@bbl: That's music to my ears! We'll definitely talk, no question about it
@SotD: Yeah, I was very surprised to have him decline an offer slightly higher than the 950k "roof" you (and definitely I) expected him to accept. Still well worth it, I feel, as he's a rider it's easy to plan goals and such around, which I haven't really had since EBH rode in our colours. Hopefully though Taaramäe is slightly more succesful in the goals races compared to what EBH once was. He often delivered great in general, but had a habit of failing the goals
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
Scully definitely told us he'd happily join any team except his former, after several years of abuse from this certain manager who happens to be his former manager
And thank you, the same goes for your transfer season!
ember wrote:
A certain thing regarding my transfer seasons, is that those marked "No" is not not at all for sale. Of course I'm happy to discuss any of my riders, eventhough a "No" here means that my intention starting the transfer season is to keep them. That can change, even several times during transfers!
It could actually be very tempting to put some of them on the table if it makes one or two certain Danes go the other way and join us, seeing our new nationality focus
Well I have a Dane I want to sell, and you have a Norwegian who I wanted last season and couldn't get - a man can dream, right?
I remember which Norwegian you had an interest in last year, but I also remember me being interested in half your team, not only your Dane We'll definitely talk!
With the transfer season well underway, as usual it's been testing and challenging times for the team. Though, different to previous seaons, we're not looking for a complete makeover, as things are about to settle down. Though, saying nothing has happened would be a clear lie.
First, we'd like to say thank you to Ben Swift, who leaves the team to try his luck with Berg Cycles in the Pro Continental division. Admittedly last season weren't as good as neither we or he hoped, but there are no hard feelings seeing him leave. We wish Swift the best for the upcoming season, and fingers crossed he'll bring several wins to his new team. Also Sindre Skjostad Lunke waves us goodbye, as he joins the continental team Tryg - Ritter Sport. That's a great deal for Sindre, who now will get the chances to shine and ride as a leader, where he has been used to ride as a domestique for us. Though, Sindre will always have a special place in our team's history, having won a stage in last year's Tour de France.
Now then, over to the new kids in town!
Michal Kwiatkowski
30 years old
78,86
€ 880.000
FL
HI
MO
TT
STA
RES
REC
COB
SP
ACC
FIG
DH
PRL
72
78
79
70
74
76
75
68
67
75
73
69
75
Kwiatek is our new leader, make no question about it. After a season where we had no rider to lead us on the hills, we have faith in Kwiatek and his abilities to make us shine again there. We've got some strong traditions to honor on the hills, having had Boasson Hagen for several seasons. We hope and expect that we once more can compete for top 10s and the rare race podium too with Kwiatek as our leader.
Dayer Quintana
28 years old
73,52
€ 50.000
FL
MO
HI
TT
STA
RES
REC
COB
SP
ACC
FIG
DH
PRL
69
76
71
70
73
72
76
60
61
63
67
64
70
Quintana is brought in as a key domestique for Taaramäe. He'll get to ride at least one, probably two Grand Tours, and also several shorter stage races. In races where Taaramäe isn't present, we hope Quintana can make the most of the opportunities and chase personal success, be it good stage results or maybe even a King of the Mountain jersey.
Niklas Larsen
23 years old
71,53
€ 50.000
FL
MO
HI
TT
STA
RES
REC
COB
SP
ACC
FIG
DH
PRL
73
60
67
69
71
70
67
64
74
74
65
65
75
2020
77
60
68
70
73
74
76
67
79
78
65
66
79
2022
Jonas Vingegaard
23 years old
71,43
€ 50.000
FL
MO
HI
TT
STA
RES
REC
COB
SP
ACC
FIG
DH
PRL
65
73
67
67
72
74
73
60
61
65
67
68
67
2020
67
78
70
71
76
77
77
60
61
66
68
69
71
2022
In the deal seeing Sindre leave the team, Niklas Larsen and Jonas Vingegaard join us. We're thrilled to have them both. They fit very well with our new Danish focus, especially in a market where our plan A regarding Danes quickly went out the window, as Pedersen joined fellow Norwegians in Grieg-Maersk.
