The Pre-Season of the 2018 version of the PCMdaily.com ManGame continues and with its over 10 years of history it still remains a popular competition to be hold each year. This is our 4th season in the ManGame and for the 3rd year our team name is Fablok, led by our flagship sponsor Fablok of course. This is also our 3rd season in the PCT division, nearly promoting within the last few race days of that season. Interesting times are set to come for our team, as the search for new captains and riders are the main focus for us this off season, unlike last year having only 2 signings to present.

It is already confirmed that around 6-8 riders (some of which have been with us from the start) will leave the team this off season to pursue new adventures. This brings in the opportunity to switch focus and try to promote with new leaders, too. Yes it is still our goal to promote, while we haven't been much lucky in this are, that is mainly due to poor race planning and not having any width. It is mainly only around 4 riders that score for us mainly, so that is an area we will look to improve on. As to find out who will leave us cannot be revealed yet, as it will first be decided until contract negotiations.

Fablok "is a Polish manufacturer of locomotives, based in Chrzanów. Fablok being a widely used syllabic abbreviation of Fabryka Lokomotyw. Fablok does not make new locomotives anymore." - Wikipedia - Fablok is our Polish Flag Ship for a lost work of art never to return and tells the lesson that all great things must come to an end

Booker wrote:
Looking forward to seeing that new look Fablok roster, after renewals - any chance you'll be letting some strong Polish riders go?? Please?

Sleek jersey by the way

Nat.	Surname	Firstname	OVL	Wage
GER	Mohs	Erik	78,35	€ 440.000
GBR	Froome	Chris	76,90	€ 375.000
IRL	Roche	Nicolas	75,90	€ 180.000
ITA	Guardini	Andrea	75,96	€ 150.000
GBR	Geoghegan Hart	Tao	71,13	€ 125.000
POL	Stepniak	Grzegorz	75,39	€ 115.000
POL	Poljanski	Pawel	75,17	€ 110.000
ISR	Shapira	Idan	74,07	€ 90.000
ISR	Cohen	Noam	73,84	€ 50.000
POL	Zielinski	Kamil	73,13	€ 50.000
ISR	Margaliot	Ran	72,37	€ 50.000
GEO	Nareklishvili	Giorgi	72,76	€ 50.000
POL	Bodnar	Maciej	71,34	€ 50.000
SVK	Sagan	Juraj	72,03	€ 50.000
ISR	Eliad	Daniel	72,75	€ 50.000

Matysiak, Berard, Lavoine, Bialoblocki, Pszczolarski and Feillu leaves the team, while Froome and Roche keep their position within the team. We would like to thank Feillu, Pszczolarski, Lavoine, Berard and Matysiak for their service within the team, where they have been us from the start until now. This leaves a nice gap of wage cap to use for the transfer season, but at the moment a renewal doesn't imply that certain riders will stay after the transfer season is over. Early talks in the Renewal process made it clear, that an complete reconstruction of the team wasn't needed, so therefore a lot of riders will stay.

With only 15 spots filled, there's still a lot of smart transfer research to be done, before we can begin on making a better team than last year. Which by itself will be very hard, as Roche and Froome have declined a bit in strength. The residual wage cap that remains to be spend, will be used either to find one more captain for the team or increase the depth of our current team. With a spicy Free Agents market there are alot of possibilities, but our small wage cap means we have to be smart during this process. Either way this is our template for the 2018 season!

Yes Transfer is over us once again and this time around our goal has been to spend our remaining wage cap in a effective manner, while maintaining a competitive squad for PCT promotion. We had contemplated to sell most of our leaders and start on a fresh, but renewals went better than expected. So now we can finally present some riders, that perhaps not will score that much, but can setup our leaders better than before.

While these stats don't scream for much and he for sure will spend most time protecting our captain or getting water bottles. That is also a type of rider that we need and adding to our recent fallen collection of Polish riders, maintains our nationality focus.

Russian riders have despite having grown up in the part of the world we have our focus, haven't yet featured on our team until now. Ivan Rovny is a rider, who will both add to our depth and also be able to cause havoc in attacks. This is something he should be able to warrant and for only 50k wage he does not fill much in our budget.

