It was certainly the most complicated  season ever in Football Manager 2010 because of tight challenge by my Leeds in all tournaments this year. We got to the finals of League Cup, FA Cup and Europa Cup! And two last cups were won!

Leeds success in 2 tournaments

Europa League

Drum roll…

Though it wasn't too hard to win it. At least the final was easy game due to average squad strength of Standard:

Marco Verratti and Lautaro Acosta made that game scoring and assisting each other. So the final was easy, though I wouldn't say the same about previous stages:

1/4    Leeds – Tottenham 2:0, 1:1

1/2    Leeds – CSKA Moscow 2:1, 1:1

Tottenham is always a problem for me. It's one of the best English clubs now in the game. CSKA Moscow is simply the best Russian team that won the championship 4 times:

So I cannot say that it was just a lucky strike to win Europa League. These two teams were really strong and made me sweat…

FA Cup

"Damned Aston Villa, damned Aston Villa!" – I had been saying to myself since the 70th minute of FA Cup final. I had lost almost all hopes on victory and hung my head in the very end of the game… But then fabulous Marco Verratti made a through pass to Marquinhos who was accurate enough to score a goal on the 90th minute! Late equalizer! The extra time was played under Leeds dictation. I beat my opponent tactically in it:

As you see Verrati made another assist and scored goal with a smart diving header from 14 meters. Here are the player stats of Leeds:

Premier League

The only tournament failed by Leeds is Premier League. We started at the 7th position after first 10 fixtures and finished the season there. And it's when I claimed 'Title challenge' expectations before the season.

There were another portion of what I call "stupid matches". It's when your team has an absolute advantage but don't able to win a match. Among such games are:

Burnley – Leeds 3:2

Leeds – Portsmouth 1:2

Finally the most of squad and board are disappointed with the 7th position in the league. Though totally they are satisfied because of success in Euro League, FA Cup and League Cup (don't forget Leeds got to the final):

Cool thing is club's profit of $32.49M this year. Hope it will influence on amount of transfer money that will be given by board to me next season.

Players

I would like to start talk about Leeds from praising Leeds leader Marco Verratti.

Marco Verratti

This year he became English Players' Player of the Year:

He had already become World Class footballer. Just look at his attributes, they are amazing:

You can compare these attribute values with those he had in previous seasons using this link: http://www.truefootballmanager.com/2010/03/too-many-draws-in-premier-league.html

Marco fulfils his potential during trainings developing his attributes' values more and more. It results in excellent performance during season:

His this season's 19 assists became a new Leeds record:

Leeds squad

At first traditional Leeds squad screen shot from me:

What do we see in it?

- Gignac is the best Leeds goal scorer again with 29 balls. Though he became older - 30 years. But I am pretty sure Gignac will show high level in the next season.

- Other forwards Marquihnos and Anichebe played very well scoring truly vital goals on the last minutes. I am happy with these classy strikers.

- Central midfielders Teicou and Mbia were enough destructive at their positions. Though Teicou is a backup player now because I used newcomer Fabian Delph instead. Delph is not so good in ball tackling but much more efficient as goal assister making creative passes. This season was quite decent for him. Hope to see some progress from his side in the next one.

- Zoran Tosic and Lautaro Acosta. Other Leeds newcomers. I have contrary feelings regarding performance of these 2 guys. Tosic had started the season marvellously but was below average in the end. Acosta had been rather poor winger at the start but adapted himself and showed great performance during last matches (including decisive finals).

- Lee Wallace and Clement Grenier are the worst players of the team and will be sold. The same decision is taken regarding Howson because he cannot even face substitution bench competition now.

- Our goalie Vincent Enyeama produced good performance making a lot of important saves. From the other hand he did several mistakes during the season that influenced amount of taken points in Premier League. I will think over goalkeeper position, maybe it's time to find a new more stable guy for it.

- The  most problematic area is defence that cause bad Leeds result in Premier League. Mevlut Sahin is Leeds newbie who gets better and better every month. Though he is young and makes mistakes as other defenders. Others are weaker. Addison is more central midfielder than defender. Prieto, Johnson and Hangeland are too old already. Their attributes fell much. Look at Brede Hangeland:

Look to the attribute values of Leeds captain I understand that next season will be started with totally new defence. Waiting for transfer window impatiently…

True Football Manager