Not as Good as We Thought?
Part 22 | Yanbian FC | 延边足球俱乐部 | 연변축구 | FM23 Hardcore Mode
Signs of Weakness?
We managed to beat Tai’an Tiankuang, but it wasn’t pretty at all.
We didn’t score at all in the first half of this one. I think that’s the first time all year that we’ve been held scoreless in the first half.
I was really starting to worry until Pietro Rovaglia finally connected for one at the start of the second half.
We then had to rely on two penalties by Mr. Kwon to give us that 3-0 margin.
It seriously was not a pretty match for us, and the offensive display really has made me worried. I mean, we dominated possession, we had 27 shots to their 7, and our xG rating was above 4 — but we still couldn’t manage to actually produce meaningful shots on target.
I’m worried.
Transfer Theory
I think what is really happening here is that the league is divided into two general divisions: awful teams and mediocre teams.
We’re apparently the best of the mediocre ones.
Seriously — I refuse to believe that we are really a great team, particularly after our inability to score in this match. We’re just good at beating up on the dregs in the league, and are just a hair above being horrible to prevent us from being demolished.
I’ve got a number of new players coming in on January 1st. I’m not going to stop there, either. I’ve instructed our scouts to scour East Asia for high quality teenagers, the sort of players who make their national teams — and especially the sort of players who are consistent, who aren’t injury prone, and who have good personalities.
That shouldn’t be too hard, should it?
Now, we do need to be careful. We’ve already got more than our share of foreign players at the club. We can only have 20 registered at a time, and we can only loan out 8 foreign-based players over the age of 22 at a time. In other words, if we wind up with too many old guys from foreign countries in the squad, some of them will likely wind up sitting around unregistered for matches.
In theory, we could hope that some of our foreign players qualify for Chinese citizenship. In reality, though, it takes 1,825 days (about 6 years) for players to qualify for Chinese citizenship. In other words, that’s not an adequate short-term solution.
Even with the money we’ve got, the best plan has got to be to target young players, get them in as young as possible, and go on from there. A foreigner who comes in at age 15 could become a Chinese citizen as early as age 21, and would be home grown at club to boot for potential future Champions League registration. In contrast, a foreigner who we sign in his early 30s would likely always take up a foreign slot on our roster, would end up declining, and would have to take up one of our outgoing loan slots if we were to loan him out.
And this is why I’m not going to sign “high reputation” players. I just wish I could convince Chairman Guo. It makes perfect sense to me.
Qingdao FC
We’re back in Shandong Province again, this time to face Qingdao FC.
This is another match that we should win easily. I hope we do. I’m starting to get worried.