Gazelec Football Club Ajaccio (Part 2) — The First Steps

If you haven’t read the first part of this series then you can find it here. It lays out the plans that I have for the save.

So, I’ve taken over a new club and the first thing I wanted to do was check out what I had at my disposal. As it turns out, not much. I had a squad with a couple of good players (for this level at least) but the rest were mediocre at best. To complicate matters, we had no money. There was no room to sign anyone and at this level I’m not expecting to sell anyone for anything remotely meaningful so I decided that I’d make do with what I had. The only player that did leave was a 20 year old fringe player named Ahmed Guettaf so that I could free up wages for a contract extension. 23 year old Dominique Guidi’s contract expired at the end of the 2019/20 season and there was no chance I would allow him to leave yet.

Now that I knew this was what I had to work with I set about creating a formation. I settled on a more defensive 4–2–3–1 (if it can be called that) with not only the 2 dropped deeper but also the AM being dropped into a CM role. This was mainly because I had one player that can naturally play in attacking midfield but I didn’t overly rate him. Instead I opted to give more game time to a younger player who could potentially develop a little. Because I wasn’t sure how we’d fair against better teams in the league and in the cups, I decided that I’d also go with a back up formation. A pretty simple 4–4–2 but with the CMs dropped back because my players were more comfortable there. The 4–2–3–1 was meant to attack teams whereas the 4–4–2 was designed to soak up a bit more pressure and hit on the counter if the chance arose.

So, how did it go? Well, it went quite well. A strong start and end to the season actually meant we won the league. We picked up a few injuries around the middle of the season which contributed to us picking up only 2 wins in as many months. The defence was pretty solid (top 5 in the league) but the attack is where this team really shone. David Pollet alone scored 25 goals in 31 league games which was almost half of the 58 scored as a team. The closest teams to us in terms of scoring were Lyon-Duchere and QRM who managed 47.

We also met the board’s expectations in the cups. They weren’t bothered about how I did in the Coupe de La Ligue (France’s version of the league cup) which is great because were eliminated in the 1st round by Ligue 2 side Troyes. It does mean that I will never win a Coupe de La Ligue game though as the French FA made the decision to stop the competition after this season. We managed to go a bit further in the French Cup, eventually losing on penalties in the 9th round to a Monaco side made up of youth and squad players but we dismantled a few amateur and semi-pro sides along the way.

Promotion was great, it meant we’d get a bit more money to work with and we could finally start recruiting with the plan to sell players on. But a new league meant new challenges so I started to plan. I found a few players that I liked the look of who were either lower in the French league system on amateur contracts or were at clubs around our level but with expiring contracts. Due to us haemorrhaging money, we couldn’t afford any scouts so I decided to offer trials to players and have my coaches assess them. Just as I was ready to start offering contracts to trialists I got a message.

We were in the middle of a takeover. A takeover by a tycoon. My heart sank. The whole point of this save was that I would take a small club with no money as far as I could off the back of smart recruitment and player sales. I wanted to defeat the sugar daddy funded PSG not join them.

The takeover was completed and it felt like I’d wasted my time with the save. The new budget of over £1million in Ligue 2 wasn’t what I wanted. But I decided that I’d stick it out. After all, as I’d previously mentioned, we were haemorrhaging money. By the end of the season we were over £2million in the red and we didn’t yet have any players to sell on to keep the club alive. My plan is to use the new owner as a safety net. He is there solely to keep the club alive. Sure, I’ll have a lot more money to play with in the transfer windows but I’ve set myself a new rule to help reduce that factor. Make yearly profits with transfers. The aim is to make a profit from player trading every season but at the very least break even. My hope is that this limits the impact the new owner has on my plans.

The next step is to re-evaluate the squad and see if I can afford to bring in any better players. The focus will always be to upgrade on the weakest parts of the team first but with a bit more money I might be able to upgrade on a couple average parts too. The only positions I know I definitely need right now are GK, RB and LB. The LB spot this season was filled by Fode Camara on loan from Olympiakos. He played quite well and I’d hapilly take him on loan again but I’d much prefer to own the players I’m giving considerable minutes to.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading! Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this part of the series. I don’t really know when it’ll be up but I’ll tweet about it when it is. I’ll also update this part and link to it here.