Hello my dear readers,

Today's post is completely dedicated to the winter transfers in season 8. The point is in that Tony Fernandes is a greedy and covetous chairman of Queen Park Rangers. He sold two my very prospective players without opportunity to refuse!

Players out

What a twist of fate! I was boasting Abdel Hamid Gomaa in the previous QPR story post, and now he is sold to PSG. Unfortunately.

 

The same happened with Dif who has been one of my main central back since the very season start. Therefore it's even more painful loss. Stupid greedy Tony Fernandes!!!!!

Abdelmalek Dif

Additionally, goalie Tomas Cerny had got tired sitting on a substitution bench and was sold for $2.7M which is twice higher than his actual price value.

 

Centre back instead of Dif

So I lost two brilliant youngsters and had to analyse several squad positions. I have 5 centre backs in my team + anchor man Zargo Toure who can play on the last line as well. Well, I decided to stay away from headache of signing new DC and rely on young English talent Kyle Redhead. He played as a substitution centre back before.

Kyle gets a chance!

 

Players in

Loosing Gomaa I understood I have a right flank problem. MR position has only one good player now - Seamus Coleman. This is why I decide to go transfer market to find another footballer who is able to play as right midfielder.

In total, 3 players were bought to the Rangers:

One of them is Jordi Alba. You may be wondered but I intend to use him on the right flank!

Jordi Alba

The best left back of Euro 2012 in the real life possesses excellent passing skills, high speed, and good technical level. Mentally he is also very good having the majority of attributes above or equal to 14.

Alba's versatility will allow me to use him at 3 different positions:

- MR

- ML

- WBL

Though you can point that MR position is at Unconvincing level and you'll be right. But I set New Position training for Alba, so playing right midfielder should become more natural in further.

What's good is that Jordi Alba grabbed the Man of the Match award in his debut game for my team. He made 2 assists providing a victory against weak Brighton in FA Cup. Jordi deserved his 9.0 average rating with great passes, ball interruptions, runs…

Welcome to the Team Jordi Alba!

 

Nick Uguz

Young nice defensive midfielder. It was too tempting not to sign Uguz for just $700K.

 

Guilermo Ochoa

Ochoa comes to Q.P.R. to be a new backup goalkeeper.

 

Balance and wage budget

Wage budget has grown because of high salary given to Alba. Young Gomaa and Dif costed much lower money every week. But I am still in $200K below set wage limit. That is inspiring!

Balance is also quite good now. Especially if one counts that I ordered enhancements of the training and youth facilities.

So there it is.

How do you like my signing of Jordi Alba?

 

Excited to blog for you,

Vitaliy Mokosiy

Following their conversion of Mid Ohio, Virtua_LM has brought the second of their high-quality tracks from rFactor to ISI's new rFactor 2 simulation.

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Alan Boiston of VVV Automotive has managed to get his hands on an early version of WRC 3 title, treating us to lots of new gameplay footage.

iRacing has released a new version of their online racing simulation, adding plenty of new features and improvements to the system.

Fanatec has released the video manual for the new ClubSport V2 pedals.

Kunos Simulazioni has released a mix of new Assetto Corsa previews.

Team RMT has released new previews of World Super GT 2's Welter LM94.

Slightly Mad Studios has released two new development builds of their WMD-powered Project CARS title.

Dear readers,

My current season numbered 8 should be the most successful in the whole story. That's because Queens Park Rangers is still on its course to win several trophies including Premier League and Champions League.

I played 15 matches which resulted in 11 wins, 1 draw, 3 losses.

 

Premier League

It's interesting that all 3 losses happened in Premier League but it doesn't hinder to stay at the table top having 6 points distance from the closest persecutor - Man Utd.

As for the losses I uncovered some information already about tough away games against Arsenal and Manchester United at my FM Crowd blog:

Arsenal - Q.P.R. 3:0

Manchester United - Q.P.R. 3:1

Chelsea - Q.P.R. 0:1

It was really great that my players coped with their feelings after the loss at Old Trafford and were quite confident in the next game at Stamford Bridge. Q.P.R. was playing without Carlos Fierro but anyway managed to grab the victory against arch-rivals thanking to Douglas Costa.

It was particularly important victory!

Unluckily, this win became painful for my squad due to 2 sudden injuries and 3 suspensions. Therefore I had no rotation options in the next match against Liverpool what caused another our loss in a quite equal game.

Chelsea is still having an advantage in past meetings:

 

Carling Cup

If you look into Q.P.R. story achievements, you will see that Carling Cup has been the most difficult tournament for me since the very first season. It sounds funny but in the majority of cases Q.P.R. gets out of it it the 3rd/4th round. Twice we managed to qualify to quarterfinals. This time we excelled ourselves to become semi-finalists! At last!

It happened in the nervous and somewhat weird game with Wolves. It look like an equal game by shots. Albeit, by possession and passing percentages, The Rangers were better.

 

Champions League

It was not too difficult, but it was not too easy as well.

Napoli was beaten at home with ease but Sevilla is still very strong. We could only manage to play draws against Spanish champions. It confirms there can be a lot tough matches on our way to so dreamed trophy. Though my first priority is Premier League now.

Carlos Fierro scored 10 goals in 6 Champions League games and goes the 2nd with this amazing statistics. His attack partner in the national team of Mexico has 2 goals more.

 

Q.P.R. will meet with Lyon, very experienced Champions League club as you can see from the next screenshot. So it's going to be a tough challenge for Queens Park Rangers.

 

All clubs in the first CL knockout round:

 

Q.P.R. players

Only 6 guys have average rating below 7.00! Should I not be happy with that? Of course, I am happy!

All those 6 underperformers are young and should probably play better in future. I am slightly worried about Johannes Geis who is not so young actually being 25 years old. I expect the German to show more confident and stable football.

At last, I got reliability and great constant creativity from John Fleck. Now he has 10 assists in 17(6) matches.

Carlos Fierro is definitely the best and most valuable Q.P.R. player of the reported period. But today I would like you to pay attention at Abdel Hamid Gomaa, my substitution player who is having brilliant progress in trainings and overall.

Abdel Hamid Gomaa

My assistant manager suspects I am wrong putting Gomaa onto substitution bench and using James Rodriguez instead. Who knows, maybe he is right…

The Egyptian scored 2 wonder goals which I am sharing with you.

Gomaa was dribbling from the right flank

Lucky strike by Gomaa

 

Next matches

I would say Q.P.R. has easy matches ahead. Just think we will only play 2 matches with grand clubs in 2.5 months. Both at home. Serious opposition is going to happen from Wolves as well. All other games should won including Carling Cup semi-final legs against Bolton.

As for Lyon, it will be outstanding Champions League encounter!

What's your forecast for it?

How do you think will my Q.P.R. hold the 1st PL table line or even increase distance from other clubs to 10 points, for example?

Truly excited to blog for you,

Vitaliy Mokosiy