FM Experiment Update 2015/2016
1. Cinadine Cidane (Fiorentina)
Last season Fiorentina battled to a well earned forth placed finish in Serie A, giving them the European stage to show off their impressive array of attacking talent. Sadly, their 2015/2016 campaign would begin with bitter disappointment. Their qualification round in the Champions League drew them against their Premiership counterparts Aston Villa, who were also surprise contenders in the Champions League after an unexpected forth place domestic finish. The Viola lost 3-2 on aggregate. To the UEFA Cup then – this campaign ended in defeat to Standard Liege in the 2nd Knockout Round. Their Italian Cup run ended at the hands of AC Milan in the Quarter finals, and an 8th placed finish in Serie A made their fantastic 2014/2015 seem a distant memory.
Despite all this, Cidane had a belter of a season in which he outperformed all of his teammates quite drastically. Perhaps helped by his direct rival Alen Dzagoev suffering constant injuries (Allowing Cidane some matches in his favoured AMC role), Cidane ended the season with 18 goals, 5 assists, 9 Man of the Match performances and a new contract offer on the table just a year after signing a deal worth £100,000 a week. He was also voted the Serie A Young Player of the Year, preventing Ubor Skolskov taking the title a third year in a row (Git). Cidane also finished in 3rd for Serie A Goal of the Season for a ridiculous 40 yarder he curled past Lazio goalkeeper Inaki Goitia.
But Cidane remains a well rounded, hard working player who regularly puts in a 10km a match and makes 4.37 tackles a game. As you would expect, his shooting accuracy has increased this season from 37% to 44%. Serie A defenders have responded to this goalscoring form by almost doubling the number of fouls inflicted to 68 for the season.
Unfortunately, Cidane faced disappointment with the Irish as they finished third place in their European Championship qualifiers Group, unable to surpass Italy and Switzerland.
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2. Cw1984 (Manchester United)
Quique Flores has had a decent impact at Manchester United and at least tucked them back into European positions. They finished 6th this season, 4 points ahead of Liverpool, and so will have a chance to regain some success in the UEFA Cup next season.
United’s problems are defensive. They conceded 52 goals this season, by far the worst defensive record of the top eight teams in the Premiership. Cw1984 being part of this leaky back four has to take some responsibility. However most games he lines up alongside a decent player in Jonny Evans, but two pretty uninspiring youth products called John Doyle and Mick Morris, neither of whom have the quality to be playing for United, producing over 200 mistakes between them, 10 directly responsible for opposition goals, between them last season. United also have former Coventry man Kieran Westwood in goal. To be honest though, cw1984 made 178 defensive errors himself this season, so you can’t just blame the players around him! Needs to sort himself out!
But in attack United are pretty effective, and again Cw1984’s left flank partnership with Ronaldo has again been crucial. This season cw helped himself to 7 goals and 4 assists, Ronaldo to 12 goals and 13 assists. Along with Wayne Rooney these two are by far the most valuable players in the United team.
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3. Diver (Arsenal)
With Arsenal’s abundance of central midfielders I expected Diver would be playing most of his games at the center of defence this season. But again, he just alternated between the positions, actually playing 30 of his 52 games in midfield. That all these games could’ve gone to gone to Miguel Veloso, Joao Moutinho, Yaya Toure, Momo Sissoko or Jack Wilshere shows how much faith there is in Diver at the Emirates.
But Arsenal responded to Man City’s spirited challenge in 2014/2015 by easing into another 1st placed finished, this time 10 points clear of City. But again, this was the extent of their success this season as they failed in the domestic cups and also the Champions League, this time defeated by defending champions Real Madrid.
Diver improved significantly on his second season at Arsenal, finishing on a 7.21 average rating, with 4 goals and 10 assists. His discipline is getting worse though, and he ended up with 10 yellows for the season and 87 fouls to his name. May be growing fonder of those crunching challenges, his tackling increased to 6.66 per game, but he’s still an outstanding ball winner and won 336 of 359 attempted tackles. His cards and fouls probably more easily explained by him being an Arsenal player and therefore a generally revolting individual who deserves harsh treatment from refs.
