turnip

When you're down near the bottom, you don't often get many games - you could probably scrape less than 25 from the bottom of your shoe come December. Plus, not all of the State groups have the same rules, and even the Div 3 groups are of different sizes.
At the top, though, it gets very very busy. 46 games in the 1st Division, however many cup games you end up playing and Continental football runs through 'til late September (if my memory serves me). Add on top the State Championships, and you've got an awful lot of matches.

turnip

All that talk of how many games in Brazil in a season... academic, really.
Following a close season so brief that after a friendly my physio suggests giving a player a 'rest' - said player got 45 minutes - and a couple of games that suggest nothing has changed form-wise, I have a look around for further opportunities.
Crystal Palace look tempting, but their 'Rich' status is a bit disappointing.
So, bearing in mind I failed to see any of the corruption notorious in Brazil, I decide to join a real gang of crooks. It's off to Castel Di Sangro in Italy. £5k over the wage budget when I take over. Looks like fun.

turnip

Season 4
Castel di Sangro - Italian Serie C2/C
Serie C2/C: When I take over the club, CdS are lying just above the relegation playoff zone, in 13th. It takes a couple of matches, but form starts improving - for 2 possible reasons: 1) I decide to start putting players where I think they'll play best, and 2) the freebies start coming in. The patchy form isn't great, but we end the season with 4 wins on the trot to finish 6th, just outside the promotion playoffs. The board seem happy, but I'm now in the red.

All of the players brought in were triallists who impressed enough to get a contract. The pick of the bunch was probably a striker from Juventus who I spotted Sevilla were making an offer for. Not sure why he picked me - maybe he thought the Spanish 1st Division wasn't good enough.
Anyone earning more than £300 per week and not playing like a god has left - most of them flogged for a pittance. Anyone whose contract expired in June/July and didn't look likely to play was sacked straight away. Having a look around to find any other way of cutting costs, I find out I'm being paid £3500 per week.
:eek: Now where's the "Take Pay Cut" button..?

Kfoolmoon

Wage budget does not include manager and coaching staff salaries, as far as i can tell. It only shows the player salaries.

You could be paid 300k a week, and the salary total would still be the same :/

Kfoolmoon

KUTGW btw, better luck next season!

bigpants

promotion should sort you out, stick with it and lets hope you go up next season :thup:

turnip

Season 5
With money scarce, the board decided I shoulnd't have any of it to spend. Fine. Having reduced the club's wage bill, it started creeping up again with a number of quite decent freebies joining the club - including a Ukrainian under-21 International who was snatched from under the nose of PSG. A Ghanaian under-21 midfielder signed up for very reasonable wages.
Serie C Cup: We qualify from the group stage and then beat one more team before losing on away goals to Venezia. Good performances are hard to spot, and my apathy towards the competition means I certainly won't spot them.
Euro 2008: 1st: France; 2nd: Serbia & Montenegro; 3rd/4th: Bulgaria / Holland
Serie C2/C: Not all that tricky. If you ignore the playoff games, we drew more league matches than we won. Only losing five matches helped, but the defensive record was the 2nd best in the league - only the top team could better it, and they only lost one match all season. An Argentinian forward joined early in the season on a free (shortlisted during my Americano days) and although he bagged 11 goals, he played like a donkey most of the time. We only scored 37 goals during the league campaign - only five teams scored fewer. Still, petty quibbling aside, we finished 2nd after spending most of the season in 3rd, so it was probably deserved. We eased past the 'competition' in the playoffs, only conceding 1 goal in the four matches.
CASTEL DI SANGRO GET PROMOTION !!!
Lots of triallists passed through the club this season - 160 at last count - but only 10 made the cut, and even a couple of them might be offloaded soon. The pick of the bunch were probably the Ghanaian (even if he did spend most of the time injured) and the Ukrainian defender. My player of the season is the forward who signed for me instead of Sevilla: his goalscoring efforts might have been far from heroic, but being able to punt the ball up to him certainly has its uses. The fans agree.
One of my centre-backs is worth a small fortune for reasons I'm unaware of. Bearing in mind there's a Brazilian DC due to join in late June, I might try flogging him. Money doesn't look too bad at the moment, but every little helps...

Kfoolmoon

Beware of the gap between C2 and C1, it's still early in your game. KUTGW!! :thup:

turnip

Season 6
There is an amusing moment at the end of March where I look at the World Cup Qualifying groups for Europe: Liechtenstein top Group 3, ahead of Russia and Sweden; England find themselves behind Wales and Kazakhstan in Group 6; Italy are 4th in Group 8 behind Ukraine, Austria and [ahem] Cyprus; while Estonia are showing Hungary, Czech Republic and Ireland how to play real football.

The Brazilian defender generally performed well, after a shaky start to the season, and the partnership with the Ukrainian looks promising. Another Brazilian joined, midseason, on a free and looks a solid midfielder (he signed for me at Americano, too, but only a week before I quit). Up front, The Lump got a few more, ably assisted by another freebie from Milan. Kind of them.
Serie C Cup: The team fielded for every match was basically my reserves plus my first-choice strikers. They did surprisingly well, but there were still no tears spilled when they went out. Priorities. Well, priorities, added to the fact that no-one ever turns up to the matches.
Serie C1/B: No-one's going to look at our form - especially through the back-end of the season - and say we really played well. Eking out results against carp teams isn't my preferred way of doing things. But what the hell.
Long story short, we might not have played all that well, but averaging 2 points out of three ain't bad. On the last day of the season, I had to make sure I beat Montichiari to go up automatically. I took an early lead, as did 2nd place Torres. Montichiari left it late to get an equalizer. I left it even later to get the winner. As it happened, Torres left it latest of all to concede an equalizer, but the grin on my face didn't care.
CASTEL DI SANGRO GET PROMOTION !!!
Hmmm, seems like lots of people want to join the club now. Funny that.
Oh, it seems like there's this thing called the Serie C Super Cup. Apparently it runs after the league finishes. Like all the Cups I've had the dubious pleasure of competing in, though, it sucked ass. Still, gate receipts were quite nice.

turnip

Bah!!
Pre-season's taking half of forever. I might have time for one more season before I set off on a "scouting tour" of Eastern Europe in August.