Wheeling and Dealing

As I mentioned last time, if I wanted to survive in the Championship, then many signings needed to be made. I had already sealed a couple of bosman deals.
Matt Derbyshire - A fairly well-known striker with Premier League experience for Blackburn. Stats on 1st July: Finishing 17, First Touch 15, Pace 14.
Laszlo Bodnár - An explosive full-back from Hungary with great pace and acceleration (both 19), and OK tackling (14).

However, it was clear that if I wanted to really strengthen, I had to sell. I had one player with high value that was interesting top teams, and also had itchy feet: Sherman Cardenás. I judged that the money freed by selling him could be used not only to buy an able replacement, but also to buy a couple more useful players too. So he went to Hannover for £4.3M. Here are his stats:


I only spent £1.4M of that in the end, but that's still a fair bit more than my original season's budget. I reasoned that there was no point just spending the money for the sake of it, and my signings turned out a little cheaper than I expected.

First, his replacement, Zoran Jovanovic. His strengths are his speed and his ball control, but he can also offload the ball well: finishing 15, passing 16, long shots 17. I'd been interested in him for some time, and he moved from recently-relegated Oldham for 120k.
Kelly Youga also signed from Oldham. He can be used either at left-back, left wing-back, or left midfield. Like Bodnár, he is quick (pace 17, acc. 19), and he's also a good defender (passing 15, tackling 16, marking 17).
Vieirinha is who most of my money went on. He's a right winger (crossing 16, dribbling 18, finishing 16, passing 16, technique 18), although he lacks a little in speed (pace 13, acc 12).
I also made the loan signing of Victor Anichebe. Given his attacking stats (crossing, dribbling, finishing, first touch, heading, long shots all 16 or above), I couldn't really resist.

One more hole to be plugged in my squad: my back-up central midfielders were not strong enough at all, only performing averagely even in League One. It took me a few weeks to find a player of the right calibre, but I eventually pulled off what could turn out to by my best signing yet... Mathieu Flamini!

Since he only broke into the Arsenal team during the 2005/06 season, he's not as fantastic on FM06 as you might expect, but he's still highly-rated by my coaches. He had already left Arsenal, on a free transfer to Brighton (I tried to sign him then too). He was worth something like £1.3M. I asked Brighton how much they wanted for him, thinking that I'd have to blow the rest of my budget... they said I could have him for 275k, so I snapped him up quicker than you could say "bargain".

TRANSFER SUMMARY

Most of the sellings were just getting rid of the players who don't live up to Championship standards. This meant that out of my first team squad, only two were in the Oxford squad when I started the game, and those two are both ageing and on the fringes of the squad.

I've now almost caught up with where I actually am in the game (I'm up to the start of December now), so look out for my early-season update shortly, and my mid-season update in a few days' time.