retired_blondie_524

14/10/06 away to Yanbain (National 1st div.)

Zhejiang make the early running and Tomou opens the scoring after 20 minutes when he intercepts a pass, skips past the defence and drills the ball into the bottom corner. On the half hour mark Zheng Kewei, the midfielder I picked to return to the side, headed home Ma Liang's deep cross. Yanbian had perhaps the better of the second half but Zhejiang had their moments and held on for the win.
Yanbain 0-2 Zhejiang (att: 10,505)
(Tomou 22, Kewei 29)

The win was our 11th of the season and with one game to go we lie 8th. The four teams just above us are within two points of us so we might be able to move up yet.

21/10/06 home vs Henan (National 1st div.)

I spoke too soon, we finish off our program by entertaining the league champions Hernan. In a fairly even first half we had the better of the game but woeful finishing kept the first half goaless. Cui Wenyi had only just come on as a substitute when he latched onto Zhang Shuai's long pass over the defence and fired in his first ever goal. Zhjiang looked comfortable until their world fell apart in the last 10 minutes, first Luo Yi took advantage of slack defending to walk through the defence to equalize and then Wu Wei stood looking at a bouncing ball and allowed Xue Fei to dispossess him and score the winner in the 93rd minute.
Zhejiang 1-2 Henan (att: 4,293)
(Wenyi 66)

After the game I just stood in the dressing room and bawled the players out, judging by their expressions they might not have understood the words but they sure as hell got the message.
We finished the season in 8th.

retired_blondie_524

The final Chinese National 1st Div. table

<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">| Pos | Inf | Team | | Pld | Won | Drn | Lst | For | Ag | G.D. | Pts | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 1st | C | Henan | | 26 | 15 | 8 | 3 | 37 | 25 | +12 | 53 | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 2nd | P | Guangzhou | | 26 | 13 | 7 | 6 | 55 | 34 | +21 | 46 | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 3rd | | Nanjing | | 26 | 13 | 5 | 8 | 45 | 35 | +10 | 44 | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 4th | | Hunan | | 26 | 13 | 4 | 9 | 40 | 33 | +7 | 43 | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 5th | | Jiangsu | | 26 | 13 | 4 | 9 | 41 | 35 | +6 | 43 | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 6th | | Changbo | | 26 | 11 | 7 | 8 | 33 | 31 | +2 | 40 | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 7th | | Jiucheng | | 26 | 11 | 6 | 9 | 34 | 29 | +5 | 39 | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 8th | | Zhejiang | | 26 | 11 | 5 | 10 | 34 | 36 | -2 | 38 | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 9th | | Nancheng | | 26 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 35 | 34 | +1 | 33 | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 10th | | Guoli | | 26 | 9 | 4 | 13 | 35 | 41 | -6 | 31 | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 11th | | Hailifeng | | 26 | 7 | 9 | 10 | 32 | 35 | -3 | 30 | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 12th | | Chengdu | | 26 | 7 | 7 | 12 | 36 | 41 | -5 | 28 | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 13th | | Anhui | | 26 | 4 | 6 | 16 | 19 | 45 | -26 | 18 | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 14th | | Yanbian | | 26 | 4 | 5 | 17 | 22 | 44 | -22 | 17 | </pre>

retired_blondie_524

Sunday 12th November 2006
The Zhejiang squad have gone on their off season break, they are due to report back on 15th January 2007. Meanwhile I have to sit down and try to work out were I'm going to be able to trim the wage budget and still recruit the players to make a run at promotion.

Off season notes

When the transfer window opened I was able to unload Wen Guanghe to Yanbian for 10K RMB and 14 players were released from the reserves when their contracts ran out. That brought the wage bill down to 267K RMB, just 3,000 RMB below the total wage budget.

Made my first signing on Wednesday 3rd January, a 19 year old keeper Cui Kai who had been released by Super League side Liaoning Zhongyu.

retired_blondie_524

Tuesday 16th January
21 year old striker Wang Jinxu is signed for 10,000 RMB from Hailifeng of the Super League, also incoming is 22 year old defender Li Haotian from Guoli for another 10,000 RMB.

The fans are really delighted about the signing of Li Haotian, sales of shirts with his name on are flying out the door.

Balancing the books a bit is the departure of Zhang Xu to Nancheng for an initial fee of 10,000 RMB.

Thursday 18th January
The firesale goes on as Chen Licheng is shipped out to Hailifeng for 20,000 RMB and Sun Wei heads to Guoli for 90,000 RMB up front and 260K RMB over 24 months.

Saturday 27th January
Orlando has been top of my list to get rid. He earn 16,000 RMB a week and failed to show me anything in the last three games and today I finally offloaded him on a free to Hunan whose fans are already kicking off about signing him.

Zhenjiang's tour to Japan

27/01/07 at FC Hiroshima
Despite the result here it was a good performance. Cui Kai looked confident in net and Wang Jinxu showed good movement up front, the worring thing was that neither of our forwards had an attempt at goal. Shen Liuxi scored our goal with a 30 yard screamer and he had three of our four shots. A good start to the tour.
FC Hiroshima 2-1 Zheliang
(Liuxi 53)

[i]Sunday 28th January [/]
I might be in Japan with the squad but Wang Shihai is working hard back home wheeling and dealing on my behalf. Today he managed to loan out Wu Wei (I haven't forgiven him for that dreadful mistake in the final minutes of last season !) for the season to Changchun, they can pay his 7,500 RMB wages!

Flying out to join us is Bai Long, a 20 year old striker we have just signed from Jiangsu for 50,000 RMB.

