A big welcome to the new players and what an addition all 13 new players look to be, with all of you already opening great Team HQ threads. Some incredible efforts in here give a reporter like myself a very high degree of enthusiasm to give you detailed, interesting and in depth race reports.
I hate to single people out, but it is proving hard to ignore the early equipment contributions of BoogieBoogie. The quality of the work produced here has been superb what an asset to the Mangame already! A couple of you others have contributed too to making this no doubt graphically the best man Game yet!
I must also admit from the team HQ threads point of view the video’s are very nice and give that real feel to all the teams. ANFreeman’s Cyclevox thread is looking good and I watch valverde’s Meiji-Fuji and Sykkel_Freak’s high class Venchi thread with much interest.
We also have to credit roturn and tsmoha for having stage races used in the Man game proper. Roturn’s Murcia making the protour cut, whilst some of tsmoha’s contributions are in the CTour.
Here is a rundown of those new teams and some information about each:
The Brits certainly know how to talk to the media! The team have set themselves a modest looking top 15 overall team standings goal and not taking an area standings goals gives them the freedom to move around a bit. Though there is certainly a nod toward the races in the British Isles, the lottery of the Tour of Britain has sensibly been given a top 10 billing which the Welsh stage race Ras De Cymru also targetted.
Cyclevox look like they will need a decent sprinter targetting a good result at the Down Under Classic as well as setting a 15 stage wins goal. The template for success here really is the Pokerstars team who achieved this goal by signing several decent sprinters with the top level Eric Mohs being splashed out on. Certainly targetting Belgian Maxime Vantomme will help in this regard, though competition may be fierce for the young cobbler-cum-sprinter.
The win goal Manx International is probably a sensible choice, indications are that this will need to be coupled with the Isle of Man TT, which may limit the field slightly. The signing Cyclevox seem to be aiming for here is Team Emu Exports Daryl Impey, signing him would be a tough propostion though the media thread seems confident.
Stage racer Jurgen Van den Broeck seems an ambitious target also, he will be another who gathers a lot of interest from PTour and CTour teams alike and one wonders where the marquee British signing for the Cyclevox team will come from? Team Venchi - ITA - Sykkel_Freak
Trust the Italians to bring in the style and Sykkel_Freak an active Graphics man in the pcm daily thread has not disappointed so far. The target for the team is Italians and they are looking for a trump card in Festina's Giro stage winner Diego Ulissi looking like their numero uno target. It would probably take a fair whack of the teams transfer budget to land such a rider, but you only have to look at Bacardi's success last year to know that can be a winning strategy.
Certainly a strong Italian punchaer would be handy for team Venchi as they have targetted a number of hilly classics incuding the tough Giro dell'Emilia, as well as hilly stage races. The win goal however is the Brixia Tour which includes a mountain stage and a team time trial, which is always a difficult prospect for a new CTour team to prepare and find riders for. The racing schedule looks likely to based solely in Europe as Venchi have selected the top 5 on European standings goal, with all the targetting races in this area.
Good stylish graphics here, perhaps the tough thing for this team will be to find an Italian edge in the crowded and frankly hostile Italian teams environment. The Vespa, Bacardi and Wiggle trio could well position themselves to snap up the better Italian talents, teams like Intesa and Unicredit were rather frozen out last year.
It seems as if every man and his dog is making a move on German riders, though it is through Roturn's Rothaus-Aegon who perhaps have a confirmed interest in the area. It is hard to imagine how the Pcm Daily's most helpful member of the year's team will not be popular, just look at the jolly jersey.
The races targeted will surprise nobody the win goal being set at the smallish Criterium Hainleite and all four other German races are also going to be important for the teams sponsors. The goals seem to be spread of a number of differing terrains and with a top 10 team standing target the team is aiming fairly high. It is hard not to admire a team that wishes to be competitive straight from the bat.
The targetted riders look sensible, Schreurs could well be tempted away from CrueTrue's Phillips team which will probably be looking for space. Whilst Bbox's complete change to an American emphasis should free up riders like Mollema, but signing Roger Kluge looks very unlikely. Probably putting the eggs into either the Wegmann or Kessler basket would be the aim here.
When it comes to graphics, I think I speak for everyone when we say a hearty thank you very much to Boogie Boogie's outstanding work designing helmets for numerous teams already.
