Chapter 4: Des Champions

If you haven’t read my last article, make sure you go do that, because it will allow you to get back up to date and make sure you know what our crazy journey started like.

The French Revolution: How To Handle Finances Using Soccernomics – Part One

This will give you insight on how to structurally look after whatever team you decided to take over in football manager from the start and how this can lead to success on the pitch, for the fans and the players. I also talk about why I’ve chosen Monaco in the French league.

The League After 38 Games

We did it! I really don’t know how, if you remember in part one, I quote myself “PSG will get 100 points” and I was right, they went invincible, although for once the giants couldn’t win because we managed to win on the last day due to having more wins, we smashed the league this year. Imagine going invincible and still not winning the league, you’d be absolutely fuming, but it makes Monaco winning the league even more sweeter.

One of the main reasons to winning the league was because we weren’t in the Champions League and because of that we didn’t have to play two games each week whereas PSG did, I’d say this is were they suffered, however they still went invincible!

In the two cups, we didn’t do to well, we finished in the 4th and 11th round of the cups, meaning we didn’t even get to the quarter-finals, however this isn’t a bad thing because I’d have much preferred to winning the league than a tinpot French cup.

Reflecting on the bad

Our two loses of the season came to Bordeaux and PSG away and because of that I can’t even be mad, we managed to go to teams like OL and OM and somehow win, even I think we’ve massively overachieved, however this isn’t something to dwell on and instead its something we can start to build on.

I like to analysis my loses to see where the problems are coming from, so that I can get the efficient players in, so that hopefully next season we don’t have the same problem which is obviously key as we want to improve.

Bordeaux: 

3-1(A) Lose

We scored in the 9th minute through Balde Keita, which is great, however Bastos, one of our signings decided to give away a penalty, the next was at the 88th minute which is obviously a massive kick in the balls and we must have switched off late in the game because they then later got the 3rd in the 90th minute, we dominated the game overall so clearly we’ve not taken our chances and they’ve snatched the win from a tired team late on. Well played Bordeaux.

PSG: 

3-1(A) Lose

PSG just smashed us as expected, however in soccernomics it is believed that PSG should completely smash us especially having the “advantage of the 12th man” – I say this because everyone knows for a fact that it is easier to win at Home rather than away because usually you have the help of the fans cheering you on and then booing the opposition which psychologically can do a hell of a lot to a team.

Celebrating the Good:

So amazingly with only two loses and three draws, that leaves us with thirty three wins and for me that is incredible, it is defiantly up there as one of my personal highest wins in a season with a team of Monaco’s calibre.

Stand out players were:

• Jorge (LB) – Went from £2.3M p/y to £3.6M // 42 appearances 6 goals 9 assists
• Golovin (CM) – Went from £1.65M p/y to £2.7M // 37 appearances 10 goals 10 assists
• Balde (LW) – Went from £1.23M p/y to £3.6M // 41 appearances 23 goals 4 assists
• Henrichs (RB) – Went from £2.02M p/y to £4.0M // 34 appearances 0 goals 12 assists
• Yedder (ST/RW) – Went from £2.5M p/y to £5.7M // 41 appearances 12 goals 5 assists
• Pellegri (ST) – Went from £0.67M p/y to £2.05M // 32 appearances 10 goals 0 assists

My player of the season has to go to Pellegri, it was his debut season, we won the league and he played ST for thirty two games and managed to grab himself ten goals, nothing phenomenal, however we won the league with him in the team.

I fully believe that if I didn’t give these players, that I see as Star/Important first team players, new contracts and extra cash to splash that we would have finished in the UCL but nowhere near the title with 102 points and 33 wins, that was something pretty phenomenal.

We have a lot to be happy about and obviously we’ve achieved something truly special, however we’re not going to stop here, time to build for the future and we have no time to waste.

We managed to receive a shocking £16.74M for achieving 1st place in the Ligue 1, that is disgustingly bad, this just further states that this league doesn’t have the money to compete and give the other teams a chance to compete, its only because we’ve had a takeover and still got a lot of the Mbappe money that we can still try and build something.

We achieved more from one of our signings that we can probably sell now for more and this is the key in Football manager finding players consistently on the cheap and getting them out for a lot more than you sold them for.

Meet the ex PSG legend Thilo Kehrer: – He’s a legend because he left them and came to us to help us win the league, much appreciated Thilo!

We picked him up on a transfer cheap of £3.93M and we’ve managed to get his price all of the way up to £25.5M meaning we can now sell this guys for a profit of £21.57M+ this is literally more than what Ligue 1 officials are giving us for finishing first in the league.

