Tis the (close) season

It's that time again: UPDATE TIME!

Season two is consigned to the history books, with FC Highlanders doing a stellar job of retaining their CWA Premiership title, and the mighty, mighty River Medway Riot showing just as much consistency by finishing 13th. Mmm... midtable.

As well as that, Preach Clubrooms, our humble home, hosted the first ever Daria Morgendorffer Knockout Cup Final, with R Standard Liege causing something of an upset, defeating the fancied Barcalonika FC 2-0. But no sooner had the Daria Morgendorffer trophy heads to that footballing hotbed, Belgium, than recruiting for the second season of the competition began. With both Liege and Barcalonika saying "count me in", could we see the two sides cross swords once more?

So, what does the close season mean for a club like River Medway Riot? Well, first and foremost, it's a question of deciding what to do with those who've started to catch the eye of the bigger clubs. Since most of this kind of player have developed at the club over time, they've generally been signed on reasonably low wages to begin with, which makes them all the more attractive now. With only five over-21's being locked, how do you decide who to cash in on, and who to keep hold of? This seems as good a way as any to introduce some of our stars.

Arouca is the heart and soul of the team, a lightweight midfield playmaker whose reputation has just grown and grown. Signed as part of the initial squad setup, he's now put in two seasons of ratings averaging over 7.0, and is far and away the best, most consistent player in the side. He's 23 now, but will he live to see 24? The way things are going...

...sorry, got sidetracked there. But Arouca is 23 now, with wages of 10k and has a market value of £2.5m. It would take at least twice that for him to leave the River- the side is literally built around his presence. He is our star player, and until he says he wants to move to win things, he's staying put.

Anthony Modeste has been a revelation- signed for 140k from bradford city a.f.c., he's developed into an incredibly quick star striker, and has led the line all season. At 21, there's every sign that he could be a superstar, and there have been offers around £2m turned down already. That said, 37 in 79 isn't a superstar strike rate- it's very good, but it's not excellent- and that perhaps has to do with the quality of the supply and the team around him, rather than any fault of his. With some of the new faces coming in already showing themselves to have scoring boots (see below), there's a big question mark over how much Modeste would feature next season if he remains at the River... could it now be time for him to move to greener pastures?

There has, however, been no interest in Modeste's strike partner, Kaimar Saag, which is a little surprising, but perhaps understandable. The same age and of a similar stature, Saag has spent the season racing away from CWA defenders onto the ball before putting it straight into the goalkeeper's arms, or over the bar. No, this is no namby-pamby rose-tinted blog. He didn't score enough goals, found himself drifting onto the bench and into a supersub mould, and now faces competition even for that. Saag and Modeste individually are both very good young players- they just struggle to play together. And, when it comes to the crunch, Modeste got the nod in the starting line-up. That said, Saag will still be around the River come season three, regardless of whether Modeste goes or stays- if nobody else wants him, he'll have to make do with benchwarming again.

And finally, Marco Criscuolo, a winger who's eager and has established himself in the River Medway Riot first team despite only being 18-years-old. While many of the U-17 graduates are wished all the best and sent on their way, Criscuolo is one of three who have bucked the rule (the others being Jozef Michalik and Andros Townsend) and made the step. Now we know there are scouts in the crowd watching him, with talk of a £2m price tag. With wages at just £854, he's a true success story of the River Medway Riot Youth Programme, and is now repaying the faith shown in him by giving tremendous value-for-money.

So, the answer to the question of "how to decide who to keep?"... well, it's a trick question. Build a young team. Players like Criscuolo, Michalik, Townsend, Ricardo Verduguez and Lucas Galdino are all still under-21, so their contracts can be auto-protected. Add to that the five locks- Arouca, Modeste, Saag, Paulinho Dias and Rurik Gislason- and a goalkeeper (Samir Ujkani) and you've got a team you can keep hold of. Ok, after next season things might go a bit pear-shaped, but there's plenty of time before then.

Before we take a look at the close-season comings and goings- and there are plenty of them- let's break this up a bit with some TOTALLY AWESOME AND REAL NEWS!!!

RIVER MEDWAY RIOT UNVEIL SEASON THREE KITS!

Replacing last season's Kappa 'sidestripe' designs, the new River Medway Riot strips have been designed by Legia in association with new official club sponsor Debenhams (located 240-246 High Street, Chatham). Continuing to feature River Medway Riot's Invicta horse in the lining, these stylish shirts are designed to prove that losing 5-0 doesn't always mean you have to look bad. The navy blue home strip is accompanied by two change colour strips, in white and magenta.

Now, to the ins and outs. Let's get down to the nuts and bolts- first and foremost, the outs.