But information is a bit thin on the ground for the Dutch Koppert squad, certainly it is nice to see a team attempt to follow in the Jack Wolfskin slipstream. You would imagine that Benelux riders will be the target here with cobbled classics and hilly stage races being the most suitable races.
The question I guess is this - can the graphics king show some expertise in the transfer market and does perhaps this give him an edge in manager to manager dealings?
Certianly this team promising to focus on Polish and Eastern European riders interested the admins, it is a neglected area in the ManGame. This opened the door for dudi to set up the Orlen Cycling team, getting the nod from SN and the admins. After an active start, concerns have risen following the delay with setting of goals, I hope this has been rectified now.
The pick of the Polish riders for me is free agented Niemiec formerly of the Youtube outfit, once you through a few other decent Eastern Europeans such as Konovalovas (Lithuania), Smukalis (Latvia) and Mandri (Estonia) you have the makings of a half decent back up team with stand out riders such as Taaramae and Vaitkus possible big targets.
My hope is that this is not going to be a case of our first casualty of the season, however if dudi is not interested it would be nice to know as soon as possible as we can currently ship in a new guy in place.
The second new German team and it should be fascinating to see the two new guys go head to head with the addition of Heine's reforming Telenor squad. The jersey looks amazing, designed by ANFreeman, the 'men in black' will be a team easy to pick out in the multi-coloured peleton.
The goals have been announced here and all the German races are here with a couple of neighbouring countries picked for the target races. This seems sensible with the hilly Rund um den Eschborn Frankfurt the number one target probably implying that Fabian Wegmann is going to be the number one target here. Competition will be fierce for his signature and it would be wise for Trilux to have a few targets as back up, such as Alex Flugal.
The top 10 Europe Tour standings should be very achievable as long as the squad focus on accumulating points in European races. Other targets such as Eichler and Sieberg may be tricky to tempt away from current managers, though it seems as if Greipal is available at a price.
My thoughts here is that it could be dangerous to target German riders to obsessively I would open up the possibilities by looking into neighbouring areas (such as France) to pick up bargains else transfer season could become a frustrating one for Trilux.
Stepping onto my patch, the Oz Cycling Project has that Greenedge look about it. As you would expect from an accomplished story writer the media thread is a strong one and the promise of a big Aussie presence is the peleton is welcome. Eight riders have been listed and whilst Sulzberger, Howard and Matthews are half decent riders, none will deliver big results. A leader may needed to be recruited from elsewhere for this team to get the results it desires.
That said Goals are fairly modest with the downgraded (and likely weaker field as a result) Tour Down Under being set as the win goal. Three of the goals seem to suggest a top level sprinter needs to be purchased, possibly the best Aussie available will be Mitch Docker (formerly of Lafarge). Outside of sprinters I expect the Oz cycling project to look for a stage race leader, one thing I found tough in the last transfer season. You either have to go for a budget busting prospect such as Ricco/ Serpa or try and cream off a slightly lower level one from somewhere.
With three teams competing for Australian cyclists the competition will be fierce, it should be interesting to see what tsmoha can cobble together here.
AKER are looking to plug the gap left by the Telenor team (though the reformed Falcon team remain) in Scandenavia and Norway in particular. Certainly these teams have had success in the last year with Sony winning the PTour and IKEA taking the CTour. I like the way this team has spead its goals across the world here, though they do look on the tough side. Especially the top 5 team ranking one, though this team will look at what Bacardi did last year and will surely try to emulate that.
With Corsica, Slovenia and Transfaragarasan GP targeted you would have to assume a big name mountain climber will be gone for in a big way. Obviously competition will always be tough in this area but when you have a blank cheque book it is possible to trump the existing managers. Cunego is the obvious first name, though his price may well be too steep but someone at the next level may well be possible. The problem here though is an influx of new teams to the Protour as well with a number really such as Bacardi, Wiggle and Pendletons really needing to splash out on a decent climber or two.
Nethertheless it is nice to see a team looking at climbers and also filling that Norwegian hole left by leaving and migrating teams.
I recall fondly the nice little favourite rider/team competition made by this avatar severel months ago and this was one of the early names I was keen to trumpet in the selection process. Certainly the media thread suggest someone prepared to make that effort with wonderful videos.
CSC Orbea are looking at riders from Spain primarily and whilst we already have the newly promoted Santander there is plenty of talent left over to form a second big Spanish team. When I say big this team are certainly aiming at that, but at least in a couple of years time as this seasons goals look reasonably modest. This is no bad thing, the hardest to achieve will likely be the top 10 in team standings and the win in the Barcelona Classic.
