Was the boss on drugs for the entire transfer season? This question was one that I was trying to figure out after the transfer season ended. Well he was never a transfer wizard, much less a guy worthy of PCT movements, but at least he was ambitious during the planning sessions, right? Right? At this point I am fearing for my job come the end of the season, which CT team has the money some lousy intern? One thing was sure, boss, was definitely not in a good mood for most of the transfer season. From a shortlist, including Lutsenko, is crowdfunding really enough for his wage bill over at Reddit? Dude’s a millionaire afterall, can’t wait for the triggered reddit users complaining when he pulls up in a Lambo for the Monte Carlo F1 GP after being beaten to pieces by Kinoshita. Warbasse was another rider on our shortlist, was also a tough deal for a while but, hey we we’re basically a rich CT team that had to fill out extra spots with much of the same budget it would seem. We got outbid by the Andorra project, a CT team, A CT TEAM! Its bad, huh, really bad. But think about how bad it actually is: had we not lost the bid war on Warbasse we wouldn’t have had to pay DLC just shy of 400k, just imagine what 250k more could do for this team! We also lost one of our main targets in Lawson Craddock to a CT team putting up more money, and PCT team had too MUCH cap going into transfers, right, right?

Even though my boss isn’t the most competent manager out there, I guess its not his fault that the actually good stage racers were super inflated this year. Meintjes on 700k+ REALLY? He decided to work on his acceleration and suddenly he is top target for so many managers that he is so inflated you could properly put him above a basket and light a fire and use him as a hot air balloon to spectate some of the mountain adventures DLC will be failing this year. I will not go further in-depth on the planning because it all went to shit. But hey at least we got a vast surplus of riders who are capable in the hills. And Villella and Pichon are actual good signings. If I am still here I will lead what’s gonna be known as the great CT purge when we relegate this year. Its not even a debate, maybe the boss has some budget left to hire Fall Out Boys because Sugar, we’re going down this year, and I would like a nice Christmas Party to drown my sorrows in and say thanks for the memories to the boys.
Intern out, goals up next whenever my schedule isn’t filled with pushing self-deprecating memes to our social media.

Aquarius97 wrote:
It looks like your rookie manager was told to sign puncheurs but no one explicity told him that a certain limit of puncheurs in the team shouldn't be surpassed

It has been a busy season here in the office. My role as intern has transitioned into a full time position with the team starting next season. However it has not been a great season for us, and already fairly early on, it became quite clear that Nordstrom didn't seem to be impressed by our performances. With the CEO having messed up in all parts of silly season, Nordstrom made it clear that they would very much consider exercising a clause in their contract that wuld allow them to cut off funding to them before the agreement was to come to an end. This obviously put a lot of uncertainty into our division, our funding was very much in the balance and we did not know when we would have an agreement in place or if we would have to change up our focus entirely for next season.

However just before the start of Tour of Britain, Nordstrom's liaison came to us and announced that the Nordstrom brand wanted to say thank you for the two years with WJSM, but they would not be a part of the next season with the team, regardless of we somehow still were a PCT-team. This was obviously hard to take for us, because we moved our offices to the US just before the season started. The CEO was very upset and started yelling, he also started throwing shit around the office, because this was his fault to an extent, he had not performed, and he knew that it would be very hard to him to find a new sponsor on the same level as Nordstrom.

I ended up calling BioWare to figure out where we standing with them, and we got the same message from BioWare, who simply said that they had not gotten anything from the partnership and would like to by mutual agreement, call it quits after the season, to which we agreed.

We sat in darkness in this office that night, with a sense of helplessness and no idea what to do. It was time to find new sponsors, we were not going to close any doors, everything was on the table.

knockout wrote:
The mention of having just moved to the US makes me think you want to move elsewhere for the next season. With an international squad like yours there are quite a few directions possible. Canadian and britain are the first thoughts but i wouldnt want to rule anything out...

