Thanks for the updates over the course of the season Fabi! They've been great reads!
Some pretty big guns joining us in the PCT next year, going to be interesting to see if it will be feasible for roman to keep Kudus for next year! Regardless that will still be a huge cash influx to work with if he has to sell him!
At times things looked pretty poor for us, but we managed to scrape through this season somehow. I expect next season will be another difficult one so it's gonna be a challenge to find some solutions during transfers.
Thank you a lot for the quick final update, Fabianski! And also your stellar work with these through the season
Massive, massive congratulations to you, DD! Love to see you win, definitely cheered for you in the battle for the title, and so cool to see you win it again Always nice to write and discuss with you in the transfer seasons, and super cool to see you run away with the title with a somewhat typical DD build team wise, having lots of those depth/solid riders doing their job here, there and everywhere.
For us, 6th place is very good for our first rebuild season. Super happy to land that high. We overpaid a lot for Valter, but I’m thrilled to see him this good in his first year with us. Anderberg also made a clear step as our sole leader and not a luxury domestique anymore. Cool to see! Then there is the gem Kragh, who always delivers around the 600 points or so, and this year he even went better crossing 700 points.
Groenewegen was a disappointment points wise, but one I guess I kind of have to expect, due to how tricky it is for the top sprinters. Novak was a very cool rider to have on board as he never did a proper GC race, but always aggressive and being a great breakaway rider. Speaking of which, what a TdF and thus also season for AHJ!
Very fun season to follow with all the drama at the very top and also to avoid relegation. Congratulations to those managing to hang on, and commiserations to those forced to go down. Looking a lot forward to pick it up again with the transfer season, which is by far and away the biggest highlight of every season of this beautiful game
Congrats to DD for his second title win! Couldn't be any closer for Tinkoff!! Incredible that the TDF winner and the best sprinter of the division is on their way down to PCT, vey bad luck for Roman there! Happy that Oxxo survived though. They shouldn't be in this position at all with the team they had.
Congrats Gazelle!
Huge win here and quite close as well. Tinkoff a surprise to me, from last year predicted to potentially relegate to 2nd in PT is a huge run. Seeing the individual rankings, a lot due to depth scoring.
10th in the end is a nice bonus as this was the season goal. Vansevenant obviously the huge performer here delivering this to me.
Transfer wise a bit of a dilemma for me as stat wise the team likely should have reached top5 even. But with Phinney lacking all the suited races including TTs, he already scored well enough without!
Cras kind of added the points missed by him, just like Wellens with some depth points mainly.
Van Hooydonck the big fail this year. Due to not having many training options, he got trained a bit 83 cobbles. Unfortunately he still is far from the best due to his mediocre flat stat. He barely could show his full potential making this some kind of stupid investment.
First of all, sorry for just posting plain numbers for once. I was frustrated about all the work done on the pre-final standings for PCT and CT becoming pretty much pointless after all the details were already posted in the race previews, and then decided to not spend any time more than the strict minimum to get the season done.
Big congrats to Gazelle on another title win! You won the division in my first year in 2019 (not sure if it was your first one?), and you did it again now, 5 years later!
I said it in the Lombardia thread, the key event in my opinion was Lutsenko's Giro, where he really did an amazing job! Of course, Dombrowski was good, too - but more importantly, you're really a role model in depth team building! You've got so many amazing riders, I wonder how you managed to grab them all.
The team got the optimum out of this season, and I guess it will go down in history as a great farewell run for quite some of your team leaders! Dombrowski will continue to decline, whereas Lutsenko, Warchol and Teunissen will all start declining - so it was now or never for this team to grab the win! I wonder what the team will look like by the start of the 2025 season, but I'm sure you'll have a great offseason once again!
Well done to Tinkoff for securing 2nd, as others said maybe the biggest surprise up there. And it could easily have been the title, with a slightly better (and more expected) result in Battenkill. I mean, 49 points is nothing after 180 RDs!
I wonder what you're going to do to further strengthen the team for next season, as I could well imagine Skujins and Kamyshev both leaving after another decline. Sivakov on the other hand will surely get even greater
Congrats also to King Power for that late surge to 3rd place! Gidich may have been rather disappointing for most of the year, but what an amazing team result in Lombardia to end the season! Quita just loves this race as well it seems.