71

58

69

75

70

72

71

57

56

67

66

67

74

Another Russian signing here and this time we have signed this guy, because we want to strengthen our TTT squad. Dmitriy will also be better than average in hilly TTT's and this will make for another bonus. There's not much to add, as this is the main reason we have signed him.

Andrei Nechita is our first ever Romanian signing and once again an addition to our TTT squad. While does have a 71 stat on cobble, he will be the only one with a good cobble stat, so it doesn't mean anything. Once again all signings this time around has been gotten for 50k wage, so we're happy with this signing.

Basically another rider like Rovny, however where Rovny is more for helping our leader, Wallays is more of a breakaway type, that can put pressure on other teams. Wallays will be the sole Belgian rider, just as Maes did 2 years ago, but he fitted the bill for our wishes. And that is it for now!

Marcovdw wrote:
I believe you signed Welle Jallays, not Jelle Wallays. They are pretty much the same but still

Mikhail Ignatiev has joined from Free Agency for a wage offer on 375k and will join the squad for preparations for next season soon. Mikhail joins us after a renewal face that cleaned up some wage cap and now we're here to capitalize on that. Mikhail's signing comes in a window, where the likes of Coppel and Costa has joined the PCT. This will undermine this signing a bit for sure, but we're confident he can be there for podium finishes in the right races.

Ignatiev joins his brother at the team and which also includes Russian domnestique Ivan Rovny. He also joins our team to captain the team throughout several occasions alongside Froome, Mohs and Roche. We did have other riders in mind, but that is not to say we're enthralled by this signing. Mikhail is not a young fellow anymore though, so Ignatiev is also signed in the hope of finally promoting to the PT. I'm afraid if that goal doesn't come true, then next season will be a big restructure of the team, but it would also be that way if we promote.

Aquarius97 wrote:
After one year of decline he's still an incredible beast. Very unfortunate that even better riders for his favoured stage races came to PCT, but he will still score decently no matter the oposition

Yes we're done with the transfer season and there's been a lot of new signings in the pipeline. We have two low tier super domnestiques incoming and one TT rider. Overall we had 3 solid plans we could choose from, but as they were working really close to each other, we managed to pull off Plan A. Arguably our 2 other plans had stats wise been better, it has to be said they didn't feature so many signings. We had been happy to work with all plans, so we were never in doubt of not getting the riders we wanted. Now on to our 3 new signings

Cristian Raileanu joins us from Moser and has come to our team for 600k in transfer fee. Even though we were actually done with our transfer season, we couldn't get anything worthwile out of the 600k in training cost. Raileanu isn't even maxed out yet, so next year he is worth calling a super domnestique. Not much to talk about his role this season, as he will be loaned out

Jaka Bostner was kind of an impulsive purchase, but all good in the end, as he add some nice depth to the team. Our main goal was to strengthen our depth in the hills and while Bostner is not A-class material, he will do just fine. 500k was his cost and with a 50k wage fits nicely into our squad. He also has quite good skills in many different areas of cycling, especially in breakaways. So overall a solid addition to the game

The final signing of the season is quite fitting for us. Roy Goldstein fits the bill to strengthen our TT capabilities. Also as an Israeli rider it has been important for us to get him into our fold. While he will not get over the hard TT hills very comfortably, he can add alot of pressure in TT extensive races. Thus we come to the end of the transfer season!

The final thing that remains for this transfer season is to share our 2018 roster, where we are targetting PT promotion as always and is bound to be a defining moment for many riders. We are not a young squad and therefore to continue our development in a positive direction, we kinda need to promote to PT to access new ways of improvement. Chris Froome, Nicolas Roche and Erik Mohs is once more our main leaders for this season, but with the addition of Mikhail Ignatiev has given us another type of terrain to focus. Going into this transfer season we were fully aware, that we cannot be competitive in every terrain, so therefore Mountain races and Cobble Classics have been put down as secondary terrain.

Another goal was to create a stronger roster than last years roster and we feel strongly about saying that we have done just that. Even though that meant we had to get rid of loyal talent and also our main hero from our first season. We can see the possibilities of promoting, after being so close last year. Mohs really had some unlucky races and if he had been more lucky, we probably would have promoted. That is not to say we are certain of getting promoted, as many other teams will have gotten stronger and relegating PT teams with different riders have joined. So overall a really magnificent transfer window from the Fablok HQ.