SeasonNine.EpisodeFive | End of season review
Welcome back to my Football Manager 2020 blog with Stade Rennais. If you missed by previous post, you can catch up with everything that happened, here:
Read more » 09|04 DERNIÈRE LIGNE DROITE: The End of the Save Nears
MANAGERS WORDS
The league is getting a little predictable now. We have reached the inevitable stage in club development where you have upgraded all your facilities and have enough scouts around the world to deliver youth players who can grow into world-class first team players. We’ve won everything, except for the Champions League.
The current concern is whether Champions League is enough to keep me going. At Dortmund, it became tiring chasing that one trophy. You have such a small margin of error and as we learned against AC Milan, a stupid penalty and free-kick cost us the win.
The reality is that we still need to sell to buy. We have around €50M available for transfers which is not enough to compete at the level we want to compete at. I’m expecting a lot of players to leave this summer. At least they’ll me made available, with the hope we can find clubs for them, release some money for wages and bring in some for transfers.
Deflated.
THE BOARD APPRAISAL
The board are still only very pleased with my management of the team. A Champions League final. Yeah, we’re pleased. Thanks.
Confidence summary B
Club vision
Still B- here. *taps mic* is this thing on?
Club culture
The board continue to be delighted with the club culture.
- Desired: Develop players using the clubs’ youth system | Delighted
5-year plan
Expectations are rises, after nine years at the club! The 5-year plan has changed and we’re now expected to challenge for the title and reach the Champions League semi-final. No pressure.
TEAM STATS
This will probably be the last season we do the stats and review in this format. We’ve reached that point where little is changing now. We’ve reached the top in France and close to the top in Europe.
| Rennais Stats | 2027/28 season | Position | 2026/27 season |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average possession | 58% | 1st | 56% (2nd) |
| Goals | 102 | 1st | 87 (1st) |
| – from set-pieces | 29 | — | 21 |
| Pass completion ratio | 89% | 2nd | 86% (4th) |
| Cross completion ratio | 29% | 1st | 28% (1st) |
| Chances created | 140 | 1st | 127 (1st) |
| Shots on target ratio | 47% | 15th | 45% (20th) |
| Conversion rate | 10% | 7th | 10% (7th) |
| Conceded | 15 | 1st | 10 (1st) |
| – from set-pieces | 5 | — | 5 |
| Fouls committed | 418 | 5th | 437 (7th) |
| Tackles won | 84% | 10th | 86% (4th) |
Our average attendance in our fourth season at Parc de la Guérinais was 32,986 due to the on-going work to increase the capacity to 55,742 which will be above PSG and the third biggest in France. We are also finalising plans to improve the training facilities to the highest level. We are going to be one of the best clubs in France in terms of facilities by the end of my time here.
A brilliant fourth season at Parc de la Guérinais.
PLAYER STATS
In goal Cristian Rivas had an even better season than the last, breaking more records. In his 57 matches, he conceded just 24 goals and kept 39 clean sheets. How we have still managed to hold on to him I’ll never know. Hopefully, his form remains under the radar!
My Wing Backs again are not as productive as they once were. Teams are setting up very differently to us now. 28 assists between them is just one better than last season, with more assists now coming from the wingers.
In the centre of defence Gélin has been getting even less game time, it could be the season that our captain leaves us. He has been with the club since the 2013/14 season, but taking €69,000 in wages each week we could do with freeing some of that up. Onguéné and Nikolaou have 9 and 8 goals each.
In the middle of the park, Duvnjak and Verbeek have been playing well, rotating that DM position. There’s interest in Duvnjak so with the signing of Aydin I might just let him go since his value at €52M could help us get some better wingers at the club. The central midfielders have stolen the show this year, Rault has 22 goals and 7 assists, Moreno 14 goals and 10 assists, Öztürk 4 goals and 8 assists.
It has been a brilliant season for the wingers this year. Serrano has 11 goals and 12 assists from the right with Sabiá bettering that with 15 goals and 17 assists.
With Schmitt coming back and getting 10 goals in 14 I’ve really considered trying to get him back from Manchester United, but he would cost far too much. Ayari will be sold if we can find a buyer, despite recording 13 goals in 13 assists, I just have better youth options coming through.
As rated in-game, the following end of season awards were presented to the players.
Top Goalscorer
- Jacky Rault | 22 goals
Highest average rating
- Jérôme Onguéné | 7.59 rating
Most Assists
- Sabiá | 17 assists
Best pass completion
- Tomislav Duvnjak | 95% pass completion
Most player of the match awards
- Sabiá | 7 Player of the Match awards
Most yellow cards
- Jérôme Onguéné | 12 yellow cards
Most red cards
- Sabiá | 1 red card
END OF SEASON AWARDS
Oliver Jensen’s golden spoon award
Awarded to my stand out player of the season.
- Jacky Rault
Despite missing a penalty in the Champions League final, Jacky has been outstanding this season. 22 goals and 7 assists have been an excellent return for the box-to-box midfielder and he is fully deserving of this reward. To look at his attributes you wouldn’t expect this sot of return from him, either.
Oliver Jensen’s wooden spoon award
Awarded to my stand out player, for all the wrong reasons.
- Julian Bey
How do you pick a wooden spoon winning, when every outfield player achieved a rating over 7.00 this season? The player I had a lot of promise for, Julian Bey, is the unfortunate recipient of this award. He just hasn’t done as well as I would have hoped. With interest from China, this could be his last season.
Oliver Jensen’s silver spoon award
Awarded to the best youth player (under 23) to break into the squad, either new signing or from the youth teams.
- Victor Chernyavskiy
I bloody love this player, not only because he’s a Russian with 20 tackling, but because at just 19 years of age he’s already playing like he’s a mature player.
Fans player of the season
- Pedro Moreno (40%)
- Sabiá (30%)
- Jacky Rault (19%)
Young player of the season
- Pedri Moreno, 21 years old
OFF THE FIELD
We still have around €146M in the bank at the time of writing, but the transfer window hasn’t opened yet. The board have given us €100M for transfers which is a little worrying, so I’ll likely hold back on that.
With the stadium being increased to nearly 60,000 seats by July for the start of the new season, that’ll add some much-needed income. We still need to sell to buy if we want to really strengthen, but I’m okay with that.
Another season down. A time to step away and reflect and decide if we have a 10th season in us.
So that just about wraps up the review of this season.
As always, you can get in touch with me in the comments below, via twitter @fmfutbolmanager, or my slack channel #fmFutbolManager — if you’re not a part of the Football Manager Slack community, then you can join here!
Until next time, à tout à l’heure.
Oliver Jensen