What impresses me most is that your Top 10 riders (OVL-wise) are all less than 30y.o., so the team definitely has a great future ahead and should really be ready for the title in the near future!
Commiserations to all the teams relegating. As others said, pretty much unbelievable that a TdF win and sprint dominance aren't enough to stay up for Moser! But imho that risk was always there - the gap between the Top 2 and the rest is just so huge. But I'm sure you'll use your time in PCT well enough to be back with an even stronger team in 2026!
Assa definitely suffered from Dainese not doing as well as he should have, and Wisniowski had an awful start to the season. But I guess even with both having a good year, it wouldn't have been enough. The lack of both climbers and TTers just was too much.
Lidl then clearly suffered from the fact that they couldn't sell De Bie, so they didn't have much room for big changes. I still love their depth - but they were missing the top performers. De Bie himself was really awful, not even making the Top 50. And Kemboi's 382 points are ridiculous, no clue what's wrong with him. Each of them scoring 500 points more wouldn't be unrealistic, and then Lidl are safe... Good luck for reshaping the team in PCT, I'm sure you'll find some good solutions!
ZARA didn't just lack last year's ToNE luck, they simply had plenty of races not going according to plan. The Asian GC rider duo could have scored higher, Jakobsen could've been better as well. I'm pretty sure they'll bounce back right away, and they'll be back stronger.
Seeing MOL going down is even more surprising to me than Moser. Ardila, Amezawa, Almaida - and obviously Haig - that sounds like a great lineup. Plus Altur for the cobbles. But not covering TTs and sprints got punished big time here. I guess not too many tweaks are needed to find success with this team, and they'll use their year in PCT well for that.
Last but not least, my own team. Well, we missed out on our Top 10 goal. Seeing that two other promoted teams ended up right there somewhat sucks. On the other hand, it was always clear for me that Xero and Fastned both had better teams, even though I finished clearly ahead of them last year. But PT isn't PCT, and in PT world-class riders like Areruya can just score huge. Areruya, Pidcock and Vansevenant were likely among the overperformers (and will all get more RDs as a reward ), but still, they are just great riders to have.
But hey, I'm definitely happy with 13th place. 5 spots above the relegation zone, almost 600 points clear of Moser, that's an awesome performance. Sure, when comparing Schmid's and Vansevenant's score, I wonder what went wrong, with Mauri outscoring Mauro by 900 points! But Schmid was 30th in terms of OVL, and finished 35th, so I guess that's fine in the end.
Groves even a bit better, definitely our rider of the year! Bringing home the Maillot Vert is a huge achievement, and his performances at Le Tour and in the Netherlands where he defended his GC crown brought us a big part of what was needed to stay up!
But also Theuns getting a Top 50 even after his first decline was huge. And Stüssi was the reliable GT rider we were hoping him to be - his scoring was probably not maximized this year, but two GT Top 10s are an awesome result for him.
So, no rider in the Top 30 for us - but 4 in the next 30, thereof 3 in the Top 50.
None between 60th and 110th clearly shows that there's still some work to do, but 9 between 100th and 200th is a great outcome, having almost 10% of the riders in that range.
So what we're really lacking is high-end scoring and some more depth, so we know what we'll need to tackle during the offseason.
There weren't many disappointing riders this year. Berthet is one of them, as we clearly expected more from a 75/74 Mo/Hi rider, but maybe the pressure on his shoulders was too big. And THE one big disappointment obviously is Bol, who was only our 17th highest scoring rider - more than 100 points behind our #3 sprinter Szarka who basically got just two races to lead the team...
Thanks for all the kind words concerning the updates, and sorry again for the minimalistic one here.
First of all, thank you Fabianski for all your work on the ranking updates this year!
Second, congrats to Gazelle! Just a perennial top flight team that always intrigues me in terms of team build, getting things done with depth and finesse. Very interested to see what you do in the offseason.
For us, we did it! 9th in the PT! That means our top 10 goal, which I originally considered pretty much unattainable, has been realized! After languishing so much in CT and the bottom of PCT, it really feels like everything has clicked for us the last few years. I've learned a lot about the game over the past 11 years, and I'm so happy I've made it here. I really never imagined I could. And while I'm not exactly as focused on roleplay as I was a decade ago, I'm glad I was able to do it with a team identity that still feels right.
