With the season over, I thought I’d do a bit of a run down.

League…

When I took over at Marseille, we were 16th. The board set the target of a top half finish which was totally achievable. The squad was riddled with injuries but I knew we could turn it around. I probably exceeded their expectations if I’m honest. Lorient are yellow as they are an affiliated club. As you can see, 4th spot, which even surpassed my target of 6th place. We finished two places above Monaco who had a terrible season and only 5 points off of a Champions League place.

Looking at our rise, I took over on game 13. There was always time to take us to the upper end of the table. The blue circle denotes when I took over the club.

Cups…

The cups were our only real chance of silverware. As I mentioned in my previous blog, we were knocked out of the Europa League on away goals to Tottenham after 1-1(H) and 0-0(A) draws. They had a far greater squad than me, so I was pleased with those results. It was never a goal for me to win that competition. I’m not a fan of the Europa League format if I’m honest.

We won the Coupe de la Ligue against PSG as I previously mentioned.

The Coupe de France final was our last game of the season, again against PSG. Unfortunately we weren’t to be victorious on this occasion. It was a pretty close game, but they took their chances and we didn’t. Jordan Ayew had been on a goal drought and Demba Ba had picked up a knock a couple of days before the final. He made it, but was below par. Stats show it was closer than the result suggests.

As previously stated, that’s my last game at Marseille as I’m looking to move onto a new club. I achieved my goal as set out by the board and won a cup final. A decent season. I’ve been in France for two seasons and I think it’s time for a new country.

Players…

Finally, a quick look at some of the stand out players. I’ll concentrate a bit on the signings I made as well.

Demba Ba was arguably my best signing. He cost me £4.4m in January. He played in 33 games and finished as my joint top scorer with 19 goals.

Mathieu Valbuena also played great for me and was my top assist maker and a little bit of a genius. He had 73 Key Passes this season which was 38 more than the next guy. Demba Ba finished with 34 Key Passes.

Frickson Erazo was another of my January signings and he came into the team more towards the end of the season. Not amazing, but his value has trebled to £9.25m from £2.4m that I got him for.

Valbuena had my highest average rating of 7.41 followed by Demba Ba 7.25 and Bruno Ecuélé Manga 7.23. Demba Ba and Ji Dong-Won(a loanee from Dortmund) were my top scorers with 19 each.

The team adapted to my tactic almost instantly which was interesting to see. The 2-2 draw with Lille in my first game a great start and beating Metz 6-2 in my second game was a dream start.

Time to move on though, I’ll be handing in my resignation now and looking for a new team for next season.

Future Blogs…

Obviously I’m new to this blogging malarky and I’m really keen for any feedback which you can offer. Any interaction is good, even if it’s just to tell me this is rubbish! I plan on adding some videos, a bit more info about my tactic and the attributes I look for in players. I’m not thinking I’ll be amazing at any team and perhaps that’s more interesting than doing well. If I do rubbish, it just shows that sometimes, we’re all gonna be crap at some point.

Thanks for reading, J