The last four years have been a rollercoaster. From a debut promotion, narrowly avoiding relegation, to almost promoting in our third season. We now find ourselves back at square one, four years of experience richer, but with a broken spirit.

Daring tactics, arrogance, memes, and an obscure project got us only this far. Nowhere. But we need more, much more. Blessed by the Holy Father himself, if God is with us, who could be with them?

Today we present our full jersey, blessed upon us by the Holy Jakstar himself, an homage to the greatest country on earth.

It is true, it has been awfully silent in the Vatican since our presentation. For good reason however. First and foremost, I was yearning for my vacation. Having to combine the first week of transfers with my last week of work, and I was exhausted. But, I also wanted to focus on building a team rather than pushing out updates because I felt forced to. Maybe because relegating back to the inferno of the CT isn't something to cheer. Or just because the Pope, and his chosen Manager, do whatever they want. My chimney is spewing white smoke, so here's the team!

This is probably what you've all been wondering about, training. So lets cut to the chase. We've spent over Four Million In training as a CT team so yeah. Team was already built, wages spent, so what do you do if you sell a 23 year old Mexican for 4 million.

-Powless, arguably one of the best in the division, gets a double injection into his climbing legs.

-New signing Alexandre Mayer is immediately greeted with some extra stamina and a booster shot for the hills. They are very much alive with this one.

-Our first incoming trade of the year, Guillermo Beltran gets to share in the mountainous flavors with a little boost.

-And our final training session went to new kid on the block Kevin Vermaerke. Really just the only useful thing we could do with the scraps of cash I had left, so we've trained him in his time-trialing ability.

The assigned values in their respective MM fields are subject to change, no clue if I can trust ChatGPT on that one.

All in all I'm happy with how transfers turned out for us. We went into the transfer window with just 7 riders. I decided fairly soon into the window that the opportunity of having a beast like Powless wouldn't present itself twice, as I did have the intention of returning to the PCT as quickly as possible.

But if some of you remember my first squad back in 2022, it was quite top heavy. Needing loanees and stags to get to the minimum amount allowed. This year only needing the one loanee for that cash money. It was filled with aging riders, with some of questionable pedigree. And perhaps with some luck involving a certain Moroccan man who crushed the division to deliver us promotion in our maiden season. This year however I gave it a spin. Instead looking to build a balanced squad behind Powless that could take us beyond a promotion without the need of an entire rebuild. And we've achieved exactly that. With 400k, Powless is at the very end of what's comfortable wage-wise for a singular leader, but the thirteen others who's wages are on our books sit between 50k, and 85k. Perfectly balanced as all things should be.

I intended to resign the 'Big Four' that I had to let go in renewals. And while it did seem for a while a certain Sammarinese sprinter would return to his nest, we only managed to bag Kwanele Jele. With a unique but impressive skillset, I do believe his 75K wage is somewhat of a bargain. And with Mayer, Sütterlin, and Munoz on a combined 205K wage the core of the team didn't break the bank.

An added bonus being here is the unusually low average age this year. With Sütterlin the only antique rider on the books, everyone else is 30 or younger. It provides us with enough time, potential, and space to develop and build upon a strong core team. Ofcourse with promising talents like Onley, Staune-Mittet, Kachur, and Prieto, all it'll take is time for the next generation to arrive at their peaks.

And finally, our regional focus has well and truly gone off the rails this year. The cacophony of flags listed above looking more like I regurgitated an entire bag of skittles than a 'planned' focus. When I came into the ManGame, I entered with the primary focus of the Greatest country on earth. San Marino. Ofcourse a certain someone had practically monopolized that market and we shifted towards Micro nations, in turn expanding to "Obscure countries." And in that regard, I feel like we've stuck to our guns. With Mauritius, San Marino, Malta, eSwatini, Chile, Morocco, Ukraine, Turkey, and Mexico the core of our team doesn't come from the traditional household nations. And I think that's beautiful.

But it did bring me to tears that we haven't been able to retain or sign a Liechtensteiner this season. Effectively bringing an end to our Triarchy we held for the last four years.

But I'll be back.