It’s time to jump straight to the end of season 2013/2014 in my Chieti story in Football Manager 2012 and I have some great news to share with you: we’ve managed to keep up the great form throughout the season and stayed almost all times at the number one spot. Eventually, it all ended with this:

We’ve actually had a pretty decent run and winning the title was no surprise: we won it by 16 points and had an amazing goal difference of +44. Now that’s something that I really like to see, even though we also seemed to concede a lot of goals too. In the end, it’s the final league standing that matters the most:

Thanks to our great form, we’ve managed to leave a mark in the C1B division by setting a new record for the number of points in a season:

We also managed to reach the semi final of the Serie C cup and I was actually hoping to win it too, but somehow Aversa Normanna managed to pull a surprise and qualified for the final after drawing with us twice. But at least we’ve won the C1 Super Cup without many problems.

Here are the last fixtures that we had and the great results of the Neroverdi:

Our great form, of course, managed to draw in some awards, even though they were fewer than one would expect from such solid winners. First of all, I was crowned manager of the year, which is always an interesting thing to achieve:

Two of our players were tied as the top scorers of Serie C1 with 18 goals each (I’m talking here about Scorza and Monachello who were both amazing):

And finally, even though none of our great players have managed to get the Player of the Year award, we did pretty well in this area too with surprise of the season Nicola Porfido getting the silver medal and the ever present Valtulina the bronze one:

In terms of player ratings, we had 10 with an average over 7, which is great to know. Young defender Nicola Porfido was the revelation of the season, even though most of his great rating came following the goals scored thanks to my corner tweaks (12 goals for a defender in 31 games is pretty impressive!). I am also pretty impressed by the fact that we’ve managed to keep Scorza at the team even though he decided to ask me to put him on a transfer list – eventually he changed his mind when he saw how well we’re doing in the league and I am really proud to have him in the squad still. Hopefully now that we’re one level higher, it will be easier to hold onto him for at least one more season because he’s actually the engine that keeps the team going.

Here are the ratings of the Chieti players at the end of the season:

Despite our great run in the league and even in the Serie C cup, the income this year was kind of disappointing: the general income from ticket sales was only 6k more than last season, while the gate receipts were 300k less. I really have no idea how this was possible, but it’s obviously disappointing. We’ll probably be the poorest Serie B team:

But fortunately, it all ended on a more optimistic note, with the sponsorship figures being pretty encouraging: 1.7 Million more than last year. Hopefully this will be enough to keep us afloat.

Thanks for reading this post and see you pretty soon with details about the Football Manager 2012 side challenges and, of course, with new posts from my Chieti story!