Both Larsen and Vingegaard are riders we'll carefully develop. When maxed out in 2022, they'll both be vital parts of our team. Larsen will be a key leadout rider, but also be able to take his own chances in sprints, while Vingegaard is a future climber who can serve as a key lieutnant in the high mountains.
ember
Aker - MOTEdited by ember on 06-10-2020 17:52
The hills will be interesting for sure this season! Feels like we all had a chance to judge the new AI in PCM18 and how it works last season. It's also too boring to sit completely out for another year on the hills, so I had to give it a go, I figured
But competing with MAL? That's only for a very select few, I suspect, and I'm not sure Kwiatkowski has what it takes to be up there.
With the final races in the Pro Tour, and the season culminating with the national championships and the World championships, it's about time we conclude the 2020 season.
First things first, we can't hide. Finishing 19th of the 22 Pro Tour teams wasn't good enough to continue among the world's best teams, and thus we relegate to the Pro Continental Tour.
It goes without saying the relegation is really, really painful. After all, the last couple of seasons we've built our team to try to be as competitive as possible from 2022 and onwards, but always trying to build a strong enough team to stay clear of relegation. In other words, it's my responsibility that we're now relegating, as our tactic clearly backfired this season.
Aker - MOT's season got off to a promising start, as Kwiatkowski proved to be just what the team hoped he would be after his training this winter. He has been a key rider for us on the hills, and especially on the tougher hills. He had several great results, winning both GP Wallonie and Balkans International, before finishing the season with a bronze medal at the Worlds.
A sign for what was to come this season came with the Giro d'Italia. We lined up with captain Taaramäe, hoping for a great points tally. Unfortunately, that went very wrong, as his and the team's points scoring were probably a record low for a Grand Tour winning team. The Grand Tour win was great, Taaramäe taking his second GT win in our colours in two years. At the same time, we feared relegation from the moment the race was finished. Unfortunately, we weren't able to produce enough points from then on and in, and the relegation was unavoidable.
The relegation leaves us in a tricky, difficult, but very exciting spot. We now need to figure out what to do. With a million less to spend on wages, and we expect little money to spend on transfers too, it's obvious we have to do something. Someone will have to leave, eventhough we don't want it to happen. Priority one the upcoming transfer season will be to keep our young core, several of them are still developing or just about to finish their development. That leaves us short on money, as we obviously can't afford both Kwiatkowski and Taaramäe in the team. Starting the season, our intention was obviously to keep both and maybe sell one of them. But who knows now, we might have to release one or the other. Hopefully we're able to avoid it, but that feels unlikely, in all honesty.
Nevertheless, we're looking a lot forward to the upcoming transfer season! This is where most of the fun is, and we really want to join the fun this year too
I'm really sad to see you go down. Like you say the Giro was the key point for you, and Taaramae finishing 550-1000 points behind the other GT winners in the overall ranking must hurt quite a bit, as he should be as strong as Lecuisinier on paper.
Kwiatkowski performed really well on the other hand - probably a bit better than I would have expected too ahead of De Bie and Kinoshita.
Fredrik Strand Galta barely inside the top 100 with 387 points is another massive contributor to your relegation I think. With the amount of freedom he had, he should produce ~600 points and be around the likes of Roglic, Schelling and Chiarello. Things like that is very much a tipping point.
Especially when you have a onedimensional team without too many riders to shoot into the selection.
No good cobblers, no good sprinters, no good timetriallists and no "hidden gems" will always make it difficult. Anderberg scored almost 200 points with also Vangstad and Amezawa performing reasonably well, and yet not a lot of depth points coming your way.
I must, however, admit that your team looks like a very solid PCT setup with Amezawa, Foss, Sosa, Anderberg, Larsen all develop into contributing factors.