This is happened on multiple signings that we’ve brought to Monaco, Thilo Kehrer is just the biggest, but the difference in calibre of player we’re going to be able to get now because Thilo Kehrer cost £3.93M, imagine who we could get for £25.5M and sell on for hopefully £100M+ in the future.

Another example is Soualiho Meite from Torino, we signed this playmker for about 12.75M, his value is now at £32.5M and this is obviously amazing because its roughly another 20M profit from one of our signings.

In addition to Meite and Kehrer, we managed to get Bastos for £11.0M and now his value is of £26.0M meaning we’ve made a massive £15M profit from him.

Finally, we managed to sign Pacheco from Real Madrid for £4.4M, he is now worth £17.5M and Luiz Araujo for £6.25M and now he is valued at £15M.

The total profit made from our signings are roughly at about £123.75M, now that is “Soccernomics” for you, we’ve made a profit of £123.75M, considering we started with only £125 Million in the bank, that means we’ve managed to make double our assets which is incredible, however there is some bad news.

Chapter 5: Money is a tool. Used properly it makes something beautiful; used wrong, it makes a mess! 

This is where the bad news comes from, we’re going to either have to sell most of our players to try and get better ones with more potential or we’re going to have to bring down our wage budget and get players on a slightly less wage.

This is because we managed to lose -£46M this is not very good, however there a few positives and that being that we have 0 transfer debt and no loans meaning we have no liabilities building up, which is always good to try and develop a football club. However what we do over the next year could indicate whether or not we push on for UCL glory or end up finishing near 17th again and possibly facing the scary sack race.

We made a turnover of £63M+ which means that we made most of our money from players sold, although this is sort of good, its also sort of bad because we’re relying on the ability of the manager to be able to sell the players for 1. a good price, 2. consistency because otherwise if we don’t sell some of our players we’re going to end up losing £100M and that will crush Monaco into the grounds because they already don’t earn enough as a football club.

Income:

As you can see the TV revenue is pretty bleak and therefore we need to try and improve both the TV revenue and the Prize Money, this will however increase as we are now in the champions league, which should give us a lot more money.

Expenditure:

These are some interesting expenditures and we’re going to have to try and decrease these especially player wages if we want to have a chance of actually staying as Ligue 1 club next season.

This is the difference I believe between a good and bad football manager player, a good one will get the odd good season because they managed to get all of the correct pieces together but quite commonly the next season they will finish 8th with Manchester City, Real Madrid, Manchester United or Bayern Munich and they’ll sit there confused and dazzled because they have a mega squad that they paid millions for and its because you’re not controlling your finances correctly, its nothing to do with the tactics, the game is largely a database and therefore if your finances are sorted and you know where your money is, you’ll excel on the pitch.

The way I see it is as well was pay loads for the extra wages per year and try and correlate a better finish in the league instead of spending it on players and potentially finishing outside of the top 3 (UCL Spot).

I was looking at the big picture, I know for a fact that using “Soccernomics” and that “Wage expenditure correlates league position a lot of the time, that we would definitely finish top 2, I was just so surprised that we managed to win the league how we did.

Now we’re in the Champions League and we’ve already made £123.75M from our profit from players we signed earlier on, this is how I see the finances compared to the average football manager person.

123.75M from player profit and 57.35M in Overall Balance. We’re now going to receive Champions League money consistently every month which can help us pay our monthly wage bill off.

Champions league and how the money splits: 

• Winners receive £19M and Runners up get about £15M.
•   Every Club that manages to Qualify for group stage gets 15.25M therefore we already have £15.25M extra. A group stage draw gets us £800k and a win gets us £2.7M, therefore we need roughly 4 wins in a tough group to get through realistically, therefore 4 x 2.7m is = £10.8M and therefore thats another £10.8M = total of £26M already roughly.
• We then receive £9.5M from the last 16 
• We then receive £10.5M from the Quarter-Finalist Stage
• We then receive £12M from semi finals.

If a team won every game in the 2019-20 Champions League from the group stage on (10 games, not including qualifying rounds), they would stand to earn a total of €82.45 million (£74m/$98m).

Therefore in our actual overall balance we should receive somewhere between £75M – £100M, which puts our finances up-to £281.1M which means as long as I get Monaco consistently in the champions league we have a good chance of really catching up the Paris Saint Germain (PSG).

“The gross commercial revenue from the 2019/20 UEFA Champions League, the 2019/20 UEFA Europa League and the 2019 UEFA Super Cup is estimated at around €3.25bn.”