The suggestion would be then that CSC are looking for a decent punchaer, though it may be difficult to find a Spanish rider to fill this hole with so many of them decent mountain climbers as well. Igor Anton comes to mind as a rider that would be a good fit and perhaps a big money offer to David Abal is on the cards? Though a decent hills man may need to come from outside the Iberian peninsula.
It is bye bye to Highroad and hello to BPost as the famous cycling nation of Belgium gets a flash new team in its place. Another very nice media thread here with some sensible targets for the new season shown. The problems that Highroad had were that they aimed too low, though that is not really an excuse for leaving, I feel CountArach is a sticker and that is Belgiums gain.
Looking at the cobbled/flat targets the obvious aim would be to get the signiture of Highroad's star man Maxime Vantomme. Sprinters who can ride the cobbled stuff will be in demand I feel this year and Vantomme could be expensive. There are a number of cobbled riders out there though, with disbanding Intesa also likely to have riders available for this type of terrian. Vanspreybrouk and Maes also will be superb marquee signings, I will be interested to see whether either can make the impact in pcm10 as they did in pcm09.
I am not sure that Vanendert will be available but it is a good idea to tap up a rider like this. Certainly the Belgium is a very decent punchaer but probably not good enough to match his current teams ambitions, so it is possible he will be let go in the contract signings.
Pellizotti has been a keen follower and writer in the stories thread and has been showing his hand at stage making. It is great to see such a keen forumite as part of the mangame with our second new Italian team in the crowded market.
Not a great deal of information but a very decent team thread nethertheless, from the goals including a win goal for the Giro del Trentino this is a team looking for a marquee stage racer or two. There should be a number available but this did prove difficult for new teams last year to find riders of geniune quality without breaking their budget.
Much like others two new players strategies are open to teams like this, either go big like Bacardi and Pirelli did for Ricco and Serpa or go steady like say Tinkoff or Red Bull did with a couple of decent stage racer types and try to build towards Ikea, Santander, UBS type success.
Pellizotti's number one asset is that he is keen and I look forward to that transferring into his team thread and activity as the season progresses.
Now for something completely different! You gotta love someone being brave and going Oriental, particularly as a certain someone else has grabbed three of the best Chinese and Japanese riders in the game! It does seem feasible though that this could well be a growth area in real life cycling in the years to come. The Japanese love Formula one and so why not cycle racing?
The goals set out by the team are realistic and with one or two top name sprinters (who knows he could somehow tempt me to release Arashiro!) and climbers a decent all round performance in Asian races is very achievable.
What this team have to be careful of however is signing too many low level Oriental riders which will risk those dreaded anonymous type of performances that plagued the weaker CTour teams last year. If they are patient though these riders I guess could develop, but they will surely need to look elsewhere for leaders to ride for all of their stated goals.
They also need to beware of an unscrupulous manager taking advantage of the obsession with nabbing the top names from their chosen area. This is something others should watch for even in bidding for free agents.
Yep, a third new German team looking to fight for those German free agents and outbid others in prospective German transfers. However rather than base all of their goals in Germany Puma have decided to spread their goals around a bit. This implies that the focus of the team could well be shifted to other nationalities.
There does need to be a floater in there somewhere and this team could easily become a sort of multi European based team. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if most new teams branch out a bit, that would seem to be the best path for success. This team looks like it will at least have some focus on the American races with plenty of long stage races there I wonder whether this team will look to plunder the South American market.
I guess cio93 is on that sort of yellow alert list with dudi as rider we are a little concerned activity wise early doors. I think cio93 will prove me wrong there, let's see as we approach the transfer season.
Edited by Smowz on 23-04-2011 17:43
Current players and prospective hopefuls alike have asked me and most of the other admins about this add-on. I really cannot divulge too much details as most is to be confirmed, but it does seem highly likely that a 10 to 20 team division two will run this year alongside the main calendar for new players only (that is players not currently involved in the mangame).
One of the key reasons here is the difficulty in choosing the fab 13 to enter the mangame, with three or four people in particular difficult to leave out.
Just to whet the appetite here are a few things that look like they will be in place:
- A division two season of 10 stage races and 16 classics lasting approx. 90 Race days.
- Will include exclusive new races designed by mb
- Old Man Game favourites (Tour of Pendle, Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne, Dutch Food Valley Classic) make the calender.
