Season 3 is over already. Another quick one but the best so far. We were finally in the top flight, ready to play our arch nemeses, RB Leipzig. But how would the home and away fixtures go and our season as a whole? Let’s find out.
Season 3 Goals
Stay in the Bundesliga.
Try and beat RB Leipzig at least once.
Get past the first round of the DFB-Pokal.
Transfers
Spent: €575k
We were flush but I didn’t break the bank. Released youngsters were easy pickings and I got plenty. The only player I paid for was Tom Jung, who came in a day before my #1 retired from football (and became my assistant manager.)
Kägebein wanted a huge wage so I let him go, Serge Mendes didn’t work out, Diakhaby left for profit and Zeegelaar? Well, that was stupidity on my part. He had a minimum release fee clause in his contract for €1.5m. Our star striker left for a bigger club. Fair play to him. Fortunately, we had cover up front but he would be missed nonetheless.
League
The board wanted us to stay up. We did even better. For one game we were even top of the league and spent half the season in 3rd place before a bad run dropped us to 4th. It was an incredible achievement for a club with “awful facilities”, playing at other teams’ stadia. And where did Red Bull finish? 16th. Yep, they got relegated. Even funnier, Cristiano Ronaldo was the manager for most of it. But that’s not even the best part. I got tipped for the job when he was sacked and this happened:
Naturally, I turned it down otherwise this challenge would have been a waste of time. I was also offered the job at Union Berlin which I also rejected. This was the first time I’d ever been offered a manager position where I hadn’t applied for it beforehand. I wasn’t even the top German manager in terms of reputation. I must have done something right.
But what about the Leipzig derby? The first fixture was away and we stormed them 3-0 thanks to a brace from Erwan Luzi and a goal from Zeegelaar. The home game was a tighter affair, with just one goal in it but we left the victors. All that money and now they’re in the 2. Bundesliga.
The Cups
We fell at the Round of 16 stage again. We followed up a 5-0 win over Essen with a 3-1 defeat of Oldenburg before Dortmund trounced us 3-0 (which was annoying because we played them in the league 3 days later and won 1-0.)
Key Players
It was Zeegelaar again before he left for Hamburg. 16 goals in 20 games and an 8.05 average were fantastic. DMC freebie Marvin Kessel was best of the bunch, though, with an 8.07 average from 27 games, 3 goals, 4 MOTM awards and 5.6 tackles per game. Bayern’s loss was my gain. The next best player was Frank Widenmayer with 7.34, showing just how good Kessel was. Widenmayer found his feet in the centre back role, conceding only 34 goals all season (third best defence in the league.)
Next Season
Having RB a league beneath us helps our goal of becoming the bigger Leipzig club but we have this current record to overtake.
I didn’t even know they won the Bundesliga three seasons ago. Winning the league will mean knocking Bayern off their perch. We managed 0-0 and 1-1 draws against them in the league so anything’s possible I suppose.
But that’s everything. Join me next time to find out how I did in Part 4!