First Notts County Season – The Transfers

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Ready to go? Ready or not, here we go, the first transfers I made in Football Manager 2010 for my Notts County. First I have to say that I let go no less than 20 players but around 10 of them were worthless youngsters from the under 18 team. I told them to try another career, they seemed totally unprepared to play football, at any level! I hoped to get some money from selling a few players but it wasn’t to be, nobody wanted to pay a cent for them. So I decided to let them go for free, at least we won’t pay their wages anymore. As for the incoming transfers, I signed a grand total of 9 players, two of them on loan.

As I told you in the previous post I desperately needed at least one left back, there were no viable solutions in the squad for that role. I signed two of them after all, the first being Adam Eckersley, an English left back that started his career with Manchester United as a promising youngster and finally arrived in Denmark, at a small club. I bought him for 35,000 euro to give him another chance to prove his worth in England.

The other left back that I signed is experienced French player Olivier Bernard, he was out of contract after being released by Newcastle. I hope that his experience could help the team.

I also needed a backup right winger and I chose to sign a free player, Godwin Antwi. He was one of Liverpool‘s promising youngsters but they finally decided to let him go after loaning him out for a few seasons.

For the left and right winger positions I chose two Romanian players, also on free transfers. My new left winger will be former Romanian wonderkid Nicolae Mitea. He was one of the best prospects in Romanian football a few years ago, he was bought by Ajax Amsterdam in 2003 but after a good start he had a few nasty injuries that pushed him away from the first team squad. He even played a few games for the Romanian national team, I remember he scored a superb double in an away game in Macedonia a few years ago. He still is a great talent and I hope that I will manage to get the best out of him.

My choice for the right winger role was pretty much influenced by my sentimentalism, I couldn’t help it. His name is Marius Sava and he’s not young anymore. But I remember watching him play a few years ago… I watched a lot of football games and a lot of players but this guy’s talent was absolutely huge. He got a chance to play in Italy, for Genoa, but he blew it and since then he’s been traveling from one team to another. I guess he is the biggest talent that I saw going to waste. He always was a troublemaker but I hope that I will manage to motivate him, it’s the last chance for him to achieve something important in football.

I desperately needed a solid centre back and although I might have picked a cheaper solution I chose to sign Shelton Martis from West Brom for 575K. He is way better than any centre back in League Two and I hope that it will show in our results.

And now the crazy signing. I didn’t really need another striker, but when I saw that Sabrin Sburlea was interested in joining the team I decided to spend all I had left in the transfer budget to get him. I might regret this choice sooner or later but I felt that it was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. He is one of the best young prospects in Romanian football right now, a strong hard working striker with huge potential. And he can also play as a right winger. I hope that he won’t let me down.

With no money left I had to go for loan players for the central midfielder positions and I was lucky to persuade Manchester United to let Sam Hewson and Corry Evans come to Notts County for now fee and also no wage contribution!

I am still looking for free transfers to add to the squad but overall I think that we are pretty well balanced. We played 9 friendly games, I wanted to test the players and different tactical setups. The good thing is that we won all of them and my expensive striker, Sabrin Sburlea, scored 6 goals in 6 appearances!

The tactic that I’m going to use is a balanced 4-4-2 system that I’m still tweaking to get the best results. I promise to make a separate post about the tactic soon enough and also make it available to download.

That’s it for now, we’re preparing for the first “real games” of the season, the games with points and glory on the table. I have a good feeling about the squad and also about the game. From what I’ve seen in the friendly games and pre season preparations Football Manager 2010 is indeed a fabulous game!

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