Atletico Madrid - 2014/2015 Update
Decided to take over Atletico as my long term save until the new game is released, hoping to topple Barcelona and Madrid and make them a super power in football.
Squad
Luckily enough the team has a good set of players with a few world class players such as Koke, Griezmann, Miranda & Oblak. Team for the season was as below:
GK - Oblak/Moya
LB - Siqueira/Ansaldi
CB - Miranda/Gimenez
CB - Godin/Gimenez
RB - Juanfran/Gamez
DM - Saul/Mario Suarez
CM - Koke/Gabi
CM - Arda Turan/Garcia
LF - Depay/Correa
CF - Mandzukic/Torres
RF - Griezmann/Jimenez
Transfers
Only play I brought for the season was Memphis Depay, didn't have much of a budget so it's mainly being paid through installments. Only other outlay was making Ansaldi's loan permanent as he had a bargain fee of £3m built into the loan agreement and he can play both left and right back. Got a lot of players out on loan due to come back so will filter through and see who needs selling. Need the board to up my money retention rate mind as they dropped it to 30% due to the debt near the end of the season.
Incoming - Depay - £25m, Ansaldi - £3m
Outgoing - Jimenez - £2.9m, Tiago - £750,000, Hector - Loan, Lucas - Loan.
Domestic Cups/Europe
First up was the Spanish Super Cup between myself and neighbours Real, was hoping for a strong defensive display at the Bernabeu and then attack them at home. Didn't need to worry as won the 1st leg away 1-4 and then proceeded to add some extra gloss in the 2nd leg winning 3-0 for a 7-1 overall win to start the season on the front foot.
Only other domestic cup was the Spanish Cup which was another strong showing for me, the 1st game for me was a 17-1 victory against minnows Eldense followed by wins against Villarreal, Sociedad and Valencia. This led me to the final against Barcelona where the team utterly capitulated conceding 10 and only scoring 3 at the other end!
The European campaign was one of stuttering disappointment. Was grouped with Stromsgodset, Juventus & Liverpool. After 3 wins (Strom x2, Juventus), 2 draws (Liverpool x2) and a loss against Juventus I finished 2nd in the group. In the first round I got drawn against French giants PSG and dispatched them comfortably 7-4 on aggregate. This is where my progression came to an abrupt end against Man City. They were there for the taking with a somewhat weakened team in both legs, 1st leg decided by a long kick from Hart for Aguero to score quickly followed by Miranda receiving a straight red. The next 70 minutes was me clinging on for the 2nd leg. They again scored early on and after some good pressure I equalised through Mandzukic, more good work was then undone by Ansaldi as he hacked someone down in the area and they scored to make it 3-1 on aggregate. A 90th minute equaliser on the night from Gimenez wasn't enough to stop me from making an early exit from the competition.
League
By far the best competition out of the lot for me, went through the season like a freight train. Kept on Barcelona's coat tails the whole season and when my chance came on the penultimate game I overtook them to the title for Atletico's 2nd year running. Surprisingly Madrid came 4th an were no where near despite Ronaldo still posting insane stats along with Messi.