VfB Stuttgart – End of the Season Review

After a season and a half spell at Athletic Bilbao, I applied for the role of manager at Stuttgart – a club that was built by Mark Scott with patience and proper scouting. If it was not for poor performances on the pitch, Mark would have continued at this job. One man’s loss is another man’s gain. After taking over, I along with my coaching department understood the pressure of being a big and able squad in Div 5 and the expectations of everyone around us to finish as high as possible. So we analyzed the strengths and weaknesses, holes and surplus of the squad, and did some tweaks to the squad which could able to compete on all fronts if not win all of them

TRANSFERS

Our biggest and only transfer at the start of the season was to sell Eric Martel for 3 talents Yorbe VERTESSEN Danila PROKHIN and Pablo SOLARI from Espanyol. Big eyebrows were raised when Martel was sold even before the reviews were done but the offer (in our opinion) was too good to turn down. We signed one more player Bojan MIOVSKI from external and we took a short break till June due to personal commitments. After a 2 month slumber, we woke up and became active again in the transfer market. We initially started getting rid of players to external, who had no market value and had no future in our squad either and got some squad space to bring in new ones. We completed some active transfers with many clubs (which will be tabled below) that improved our starting XI and also helped in building our academy.

*Martel – sold and bought back again

Not THE WORLD BEATERS but on the whole, we are happy with our new signings and how our team has shaped up.

PERFORMANCES

 

Building a good team but not showing our results on the pitch is not a good way to lead a side as a manager. During our pre season, we sat down along with each and every member of the squad, understood the realities and brainstormed what was achievable and what was not. We, as a Div 5 club, still a work in progress – can’t win everything at one go. ROME WAS NOT BUILT IN A DAY. So we decided that the league and promotion is our top priority and we would fight with everything we got. Regarding Cups and Shield, we decided to give our best and go as far as possible – you know, extra revenue and extra exposure against big clubs is always helpful for our team.

We had a high flying start to the season and had won 8, drawn 2 and lost just one in first 11 matches – massive 26 points from 33 points. But then our slump started, in our next 14 games, we had only 1 win, 7 drawn, 6 losses – embarrassing 10 points from 42 points. Ending of this slump coincided with our wake-up call when we became active in transfer market and started strengthening our squad. In last phase of 13 games, we had 8 wins, 3 draws and 2 losses – decent 27 points from 39 points. Sudden turn of form in last set of games helped us finish 2nd in the league and achieve an automatic promotion which was our target from beginning. If it wasn’t for that, surely we would have gone as low as below Top 10 and history would have been repeated. Again.As far as Cup and Shield are concerned, we were eliminated in Round 2 of the Cup tournament while we went till Semis in Shield tournament knocking out some big guns on the way and we are pleased with our performances.

Overall, we may not have had an EXCELLENT season but in our standards, it is a massive achievement and we gained a promotion which was long standing dream for our fans. Celebrations and parties started all over the city and accolades arriving from all ends. Baby Steps – I’m sure we’ll perform even better next season. Congratulations from people of Stuttgart to all the Title winners.