As reward for three seasons of fantastic service to Arsenal he’s recently been handed a new £105,000 a week contract. He’s very happy at the club and has also struck up a good relationship with fellow caftard Walrus.
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4. Hassan Emirati (Juventus)
Sickeningly, Emirati was awarded an improved contract the beginning of this season, bumping his £140,000 a week deal to £145,000 a week. But even so, he’s no longer the best paid player at Juventus. At 38 years old, Gianluigi Buffon was handed a well deserved £170,000 a week deal. In fact, many players at Juve were rewarded with new contracts this season as encouragement to better Carlo Ancelotti’s impressive AC Milan.
This season saw Juventus bettering their brilliant attacking football of 2014/2015 but not AC Milan. Emirati’s performances were a bit more consistent than last seasons in which he ended up with a 7.02 average rating. 7.08 for this season, but his tally of goals and assists decreased to 4 and 5 respectively, contrast to 6 and 13 the previous season. But he made 12 less appearances this season, partly due to injuries keeping him out for a month of the season. But Emirati has increased his work rate, improving on an already impressive average of 10km run a match to 10.3km per match and also increasing his average tackles per match to 3.09.
Busy times for Hassan with UAE. In the Asian Nations Cup they finished in 3rd place, having lost in the semi final to eventual winners Australia. They beat Saudi Arabia 3-0 in the 3rd Place Playoff, Emirati scoring the second of their goals. In all this season Emirati has played 10 times for UAE and scored five times. Their World Cup Qualifying campaign is well underway and they sit on top of their group with 7 points from three games. Their opponents are Japan, Iraq and the mighty Turkmenistan.
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5. Alex Hemming (AC Milan)
Exciting times for Alex Hemming. West Brom almost became the new Southampton with a big challenge on the top 4, but had to settle for a top 5 finish in the end. Hemming put in 18 monstrous performances (Averaging 8.42 tackles a game, a machine!) towards their Premership charge, this convincing Serie A champions AC Milan to splash out £45,000,000 to take the big Norwegian to the San Siro in the January window. Hemming took an instant liking to Carlo Ancelotti and agreed to a £145,000 a week, 5 year contract.
AC Milan sensationally went this Serie A season unbeaten, conceding only 10 goals. This allowed them to comfortably better a Juventus team who also impressed with a 99 goal haul for the season. Hemming personally was involved in 20 Serie A games for Milan and so can take a lot of credit for this. His average rating of 7.27 puts him well above Milan’s other defenders for consistency. He’s mainly a right back in this team, Thiago Silva and Serbian Aleksandar Tatalovic the central defence and Mamadou Sakho the left back, Argie keeper Juan Pablo Carrizo in goal.
For Milan so far, in his first 29 games, Hemming has scored a goal and grabbed three assists, with a Man of the Match performance to boot. He’s put in on average 5.90 tackles a game, and 71% of his passes have been accurate. From 190 headers he’s challenged for, he’s won 171.
He’s also gotten a taste of Champions League action, and played a crucial role in Milan’s Quarter Final victory of rivals Juventus by scoring his penalty in the decisive shootout. But Milan would go on to be knocked out by Leverkusen in the Semi Finals so he has also tasted his first Champions League disappointment.
But all indications are that Milan have become even more formidable with the signing of Hemming, who’s settling down quickly, and also struck up a friendship with his new AC Milan teammate and fellow Noggie Marius Johnsen. He has also been voted Serie A Defender of the Year.
Unfortunately, Johnsen and Hemming both saw Norway defeated in the Euro championship Playoff by Portugal. They now look towards their World Cup qualification campaign which will pit them against Denmark and Serbia, as well as Latvia, Malta and Macedonia.
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6. Jacob (Napoli)
Napoli couldn’t build on their impressive 2014/2015 season that saw them secure 3rd place in a highly competitive Serie A season, and ended up dropping to an 8th place finish for 2015/2016 – outside the European places. A shame because Napoli, it turned out, were very good representatives of Italian football in their Champions League campaign. They reached the Quarter Finals before being beaten by Barcelona, but on the way had knocked out a strong Bayern Munich side and also beaten European Champions (Who would go on to successfully defend this title) R. Madrid in the Group Stages.