Vien wrote:
Hopefully a new era also means better results for you!

A few days passed and various possible sponsors were contacted. Not all of them were too keen. Loads of massive Canadian companies were contacted, some of them showed interest too, but they were not willing to put up the necessary funds to run a cycling team.

The CEO went around screaming in the office quite a few times over those weeks 'AFTER ALL WE HAVE DONE FOR CANADIAN CYCLING THE LEAST YOU GUYS CAN DO IS TO BLOODY GIVE ME SOME FREAKING MONEY TO RUN MY TEAM."

I am not quite sure if he understood that people are more likely to give you money if you do a good job, and ehm, despite DLC's top 10 finish at Volta a Portugal, giving him 400k~ was not the kind off business management they would want to fund.

These days were hard for him, having to face the possibility of having to move back home closer to his parents. He looked startled by it even being an option, I felt kinda bad for him. But despite the night being long and full of terrors, our watch had just begun.

The following week after we actually had two combined offers on the table, one of them was a Russian-Nordic combination. They showed a lot of interest in the current Russian portofolio of cyclists on the current roster, however due to insecurities about where any of the cyclists were headed next year, they weren't willing to put up a guarantee and proof of payment, unless we fully committed to going all out on CIS riders and letting the rest of our cyclists go.

However the second offer was much more interesting, and while it would force the CEO to move back home, it was the best offer on the table, and to be honest; with his track record, he was forced to go with it. And honestly it wasn't bad. The manager had been looking to move into a broader, but more specific, pool of riders to generate a more homogeneous team, with more talent to avoid more transfer windows like the last one, where there was no clear transfer strategy.

A part of this will also mean a harder renewal line being taken, and with a shift in sponsorship, no one on the team are guaranteed a spot on the roster next year. Regardless of the out come of the season we will need some younger blood.

Speaking of younger blood, as some of you may have noted my new position. From the next season, starting transfers, I will no longer be just a simple intern, but will move to general head of strategy of WJSM's cycling project.

We're looking forward to providing all you night owls with great entertainment in your suites!

With a rankings update being released by the MGUCI, it looked dark. The relegation to CT, looked all but secure at that moment, obviously there was still time for a divine intervention to hit and save us.Obviously nothing would be set in stone due to disbandments, but looking at the way we were placed at that time that everything had to go our way. Something that was on the up was that we penned both of the next season's main sponsors and we were able to announce the first one. This also meant that we had some ideas behind how our setup would look for the coming season in terms of where we were going to be based out of.

Our main partner for the upcoming season was going to be Nordic Entertainment Group. A partner who allows us to spread across various regions since they cover all of the Nordic countries in Europe(Scandinavia and Finland), as well as the United Kingdom. The target group was to be dependent on what teams had to offload riders within those focus areas.



We were beyond pleased having a broadcast company of this size backing us up and with a second sponsor being within the wingspang, who would allow us to stick to our Canadian roots the the future was looking up.

Vien wrote:
Some good jersey options you got with that logo

Following the announcement of the sponsorship with Nordic Entertainment Group, there was still one more sponsor who we needed to announce. It was important for the boss to ensure that WJSM's cycling project still maintained the Canadian connection which we had created over the past two seasons, especially given the strong results from Boivin this past season, if only we had had more of those performances from some of the overpaid primadonnas on the team, looking at you GVK, we might still be able to call ourselves a PCT outfit.

When the boss came to me with joy and said that he finally found a Canadian company that was willing to sponsor us even after we failed to nail 4/5 season goals, with Tour Du Maroc still to be raced, I was honestly quite amazed. When he showed me which company it was, I was both amazed and scared a bit? Are we going to have bloody OWL on our jerseys next year?

On the other hand my social media meme skills were starting to put my mind at work. #HootHoot #FearTheHoot #YearOfTheHoot #HootliHoot(This one makes more sense for the Danes in the MG), one thing was sure our final main partner for 2019 was going to be Hootsuite.

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