	Danic (61)
RCB	Kim (72)	Won (58)
LB	Davies (65)	Robak (60)
LCM	Ledson (70)	Pfeffer (69)
RCM	Beavon (69)	Ognevoski (66)
LM	Fagundez (72)	Brough (63)
CAM	Sikorski (64)	Aina (68)
RM	Dezi (69)	Jung (62)
ST	Romero (70)	Nichols (64)