I'm Glad I Sold You!

We dispose of Shijiazhuang.

Apr 13, 2023

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I’m Glad I Sold You!

Shijiazhuang goalkeeper Teng Shangkun, a former signing of mine, vowed in the press to make me regret getting rid of him.

At first I thought his wish would come true.

We played poorly at the start of this match. It took a great strike by Younes Delfi to finally put us on the board, about 23 minutes into things.

Delfi scored again in the 36th minute, and Abrefa finished things off in the 86th minute with his third goal.

It wasn’t a completely dominating victory, but it was good enough. Shijiazhuang managed 5 shots on goal against our 25. We won the possession battle, but only just barely, eking out a relatively miserable 51%.

I thought I’d be cute, and decided to play Rovaglia and Jeong Sang-Bin together up front, with Delfi on the left wing and Mueanta on the right. Mueanta had yet another quiet game. Jeong Sang-Bin and Rovaglia didn’t team up well together. Delfi seems to be the only one capable of scoring around here.

I don’t think this is a huge problem. Shijiazhuang are in 4th place in the league, and are actually a pretty good team. We’re not playing those weak Second Division sides anymore, after all.

Still, I wish we were dominating these matches the way we once were.

The Injury Crisis

Jeong Sang-Bin was injured in that match. That makes our sixth injury so far.

The press is playing this up as a big crisis. It actually isn’t such a big deal. Jeong Sang-Bin will be out for about 5 weeks — but, then again, we’ve only got 3 matches in October because of international matches.

I see it as a good chance for our young Chinese players to get some valuable game time. I just hope we don’t lose.

Month In Review

It’s that time of the month again.

Our finances aren’t looking so hot. We’re about 34 million RMB in the red, largely a consequence of the 180 million RMB in tax payments we had to make.

I was snooping around the other day, looking at some of the transfers in the Chinese Super League. I realized that Beijing spent almost 900 million RMB on players. They must have an unlimited bank balance to be able to afford all of those taxes. The tax is simple: 100% of whatever you paid for any player that exceeds 20 million RMB. In other words, if you buy a major star, you’ve got to pay for him twice.

Now you can see why I’m so focused on getting young players for cheap and developing them myself.

The fans, of course, aren’t on board with that transfer philosophy, and have given me a C- for my efforts. They do seem somewhat pleased with our match performance, which is kind of a surprise after that lost to Wuhan the other day.

The board is a bit more concerned about our match performance, and seems more pessimistic in general.

Now, Chairman Guo does have the financial power to get us out of this hole, but he never seems to be around when I want to talk with him. He always seems to be on some jet going to some crazy place here or there. I prefer staying home, but to each his own.

Our squad cohesion is still average. Eiran Cashin has become a highly influential player, and will likely be recognized as team leader by the time the year is over. Pak Myong-Song might join him on the top of the food chain. The fans simply adore Pak Myong-Song, even though we all know that Lee Jin-Yong is the pretty boy. I’ve got a feeling that our North Korean fullback will probably stay with this club until the end of his career.

Jinan

We’re playing in Shandong province again, this time against Jinan Xingzhou.

This is a good match to play the kids in. We should win this one easily.