It’s almost a week late, but I’ve finally got the Motherwell Eagles’ season preview written up. Heading into the season I was pretty sure this would need to be another year of building the squad to compete for promotion in the future. Thankfully, I dodged any retirement announcements so I’ve got the current squad available for four more seasons at least.

To head towards promotion, my aim for this off-season has been to replace back-ups with 60+ rated starters. I’m not in position to do it all in one go, so I’ve prioritise the weakest positions in the squad. Hopefully, this approach we’ll see us show some progression up the table this season and with another season or two of signings allow us to compete for promotion.

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Squad and Tactics

Tactically, I’m sticking with the 4-1-2-1-2 formation as the primary tactic for the season. There has been some discussion in the community about single CDMs not performing well in this engine. For me, I’ve actually been getting better results in testing than I did before season 6. I’ve got a 4-2-2-2 tactic that has been reasonable as well, that I can turn to if needs be.

Goalkeepers

The first of our five newcomers is Ettore Bonetti who will be the new starting goalkeeper this season. At 27, he isn’t as young as I’d prefer to go for, but he does have a minimum of 5 seasons left in him. Bonetti also looks like he might have some progression left in him, he jumped up two points of overall last season and with a bit of luck maybe he can make it to an uncommon.

I’ve kept Mariano Ochoa in the squad as the back-up. It’s a bit of a change from previous years, where I’ve picked a much worse back-up than the starter who don’t mind a lack of progression on. Ochoa, hasn’t done much progressing so far and I’m really wanting to have a better line-up when I rotate, so I’m going to accept progression is going to be slowed a fair bit for Ochoa going forward.

Defenders

In the centre of defence, I’ve got the same starting pair of Karlheinz Stangl and Otto Hinrichs as I have had every season so far. Claudio Lombardo has moved into the back-up role, after I brought in a new CDM to be the starter over him. He’s a 56 at CB, so a decent upgrade on last years back-up.

For the full-backs, again the starters from last season return in Jacob van Vliet on the right and Gustavo Rubiano on the left. I have improved the rotation options as Bruno Gusmao comes in to replace Schumacher and is a 6 point upgrade overall.

Midfielders

Edgardo Almada is the biggest addition to the midfield, he’ll be playing as the CDM and is actually a 62 rated player in that position. At 26, he’ll be playing for at least 6 more seasons and with a really low serial he’ll hopefully last well past that. He’s backed up by Marcelo Domingos, who I’ll need to look to improve on at some point in the future.

I’ve kept the three man rotation of Timmy Cooper, Rodrigo Llanos and Thiago Almeida to cover the CAM and RM positions. I’m really excited to see what kind of progression Llanos can get this year. He picked up a point of overall last season and is still just 23 years old.

The left side of midfield one of the positions I was keen to strengthen going into this season. I was hoping to get a new starter with an overall of 60+. However, I struggled to find a player of a reasonable age in the price range I was looking to pay. I ended up settling on Alexander Waite, a 24 year-old 56 rated LM with solid defending much like Monday Ogbu.

Waite has picked up 3 points of overall in his two seasons to date (including a tier break) so I felt pretty confident he has a decent amount of progress in him. He’s had instant results, picking up a point of overall after the first game of the season. With a bit of luck he’ll turn into the 60+ player I was hoping to add.

Forwards

Martin Beck remains the star of the forward line, bringing elite pace alongside solid finishing and physical. At 30 years old, he does need replacing in the at some point but he hasn’t announced his retirement yet at least. Returning alongside Beck is the youngster Shane Garcia. Now 19, Garcia is up to 68 pace and should get plenty of game time to help him progress.

The final addition to the squad is Frederick Arnold, a 20 year-old RM who goes up to a 58 rating as a striker. I was looking to replace Henrik Ohman going into the off-season and I got Arnold from a referral reward. I was looking for someone faster than Ohman (53 pace) and Arnold fits the bill with 66 pace. Hopefully, he’ll be able to contribute a bit more than Ohman who managed just 7 goals in 32 games for the Eagles.

The League

The power creep in the division has been pretty strong going into this season. I’ve improved the best 11 of the squad by 27 points since the start of last season, but we’ve gone up one spot in the projections compared to last season. Without improvements we’d have dropped to the 11th place in the projections.

The power creep in the top half of the season is just as impressive. Last year 3rd in the projections had a best 11 of 689. This season that wouldn’t be good enough for a top half finish.

I’m hoping the improvements to the depth of the side will see us be a bit more competitive when we start having to rotate. If we can take a few more points off the better sides in the league and concede a few less goals that would be a good sign of progress for this season.

Goals for the Season

8th in the League – The same as last season, 8th is where we should be on projections so that’s going to be the aim. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see us drop to 9th as Coronel’s Death Zone are a very close match for us. But, 7th isn’t out of the question either as Heibon-sa are close-ish to us.

Knock-out Rounds in the Cup – Same as usually, getting out of the group stage and earning a bit of extra MFL will be the goal in the cup. I will be prioritising the Cup games over the league as we aren’t going for promotion this year.

More Progression – I think the team still has a fair bit of progression in it, especially the young players in the team. Maybe we can see a player or two get into a 60+ range where they can be a solid contributor in a promotion season. However, I will need to think about who to upgrade after this season.

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