Hola and welcome back to Gijon, where we’ve finished a respectable 7th in the first season. Will it be enough for a European place? I think it might sneak a UEFA Cup spot, but we’ll see.

There’s a big summer ahead, so £4.8m is very welcome.

I guess the question is, do we need more seats? What are they expecting from us? Maybe they know we’re in Europe. I’m really not sure we are.

This seems like a bleak draw.

LOOK WHO GOT PROMOTED!

What a set of awful lads.

This was before the update. This is after:

Who’s retired then? Kerry Dixon. Trevor Steven, he was a star player so probably worth finding his regen. Brian Marwood. Steve Hodge. Pat Bonner. No great losses. We move.

I’ve been recruiting, so let me take you through the new characters.

Garivia signs on a free. I’m hopeful he will solve the CM problem.

Molnar is here for £300k. He might be good but I fear it’s a level too high for him.

Cudicini has incredible stats. He’s also apparently gentle, uninfluential and unadaptable. Oh and as weak as a kitten. My number 1.

Recommended by the scouts we have Ricardo Silva. Riccy. Again, stats look good, even if he’s not the quickest. He’ll add competition.

So here we are with a month to make things better. I suspect some of those forwards will be gracing the B Team shortly.

I sold a few too, just for completeness:

£10m in the bank, I think we definitely need more. Lediakhov is like a new signing…

An issue is we are already housing 5 non-EU players and it seems like anybody keen is not from Europe. So we’ll have to be patient.

With that in mind, young strikers are snapped up. It’s simple really, they’ll either play for the B Team or they won’t.

He must have been somebody decent?

£5k for Olivero, a hero from the Mulhouse days. B Team.

This is happening too often. Olivero gets to stay for a bit, anyway.

The season starts with that Copa game against Betis. The squad…well I don’t know, I’m not convinced I’ve made it any better. What do you think?

I am somewhat worried. Nevertheless, if some of my bargain purchases prove to be good then we’ll be laughing, or at least chuckling. There are far too many forwards and I want to send some to the B Team, but they have loads too.

Mill is a 41 year old German by the way who I signed for a laugh. He’s absolutely dreadful but somehow deemed to be a star player. Some of the young players will need to be loaned out to improve if they aren’t deemed worthy soon.

Anyway, here’s how I’ve lived the first team up.

What can possibly go wrong?

Everything, then. Cudicini is probably not the answer. We had THREE goals disallowed. And two red cards. Sack the officials. Or me. Whatever is quicker.

It’s only Real Madrid next. A valiant point, even if we won this fixture last season.

Molnar gets two yellows inside 23 minutes to put a dampener on his reasonable start.

We ARE in the UEFA Cup! But we’ve drawn bloody Espanyol, that’s not exotic at all.

Betis are torn a new one. I should add, Pinto is the second choice keeper (Prats is injured) and their third choice was a grey youth keeper, who didn’t do great. Through to face Sociedad in the next round.

We play them in the league next with Prats recovered, the result is similar though. Signs of life from the boys.

Frustrating. Zaragoza’s keeper gets man of the match for keeping us at bay after we bang on the door for the best part of 50 minutes.

We find goals far easier to come by in our first European match. Even if we just lose here in the league, we’ve gone a fair way to knocking them out here. Kaiku showing signs of living up to the NRP (Nick Rowe Promise).

He needs to be at his best to help overturn a dire first half in the Copa Del Rey. It’s our third game in 5 days, which seems a little harsh and we’ll play again in 2 days. I have a big squad full of jobbers and they’re all needed.

Deadline day. Panic buys? £210k…

And a panic sell? £1.8m

This is legitimately a good signing. Ibrahim Ba arrives and I have only high hopes for him.

£275k for Portuguese Micker.

We celebrate our new friends with a win over Salamanca. A much needed win at that!

We’ll finish this week with the fairly routine task of seeing through a 3-1 lead against Espanyol. It’s all done and dusted inside 16 minutes and an easy passage into round 3.

For goodness sake, I just wanted the chance to blood some of the young lads.

The table is not much to shout about after 7 games. 31 to go…

It’s a bit like trying to turn around a massive ship. Not the Titanic, that didn’t end well. Just a big ship, use your imagination. Some of the players aren’t going to get us where I want to be and nobody wants to join. So it’s quite interesting relying on the scouts’ opinions on really random players. Most of whom, have been shite.

Still, the B Team are a joke. They sit second bottom, insistent on not playing Duncan or Bound but finding a place for Phil Williams and that 41 year old German striker. And Pat Nevin. Is he insane?

See you next week for more of this daftness.