So, how did we get here? The obvious answer is Per. He had a rough couple of races to start the year that had me worried about a potential shift in AI based on my addition of Meiler. But in the end, he was a modicum of consistency. It's not just his wins, but the fact that he's always on podiums and in top 5's. Just so rare for him to have a really bad day. Signing him for 1 mil and training him to 82 cobble is probably the best decision I ever made. And looking at some of the declines from top guys like Wisniowski next year, the projection should at least stay even if not stay the same.
Obviously, the biggest overperformer for me this year was Carthy. I do feel like I planned his schedule well and came into some favorable startlists, but obviously none of that planning was the cause of his flukey Giro performance. Anyone who projected Carthy about 1000 points this year would have been called crazy, but two great GT's can do that. He was a guy that wasn't for sure and I had to "overpay" for last season. But if it works, it's never an overpay. That's what I've learned.
Galta was also great. The overperformances were not quite as stark this year as last year, and he finishes outside the top 50. But he had had a great Tour and benefitted from not plummeting in GC from breakaway shenanigans like in the Giro last year. Carthy benefitting in turn felt a little like a resolution to that frustrating, but Galta was still good before decline.
AKA was pretty much himself. Given how slim the sprinter field is at the top these days compared to when he came up, I definitely had dreams of him going out in a little more style. There were once again some big misses in classics and other high scoring races. Having a dozen sprinters above him, many of whom are similar, isn't ideal. But he still showed our jersey with pride. Still can't believe he's declining too.
And then Aranburu. Definitely feel like his training did not pan out, though maybe a lot of that was unrealistic expectations? I mean, he ended up in the top 100 with over 400 points, which is a significant improvement from last year (117th with 268). So the training mattered and arguably got us our top 10. It just still doesn't feel like he's quite at the level I'd want from his OVL and for the wage he's sure to demand in renewals. We'll see how that plays out.
Depth wise, it was a mixed bag. Gregaard wasn't quite as good as last year, but I still feel like he gives great value for his wage and skillset. Great domestique across our calendar. Meiler saved his season with Battenkill, but otherwise probably should have scored better with minor placings. Per was still on his own a lot, though maybe that's for the best. Skjelmose did not really burst onto the scene at all, so hopefully that happens after maxing. I'm most worried about Cannister and Forssell value wise, as they're quite clearly 50k guys based on scoring, but the new OVL's love them for some reason and they'll probably need a raise.
Most disappointing was definitely Walls. I knew I overpaid for him in the offseason, but I thought he would fit into the niche AKA has filled and be an adequate replacement long term. Maybe a bit weaker, but not that much so. Only 150 points from him was pretty awful. Outside the top 200. Granted, he definitely got B-rate opportunities, but barely scoring more than a guy like Resell is weird for an 80/78 sprinter without a true achilles heal like horrible flat or resistance. Hope he can turn it around going forward.
Thanks again for everyone who helped make this season possible! Excited for the offseason!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Thanks for the kind words! Appreciated! Very happy with our second PT win. Now we can claim that the first one wasn’t a fluke.
Our riders did a great job and it was a thrill to follow the races that got us here.
Big thank you to the reporters and organisers who made this season possible and also to Tinkoff for keeping it tense all the way to the last kilometer. Massive season by Oleg and his squad. It took a lot of bad luck in their final few cobble races to overtake them.
King Power and Polar also had an excellent season; congratulations. Evonik finished with a good score, but as the big pre-season favourites will be somewhat disappointed. Aker has done very well for a rebuilding team.
Looking at the bottom of the table, the amount of quality going down to PCT is insane indeed. Moser being one of them almost feels surreal.
Now I'll ramble a bit about our season.
A key moment during transfers was the decision to keep both Lutsenko and Dombrowski. Many people suggested that, due to our aging leaders, Gazelle desperately needed a rebuild.
I kinda agreed and was seriously considering that option. But the more I looked at the database, the more I started to like their relative strength in the PT stage racing and puncheur fields compared to their wages. And the first part of the Giro looked very interesting for a rider like Lutsenko.
