Things are starting to look more clear, and today we can anounce two more signings, that we think both can have an important role on the team
CARLOS BARBERO
Believe it or not, this guy is supoused to be our best puncheur for the coming season. Carlos is yet another guy coming from the remains of Hugo Boss, again on a 50k wage. He's a perfect breakaway rider, good in flat, hills, decent sprint, great acceleration, nice backups.
FL
MO
HI
TT
ST
RS
RC
CO
SP
ACC
FG
DW
PL
74
66
75
64
76
72
68
60
70
74
75
71
67
GIACOMO NIZZOLO
Taking a stage win in 2017 Course de Solidarnosc
As per team tradition, we get an underdog sprinter to try steal some points from flat races. This year it's Giacomo's turn. He's a quick sprinter, no doubt about tha, but his lack of ability to go through climbs, whether short or long could really damage his chances to make it to a lot of sprints. His role is the underdog one, if he fails i wouldn't matter much, if he succeeds, that would be a huge thing
@Croatia Thanks! Making sure we have the rider type for most/all our races was an important goal, and some of my late moves were in that direction, like getting loan deals of riders that can at least finish cobbled races and get the mandatory points, or fill our TTT squad with riders that can climb too, in contrast to our best TTers
Transfers Update 4
It's been a hard fight to secure a PT climber worth of leading a team, but we can finally say we got him
JOSE ALARCON
In the final podium of 2017 Giro d'Italia
HE'S HERE! The Venezuelan climbing GOAT has signed his big fat contract of 860k for the coming season, with the goal of being our team leader in the short-term. Winner of two Grand Tours during his career, the 31-year old it's once again a rider that comes from Hugo Boss. There's no doubt about his amazing skills at climbing mountains. The problem is that apart from attacking a lot with his great kick and climbing mountains like the fastest, he can't do much. His physical stats aren't impressive; he's not good in hilly stages, which has made him lose Grand Tours in the past and bad against the clock. Luckily this season there's not a lot of TT kms in any of the GT. Ideally he would deliver us our first Grand Tour win, specially since we a Win Goal set in one of the three GT. His support will be very strong, so we have no reasons to believe that he can't at least make the podium on a GT this season. Otherwise we are in big danger of relegation...
In the final podium of 2014 Vuelta a España
One funny thing we have noticed, is that we have signed Alarcon for exactly the same wage as we did with Kudus in 2018, 860k. We can only hope his performance is similar as the Eritrean in 2018
knockout wrote:
Really curious how well Alarcon is in this pcm. Best of luck and enjoy him
Me too! Great addition to the squad, hope he delivers!
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
Curious, worried, excited. Can't really decided how i feel about him
Transfers Update 5
There's pretty much one day left in this transfers season, and we have finally finish our roster for the 2019 season, our first season in the PT level. We just have signed three riders on minimum wage, a Spanish rider that fits the mold of being a nice climber and decent timetrialist, and two Irish talents of Pot5, as we want Eddie (Dunbar) to feel as confortable as possible in the team
MIGUEL ANGEL BENITO
Not much can be said about Miguel Angel, just that at only 26 years old, he can be a good domestique for a lot of season. A nice mountain/tt combo makes him very valuable, as he can be part of our TTT teams during the season
FL
MO
HI
TT
ST
RS
RC
CO
SP
ACC
FG
DW
PL
68
75
70
73
72
71
73
51
56
61
67
62
73
MATTHEW TEGGART
The combination of events that made him sign for our team is big, but in short he first got signed by a rookie Irish CT team that went over the rider limit and had to fire one of their riders. Surprisingly they did it with their main Irish talent on the team, so we didn't waste the opportunity to acquire a young future cobbles domestique that is of the same nationality as our top talent Eddie Dunbar. A nice him about Matthew is that we don't need to loan him to a team of lower category, and there's potentially an option to make him a Lvl3 rider from Lvl1 in a PT team, surely not something that happens every day
FL
MO
HI
TT
ST
RS
RC
CO
SP
ACC
FG
DW
PL
66
62
67
58
69
69
68
68
66
69
53
63
65
MICHAEL O'LOUGHLIN
Second one of the Irish talents we have recruited late in transfers. This one is a pure timetrialist. He should fit perfectly on Zmorka and Gonzalez Salas timeline in order to build a powerfull TTT squad, as he's due to max out as a 78 timetrialist. He won't be a very complete rider though, but at the same time that will make him a cheap rider when on his prime. This season at 22 years he going to spend it at CT British team GCN Pro Team, where he'll take his first steps into pro cycling
In Blue loaned in riders, in Orange loaned out riders
Well, this is Repsol - Netflix 2019. The squad with which i'll try to survive to my first PT season.
