Let us start by removing the elephant from the room, I’m a Villarreal guy and have been since 2008 when I was on my quest to see Ronaldinho play in the flesh and after 3 unsuccessful attempts he was in the starting eleven to play Villarreal at Camp Nou. On that night, just over 15 years ago, I watched a Villarreal side containing the likes of Marcos Senna, Santi Cazorla & the fantastic Matias Fernandez run out winners against the likes of Ronaldinho & Thierry Henry and that’s where my love affair started. So why am I going to manage Villarreal’s bitter rivals, Valencia? Well, over the last couple of editions of Football Manager I’ve really enjoyed saves with rivals of teams I’m fond of and as I’m a stickler for a finance based save I’m happy to overlook the rivalry and take control of Los Ches.
La Liga has been dominated by Real Madrid and Barcelona for as long as we can remember but in the early 2000’s we were treated with the emergence of Valencia as genuine contenders to the Spanish duopoly reaching consecutive Champions League finals in 2000 & 2001 and winning La Liga in the 2001-2 & 2003-04 seasons under the guidance of one Rafa Benitez.
In 2006 plans were unveiled for a new stadium to be built with a capacity of 80,000. Work started on Nou Mestalla in 2007 in readiness for opening in 2009 but due to financial problems work stopped and multiple deals to get the project re-started collapsed meaning the stadium sat unfinished for a number of years. In 2021 it was announced that the stadium will now be modernised and completed in 2024 with a capacity closer to 50,000.
The successful decade ended with the club in huge debt and needing to sell star players; David Silva moved to Manchester City, Juan Mata to Chelsea, David Villa to Barcelona and Roberto Soldado to Spurs but despite the club losing so many star players they still operated in the top half of the table dropping in and out of Champions League football which meant more financial insecurity.
In 2014 Singaporean businessman, Peter Lim (him of Salford City/Class of 92 fanclub), purchased 70% of the football club and in his time with the club, despite continuing to sell their star players, Valencia has accumulated losses of €323 million euros with Lim coming under strong criticism from fans.
So that’s the background, what about the save?
The ultimate aim is to topple Real Madrid and Barcelona but we’ve got a few steps to climb before we get there:
Step One - Improving the Bottom Line
In 2012 Valencia had the third highest revenue in La Liga, they now have the sixth with Atletico Madrid, Villarreal and Sevilla growing their revenue whereas Valencia have actually gone backwards.
Simply put, if we qualify for Europe, win our games and maximise our player sales we will turnover more cash. It’s important to remember that turnover isn’t profit so it should go without saying that I’ll be paying attention to the areas of the game where we can manage cost to improve profit.
Step Two - Climbing The Deloitte Money League
Although it’s not really in the game, the Money League is really similar to the reputation league in Football Manager so we’ll be looking to make our move up that table. I’ll be having a look at what information I can pull out of the game to see if I can make a better version of the money league.
Step Three - Academy
Bringing academy graduates through to the first team not only gives you a sense of pride it can also be highly profitable. I will more than likely disband the second team for cost saving but make sure I have the best available coaches and facilities for our U18’s, we’ll use our scouting network to find the hidden gems falling out of the big clubs and take advantage of our pull when it comes to stealing talent from financially restricted teams in Spain.
Currently in the first team we have Jesus Vazquez, Yunus Musah (Arsenal academy) & Facundo Gonzalez (Espanyol academy) who are highly rated youngsters that progressed through Valencia Mestalla and are players that can compliment the current first team and potentially generate some income if required.
Step Four - Finding my Aimar
Baggy shirts & oversized shorts, he was THE man at Valencia back in the early 2000’s. For a South American attacker he was a team player and he worked his socks off for the team. At River Plate he had the luxury of a team dominating possession, at Valencia it was a different story and he realised this early, his unselfishness meant that when Valencia were out of possession he would drop into the midfield to give them an extra man and restrict the play of the opposition. When they attacked, they attacked quickly and often through the Argentine.
In this save, I’m going to look for ‘my’ Aimar but from looking at his attributes in the screenshot below it might be something of a challenge! I’ll no doubt attempt to lure him from National duty and bring him in to my coaching setup.
So here we are, the start of a new save. I’ll have the thread pinned on my Twitter @FridayNightFM where I’ll update you on the save as we go and I’ll be looking to write some blog posts based on the processes I employ rather than writing save updates, I’ll leave that for the @5StarPod.
Thanks for reading and until next time, Viva Valencia.