Season 3 - Let the building commence

So Season 3 is now underway following a quiet off-season at the Pearl
Stadium. Those who have followed this blog from the start will know
that my strategy was always to spend in the first two seasons in
pursuit of a relatively high league position and then to start the
investment processes designed to secure long term stability and
success and leave me with a good amount of cash just as other teams
run in to financial problems with escalating wages etc.

And so that's what I'm doing! The off-season saw 5 players leave and 3
come in. Of the 3 who arrived only one (a Saudi Arabian LB nabbed in a
wage auction) will start - the other two are backup strikers; a
position in which I have two high quality players but previously had
little cover. I hope this squad should now be pretty much set for 2
seasons - the only real question mark being whether I get an offer I
can't refuse for Israel Santos, my 20y/o star of a Spanish striker
(think the next Torres!).

In the meantime the cash I'm not spending on transfer fees and wages
is going on building work. A new stand with nice seats and corp boxes
behind one goal and extra blocks of cheap seats in one of my other
stands are my first round of stadium work (realistically it's going to
be 5 seasons before I get to redeveloping the 4th stand so this seems
like a worthwhile investment). By the time this is finished the
stadium will be big enough for a Level 10 team (I'm currently L8).

Following the broadly encouraging (or at least not as dispiriting as I
feared!) findings of my youth academy research (see previous post) I
have also started work on 2 new small youth academies in countries
that look like reasonable investments.

Given the lack of on-pitch investment I'm trying not to set my league
expectations too high. I think the Premiership may be a bit tough but
I'm hoping that Championship level football next season is a
reasonable aim. Hard to know what would give me enough rep for that,
but I'd certainly be optimistic that top 10 (of 18) in this year's
qualifying league will do the trick. So far one win and two defeats,
but it's still early days.