Players Leaving River Medway Riot

Contracts terminated/not renewed (17):

Nuno Gomes, Rafaelle Rubino, Carlo Nash, Mario Frick, Lukasz Sosin and Luis Tonelotto (age catching up with them)
Daniel Jimenez, Kari Asgeirsson, Andy Jeffrey, Jack Redshaw, David McAuley, Eero Lempinen, Alberto Palacio and Mads Winther (youngsters who aren't good enough)
Ryan Jarvis, Maciej Mielcarz and Dean Marney (squad players no longer required)

Transfers (7):
£1 - Atle Hansen to Harborne Town
£1 - Andrew Crofts to BuXToN's BLuE ArMy.
£1 - Eric Carriere to Cookie FC
£1 - Mohammed Al-Sefri to R-Star United
£120k - Josh Wilson to Dylan's Deadly Destroyers
£250k - Tomas Pekhart to Neverton
£350k - Alexsandro de Carvalho to Poopsocks United

So, lots and lots of departures. The straightforward reason would seem to be a requirement to dramatically drop squad size and wage in light of the forthcoming stadiums expansion, but that shouldn't be taken to be the only reason. In the cases of Pekhart and de Carvalho, both turned a decent profit, but were still sold below their market value- it was a desire to get rid of them, as neither were performing as well as they should've been. But with a 35% clause on de Carvalho and 25% on Pekhart, should either of them come good, there could be some decent bank in it.

I'm less optimistic with Al-Sefri and Hansen, who also both carry 25%, but the thing to remember is that the percentage is for the profit made, not the total transfer fee. But with a sale of £1, virtually all of any future sale becomes profit, which becomes clause-worthy. If one goes for £100k, that's a neat £25k of it in my pocket. £1 auctions can prove to be worthwhile in the long run.

It's also unsurprising Jarvis, Mielcarz and Marney have all found new clubs very quickly- they're all good value players with a few seasons left in them, and had it not been such an urgent need to lower the wage bill, they would easily have been kept around as squad players, filling in when change was needed.

With FML going to box, a load of new managers have also come in, so that too must be taken into account. They'd do well to keep hold of their money as the economy's about to change with the stadium update (literally hours away from this post), and I've recommended that to many of them. As such, quite a few of the other squad players, who may well have been candidates to join Jarvis, Mielcarz and Marney jobhunting on Monster.co.uk are out on loan. Park Yo-Seb, Robert Trznadel, Zajko Zeba, Michael Woods, Steven MacLean and Nathan Sturgis are all getting games elsewhere, while they'd be on the fringes at Preach Clubrooms.

Players Joining River Medway Riot

Although the aim of the game was to reduce the wage bill and the squad size, that shouldn't have come at a cost of strengthening the side. While a total of 24 went out, that didn't mean there was nobody coming in, and since the season's finished, the following have been pictured in the River Medway Riot royal blue:

Youth free agent wage auctions: Stefan Wijngaarde (S), Mario Ferreira (AM RLC + FC), Maicon de Lima (AM C) and Miroslaw Cichy (DC + DM)

Signings from other clubs:

Etien Velikonja (21) - With his previous club, Pingvinen FC, leaving the GW, Velikonja was about to find himself without a club. A left-footed striker again with a decent turn of pace, he's been brought in to challenge Modeste and Saag for their spots in the first eleven.

David Romminger (26) - Another Pingvinen exile, Romminger is a quality player whose versatility means he can play comfortably pretty much anywhere across the defence or midfield. For £9,000 and 1.5k wages, he's an absolute steal.

Dumisani Ngwenya (25) - Thanks to the coach departing, Coventry's Mallard Party found themselves rooted to the bottom of the CWA Premiership all season, but despite that, South African striker Ngwenya still found the net 13 times in 40 appearances. If he can get a strike rate like that without a manager and in a poor team, there's no reason he can't do even better with us.

Diego Silva (22) - CWA Championship side Beartown Blues didn't seem bothered about keeping hold of their striker, and with only 5 goals in 44, perhaps it's easy to see why. Hopefully a switch will be just what he needs to fulfil his potential and start hitting the net more regularly.

Ivan Macalick (22) - A centre-back I've admired from afar for a while, it was a case of waiting until his Bonnick's Boys contract was up before snagging him at a cut price. The patience paid off, and he's already showing signs of greatness, filling in an Anders Rambekk-shaped void.

Edilson Mendes (15) - And finally, a young Brazilian defensive midfielder who, if he'd become a free agent, would've been earning ten times what he is now. Instead, he moved directly from Roy's Rangers FC. At £400, he has truly frightening stats for his age- could he be the long-term replacement for Arouca?