Its so important to get a team into the champions league consistently if you want to be able to 

1. bring players to you 
2. pay bigger wages 

2. is obviously more important because we feel that wage correlates to league position, so surely this should affect the champions league on its own as well. Well yes and no, but we’ll get into that another day.

2020/2021 Season we’ll have £281M – £164M to play with wages, which is about £54M, therefore we can get another few players with wages up to £54M p/y.

If you don’t understand why I speak about the importance of being able to spend money on wages, it must be, because you haven’t seen the last article, don’t forget to go read that, if you already haven’t.

The French Revolution: How To Handle Finances Using Soccernomics – Part One

Chapter 6: Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance : The 5 P’s

Loans: 

Just a quick and short one, we’ve had a lot of players come back from loans and a lot of them actually have a lot of talent and therefore we’re going to keep some of them and then we’re going to get rid of some for a fee and also try and save our wages, no wonder our wages are higher than I thought they were!

Out

Due to a lot of the players coming back from loan and not one of them was needed, we managed to get rid of a lot of wages and create £182M, we sold Balde for £30M which I believe is good because hes not that good and probably highest we could have got. Golovin to Real Madrid is a great one for £60M, we need to ensure that we recruit well now, I have signed a new chief scout with a big wage so hopefully he performs up to his wage. Otherwise he will be facing the sack.

The one signing I didn’t want to get rid of was Ben Yedder, I love the way Benny is, but he’s approaching 30 years old in my save and he scored 12 goals and got 5 assists from RW which I feel can be bettered so £17.5M why we still can.

Ins

I’m a little disappointed in the transfer window, really happy with the outs but I don’t feel the ins are going to be able to secure another league title and I don’t think it gathers themselves to a good Champions League spot, which is worrying.

Grealish was a great signing as well as Belotti, but everyone else was a bit of a risk for the price, so fingers crossed it all pays off using the analytics and soccernomics that we use to analysis the positions that I felt needed adequate replacements.

Although I would say £176M is a bit much for some of the players I’ve brought in, however I’ve compared each player to each other player and they’re all improvements on paper.

We’ve also however only spent a net spend of -£4M, meaning despite buying some big names for big prices, we’ve still managed to make money.

Start of the season

That’s two trophies in the bag which is nice, however its not the UCL, so we need to push on for that.

In my other article I mentioned my goals and aims as Monaco, lets go through them again to ensure we’re hitting them correctly come start of season 2.

Season 1 Aims and Goals

1. Win the Champions League before PSG
2. Increase the Stature of the French League
3. Stop Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) from letting it be a one horse race
4. Sign French, African and South American Players
5. Demonstrate how we can use Finances to make any team in Football Manager the best team in the world

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1. Liverpool won the Champions League last year so we’re okay, meaning they won 2019/2020 season, we also weren’t in UCL last year so we couldn’t do it.
2. The stature has certainly gone up as players such as Grealish and Belotti have recognised that Monaco isn’t that bad after all, not surprised with all of the money we have over here.
3. WE DID IT! We stopped the one horse race, last year we won the league title and managed to stop the race, we made it competitive, which one of our goals therefore I’ll be removing this and saying completed already, great start.
4. We haven’t signed many African players, although we’ve signed a few South American players and also gave ones at the club new contracts, we need to ensure that we improve on trying to sign some young African players, we’re trying to find the next Mahrez, Mane or Salah, that’d be nice, wouldn’t complain about PSG then.
5. I feel like I’ve done that, we’ve managed to triple nearly our finances from the first year and win the league with only limited finance stopping aim (3) the one horse race.

Therefore we only have 2 Aims now and then our job here is done 

• Sign African Players
• Win UCL before PSG

These will be our aims for the rest of the season, not too difficult, wink wink.

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First Ten Games Of The Season 

In the first ten games, we’ve managed to get to the top only drawing one game and winning nine, which is good, especially because PSG have dropped 4 points already, compared to last season when they had the full 10/10 wins. There is hope that we can do this again, I fully believe we’ve got a good chance again.

We’ve had probably a harder group and yet the table isn’t how I expected it, we’ve managed to get the top spot with only 5 points after a 2-0 away win against Barcelona and then two poor home draws to Napoli and Club Brugge, however it seems Napoli and Barcelona are doing worse than us and because of that, Monaco and Brugge take the 1st and 2nd spot which is brilliant. Good Luck Brugge.

Chapter 7: “This is football heritage” – Jose Mourinho 

If you’ve never seen the clip of ex Manchester United coach going on about football heritage after being dumped out of the Champions League by Sevilla in the knockout round of 16, you can watch it here, I recommend it, its interesting and gives further insight into how you can look at signing footballers.

