A lot of messes to go through. Pellegri finally hits form and I think there’s no need to add Luis Alberto so I say no to the transfer and he goes and tears his hamstring or some stupid muscle 😑.
But this meant my young Saudi striker who was loaned from Man United hit superb form and is developing really well so he will probably start. I am trying to convince someone to join me in the summer to hopefully replace Pellegri. He is an absolute beast. But honestly after last time I am waiting to confirm it before I can even reveal it 😅.
Got to say I was tempted in the January window. Not by players but open jobs:
I got to say this was a wild underperformance by the pillars of the Saudi Pro League. Not just Al-Ittihad but everyone else. Look at the table at the moment:
Al-Ittihad and Al-Nassr have clawed back positions in the table and it is a bit of a shift with Al-Hilal because Al-Hilal were near the top 4 whereas the former 2 were floundering in the beginning of the season.
Election Update
Not much to say here but it did happen during December and the existing chairman managed to win another term apparently.
Transfer Plans
The Dalot haze didn’t last long. Honestly Real Madrid came knocking for him and he preferred them to us. But we did manage to bring someone in for the summer:
In a way this is replacing the spot taken by Oukhadda. Because I honestly think the Saudi RB I brought in has been really good. So at the moment it will look like Natan pairing up with Vitik. And Wober moves to CDM. It has been a huge problem but I am happy with the guy I brought in on loan. He’s Saudi too and he is very capable.
And this was a second loan which I wanted to make permanent and the board came through for me after I asked them to bring him in.
Standout matches
Some of the matches that stood out to me were a fairly dominant win against Jose’s Al-Ittihad:
Should be so much more but we managed to hold on. They were hardly dangerous either. But Jota who they had is such a difficult player to go against.
Then a humdinger of a match in the King’s Cup against Yelo League team Al-Jeel who knocked out bigwigs Al-Nassr:
Then it was Al-Ahli who lost some of their top players to the Africa Cup of Nations:
But it was still fairly dominant and I will take it.
Job Watch
So I was monitoring job security after seeing a few firings happen in Saudi and I noticed this:
I did think about the PAOK job and I wanted to apply. Their manager was pulled away to Fiorentina and they were left to find someone. But honestly without banking our miles from the league and cup we can’t really go there when we need to. And either way they managed to find someone to hire as their head coach. So that is going to close eventually. In that list the only ones worth thinking about are Al-Hilal and Osijek. Looking into the position of the latter they are midtable just shy of the top spots in the Croatia league. So they look like a good option if they ever sack their manager.