Another empty bottle hits the floor. A despondent SoggyCabbages sits in his Sao Paulo penthouse inconsolable after his play-off semi-final loss to Berty44. The season fast approaching and his laptop open on Football Manager. “Need to find the next wonderkids and stars for my Football team.”
And rebuilding is exactly what he did. Follow a busy summer transfer window for SoggyCabbages a revamped squad goes into the season with high hopes.
The first transfer was a swap deal with Jlizzle4shizzle, with relatively new arrival Kasey Palmer from last season swiftly departing in return for Gotjko Cimirot. On the same day a 12,000,000 deal for @TheAshCohen90’s Lewis Holtby was announced. A skilful CAM who will be starting further back in CM with the idea of creating attacking opportunies, utilising his 80 short passing. A mere 5 days later Jlizzle4shizzle returned for some more Cabbage. This time wanting to give Kasey Palmer back along with Isiah Brown and 600k in return for first-team starters Andrea Danzi and Konstantinos Galanopoulos. An interesting deal with the aim to improve SoggyCabbages attacking spirit in the centre of midfield. Without any time to unpack Palmer got back on the plane to Brazil only to find out that he’s going to be starting on the bench from now on.
A big problem last season was scoring goals for SoggyCabbages, although his strikers had the pace their core shooting stats were poor. To remedy this Moussa Dembélé was brought in from season 22 play-off rival Berty44 for a sure bargain of 20 million.
Paired with late last season arrival Aaron Hunt from geordiecrawf, a moist central midfield triangle of Cimirot, Holtby and Hunt has formed and will surely terrorise midfields up and down the table in fixtures to come.
Predicted lineup:
The back four all keep their place in the team with one more higher central defender looking to be brought into provide cover for injuries or red cards. Benali and Super Korean Ito retain their spots on the wing. Two new men start in midfield with Cimirot staying back and allowing Holtby to run forwards. Vargas remains up top alongside new man Dembéle and Aaron Hunt starting just behind.
Squad depth is a concern for SoggyCabbages especially on the wings with cheap backups looking to be brought. Frontman Ardaiz from last season is benched and resigned to playing back-up.
After going into season 22 with expectations against him, many so-called ‘pundits’ like deareststorm prediction Cabbage to finish in the bottom two, Sao Paulo went through a 14-game unbeaten start to the season. Hanging around in 2nd and 3rd places depending on games-in-hand, a previously unlikely promotion looked surefire. However after playing a string of top 5 teams towards the end of the season a depressing slide into the play-offs occurred.
This season SoggyCabbages on his expectations was quoted saying:
“Winning the title is everyone’s aim but let’s be realistic here. A title challenge is the least we expect and automatic promotion is our goal. We aim not to need the play-offs to be promoted but we’ll take what we get. Premiership Football really boils my cabbage.”
Later adding...
“If we don’t go up, I’ll probably sauerkraut myself.”