So we went all-in on their last hurrah. This meant not investing in any unmaxed talent, not paying a high wage to get any interesting free agents on board and it also meant using the loan cap to try and sign some zero wage domestiques that are actually useful.
It definitely was a gamble, but they repaid the faith we put in them and duly delivered. As mentioned by Fabi, Lutsenko’s Giro adventure working out was very important. It propelled us to the top and fuelled the belief that we could actually do it.
Two main leaders scoring on par with expectations is not enough though. To be a title contender you usually need to score at least 7300 points and the most important limiting factor on team strength is the 3.5 million wage cap. So on average, riders need to score at least 2.1 points per €1000 wage. I call this ratio their Ppk (points per 1k) and it’s a metric I take very seriously.
Lutsenko’s Ppk was just 1.89 and Dombrowski’s 1.75
So which riders compensated for that?
Aleotti
3.32
Malecki
2.7
Carboni (trained)
2.69
Karnulin
2.58
Bongiorno
2.44
Lander
2.3
Teunissen
2.3
Giulietti (loanee)
2.28
Nsengimana
2.12
Leknessund
2.12
Lutsenko and Dombrowski laid the groundwork, but these guys won us the title.
The off-season is going to be fun, because this time I won’t be able to postpone it any longer: we do need a major rebuild.
It was a thriller until the end for us, and I'm glad the team was able to survive. I've had quite a big share of bad luck and bad AI this season, really on all terrains possible. Usually you do get some lucky standout results to make up for it somehow, but that just wasn't the case at all this year.
Nevertheless, it wasn't all disastrous of course, but still way worse than it should have been. I can imagine some of the teams below us thinking the same of course. Conmiserations to them.
For us, it's time to go back to our roots now, and see if we can transform into a PCT-sustainable team from selfdeveloped riders only/mainly in this off-season and the one that will follow as well.
Congratulations to Gazelle on winning the title in a thrilling finale as well, and thank you all for being active this season, looking forward to meet again soon
Congrats DubbelDekker with the title, great fight with Tinkoff at the end
Really cool to read all the detailled comments from the other managers. You guys really give me inspiration and motivation to reach the top level (someday).
MG - Lotto - Caloi
[MG] New Manager of the Year - PCM.daily Awards 2022
First of all, a massive thanks to all the reporters, everyone doing the behind the scenes stuff and everyone who filled the (race) threads with activity. 11 seasons in and this is still a fantastic game and this was another very enjoyable season overall.
Im not really satisfied with my own season. 5th is at the lower end of what should have been realistic for me. There have been some great highlights along the way, most memorable for me was the East Java dominance but also the Vuelta triforce or Balkans re-conquering were really nice to watch. But we lacked a bit of the necessary luck of unexpected surprises particularly in the first half of the season and our leaders had - while mostly still very strong - some really unfortunate off-days on the biggest stages. *That* TDF break as well as Liechtenstein and Lombardia really hurt as that not only significantly lowered our scoring but also costs us important budget for next year. Still, cant really call this a desaster season either as we did alright most of the time, especially Polanc once again was great. Im already sad at the possibility of possibly selling him due to cap concerns as a consequence of maxing Plapp.
Congrats to Gazelle. Definitely had you on the list of possible contenders and the GT gamble with Lutsenko played out perfectly. Always been a fan of your depth building and your table above clearly shows that it was crucial to this title as well.
Tinkoff in second really shocks me. Its a team i alwys underrate because i dont really rate most of their riders but it clearly works well for them.
King power and Polar just above us is perfectly fine. Both had to be expected near the top spots and i kinda expected to overtake them in the last month due to the hilly classics but it wasnt meant to be.
Aker and Xero right behind us is lovely. Two of my favourite teams in the game who did well in bridge seasons before they are ready to push for the top.
Jura convincingly saving themselves is a bit of a surprise to me but then again, i always underrate these ttt heavy teams. Its a pattern i repeatedly fall in. In this case, im happy to be proven wrong.
At the bottom, Moser relegating with a TDF winner who wasnt even their top scorer is super cruel but their depth just wasnt there.
Such a crazy close finale, where it all came down to the wire. Can't remember a more dramatic finale since our first PT win over Vesuvio against all odds in the last race of the season.
