Shakhtar Donetsk – Mid season review

Thought I would do a review of the season so far and some overall observations.

I have been in SM a few years now, and in and out of T100 during that period, and of course had a few clubs along the way.

Having taken over a year out from SM and T100, I have seen some changes in here.

• Certainly seems a lot of money about now and some huge amounts spent of youngsters. I will come back to our clubs financial position later.
• It now seems most managers aim for squad building rather than short term gains. As generally shown in the lack of interest in moving to other clubs when they become available. Certainly different to a few years back.
• Following on from that point there is much less activity certainly via the Whats App group.
• As with other GW’s it now seems harder to find new managers, once again we used to have a waiting list. There now appears to be a lack of new people joining SM, gold membership may be one of the reasons, but for all the work SM are putting into the changes there is less appeal for this product it seems .

As far as my team is concern I firstly like to thank David for inviting me back in, and was more than happy to take on a Division 5 team (without the pressure). Shakhtar had some success with Dan Wallace about 2 years ago, but it seems since then they have slipped back.

In summary we have bought in 18 players and sold 15. Outlay of £114m and income of just £27.2m. Our budget is now £486m. Obviously my aim now is improve our balance for the next manager to have a sound base. So will concentrate on new players and the odd bargain priced player. But also keeping some of my young assets for the future.

In general I have attempted to look at players under 27 to bring in, the exception was the experienced Azpilicuete as a short term option while his rating remains above 86. I also bought in Lopez and Nketiah (since move on) to provide some goals (hopefully) Letting Nketiah go was not easy but it allowed me to add depth to the squad with Hutchinson, Awoniyi and Kislyak coming in.

League position prediciction at start of the season was 14th and so far we have over achieved in my view and expect a drop in form over the second half of the season, but still hope for a mid table finish.

Finally having played all the clubs – not sure why Valencia are even in this division, they have already won it and would not be surprised if they reached 100 points. Of the others to impress so far I expect Olympique Marseille and Villareal to be in the mix at the end of the season.

Good luck to all the other division 5 managers for the rest of the season.