- Squads will need to be built with a nationality focus
- Wildcards to c1 races will be available.
- A separate Division two transfer season (meaning that the Man Game proper will be largely unaffected, loans and transfers will not be available)
- A breeding ground for new reporters, it will not have escaped anyone's notice that a large amount of reports (whilst in the main retaining the excellent quality) were written by too few a reporters at the end of last year. This will be the ideal opportunity for others to give this vital lifeblood of the mangame a go.
I guess there will be many questions with this, the most obvious is when do new players sign up. The best indication is that new applications will be opened during Man games transfer season (or shortly after) with the Division two races highly likely to begin at the end of ManGames month of February. Any questions please pm me, I am not in 'charge' of division two before anyone asks though I am likely to be one of the main guys I guess.
Like most players I guess I have flicked through the free agents available for next year. There are already a few standout names to look for that are either freed up as a result of teams disbanding or for financial irregularity reasons are were free agents from last year. Over the coming weeks I will have a look at some of these riders. This week we have a rundown of the hottest free agents from protours disbanded teams.
La Gazzeta della Sport
Five Giro’s and counting... will a change of team give the little prince a shot at the tour? Surely the ‘Valverde’ of this year's transfer season Damiano Cunego the Giro grand champion is available. He cost his team 1,300,000 last year, the mind boggles though at how high he will go this year. The feeling will be that this rider virtually guarantees ProTour survival and is a goalbagger. We did see however Cafe de Colombia, who transferred in Valverde last year and grabbed the Vuelta and Volta but had a pretty lean season elsewhere.
Of course La Gazzetta former protour winners are more than a one trick pony and super TTer Michael Rogers will also be of interest. He took the pure TT race last year with both him and Zabriskie being the two maxed out TTers in the game. Last year his wage of close to 600,000 could well be trumped due to that guarantee of high results, Rogers will be pretty difficult to drop in the high mountains in pcm2010! Sprinter Bennati is another who has the look of guaranteed results as he took four stages and the green jersey in last year's tour. He has ability to get over hills and is always a challenger for those demanding flat classics, again the pcm09 - > pcm10 port could well suit him. The only thing against the star trio is possibly age as all three are the wrong side of 30.
Other names to watch for will certainly be the so called climbing domestiques De La Fuente, Vazquez, Ossella and Agudelo will create interest either as a CTour leader or PTour domestique. You feel they will have the chance to cash in on the open negotiations pushing their wages beyond the 100K barrier if last seasons transfer season was anything to go by. Dutch TTers Flens and Van Winden will also create interest, many will expect an offer from Jack Wolfskin here. Roulers Marinangeli and Santambrogio should find teams with a couple of new Italian Protour outfits and possibly chances of leading in one of the CTour teams.
Starbucks-Radioshack
There will be more than one team interested in this teams selection of nearly GC men and nearly sprinters. Certainly for any CTour team to grab any of the stage racing trio of Efimkin, Amador or Kiserlowski will result in some fine results. Whilst Protour teams may wish to avoid the nearly men strategy of Starbucks they can ill afford to ignore the possibility of a cheap stage racer. Amador is probably the pick of the trio, Kiserlowski looks more of a luxury domestique to the protour's teams and Efimkin may well be on the Russian TCS Systems radar.
Outside the three GC men Matti Breschel tends to make Scandenavians heart go all gooey and whilst perenial GTour stage winner Oscar Friere is surely now too old to threaten Mark Renshaw, Trent Lowe, Arnaud Coyot, Kristjan Koren and Giovanni Visconti may be worth a punt for a Protour or CTour team.
Lafarge
They were rock bottom for almost all of last year and Lafarge suffered for lack of leaders really in the Protour ranks. Confusingly they raced two leaders at the tour and really failed to benefit with Denis Menchov surely being one of the most expensive flops in the ManGame. Menchov will age and see his skills decline, he still may interest Protour teams as a domestique, however it is likely to be recently crowned Italian champion Caruso who provokes the most interest.
The Italian seems to have had a happy knack of going for the right crazy break move, though he isn't really capable of landing a big tour triumph given that he seems a couple of notches below the other great Italian stage racers.
The second rider that will likely attract competition from newly promoted Santander is David Abal who had a very fine Vuelta a Espana performance on loan to the mentioned Spanish team. His results in the CTour were solid and Abal with an excellent ability against the clock would be a fine stage racer, if perhaps slightly below the very best.