So what have we learned? "Graverobbing" is an excellent way of bringing in quality players on the cheap- if you're willing to keep your eyes open and look to see what is going on with teams and managers who are no longer in the Gameworld, there are real bargains to be had. For someone of Macalick's age and calibre (current MV: 400k and rising) to be coming to a club on 1k wages, you've got someone who not only is going to be of a good, playable standard on the pitch, but who is going to be attractive to other managers should things change and you decide to sell in the future. Nothing is more off-putting when scouting for players than OTT wages. The simple fact is, it is a dealbreaker, and there's nothing the seller can do about it once the wages are high.

My highest earner is a youngster by the name of Ricardo Damasceno, a 15-year-old Brazilian defender earning £16k. His stats are not those of a 16k player yet, but they are significantly impressive for someone his age, and I'm confident that he'll develop into someone who will be worth that. That doesn't mean I'm not uncomfortable with him earning that- if he flops, that's a fair whack of cash to be wasting, especially since it took destroying my wage structure to secure his signature. The next highest earner is Arouca, who has been on 10k since day one. Everyone else falls in line after that, in a squad of 65 players, at time of writing.

Basic finance management is not difficult- it's a question of showing restraint, knowing what you can afford and living within your means. At RMR, we're still turning a good profit, we're still very much in the black. We could afford to blow a couple of million on a player, if we so desired. At the moment, our biggest signing from another team is Saulo, who was signed for 200k. This season, he's averaged 6.99 as a starter, and his versatility has seen him switch from defensive midfielder to centre back with ease, giving a lot more tactical options in game. Our biggest sale was Rudolph Austin, in an auction which ended at £425k. His market value is now a quarter of that.

End of story... for now.

The first post is always the hardest.

But not on this occasion. Because this first post is an introduction, a kind of entrance point to the world of the mighty, mighty River Medway Riot, perennial bottom-feeders in the FML Keane GW. While other blogs may be able to give you a clue as to what it takes to remain competitive at the very highest level, or keep you entertained with tales of the fiercest of rivalries, here at "Gold Shoes From Chockers", we have no such lofty ambition. We just win a few, lose quite a few more, and talk in the third person to sound like we know what we're talking about. But enough of that.

I'm Law Martin, and I'll be your guide through these murky waters down here in the X-hundred rankings, and I'd like to say I'm more than qualified for the job. It would probably be enough simply for me to be a lifelong Gillingham fan, but my track record in Football Managers '08 and '07, and in Championship Manager for years and years before that, will more than back it up. No, it isn't for me to take Liverpool to the treble, nor to coach England to the World Cup final. My joy comes from knowing I've safely got a contract at Brighton for another season, as we grind out a 0-0 draw to stay up on goal difference. It's taking a foreign lower league club I've never heard of in the real world- say, someone like Siena of Italy, or Creteil of France- with players who are just names to me, and getting to know them, their quirks, the way they play, and doing what I can to make the place a little better than when I arrived. I am the journeyman manager- I play games of 20+ seasons, in which I'll manage maybe ten different clubs. There will be promotions, there will be relegations, there will be cup runs- for me, the FA Cup means a chance to manage Accrington at Goodison in the Third Round, where even the most optimistic of fans are predicting something of a spanking. Joy is then taking that shock 1-0 lead after six minutes. Sure, we may well end up losing 5-1, but for the briefest period of time, that feeling of doing the unthinkable, of upsetting the odds, of doing it for the little club with no money and a dilapidated stadium... that, for me is football, and that, for me, is Football Manager.

It's inevitable that in FML, River Medway Riot have sat in the middle of the rankings since day one. Of some 600 clubs, we've been somewhere between 200 and 350 for pretty much the entire time. Somewhere in the middle.

In the first season of the CWA Premiership, the team finished 12th out of 24. Mid-table obscurity.

As I write this, we sit 13th out of 22 in the second season of the Prem, with 14 wins and 15 defeats. Mid-table.

The Riot's current senior ranking is 323rd, the lowest it's been for a while, after a poor run of form- 323 out of 573. Somewhere comfortably in the middle.

And, for completeness- the youth team, a glorious 81st out of 216. Pretty middling as well.

As you may have gathered by now, this doesn't bother me in the slightest. In fact, I quite like it. I win a few, I lose a few. Likewise, some of the players I sign turn out to be heroes (you'll be hearing plenty about names like Arouca, Jozef Michalik and Marco Criscuolo) and some turn out to be zeroes (you won't see "Jamie Mole" or "Heidar Helguson" in this blog again, trust me). I don't play FML to win- if I did, I wouldn't be playing it, because I'm not going to win. I play FML for fun, and there's plenty to be had- pulling off a transfer coup, scoring that last-minute winner against a team ranked far above you, or even just hanging out in the lobby, talking about the game, the beautiful game and who knows what else (Pub Manager Live, anyone?).

With the game going to box very soon, and with stadiums due to come in any minute now, it seems like FML is really about to get interesting. And all the time writing this blog is fun, I'll be here with a word or two about what the view's like from Average Joe Tracksuit.