If you weren't around at that time, this stage is a brilliant re-read (Sorry SN!). What you need to know before the stage is, that Vesuvio was leading the Pro Tour - by some margin - and came to the race with:
Andy Schleck (85MO, 75HI, 79ACC)
Franck Schleck (77MO, 80HI, 73ACC)
Ben Gastauer (72MO, 82HI, 76ACC)
A ridiculously strong team. We were also strong with:
Simon Spilak (85MO, 82HI, 74ACC)
Riccardo Ricco (82MO, 80HI, 73ACC)
But they only had to keep the gap to around 200 points or so, and having 3 potential top 10 riders it seemed like an easy task... But look at what happened - and in particularly which two riders that saved the day (prior to even being maxed!)
Alright, sorry - but couldn't help but bringing this one up, as the last race brought an awful lot of memories to me!
Huge congratulations DD for another win here! You have really cracked the code on making both quality and depth pay out - also a big congratulations for a solid 2nd place and a very hard fought battle to Oleg! Having had a team so very often battling against relegation, this season must have been absolutely wonderful to play.
I would suspect also that both Polar and King Power would be somewhat satisfied with their season - but they both have very strong teams, and with a bit of fortune could have made the win. Less than 450 points between no# 1 and 5 is just absolutely crazy tight. I can't remember that we ever had such a tight division. But for me the biggest upset is Evonik. And it's pretty obvious why they didn't end up winning - like I think they should have. My old superstar Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier with 1597 points, making HUGE hickups during the season in spectacular fashion. Not only during the Tour de France where Kudus almost made a Giro/Yates kinda coup (but much earlier) also the Liechtenstein GP stood out as a farce for the frenchie. And I have absolutely no idea why!
But seeing him finish close to 1000 points behind Herklotz is just awful. He's easily the 2nd best rider in the game IMO, so finishing 11th is always going to hurt - even if your team is amazing.
But rather than focusing on that I'll say we have a clear favorite for the title next season!
It was interesting to see riders like Vansevenant and Pidcock making huge jumps, which also indicates in what direction the game is going. It isn't enough to have these one-eyed monsters anymore. The doublethreat have always been the way to get to the top 5, and still is - but those even more versatile types are definately making their way across the scene!
Really sad to see my long term - and very good - friend: Roman relegate. I wouldn't have expected that to be possible with those supersars leading the team aswell as Hirt to pick up solid points. But it wasn't meant to be even if Kudus took the Tour-Coup in style, and Gaviria being the usual best sprinter in the field. It ended up being those 3 riders alone and they just couldn't make it. In hindsight there could have been done a lot more with the team in terms of quality for the remaining cash though.
It was great, however to see the Oxxo, Cedevita - and usual Rabobank escape towards the end, as I think they have a lot to offer to the division on multiple arenas. At one point I thought we would have to see EA Vesuvio going down aswell, but the TT setup was too strong in the end.
For Assa to both relegate and stop seems somewhat fitting, but I would have liked to see all of the others stay up in all fairness. Lidl is somewhat accustomed to the never ending change of PT and PCT, aswell as 10-15 riders in/out each season, but I love the setup! ZARA has built a very likeable team over the past years, and I actually thought they would be able to survive. MOL made a lot of drastic changes to the team. Something that worked brilliantly last season. I suppose this season was a bit too much. But it came down to the wire!
A whole lot can be said about the teams not mentioned aswell, and there are both surprises and not so surprising results in the middle field. I am very happy to see the secure ways of Jura, Carlsberg and Xero in all honesty in between a bunch of very experiences PT managers.
Big congrats to all of those who did well, and commiserations to those of you who didn't quite cut it!
Thank you for the fantastic updates throughout the year Fabianski, and congratulations to DD on the title!
An unsurprising relegation for us, as even if Kemboi hadn't underperformed I think we would have still come up short. A lot of learning to take from this, all set up by a fairly terrible transfer window last off-season. That being said, we haven't spent consecutive seasons in PCT since 2013/2014, so I guess the target has to be either to come back up immediately or double relegate
They were indeed in the "On the edge" list at some point, but then Sykkel came back and started commenting, and the next time they weren't on the list anymore
), but still, they are just great riders to have.