Outside of these Lafarge's other big moments were delivered by Mitch Docker sprinting to a couple of stage wins at the Giro, led out well by Sebastion Minard. Cyril Gautier and William Bonnet will attract interest particular on those looking to build their French stock.
Auber 93
Well they are not actually disbanding but their drop from the Protour will result in massive reconstruction with some major league talent to be dumped in to the free agent pool. It would appear as if time trialling trio Coppel, Reus and Boom will be available - no doubt that Coppel one of the few who can compete with the Wikipedia duo and Rogers against the clock will be hot property.
Classy German punchaer Patrik Sinkewitz is capable of landing a big classic win and should attract interest meanwhile tough man sprinter Haussler could find pcm10 a better fit for his skills. Punchaer/cobblers Nikolas Maes and Sebastian Langeveld will also surely find a new home if available at a decent wage.
Energie Diesal
Again not disbanding but having to reform because of their wage reduction, it will be fascinating to see which (if any) of the big names this team lets go. The big two are Pozzovivo and LL Sanchez, one will surely have to be allowed to leave and the other could well be attracting big money offers from protour teams. Outside of this Energie have a number climbers and mid level sprinters. They actually had a large squad of low wage riders so their may well be less big name rider leaving then we first think. Sprinters Duque and Corioni will also be closely monitored for their availability no doubt.
'Mr Giro' Damiano Cunego is the hottest free agent ticket this year, the question is just how much will the market value him at.
Cunego's first season in the Man Game was at the Lampre-Fondital team, he would begin his Giro legacy here and also take the individual rankings comfortably ahead of Frank Schleck. His first Giro was a fairly comfortably two minute advantage over future teammate Di Luca and former mentor the fading Gibo Simoni. The stage was set with a magnificent solo break on stage 15 dropping the then leader Di Luca on the penultimate climb.
But it was Cunego's year long consistency that led to him taking the overall individual rankings with a 2nd at the La Fleche Walloonie, 4th at La Doyenne and Zuri-Metzgete, 5th at Milan San Remo and San Sebastian and a 6th at the Giro di Lombardie. Nothing spetacular but more than enough to accumalate points for the overall honours leading his team to a top three placing.
The deck was shuffled for 2008 and Cunego found himself being joined by Danilo Di Luca to form a more powerful La Gazzetta Della Sport squad. This would begin the symbiotic four year relationship that Cunego would form with the team in pink. The trade off however was that Cunego was to surrender leadership in the hilly classics and 2008 saw Di Luca not Cunego ride well in the Ardennes, San Sebastian and Lombardie. Now allowed to focus on the Giro however saw Cunego absolutely cane the opposition in a one sided Giro, siezing the pink jersey on the first mountain climb on stage five.
Cunego took five stages in all extending is advantage to nearly ten minutes over Riccardo Ricco in second by the end. Cunego now added the final classification jersey he hadn't won at the Giro, the points jersey to the KoM jersey he won the year previous and the two overall and youth jerseys he had gained already.
Avoiding the Ardennes cleared Cunego to strike at the Swiss mountain/hill classic Zuri Metzgete and also the Swiss Tour. In the Swiss tour Cunego took a narrow win in a ding dong battle with Denis Menchov inspiring his team to hold on the in Team Time Trial.
He finished the season in fourth place in the overall individual rankings and with Di Luca 2nd and his team 2nd it may have seemed a year of near misses. But in truth as an individual rider Cunego could have done little more.
2009 started and once again Cunego indicated that the Giro was in his plans once again. Indeed his squad would pursue a similar strategy to the year previous with Di Luca being their hilly classics man. Cunego even took in the Tour of Romandie to help him where he took a podium behind Devolder and Pellizotti. Cunego looked vunerable and even more so when his nemeisis Emmanuelle Sella took him on in the Giro, Cunego was beaten on the slopes of the Zoncalon.
It was here however Cunego's fighting instincts were shown as he lived to fight another day and fight away he did on the slopes of the Gavia.
Reversing the GC positions on Sella and taking the overall title in one of the classic GC ding dong battles of Man Game history. 2009 proved to be the 'low' point of Cunego ManGame career as he would 'only' go on to finish 6th on the individual standings and his team would suffer its only year out of the top three. However this was the year Cunego would take the Giro di Lombardie, his only monument to date, so worst year is certainly a relative term.
