A Football Manager Career

36: Beating Troy

There was currently just one central midfielder at the club that I truly rated on first inspection and so clearly we had to invest. As for the defence there were two targets at the top of my list: Merron and Joselu. Merron was 29 and so it was imperative that we snapped him up this window whilst he snuck under the age cap restriction. Joselu was the easier buy as he had outrageously fallen down the pecking order after I had left and was actually listed for loan. After some vigorous negotiation we were able to snap him up for just twenty-four and a half million – only a couple of million more than I had signed him for before. Merron, however, was a different kettle of fish. He had made well over two hundred appearances for Barcelona since I had brought him over from United and he was firmly established as a club favourite. I was the manager that had gotten him a World Cup winner's medal however, and was the manager that had gotten him all those awards in Barcelona and that relationship thus had weight. After a number of comments in the media and a couple of low bids I knew they'd reject, he handed in an official transfer request and forced through the move. We still had to pay seventy two million to get him, but he was in his absolute prime and this was actually less than I had paid with Barcelona before to sign him. I was happy, but the job wasn't finished there as we still needed players for the engine room. There weren't really any players who I felt I had to have from past experience in this department as it hadn't really been imperative in Spain to have that physicality in the heart of the team. However, whilst I had been in talks with Barcelona over those two signings I noticed that inexplicably Sallai had listed more of my old players for sale and so I also snapped up Tiago Gama for just twenty million.

That was three players from my old club and yet I was still a little bit upset that I couldn't sign a couple more because of the age cap – you know who I'm talking about. We had spent big, but we still needed more depth in the middle and so I went on to make a further three signings: two English lads I knew from my time as manager and a listed midfielder at R. Madrid who was a perfectly solid if not spectacular option I had watched closely whilst over there. Needless to say that I also signed up the old guard of my backroom team and was reunited with many that didn't want to move over to Asia and also of course my friend Xu. I was also delighted to see that United already had one of my old friends as the assistant and so I kept him in place for some continuity. I had briefly managed Kristoffer Ajer as a player at Arsenal before selling him on, but had then also worked with him as a coach at Arsenal again a few years later after he retired. He had left me to become an assistant at Dortmund with Troy and had then followed him to United a few years later. I didn't resent him for taking that chance however and was now perfectly happy to work with him again as it made my job easier to have him already in place and he could tell me the long, long, list of things that Troy had been doing wrong.

Whilst the league had changed a hell of a lot on my first return when I had been in Asia for the first two decades of my career, things seemed to all be pretty much the same this time around. Arsenal were still competing for the top four and were happy with Quarters, Tottenham were still annoyingly kicking around and getting the odd big match random victory against sides like mine and the two Manchester sides were dominating the title race. Indeed, the Manchester dominance was so extreme and so expected that Troy had lost his job at the club despite his previous high successes and finishing fourth and winning a trophy in his final season. I was a serial winner and a club icon at clubs across two continents however – I was not worried.

The season started joyfully on the 1st August with the chance of a trophy with a Community Shield match against Chelsea. It was no contest: we smashed them 3-1 and I was even able to bring on some youth at the hour mark whilst their side looked exhausted. We continued our stroll through the park in the first league game with a 4-0 drubbing of Southampton. That was seven goals in two games and yet incredibly not a single goal was scored by our strikers or wingers: every single goal was from our defence and set-pieces with three from Merron! He was clearly thrilled to be back in Manchester and under my wing again. Our next game was a rematch against Chelsea and this time our luck failed us as the forwards once again failed to find the net and the defenders couldn't save us. We lost 1-0 and I was beginning to feel a little bit worried and feeling a little bit silly for having sold so many of our strikers. We still had three, one of which was England's number 10 in Chris Milton's incredibly old-fashioned and failing 442 system and a club legend, and yet none of them were managing to do a thing.

Indeed, it actually took until our ninth match of the season for any of them to finally get a goal! Meanwhile, Broenland had scored at least one in every game for Barcelona this season and Prevost was already in double figures at Dortmund! I was jealous as hell and had scouts watching Prevost's every movement with him well under 30 and having won a piece of my heart. However, I needed to give the lads time to prove themselves under me and to prove they deserved to stay at the club and be my man because they were all viewed highly by the fans and I couldn't come in and upset everything straight away... 

By the New Year nobody had really stepped up and become a goal machine. Luckily, though, the wide players had finally stepped up and we were smashing in the goals nonetheless. Whilst Stelois Saldaris wasn't the sort of number nine I liked to have in my sides, he was a quality deep lying forward and was excellent at bringing others into play and it was working great for the wingers he was creating opportunities for.

Was it enough for me to see him as our striker next season? Time would tell.

The New Year did make me feel a little bit sad however – just as it had the last few years. Instead of getting to start the year with the Spanish Super Cup and the fabulous seasonal cheer of a trophy, I was in Stoke on a rainy Sunday afternoon in the third round of the FA Cup. It really wasn't the same. However, it was a cup and I was beginning to think that once again I was going to need all the cup wins I could muster. Things were going well enough in the league standings with us only a point behind Chelsea in first. However, things were a little more complicated when you dived into the results. We had only lost three games, but they were also the only three games we had played against top sides: that early season loss to Chelsea, a 1-0 loss at home to Man City and a bloody 2-0 loss at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. How could we go on to win anything if we continually lost to our biggest rivals? We had also embarrassingly crashed out of the Carabao Cup against Burnley when I had sent out a team of youth players. I had won things with kids throughout my career, but clearly I wasn't about to with this bunch. At least things were going well in the Euro Cup. But then, we were clearly far too good for the competition and so anything other than winning it would be disgusting.

The second half of the season is up there as one of the best run of results I have ever had as a manager. Between the 8th November 2049 and the end of the season we didn't lose a single game. And, to the fan's utter delight, on the 8thMay with two games left of the season, we secured the title with a 2-2 draw at home against our great rivals Manchester City. Obviously it would have been great to actually beat them, but we didn't need to so why bother making the extra effort?

This early title victory meant that we could rest our big players in the last couple of games, two away games against Everton and Burnley, and have the squad fresh and raring to go for the two finals: The FA Cup against Norwich and the Euro Cup against Borussia M'gladbach. Neither games will go down as classics, but we took home the trophies with two 1-0 wins and secured a quadruple in my first season. I don't care what anyway says: The Community Shield and its equivalents counts!

We had dominated everything, and yet I couldn't help but think that we had received more than our fair share of luck and I had a bunch load of notes scrawled down with plans for further changes in the summer.