Football Heritage

Okay so basically football heritage is when a team finishes consistently on average in the same position or there about, so the example Mourinho used was that Manchester United haven’t made it past the Quarter Finals since Sir Alex Ferguson left the club and they’ve only managed to get there once.

Therefore Mourinho is implying that instead of sacking him or making out like its a catastrophe, he’s saying give him time and he might be able to fix it because sometimes the players you have just aren’t good enough or sometimes just aren’t experienced enough to get themselves to that next stage and because of that change needs to come.

But as expected Mourinho got the sack because Manchester United don’t allow time for any coach really, apart from Ole Gunnar right now but that’s only because they’ve realised that spending millions won’t get them anywhere.

So, if we take the concepts of football heritage from Manchester United, can we implement it into football manager?

Yes we can, not enough people do this, instead of just buying wonderkids or looking at stats and analysis, nobody actually looks at the experience that the player might have in certain stages of the competition or how many league titles that player might have, that can sometimes make a player in football manager a lot better than a great wonderkid.

Have you ever noticed that there is a ton of wonderkids in football manager? It’s because they can make loads, some of them will go on to win early in their careers and others will not, they’ll all get picked up most of the time by some big club, however I’m saying instead of just splashing the release clause out constantly and hoping for success, go into their profile and look at their history and have a look to see if they’ve won anything, because sometimes experience can be more important than anything.

When I signed my players, I didn’t bother doing this and realistically, I’ve signed no good players with real good experience in later competitions of cup runs and title races and that could come back to bite me in the arse because the team I won the league with, some of them probably had a lot better experience than the ones I’ve got now.

Remember its only a concept, I see a lot of people get success doing various things in football manager, but next time you go to sign a player, maybe look at their history and that might be the key to the decision.

I’m going to use the concept in my next transfer window as I believe it can help me getting the consistency I need for Champions League success.

Key Moment of the season: 

Funnily enough, one of the worst performances of the season from the team, however the team managed to defend incredibly and get the three points when we took our chances, all of their shots were Neymar picking up the ball and shooting instantly, waste of £30.0M p/y. Araujo is on about £4.5M p/y and he managed to help us secure the 3pts, congratulations Luiz.

After this game against PSG away we had Club Brugge Away, whoever qualified for the next stage because Barcelona vs Napoli, so most of the time Barcelona win that, which means if we lose Brugge are through and if I win, I’m through to the next stage.

We weren’t going to beat PSG and then lose to Club Brugge, I’ve not developed my team to be Tottenham, we’re not bottle jobs.

Through to the Round of 16, come on Monaco, lets get the Final!

They’re not making this easy though, we’ve just got Juventus in the Round of 16 draw:

Comparing the two on wage p/y. Juventus spend a lot more obviously because of Cristiano Ronaldo who is on £50M p/y (thats nearly my whole wage budget) if you take away 50M p/y from there average, they’re more at £6.3M p/y instead of the initial £8.4M which is a crazy drop.

Our current wage per annum is £4.2M which means according to the outlying rules of “Soccernomics” Juventus should steam role us, because if you look at it like this, the average wage per annum in the French League is £1.5M, I’m pretty much steam rolling the league because of it, even though PSG should be competing but clearly they have problems somewhere (Neymar – Personal Opinion).

However between £4.2M and £1.5M there is a difference of between £2.7M which is nearly about the same between me and Juventus, therefore we’re going to have to try and get that up to £5M to statistically having a good chance against them. Then hopefully we get the better results and a bit of luck and we’ll be through, after all no matter how much math and percentages you put into football trying to figure out the score you can’t predict anything 100% all of the time, because there is still an element of predictability.

This has to be a dream, one of the best kind of dreams, PSG have just drawn to 20th place relegation contenders Angers after I just beat them 4-0, embarrassing PSG. Thomas Tuchel, maybe its time to move on?

They’re going to start panicking, they’ve never been in this situation and last time they were it was when we had Mbappe and they ended up spending £100M+ on him, give them time and they’ll be overspending on some of my youngsters.

Unfortunately, we’ve been Fm’d and shafted, Juventus didn’t even play that well, they won on away goals and they only scored set piece goals compared to our silky, lovely and stylish Monaco football goals, oh well! It is what it is, we go again next season and make sure we come back twice as strong, they are one of the favourites to win the UCL with how much money they spend per year on wages, therefore we’ll be close to winning it next year I feel.

To Be Continued… Part 3