Hello and welcome to a new episode of my Football Manager 2012 story with Chieti: The first half of the season has passed now and it is time to see how things went. Spoiler: not as good as I wanted, but better than the critics said they would.

We continued our series of mixed results without many notable results (wins or losses) – and I am still pretty unhappy with our inability to get a long series of good results:

Probably the best result during this period was the surprising win against AC Milan: we’ve managed to dominate them despite getting the early lead (Gil is one of the biggest pleasant surprises of the season):

I was quite amazed to notice that I was also named the Manager of the Year in Italy. I was not expecting this (especially at the end of the year and not at the end of the season), but I am glad I got this great reward:

Following the good run (we are still at number 8, dropping or going slightly higher every now and then – but I forgot to take a screenshot), the board decided to let me increase the expectations. I went for a bit more because I really liked the prospect of having a much larger wage budget (and 50K to play with!)

Also, Inter approached me with a really tempting offer (there were many offers from other clubs in the past, but none of Inter’s stature):

Unfortunately, there is one really sad news for Chieti: defender Karabacak had to be given a new contract and didn’t want to settle down for anything without a really low release clause, which was activated 1 DAY!!! after he signed the contract. It was a really poor move allowing him to go (I should’ve never given him a contract, even though it meant losing him for no money – at least he would’ve stayed 6 more months). But that’s life, not always nice:

I have managed to make some extra money for the club, letting go recently signed keeper Belec who was awful (I was quite surprised to see that I was able to sell him for the same price so soon after getting him) but I also lost solid central defender Delaunay to Cean, without knowing that Karabacak would go too:

Therefore, I really needed one extra central defender and fortunately I found a solid youngster who will hopefully do well. I also needed a new keeper and hopefully Svec won’t disappoint like Belec did. I have also gambled on a new Right Winger – a rather slow one but with great stats and if he doesn’t do well, he can always play as a central midfielder. Also, young Frackowiak joined the ranks since Castellani is still performing badly and is my worst piece of business:

Here are the new Chieti players:

This would be it. Hopefully, with the new lads in the team, the second half of the season will look better and we’ll manage to secure an European Qualification spot.