30/01/07 at Tokyo Metro Feliz
We took a hell of a beating in the first half which is when Tokyo got their goals but it gave our defence a good workout. Kai was excellent in goal again and all did well to hold Tokyo out in the second half, Long came on for his debut and showed some good touches.
[b] Tokyo 2-0 Zheliang[/b

Wednesday 31st January
We've signed our second allowed foreigner, 24 year old Ghanaian central defender Anthony Baffoe. He was signed from Ghanaian side AshantiGold and will fly out to play in our last tour match. Coming with him will be 25 year old Wang Zhenxing, he was signed from Chengdu and is comfortable as a striker or winger.

2/02/07 at Fukuoka Blaze
We opened up using a 3-4-1-2 formation with Long in midfield, Liuxi as the AMC. After the Blaze got two first half goals we experimented with 4-1-3-2 which seemed to work better. Bai Long worked well in midfield and Zhenxing did well as a right winger. Despite scoring an unlucky own goal Baffoe had a solid debut, hard working, strong in the tackle and in the air. I think I might try to see if I can get the 4-1-3-2 formation to work in our domestic friendlies.
Fukuoka 2-0 Zhejiang

Only one goal and three losses on tour might look bad on paper but I learnt quite a bit about the players and a number of players had just arrived on the day of the games. I'll be looking for more in the domestic friendly games that Shihai has fixed for us later this month.

retired_jessicabraden

Good luck.. One minute Wales the next China, that is what I call a challenge

retired_blondie_524

Thanks Leo :thup:

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12/02/07 home vs Wuchen Huanghelou (pre-season friendly)

In our first domestic friendly we took on Super League side Wuchen. All week we had the coaches working on tweaking the 4-1-3-2 formation, now it's result time.
Wuchen had finished 5th in the Super League last year but they were humbled here today. They did score first after 26 minutes but it was with a decidedly offside goal, headed in by Vicente who looked several yards ahead of everyone when the cross came in. We equalised four minutes from the break when left back Fengbo overlapped before slipping it inside to the unmarked Long who cracked it into the net from 20 yards. Seconds before half time we were ahead when Tomou turned in Zhenxing's deep cross. The win was sealed on 73 minutes when Ma Liang's superb ball picked out Bai Long ghosting into the area unmarked and he earned the M.o.M. award by flicking in his second goal. Wuchen only managed six shots, two on target, all game despite having more than half the possession.
Zhejiang 3-1 Wuchen
(Long 41, 73, Tomou 45)

15/02/07 away at Nanchang August First (pre-season friendly)

We traveled to second division Nanchang to try the same formation again. It wasn't as convincing as the first win but we still looked in command throughout and would have won by more if our shooting hadn't been so wayward, only 2 out of 18 shots hit the target. Bai Long opened the scoring on the half hour mark, heading in Liuxi's corner from 18 yards out. The home side equalised halfway through the second half when we failed to defend a goalmouth scramble and Zhang Hui thumped a rocket home past a crowd of players. Substitute striker Yang Siyuan got the winner with a fine move, he crossed from wing to wing finding Jiao Fengbo who picked out M.o.M. Ma Liang ahead of him. His cross found Siyuan coming in late at the back stick and he rose above the defender to nod home.
Nanchang 1-2 Zhejiang
(Long 29, Siyuan 78)

retired_bangramb

hey mate good work may i ask how many leagues are in china? The super league and the 1st division is that them all just 2? Can you get relegated from the 1st division?

retired_hamawandi

Cracking stuff.

This is different from anything else here and great fun to read too

Wales to China eh? excellent

retired_blondie_524

Thanks everyone for your messages of support

Plumble, there appears to be a Div.2 but it's not playable

retired_blondie_524

[iFriday 23rd February [/i]
Agree a deal to ship Cui Wenyi off to Guoli in the next transfer window for 207,000 RMB (20,000 up front and the rest over 24 months) plus striker Xu Feng.

Home vs Shandong Luneng (pre-season friendly)

Our last home pre-season game pits us against last season's Super League champions who haven't finished outside the top three for the last three years.
Zhang Shuai needs a rest so hot prospect Li Haotian starts at the heart of the defence alongside Baffoe, Jinxu partners Tomou in attack.
Shandong opened the scoring after four minutes when Yaokun headed in from a corner but Zhejiang had the crowd roaring barely 10 minutes later when they hit Shandong on the break. Tomou headed down for Liuxi to crack in a vicious shot which was parried straight to Jinxu who buried the ball. Shandong almost restored the lead a few minutes later when Kai had a rush of blood and dashed out of goal but was beaten to the ball, Shandong missed the open net from a tight angle though. Jinxu had his second goal ruled out for offside four minutes from the break and the teams went in for halftime still level.
Zhejiang took the lead four minutes into the second half when Yaokun brought down Jinxu in the box, Tomou converting the penalty. Bai Long cracked one inches over minutes later as Zhejiang took control. Erkang, Liuxi, Liang and Jinxu were replaced on 58 minutes by Xiaotao, Zhenxing, Zheng and Siyuan. Wang Zhenxing almost sneaked a 30 yard free kick in on 63 minutes before Long's ball found Tomou in the area and his deft chip allowed Yang Siyuan to head home our third. Four more substitutions were made by me in the 73rd minute. An error by substitute keeper Tian Ye allowed Shandong to pull one back with ten minutes left but we hung for a magnificent victory.
Zhejiang 3-2 Shandong (att: 7,049)
(Jinxu 12, Tomou 49 pen, Siyuan 64)

In the dressing room I told the players it was a fantastic result, they have really adapted to the 4-1-3-2 formation and if they continue as they are, a place in the Super League beckons.