On to the season itself and it started in great fashion, a 3-0 away win at Rubin Kazan. River fans got brought back to life fairly quickly with back defeats to Augsburg and Independiente, both narrow 1 goal defeats. The springboard to the season’s success followed though as the lads bounced back in simply great fashion..7 STRAIGHT WINS.the first 5 of them without conceding a goal as the lads roared to the top of the table. A mini wobble came after the magnificent 7 with a treble loss in the league as Alkmaar, Bordeaux and Udinese took the spoils. 1st round cup defeats in the shield and cup probably helped us focus our efforts on the league with players fully fit in the league campaign.
We recovered to take maximum points from games against West Brom & Dinamo Zagreb before Feyenoord left Argentina with 3 points. Game 17 saw our run of win/lose come to an end with our first draw of the season against Lille in an entertaining 2-2 match. We ended the 1st half of the season with back to back wins against Twente and Malaga. We finish the 1st half of the season in pole position for promotion with 37 points from 19 games, 12 wins. I’m happy with this so far!
We exited the youth cup against PSV after a 3-2 aggregate defeat, 2-2 away had set us up nicely I had thought but a disappointing 1-0 defeat left us out on our arses. The league’s reverse fixtures started in the same fashion, win against Rubin and defeat to Augsburg. Happy with the wins but the defeats kept cropping up, 7 defeats in 21 wouldn’t normally be the catalyst for a title charge but with just the 1 draw the wins were keeping us flying.
The next 11 games give us the consistency I craved, 7 wins 3 draws and just the 1 defeat. We are now flying, 8 points clear of 2nd and I’m looking at previous league winners to see what the record winning margin in division 5 is, arrogance at it’s finest(11 points by Villarreal in season 2 with a record 85 points in case you are wondering) . Then our arses started twitching, 3 successive draws closed that 8 point gap to 2nd to 3 points. 3 games left and I’ve got 2 of my 3 immediate promotion rivals to play. I’m now looking at the gap to 4th and thinking have I enough to gain promotion let alone the title which had looked nailed on 3 games ago. A 2-1 home defeat did absolutely nothing to calm the nerves, the gap stayed 3 to 2nd but 4th was now just 5 points away. A point was needed for promotion as our goal difference would see us ok.
Away to Twente whilst our rivals were all at home scared me, was this gonna be the greatest slip since Gerrard? Well we started slow and the game was still 0-0 when 8 minutes into the 2nd half Ze Luis strode on to a Diego Demme through-ball to fire us 1-0 up..aah this feels better! 15 minutes later and it was 2-0 as sub Cordoba struck a fantastic half volley to send the River fans delirious. Remember a point was enough and with 20 mins to go we are 2-0 up. Twente however were battling despite their lowly league position and sure enough they pulled a goal back on 73 when Eder flicked home a cross. However the kitchen sink failed to materialise and we saw the game out without any further scares..2-1 we were promoted!!! A quick check on our rivals and we weren’t just promoted WE WERE CHAMPIONS!!! Malaga had drew and West ham had lost, 4th place Lille won so the battle was now who was joining us, all 3 tied on 65 points. Not my concern although I would stick a full strength team out in our final game to Malaga as the integrity of the league needed to maintain. A carnival atmosphere welcomed both teams but the game itself was an anti-climax 0-0 but both sets of fans celebrated as Malaga’s point ensured they secired 2nd place as well. Happy days all round.
The season ended for us in Holland with that win against Twente, My first success in T100 and straight away I was looking to improve the squad for our Division 4 campaign. In the days following we agreed several deals which I’m delighted with, although I am sad to see Wan-Bissaka leave the club. The ins and outs are as follows, IN’s on the left OUT’s on the right
- Fabian Schar for Bittencourt and Salcedo <completed>
- Martin Dubravka for Ulreich <completed>
- Jordan Lukaku for Bruma <completed>
- Bonfim Marlos & A Jahanbakhsk for Van Aanholt <completed>
- Duarte Bernard & K Walker-Peters for Wan-Bissaka <completed>
- Francisco Montero for Ribery <completed>
- Goncalvez Ismaily for Garcia & Chust <pending due to complete this weekend>
- Callum Wilson for Llorente and Cordoba<pending due to complete 16th april>
Thanks for the read, hope I haven’t bored the life out of you, if I have tough shit ha.
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