Football Season Guide

Although they received a license to participate this season, questions over their finances remain. They are therefore supposed to start this campaign minus three points because of it, although it's not currently showing on any official league tables so they could have appealed it. As far as things on the pitch go, they're in a strong position. They lost some rotation players pre-season, none of which will be missed. Key striker Prelec left but it was Malone who impressed more toward the end of the season so they opted to sign him over Prelec. The only real loss to this team was that of Matteo Perez Vinlöf at LWB. Understudy Guenouche isn't as good as he is but as things currently stand, it looks like he'll be relied upon. Other than that though, this is a strong team that should be able to start well with last season's success fresh in their memories, having secured themselves European football. They've made good additions for the future to their squad with Australian hotshot Noah Botic and rapid Ghanaian Boateng joining as alternatives to the departed Prelec. Both can take their time with developing though - the club managed to bring Sarkaria home from his tour of Asia, and he's a very experienced head at this level. They also added Kang-hee Lee to their ranks. Although a midfielder by trade, he's actually been used at CB in recent friendlies. They've got some talented youngsters on the cusp of joining the first-team (e.g. Aleksa, Maybach, Saljic) so they're in quite a good position, all things considered. The only real problem they're going to encounter this season is depth. They thrived last season because they only had to play once a week barring the odd "English week". This season, should they make it to the Conference League group stage, they'll have to play every few days and that's not going to suit them. They don't have the depth, and they don't have the money to grant themselves more of it so unless some of the kids develop rapidly, they could struggle. Given the rule changes in Austria this season though (7 subs named to 9), they will get more opportunities to blood youngsters though... It's not a secret that they over-achieved last season. A repeat this season looks unlikely. A top six finish should be the least they manage though, all things conisdered.