Alarcon and Kudus as the obvious leaders. If they deliver the results we expect from them, specially after the money invested on Kudus' development this off-season, we shouldn't have a lot of troubles with the relegation zone. The depth behind is great, with Ndayisenga, Novak, Roson, Pedrero, Serrano, whether it's used as pure domestiques, breakaway options, depth scoring or whatever. Maybe the strongest team in climbing in PT?
Vanmarcke should get minor places in the cobbles, with strenght of division in cobbled looking a bit worse than previous season. No Summerhill or Stallaert, but Blythe and a heavy trained Theuns come in. Still a solid leader for his wage and the lack of need of a team behind him, though we spent a bit of money in bringing some cobbled depth with Insausti, and our loanies have been brought thinking of getting the 5 points for finishing the cobbled races
Nizzolo has a big question mark with him. He will be awful in any stage with a tough route, and is probably too slow to be relevant in flat sprints. His planning will be key. It's anyway a 1-year solution to fill our void in the sprints
Now to the TT squad. Zmorka leads ofc, and is our back-up plan for surviving if Alarcon or Kudus disappoint. We have a lot of races suited to him, and we really believe he's going to be in the 500-point zone. Otherwise that would mean he has underperformed in his key races, and with his big wage we can't really afford that. Gonzalez Salas is a decent rider for some TT results too and scoring depth in the TT races, though he's always in trouble in the less-flat stages in this kind of races. We also focused on bringing some riders that had decent timetrialing abilities, in order to build a decent TTT squad, that could both challenge for a result in Copenhague - Malmo and potentially lead our GC duo to better results in the mountain stage races with a TTT.
Then we have a few talents still unmaxed. Roson and Rodriguez are due to finally max-out after this season; Dunbar will only have one season left of development before reaching his full potential. And then two level 1 riders; Teggart as a cobbles specialist, that is potentially looking at reaching Level 3 from 1 in a PT team (something quite unusual) and O'Loughlin, loaned to GCN, that is a great addition to a future TTT squad
Still unsure of how we would rank against the rest of the division, specially against our follow promoteers, so we are looking forward to Previews/Predictions time to see what other managers think about our chances
Kudus training <3 If you must keep him away from me, you're at least doing right by him!
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
That climbing squad looks dope Big responsibility on Zmorka and Nizzolo to get you the points elsewhere. A bit of a risk not concentrating on two whole terrains, but we've seen that it can work out earlier.
Not being an expert of staying up in PT myself, the only time I managed not to relegate (2017) my squad was pretty similar to yours. I had Machado (84) and Reis (80) as climbers, Zmorka (82) and Fiedler (83) as TTs, Avelino (83) as main sprinter, Borges (78) as puncheur and Ferreira (79) as cobbles leader.
The big question mark for me is Zmorka. I had him in my plan A, but decided not to go for him given his results in the past couple of seasons. Should he deliver I think you're good to stay. Good luck!
Gustavovskiy wrote:
Not being an expert of staying up in PT myself, the only time I managed not to relegate (2017) my squad was pretty similar to yours. I had Machado (84) and Reis (80) as climbers, Zmorka (82) and Fiedler (83) as TTs, Avelino (83) as main sprinter, Borges (78) as puncheur and Ferreira (79) as cobbles leader.
The big question mark for me is Zmorka. I had him in my plan A, but decided not to go for him given his results in the past couple of seasons. Should he deliver I think you're good to stay. Good luck!
A strong TT'er is a nice little addition, but doesn't provide a huge amount of points unless he is also capable of doing something else (Phinney, Coppel, Keizer etc.)
The two very strong GC riders will give an easy planning in that regard and thus give some good points where the field is weak and decent points where it's strong. That alone could be enough to survive.
The issue here could be that Vanmarcke can't be expected to score big (~250-300 points I would think), Nizzolo will need to be planned well or get very lucky to get above that points too.
The big oh-oh for me is the lack of a decent puncheur. Kudus may be able to score a bit in the harder ones, but he definately isn't planned best like that, and the others simply won't even get into top 20 in hilly races - and there are LOTS of those!