Indeed by 2010, Cunego's patterns were well set: the Giro, one stage race and a couple of classic assaults. Cunego was finally allowed loose on the Ardennes this year but could not land the Fleche Walloonie (3rd behind Ricco) or La Doyenne (6th behind Schleck). So once we reached the Giro, Cunego was hungry for success. It was a tactical race this year with Cunego's nemesis from the year previous Sella making a mess of the stage over the Alps losing over five minutes. Cunego showed his class winning the queen stage.
It was a strange sort of Giro though were one by one Cunego's competitors had an off day, but not the little prince though as romped his way towards a massive 12 minute victory over then world champion Pellizotti. It was a year of utter dominence in the Giro as Cunego took all three main classification jerseys. However it was the July Austria Tour race that bizarrely saw the big stage racers showdown as Cunego outmuscled Suisse 2010 champ Sella and Vuelta 2010 champ A Schleck on his way to victory.
Following this Cunego now looked towards the Italian classics of Emillia and Lombardy to add more points. It was looking good for his trade team La Gazzetta della Sport too as teammates Rogers, Di Luca and Bennati were having excellent years also. At Emillia things looked even rosier as Cunego outsprinted Sammy Sanchez, Pellizotti and Rodriguez to take the win.
Whilst Cunego was not able to repeat his 2009 win at Lombardy he managed a 4th with Di Luca in 8th Gazzetta della Sport managed to take the team standings with Cunego king of the Individual standings once more.
With the big win behind them, there was little left to conquer for the Gazzetta team in 2011 however the team did a fine job of papering over the cracks left by the departure of Di Luca. This gave Cunego a chance of a proper crack at the Ardennes.
He did not let his team down taking a dominent victory up the Huy to register his first Ardennes classic win.
The Giro proved an exciting one due mainly to Cunego suffering a nasty early crash, but a cornered champion is a dangerous thing. Showing superb form in the final week winning several decisive stages clawing back ground and overhauling Sella to take his fifth successive Giro crown. Cunego even romped away to win the final day Time Trial ahead of teammate Michael Rogers.
As the year wore on it became apparant that Cunego team would not be renewing their contract for the next year and all the squad members would have to start looking for new teams. This did not seem to diminish Cunego or his teammates. Cunego would take his first Spanish race win at Asturius and would take a podium at his beloved Lombardy race at the end of the year. Cunego would finish top of the pile once more on individual rankings having that happy knack of brilliance in a GTour followed by competitive in the classics. His teams final year would be a reasonably successful one finishing a good second in the Protour behind the all conquering Sony Ericsson outfit.
Five Giro's is nothing to be sniffed at, and a change of team may see Cunego go for that 'guarantee' of a 6th Giro win. But the Little Prince is turning the other side of 30 and attention might turn to gaps on his parcours. It would be nice to see Cunego go after the Tour, there is that points motivation there at the risk I suppose of not actually winning! Cunego has also had a couple of cracks at Liege Bastogne Liege without success, perhaps an all out assault at all three is on the cards this year? How about Milan San Remo or the Race of two seas or maybe the Dauphine?
Really a great read Smowz. Like Mresuperstar had said, I enjoy reading about other peoples perspective on my own team, and a few other teams that also interest me.
A good read and I'm interested to see what the next part will be about. The renewal phase seems to be on standby, so I hope that the current non-active managers will get back in the near future!
valverde321 wrote:
Really a great read Smowz. Like Mresuperstar had said, I enjoy reading about other peoples perspective on my own team, and a few other teams that also interest me.
My main aim was to try and give the new guys a bit of backing, its a shame really that they now have to twiddle their thumbs for a bit.
Upcoming topics.... well I was going to continue giving out detail on CDiv2, in preparation for its grand opening. Also more on the hot freed up agents, as well as another focus on a rider. The opening topic will probably be an in depth look at the parcours for this years ManGame GTours.
Will you be doing a presentation and preview after the transfer season this year aswell? I really liked both yours for the CT and the other one for the Pro Tour
In what concerns my team, I have to say you were spot on. I'm going "extreme makeover" on my roster so I will have to let go of at least one of my 2 star riders, firstly because of the salary cap reduction. On the other hand as I have a lot of low-waged quality riders I'll much likely be gambling a lot on the post-renewal transfer season. Finally as I'll be focusing on the nationality of the riders rather than their quality, there will be a lot of room for negotiations to take place.
