Well Folks its that time again...
July Fourth Season Summary (Game Season 37, My Season 15, My Level 15)
League
Final Position: 1st, Played 26, Won 24, Drawn 2, Lost 0, GF 100, GA 7, GD +93 PTS 74
July Fourth won the league in similar fashion to how they did last season by going through the whole undefeated in the league this season, thanks to Marco Van Basten missing a last minute penalty, this season there was 2 draws, 0-0 away against NumCeza FC and 2-2 away against Besiktas, We went unchallenged for the title and were champions as early as last sunday afternoon with still 7 games to play, we won the league by 25 points which equalled the biggest league winning margin which we achieved last season
Champions League
Final Position: Winner Played 13 Won 11 Drawn 1 Lost 1 GF 41 GA 11 GD +30
This season was a tough champions league campaign for July Fourth which we failed to win our group and qualify as runners-up for the first time after drawing at Sentepespor and our only defeat of the season came at home 0-2 against Sentepespor again, but we still made good progress to the final giving we had a tough draw with good challenges from both FC Zywiec in the QF and also FC RonnyBonny in the SF both managers put up good fights and were unable to stop us reaching the final, once we played the final after being nervous initially of completing the 3rd Treble in a row, we started well out the blocks and went on to win by an easy 5-1 scoreline.
Cup
Final Position Winner Played 13, Won 13, Drawn 0, Lost 0, GF 67, GA 2, GD +65
July Fourth were left to claim an easy cup win in this campaign, as usual the early stages were comfortable for us playing against lower levels, Eragon Team in the Semi-Final were our best challengers with only us beating them 1-0 and 2-1 and when we got to the final we played a erster FC Puma that was unorganized for this final and played many players out of position and we were able to take full advantage of this and went onto destory them by a 5-0 win.
Total Games in all 3 competitions: Played 52 Won 48 Drawn 3 Lost 1 GF 208 GA 20 GD +188
We worked hard this season and got the full reward of having a strong squad and good organization to win all 3 competitions for the 3rd consecutive season and thus won the Treble "Treble" but we regard this season as a failure. Why? Our aim this season was to go 26-0-0 in the league this season and NOT win the treble. But having said that 3 trophies are better than 1 league trophy and a 26-0-0 season in the league but we would love to complete a 26-0-0 season in the league in the future even if it take us years.
Appearances
Alex Zidane 52
Leigh McNamara 52
Stacey Papaleo 52
Ryan McNamara 50
Ludek Novotny 49
Phil McNamara 46
Tony Adams 44
Kevin Mensah 38
Roy Holvoet 35
Pepp Crawford 34
Robbie Savage 34
Petr Vasko 33
Aaron Murphy 33
David Rocastle 28
(Players in BOLD played every game this season)
Top Goalscorers
Stacey Papaleo 36
Kevin Mensah 34
Leigh McNamara 34
Pepp Crawford 23
Alex Zidane 23
Phil McNamara 18
Assists
Stacey Papaleo 32
Ludek Novotny 28
Man Of The Match
Stacey Papaleo 11
Kevin Mensah 6
Ludek Novotny 6
Leigh McNamara 5
Ryan McNamara 5
July Fourth Player of the Season
Once again goals were evened out and the assists mainly came from 2 our our players this season Ludek Novotny and Stacey Papaleo. Novotny and Adams in defence were an excellent partnership and they kept goals down to a very minimum with only conceding 20 goals in all 3 competitions, Ryan McNamara dug in and got some vital tackles in, P.McNamara was a shining player this season with scoring 18 this season, Kevin Mensah was excellent as usual with his brilliant free-kicks and scoing lots of goals from knowhere, David Rocastle put in a great last week for the trophies as with Alex Zidane adapting well to AMR but he is still more effective as a striker and scored goals in both finals, Stacey Papaleo was disappointing to begin with this season but came good towards the end finding a hatrick and some braces, Pepp Crawford was excellent in his introduction to the club but he god injured and his form seem to gone with it, But this season there was 1 squad member that did something that was unexpected and the July Fourth player of the season award goes to... Leigh McNamara, he was easily our best player this season from the left side of midfield playing well all season in all formations and was deadly at scoring goals this season from both AML/ML and played all 52 games this season and scored 4 goals in one of the cup games in this season and got about 5 braces, he scored in both cup finals and also was the match winner in a few of our games this season. Since we already knew what Papaleo and Mensah can do and they did what was expected of them this season and L.McNamara wasn't expected to score 34 goals this season it was easy for us pick him out for our choice of player of the season this season.
Off The Pitch Performance
The board have announced that July Fourth have made an operating loss of $38.1million this season and also our squad is 2 players shorter than last season so that would of ment we would of made a further loss of around $100million had we had our usual 20 player squad this season rather than 18, Players wages were increased by a million a day due to 8 players needing new contracts renewed at the beginning of the season, The main reason for the club to make a loss was the $268million expansion of the Pro Arena which is due to be completed tomorrow and once the expansion has been completed the club will make an immediate investment into the World Arena for around $352million that will increase the stadium capacity from 183,000 to 211,000 by the end of next season. We currently have 344 tokens available for next season with the board expecting to make an investment of another 500 tokens in the near future.
July Fourth ended the season with a fanbase of 2,396,229.
Board Meeting
The board have announced that they will make an extra 500T investment should the club require this for squad development for next season. The board are also excited by the possibility of a competitive new cup format.