So for me this is one of the teams that could well be in some sort of trouble - but relegation definately isn't given in advance. I see quite some teams with weaker teams or similar "issues" as this one
@Jandal The better he is, bigger the money you'll have to pay for him
@Quadsas Actually it's the other way. I'll try to avoid Herklotz everywhere so he can easily get those U25 jersey
@Abhishek Yeah, there was even a time during transfers when it was even better, but sold a couple of guys as i didn't need that much depth and wanted to have better riders in other terrains too
@SotD Actually it's 49RD's. 52 was pre-training, forgot to change it for the team photo
@Gustavovskiy Yeah, looking quite similar. Hopefully same outcome with my team staying ahead of relegation
And yes, Zmorka has a big question mark. Obviously he'll have the 3-4 completely flat races with a TT, like Praha, Deutschland, Qatar, Herbiers where he can compete for big points. If he performs at his level (3rd best timetrialist in PT, 2nd if Phinney focuses elsewhere) his points are going to be great, and that's what i expect from him
@SotD (again) Yeah, Zmorka's points are quite limited with his lack of climbing skills, but being a top TTer he shouldn't score low anyway, and probably he can be as important for the team getting individual results as in the few TTT in stage races we have this season.
The two top climbers give us a lot of planning oportunities, almost covering every mountain stage race in our calendar between them.
About Vanmarcke, would need to check how he did in previous PT seasons in terms of points, but last season only in PTHC races he scored more than that. He won't repeat a win in a PTHC classic though...
Yeah, not having a good puncheur isn't ideal, but i didn't want to have a "Tier 3" puncheur that is one-dimensional, main reason i sold Bystrom. And having not picked the hilly PTHC bands, i have like 20-25 pure hilly days (main reason why i didn't keep bidding on Ponzi while it was still at a reasonable price). On hilly classic i clearly stand no chance, and will struggle to get anything more than the finishing points, but i have some hilly depth to go on breakaways with Mosca and Barbero being specially suited to that kind of racing style
It's time to finally present the Race Goals that management set pre-transfers. Unlike in 2018, we have managed to sign riders that can fullfill these goals, like we did in 2017
WIN PRAHA - KARLOVY VARY - PRAHA
First Goal of the season, first Win Goal. Starting on a high it seems. For the first time ever, we have set a TT goal, and even more surprising, we have a rider to compete for that goal. Marlen Zmorka will fight for the win in Czech roads in March, looking to stop Taylor Phinney from winning four in-a-row in this race. Marlen is the third highest favourite, if he can step up his game for this one it would be amazing
WIN GIRO D'ITALIA
Spoiler
It's no surprise that we have set a Win Goal in one of the Grand Tours this season, and for various reasons, we decided that it would be in the first GT of the season, in our first ever GT. The lack of flat TT kms will help our leader there, that will have to overcome his hilly weaknesses and bounce back in the high mountains in the second/third week if he wants to win his third Grand Tour. Yes, Jose Alarcon is going to be our leader for Il Giro. Full disclosure of the team that will be sent there, and the Venezuelan's full season schedule will come later
TOP10 VUELTA A ESPAÑA
Spoiler
Second climbing goal and second Grand Tour of the season. You see the pattern already. This Goal was an OR goal, but after transfers, when we decided the planning of our leaders, we couldn't say no to this goal, given it's our home GT. All of this means that Merhawi Kudus will make his debut as GT leader in this year's Vuelta a España. Not knowing yet the startlist means we can't say if Top10 is just realistic goal or we could be even more ambitious and aim for a Top5 result. As we said about Giro, details about the team that will be sent here and Merhawi's full season schedule will be unveiled at a later point
WIN DEUTSCHLAND TOUR
Our only PTHC goal for this season and it's our second TT goal. Two for mountains, two for TTs in resume. We are really confident with this goal, as Marlen Zmorka should be the race favourite, seeing that neither Phinney or Fiedler's teams will participate in this race. Placed in September, will be a key race if we are involved in the relegation fight
TOP10 PT STANDINGS
Not much to say about this one. Picking "Avoid Regelation" is almost worthless in terms of goal cost, so we go for the next level. We would very surprised to achieve this Goal
Big responsibility on Zmorka and Nizzolo to get you the points elsewhere. A bit of a risk not concentrating on two whole terrains, but we've seen that it can work out earlier.