Jacob’s average rating dropped from 7.20 last season to 7.06 for this season, but he was still a very productive player for Napoli and served up 9 goals and 8 assists in his 34 starts, 5 Man of the Match performances. Only Takayuki Morimoto really outshone Jacob this season. With his 12 goals and nine assists his output wasn’t that much greater, but his average rating was 7.20 and he was voted Napoli’s player of the season and Serie A Foreign Player of the Season as well so he obviously made a very big impression this season.
But aside from passing (Accuracy slightly decreased from 81% success rate to 78%) Jacob’s game has only continued to improve. He’s tackling more often (190 for the season, 164 succeeded), his shooting is more composed (46% on target, or 35 from 75), and he’s running 9.7km a match on average. All this despite finally getting into that AMC role formerly occupied by Carlos Eduardo. Perhaps Jacob would benefit from letting Moussa Sissoko and Nikola Radulovic do the dirty work in midfield and concentrate on his attacking game.
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7. Dennis Law (R. Madrid)
Dennis put his Man City nightmare behind him and signed for the vaguely respectable Real Madrid in January 2016, joining the European Champions for £40,000,000. Los Blancos obviously still remembered Law’s brilliant form for Aston Villa and were willing to ignore the fact he’d officially become a Man City reject. During his year at the Bitters Law only made 17 appearances, only 7 starts, and scored only 4 times. In fairness, Vagner Love responded to the challenge of Law with a shedload of goals and it’s understandable the Scots career at Eastlands wouldn’t last. When Madrid came in offering City a chance to make an easy £10m profit the outcome was obvious.
At R. Madrid Law has so far looked the business, starting 25 games and scoring 15 times, but creating 14 goals on top of that. His average rating of 7.56 is fantastic, and his European pedigree only grows. He scored 5 Champions League goals from 7 appearances. Not only did this earn him his first success on Europe’s biggest stage, but a place in R. Madrid folklore. The Semi Finals of the Champions League pit Madrid against bitter rivals Barcelona, and after a 1-0 loss at the Nou Camp, it was Law who came up with two goals at the Bernebeu to break Catalan hearts and send the Franco cnuts into the final against Leverkusen, where they’d win on penalties for a successful defence of their title. Law’s 10 goals in the Primera helped Madrid to another 1st placed finish, so he’s also a Spanish League winner.
Thanks in part to Law’s clinical finishing and outstanding record of 20 goals in 23 international games, Scotland qualified for the European Championships at the top of their group. They face a difficult group at the tournament though – France, Switzerland and Holland. Interestingly, their World Cup qualifying group will include England so Law’ll have a chance to pit himself against the majority of fellow Caftards, including his R. Madrid teammate Paz.
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8. Cristiano Lazytov (Chelsea)
Familiar story with Lazytov, still very much a fringe player at Stamford Bridge. With Salomon Kalou leaving for Sunderland and Amauri constantly injured and in his mid 30’s there seemed to be some room for optimism at the end of last season and opportunity for Lazytov to stake his claim. But Amauri continues on at 36 years old, and scored 13 goals in 28 starts, not willing to give up his place in the team. But also, Roman threw around some change and signed Pavel Pogrebnyak from Porto for £3.7m, the 32 year old Russian international proving to be a fantastic signing by scoring 15 goals in 22 games.
So Lazytov is up against it, and he needs to make a better impression with the few opportunities he does get. For 10 appearances this season, 8 starts, Lazytov bagged one goal and one assist, ending up with a 6.66 average rating. If there was one positive indication from last season it was his 59% shooting accuracy, but this has now dropped to 22%, only 4 shots on target from 18 attempts.
Chelsea have improved on their dire showing from last season and are back in the top 4, Mourinho making positive progress. There is some hope for Lazytov in this, he was awarded a new 3 year contract by Chelsea at £33,500 a week – a slight pay cut from £37,000 a week, but maybe he has friends in high places. He also has friends in amongst the Chelsea though, and he now lists caftard Karan Mittal as one of his favored personnel.
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