After a tiresome 2012/2013 season in Football Manager 2011 with Universitatea Craiova (but also a highly rewarding one), it appears that the new season 2013/2014 is not as simple for our team, even though we have had an amazing performance in the Champions League.

Here is our group stage and how it ended – not really a huge surprise that we were the 3rd placed, but with the amount of points we have managed to grab: 11 points is an incredible result for us, meaning that we have also managed to beat Porto at home and also snatched a draw from Fiorentina. I was really, really pleased:

And here are the stats for the Porto match that we’ve managed to win in great fashion:

Universitatea Craiova Player Analysis

One of our biggest problems is connected to Jermaine Beckford – the striker has been injured and didn’t manage to have the desired impact (even though he did score 6 in 12 games, which is quite fair). Bratu and Cristea are still an amazing strike force upfront and Antal performs beautifully every game, but I’m still concerned about the Team Blend – probably the number of the signings and the strange schedule we have has caused something that I can’t yet explain:

As you can see, we are not the unbeatable team of the last season, Dinamo managed to make a comeback (sorry, Johnny) and Rapid is a solid 7 points away from us. I do hope that in the second half of the season 2013/2014 we’ll be able to make a comeback:

I have also signed two new players, hot prospects that will hopefully become Craiova’s superstars in the future. I am most pleased with Ewan Tixier – hopefully he will see a huge leap at his physical attributes


See you next time, hopefully with a happier update!