Pentagon Challenge - Season 2 (2024/25) - Part 1.

Season 2024/25 - US Biskra - Algerian League 2 West

The expected sacking never actually came.  In fact the club offered me a new 2-year contract.  So although I’d failed the “required” part of the club vision by getting relegated, I’m guessing they saw enough of an improvement to decide to stick with me.

Still, I know failure this season is not an option.  The board are not messing around with the objectives this season.

There is only one automatic promotion place in this league, so gaining automatic promotion requires us to become league champions.  2nd and 3rd place are involved in a playoff.

And if the bookies are to believed, a league win is the most likely outcome:

First came the inevitable clearout.  As you can see, we made a lot of money on player sales.  Not showing on this is a player sale for £21k which went through before the season switched over.

I also cleared a lot of the deadwood who were out of contract.

Then, we had the friendlies, which were incredibly important this season, as they’d not only allow us to get the squad cohesion up to scratch, but by mostly playing lower tier or amateur sides, we managed to get the squad used to winning and to improve player morale.

It didn’t start brilliantly, with a 1-0 loss to USM Khenchela, who had finished bottom of Ligue 1 last season with only 1 point.  We completely dominated the game, but just couldn’t score and then they hit us with a sucker punch late on.

That was the only bad result over the course of the pre-season though, and the remaining matches geared things up nicely.

September/October 2024

Things couldn’t really have started any better than they did.  We started off with an absolutely dominant 10-0 win, which I’m pretty sure is the first I’ve ever seen one of my teams get a double-digit score in a competitive fixture.  Several excellent wins followed, we were excellent going forward and extremely difficult to break down.  We win the first six league games on the bounce and also progress in the cup.

November 2024

This is where we hit the skids a little bit.  Our 7th game was against CR Témouchent, who had also gone into that game with a perfect record.

It was a game in which we were undoubtedly the better team, but their goalkeeper was on top form and we hit the woodwork three times, where as they managed to make two of their chances count to walk out 2-0 winners and their perfect record intact.

We were also incredibly unlucky in the 1-0 loss against WA Boufarik, as we absolutely dominated the game but again were facing a goalkeeper having the game of his life, as he walked away with a 9.1 rating, a player of the match award and an unlikely clean sheet, and just like that first friendly game of the season they managed to score a late winner to earn the win.  We also hit the woodwork twice.

We did manage to end November on 2 straight wins though, to keep us in the chasing pack and still in the title race.

December 2024

In terms of league games, December was back to being a perfect month.  The one worry I do have is that it’s been a little while since we’ve kept a clean sheet, but we’re very potent in terms of our attack and so that is keeping us ahead.

We did lose in the cup, as I fielded a very rotated team due to player fitness, and because the league is absolutely the priority.

At the halfway point, the league table looks like this:

CR Témouchent had been looking to be on course for a perfect record at the halfway point, but with a loss and a draw amongst their most recent 3 games, that keeps them within touching distance and now, basically if we can win all of our remaining games, we will win the league.  That is obviously easier said than done with 15 games still to go, but with how we’ve played overall, it’s definitely possible.

It was a game in which we were undoubtedly the better team, but their goalkeeper was on top form and we hit the woodwork three times, where as they managed to make two of their chances count to walk out 2-0 winners and their perfect record intact.

The club’s finances are still a mess, despite me being as careful as possible with the budgets, not even using half of my wage budget and only free transfers brought in.

The overall balance is only as good as this, because the board literally just gave a £150k cash injection.  Despite my best efforts at keeping the expenditure to a minimum, we’re still losing money hand over fist.