Season 31b – AS Asteras Tripoleos – Greek Superleague
Took over with them 15th of 16.
Got them out of the Greek Cup first game, then over 6games in the league we lost 5 and drew one 0-0. Stunning form and we showed all the classic memes with a great GK and a decent defense completely let down by a hopeless offense.
In my last game there we were winning 2-0 at home to Olympiakos with 65mins gone. I decided that if we won this game I’d give it a go through to the end of the season. But I was called away for a honeydew, couldn’t pause it, and came back to see we’d lost 3-2 with their last two goals in extra time.
Resigned to give someone a chance at saving them with 7games left, 16th of 16 and 8points adrift.
Epilogue
I have decided that enough is enough with this save. It was a great ride, but I made some critical errors including some in setting up the game and then some in understanding the (generic) board.
In terms of setup it was foolish to have playable leagues far from each other. It meant that many players couldn’t settle (since they were moving so far). And I didn’t have any major leagues modeled so even they weren’t available to scout.
In terms of my approach what I now understand is that the board will judge/set expectations based on the budget they give you, not what you spend. As long as things are moving in the right direction it’s OK to spend less, but as soon as they aren’t then they are justified in saying that they had given me a $60+m budget, why couldn’t I find an ST for that?
Ultimately this means that the timing of when the club can be dominated by academy production would be much later than I thought, and I especially need to be careful in the seasons following a promotion.
But even with that, this save overall rolled out like this:
- P1039 W407 D249 L383 +147
- 2 league wins, 2 cup wins.
Players in: 129 for $23m
Players out: 105 for $181m
Players released: 159 (I think players choosing to leave on a free must count in this)
I set up a new save addressing some of the systemic errors above, and when I went to consult Frank he immediately came up with a team from one of the countries I’d modeled. I took that as a blessing from Frank (and really, what higher blessing could there be?) of the decision to move on.
We’ll leave this version of the Good Doctor sipping his retsina at a small cafe in Santorini, watching that olive-dark sea lapping at the sand remembering some of the great players that came through.
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