2019/20 - Pre-season

I had mentioned in the previous post that the squad had issues with quality and balance and that, if possible, I'd need to do a bit of Harry Redknapp style wheeling and dealing as I had no wage budget left to play with, and a severe shortage of players in wide positions.

Well, it was more successful than I could have envisaged before I began and as you can see below, the pre-season was extremely busy in terms of transfers in and out.

My first attempts at the outs were to get the players I deemed surplus out on transfers and whilst I was able to ship some out on permanent deals (even attracting a fee of £170 for one of them!), most of them are loan deals out.

The good news from my point of view is that all but one of the players I've loaned out will actually be out of contract at the end of the season, so I'll be able to release them once the loans end so I won't find myself massively over the wage budget come the end of the season (and all of the loans are for the entire season).

In terms of bringing players in, my tactic was quite simple.  Bring players in on trial and sign the good ones.  I do also have a scout going out and about and my preferred method is usually to rely on scout reports and sign players based on what the scouts recommend.  Although I did say results aren't massively important this season, I would still prefer to get going in a positive fashion and so I did choose a bit of a shortcut in this respect to give me the best chance of achieving a good season!

The signings have clearly had an impact on how the squad quality is being perceived outside of the club as well, as our media prediction has jumped from 15th to 7th based on our squad now!

Here is how the squad looks now and it is a significant improvement.

You may also notice from the squad there's a large number of players whose names are listed in blue text, which means we have them on loan from another club.  Every single one of these loanees are from Inverness Caledonian Thistle, who we have an agreement with (and all were in the squad before my arrival).  The handy thing about this arrangement is that aside from the fact the players are generally decent for the level we're at is that none of these players cost us a penny in fees or wages.

Now, if I'm honest the squad is a fair bit larger than I'd planned, but this is offset to a degree by the fact that quite a few of the players are signed on non-contract terms, meaning they could leave or be poached by another club at any time and there's nothing I'd be able to do about it, so there is every chance the numbers could reduce over the course of the season.

Anyway, it wouldn't be pre-season without some friendly games, and we played a few.

First up was an inter-squad friendly, which given most of the reserves were the greyed out fake players didn't really tell me anything.  On top of that, I'd not signed anybody at this point.

Next up was a match where we hosted Inverness Caledonian Thistle of the Championship, which is part of the affiliate agreement.  We host the game and keep all the proceeds.  Given the relative quality of the opposition and how early we were in the squad building, a 2-0 loss wasn't a bad result, although they were all over us for most of the game and were probably unlucky to not win by a larger margin!

The remaining games were designed to get fitness and morale up by pitting us against teams lower down in the pyramid which in theory we should be able to beat.  And this turned out to be mostly true, although we didn't really turn up against Inverness Athletic - but thankfully neither did they and so played out one of the dullest games you'd ever see.

Fitness-wise, we're in a fairly good place and should be ready to get the competitive games underway!