12 August 2016
Tembisa, South Africa

After a short interlude we return to our intrepid journey through the world of football. After joining Jomo Cosmos almost at the end of the last season, I am faced with a long slow preamble until the budgets are set and the pre-season can begin.

Initial Budgets

First piece of news is we have our initial budgets.

As things stand we have £63 free on the wage budget and £119,000 available as a transfer budget. Players leaving will give us an additional £2400 of free wages to strengthen the squad.

Seasons Expectations

The board came back with expectations of Consolidation, Mid-Table, or Top Half. The amount of money on offer was not significant to make me want to choose anything more than Consolidation. Secretly I am looking at mid table as a minimum achievement.

New Seasons Kits

For the first time on this save I have decided to make kits for my current team. Here are the 2016/17 editions of the Jomo Cosmos kits!

New Stadium

The news that we were moving into a new stadium came as a surprise. Annoyingly I will have to find the ID so I can load the graphics into the game.

Transfers Out

I was offered £155K for Jame Mahlangu. This posed a dilemma. 18 year old Mahlangu is my backup right back and a key player for the future.

Only 40% of the £155K will all be made available by the board to reinvest, and if I divide that across weekly wages for 104 weeks, this allows me to increase my wage budget by only £650 a week for two years. I will also gain back the £210 a week that I am paying him, but that still doesn’t adequately compensate me for the loss.

However on the flip side it is still good money. I rolled up the sleeves and went negotiating. The final offer agreed was £180K + £40K over 12 months.

Summer Signings

Four new names came in to bolster the squad, one defender, two midfield players and one attacker.

Thapelo Sangweni joins us from Santos and is a solid defender. He is a rotation option for us initially.

Defensive midfielder Mopea Rikhotso looks like a significant signing.  I am seeking to play a possession orientated tactic and passing accuracy is a key component. He will be a key player for us.

Eugene Ngcobo is a good technical midfielder who will be playing as an advanced play-maker out of the midfield strata.

Joseph Ralebaena provides cover across all three of the attackers in my system. His lack of stamina could be an issue however.

Friendly Results

Match fitness, tactical familiarity and morale rebuilding were the three key objectives of this pre-season. I selected a number of less strong opposition to wail upon and while it didn’t test the teams resilience it did fulfil all of it’s assigned objectives.

Aside from dropping the game against the Brisbane Roar, I am happy with the results overall.

Upcoming Fixtures

The season gets under way in this weekend. Here is my schedule for the first two months action.

Next Update

I am hoping to schedule five updates this season, although the quantity of updates will be determined by the number of games I get through each day.