Isn't Money and Medals all we desire as as Football Managers in a long term save, besides amazing Regens? At Lyon we don't have much money nor did we win big titles so far, but this season there as been a change. The first words are not going to be about the beloved Olympique Lyonnais, more I want to show how you much money there is at PSG. Before the transfer windows in Spain and England did start, the rich club from the french capital spent a lot (like they do it always in summer).

At least they bought some world class quality, unlike on FM_Grasshopper's save in Argentina with Estudiantes La Plata. In total they spent over £150 mio in June 2017 on Dybala and Özil. Meanwhile the transfer budget a Lyon was £18 mio, so roughly 10%.

Besides PSG also Olympique Marseille seems to have a sugar daddy as a charmain. They spent a total of 60(!!) millions on the transfer market as well.

Signings

Meanwhile we did do our summer transfer signings and there was one big fee: We signed Leo Babistao for 8.25 mio from Espanyol Barcelona as I felt that there was a lack of depth in the attack area as we did not have quality coming from the bench.

Besides the brazilian forward Kolarov came as short term replacement of Danilo D'Ambrosio, who wanted to leave after a bid from Napoli. At the the he ended at Manchester City for almost £20 mio.

Guillemenot and Vlalukin join for small fees as well and will be hopefully making an impact in the future!

Competitions

At the beginning of our 2nd season we managed to win our third trophy, the Trophée des champions, but we did lose the matches in the French Cup and the Coupe de League against our big rivals.

Meanwhile we managed to beat them 3-1 at home during the first half of the season, which led us to the top spot of the league at the winter break. After the first 21 games a total of 19 games and two draws, which was amazing in my point of view. The good thing is that it was even getting better: PSG had a really bad time in the league after they smashed us 5-0 in the French Cup. In the following 8 league matches they could only win 2, which allowed us to have some distance between us and PSG.

In the end we managed to secure the first league since 2009 with a total of 99 points. After almost 10 years we could do it again. This has truly been an amazing season, we were able to deliver our results really constantly over the whole season. The main advantage over last season was that Mathieu Valbuena was given a team in the first team. He was on loan at Valencia last season, due his tremendous high wages, but we couldn't sell him before the season started, so I decided to give him a chance on the first team and he was simply great:

The two titles allowed me to enter the hall of fame of the french football:

The performances in the champions Cup weren't too bad, we finished 2nd after Juventus Turin.

Youth Watch

With some amazing Regens joining the club in March, the first players of the last intake did have some first team team appearances. The young goalkeeper Guillame Hakker did play a total of 5 games in the late stages of the season, as the main goalkeeper Anthony Lopez was out for a few weeks. Hakker did deliver some high class performances at the age of 16 with having 2 clean sheets in a row and only one received goal against Barcelona in the first 3 games.

After we secured the league title I did provide him with some more match experience with the first team quad.

Besides Hakker I decided also to give Jan Zambrano some playing time, as already mentioned I think he'll be a world class striker. Barcelona and Real Madrid have already started to bid for him, but luckily we could keep him at the Club:

This year's youth intake has provided me with a player I want to show you: Amine Stephan. He has some amazing Fibra for a 15y old player, which just has been introduced to the club. A total of 60 of 80 points from the Fibra-Scala, this is just insane. It would be amazing if I could develop him to something around 80.

Big Money

The ones that follow my twitter-account have seen, that Man City came in with an offer of 93 mio including clauses at the of the season. This offer was just too good to turn down.

The good thing is that after his transfer the World Cup 2018 was still in progress and he did play most of the matches in the french national team, who did win the world cup hosted in Russia, and so the 10 international appearances for the fee of 18.25 mio has almost be accomplished.

With this transfer we were given a budget of a total of 80 millions, which allocated ourselves near the other top teams of the league 1 (When I last checked, PSG already bought some players for 100 mio). But I won't spend much money on the transfer market. Of course we will buy some promising youngsters and maybe and good central defender to make sure we advance a bit further in the European competitions.