Well, the dream is over.
I'm being melodramatic, nothing that bad has happened but Berardi has left, deadline day and in come Dortmund to meet his minimum fee release clause, which leaves me scrambling as I'd sold Mitro at his own request and was already signing Batshuayi to replace him.
Couldn't find any value at all in the permanent market so went for a loan option which was then rejected at work permit stage leaving me with a less than ideal two strikers for the first part of the season. That Batshuayi and Dolberg are both plenty good enough so I'm not too concerned but fitness/injury will become an issue at some point.
I did manage to push through the deadline day signing of Cristian Pavon from Boca though, which I'm delighted about since he's absolutely superb.
I missed out on the CL proper after drawing Roma in the final qualifying stage and losing 2-1 on aggregate which is really disappointing but it just means another europa league campaign which is fine at this stage.
Lazaar got a massive injury the day before deadline day and will be out for 6-7 months so I was chasing a loan option for the season which worked out pretty well and I replaced Gamez with Darmian, pushing Yedlin back to second choice so overall I am much stronger on paper this season, though it will take time to properly gel.
Squad;
Main/Rotation
Horn/Sels
Darmian/Yedlin
Mbemba/Diallo
Nastasic/Clarke
Loan guy whose name I've forgotten/Haidara
Ilsanker(C)/Hayden
Dahoud/Oliver
Xhaka/Diame
Pavon/Carillo
Gnabry/Lombardi
Batshuayi/Dolberg
Notable spares; Shelvey, Murgia, Ritchie, Harit. (mostly out on loan now)