A Football Manager Career

40: Burnley's Revenge

Part of me still believed that we had an incredible squad and that we didn't need any true investment to win everything in the world. However, I was at Manchester United and we had over three hundred million in the bank for me to play with. It almost seemed arrogant not to spend it – especially considering we didn't actually win the league the previous year. Furthermore, I had repeatedly had that attitude whilst at Barcelona and we all know how that worked out. So, we went into the market aggressively. 

As we didn't need any particular positions, I decided that we would work down the scout's lists of the best players in the world and see how many of them we could sign. Top of the list was Moretti at PSG. He was a twenty-three-year-old Italian central midfielder who already had thirty odd caps and had a reputation as a true maestro. A mix between Cazorla's conducting of the Arsenal midfield and Lampard's prowess at arriving late in the box to smash a goal in - apparently. I didn't think that we needed him. However, after reading what the scouts had sent me and going through a few match reports I decided that we couldn't afford for anyone else to have him. We went in with a probing bid of his value, eighty million, and it was bluntly rejected. I didn't want to waste any time as both Barcelona and City were interested so we just went straight in with his release fee and grabbed him for a hundred and forty-nine million. Next on the list was a twenty-nine-year-old striker at Chelsea, but he was a little on the old side and at Chelsea so we ignored him and instead signed an English centre back from Watford for just under fifty million before add-ons. He was around the same standard as my third choice current lad at the club, however he would help our home grown numbers and Tottenham were interested in him and I'd happily waste all of our millions for the rest of time ensuring that they could never make a decent signing again. We then also grabbed a right back from RB Leipzig for another twenty and a winger that my Brazilian scouts were convinced would become world class for another thirty despite him being just sixteen. I still didn't really think we needed anybody, and yet we had splashed out almost two hundred and fifty million without breaking into a sweat and we were 100% ready for the new season... as always.

Sadly, the season didn't start in the correct way as we had not won the title nor the FA Cup and so instead we had to start the season at Old Trafford with an ordinary league game against Arsenal. Obviously this is a big game and beating them 1-0 was a relatively good way to start the season, but I missed the Community Shield. Fortunately, though, we had a Cup in our second match with the Euro. Super Cup at the St. Jakob-Park. The game was an immediate rematch against Arsenal and, once again, whilst we had won one game we lost the other. And so once again we had to watch somebody else walk away with a trophy that should have been ours. It was a very close game however, 50/50 possession and the same shots on target, and so while it was obviously annoying, it wasn't another crushing 5-0 humiliation to dent our ambitions and we marched on.

Talking of 5-0 humiliations, in our very next home game we achieved just that against Bournemouth thanks to a Prevost brace and a Celenza hat-trick. This was his first in years and I felt incredibly proud. Admittedly two were from penalties and the third from a corner, but a striker has to keep his composure and be in the right place at the right time. The man was still slaying and I loved him as much as ever. Furthermore, we were also slaying and this was just one of a multitude of demolitions with us beating Monaco 4-0, City 4-1, West Ham 6-0, Stoke 5-0 and Fulham 4-0 all before Christmas. We were on fire and it wasn't just Prevost at the top of the scoring charts, but we also had my Brazilian Falcao in second AND Sergio Valls in third.

I could fight it no longer: we had to play with two strikers, my lads were just too good to bench and we played a 442 with a defensive midfielder and central midfielder sitting asymmetrically in the centre of the park to run things. I had continually chopped and changed systems whilst at United having feared we would be overrun in the middle of the park like we had been when I was at Arsenal. However, now I was fully settled back in the league and the club I realised that if the lads performed to their potential and I made the right calls during the games, we could play whatever system we wanted and win. Clearly we had just not been very good in my time at the Emirates – sorry guys.