It's indeed a painful and unlucky relegation for you with the way the Giro went for Taaramäe
But I know you have what it takes to compete for a promotion spot in PCT. I think Kwiatkowski will continue to give Beltran a bloody nose which I'm not looking forward to
Very easy to do the analysis of why you ended up in the relegation spots with that Taaramae GT scoring and it's so sad to see you go down to PCT this way. Hope you will promote back again immediately!
Really sad to see you go down. You spent so many years at the top level, and as the top Scandinavian team overall, that it became the default in my head. It's still weird to think about. Especially the fact that we'll be in the same division next season and competing is very strange.
Nevertheless, you still have that really solid young core, and I don't think this is the end for an upward trend, just a speedbump. With some good decision making, you could be a real PT force at the top in a couple of years.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
@quadsas: At least he didn't do anything less than expected, I was happy to have him Would be fun to see him in Aker colours fully developed too, but I suspect that could prove difficult seeing your love for him
@SotD: Completely agree on everything! Going into the season I knew our depth was non-existent, and we were hanging on to our captains making the most of their race days. When two of them couldn't do so, the "surprise potential" in the rest of the team, simply wasn't high enough.
@redordead: Haha, yeah, fingers crossed we'll get a lot of duels between them on difficult and demanding hilly terrain
@alexkr00: Fingers crossed! Though, I'm not as confident as you
@knockout: I guess that has to be what we aim for, which makes me very curious, but also very nervous, for the wage demands and renewals when that time comes... And thank you!
@bbl: Looking a lot forward to race against your team and others in the PCT! Hoping we both can be successful, and not that one team's success gets in the way for the other team. Yeah, those young riders have to be our core for future seasons, eventhough it will take a solid part of our wage budget keeping them, or most of them. How big the remaining budget is, and how well we can deal with that, will probably be what decides if we can fight for promotion or not.
With the relegation, renewals was always going to give us a proper challenge. After three rounds of negotiations, we're happy to announce we've found common ground with 15 riders.
With transfer season approaching fast, the team's management decided to go above the wage cap to keep those 15 riders within the team. As a Pro Continental Team, it goes without saying we'll need to do changes this transfer season, as all managers having looked at our team and wages know we'll need to reduce our expenses.
Thus, below follows the list many other teams have published, giving you the 15 riders we've renewed and their transfer status approaching Thursday. They're given stars from 1 to 5, where 5 stars means the rider is very likely to leave, while 1 star means it's unlikely the rider will leave.
Having said that, we all know that everyone has a price in transfer season, meaning everyone could be for sale, if the right offer is made.
Rider name
AVG
Wage
Availability
Rein Taaramäe
79,91
820.000
*****
Michal Kwiatkowski
79,46
680.000
**
Fredrik Strand Galta
77,93
340.000
**
Takeaki Amezawa
77,23
275.000
****
Hampus Anderberg
76,91
150.000
*
Ivan Sosa
76,11
110.000
***** (loan)
Andreas Vangstad
75,07
95.000
*
Tobias Foss
74,94
85.000
***** (loan)
Nihal Silva
74,74
75.000
***
Trond Hakon Trondsen
74,24
65.000
**
Dayer Quintana
73,86
50.000
**
Jonas Vingegaard
73,84
50.000
***
Niklas Larsen
73,38
50.000
**
Peter Pruus
73,36
50.000
**
Marildo Yzeiraj
71,85
50.000
**
Some of the riders took considerable pay cuts, like Taaramäe, while others finished their development and got a considerable rise, like Amezawa and Anderberg.
We're looking forward to again talk to others managers about transfers, possible transfers and any kind of possibility there is out there to make something interesting happen
ember
Aker - MOTEdited by ember on 06-09-2021 21:38
Will be interesting to see if you can bounce back directly. With Rein probably leaving, you should at least have a good chance to get in a leader that can stay with the team for many years to come. One of the riders you're loaning out certainly caught my eye there, we'll probably talk a bit (much) during transfers
We'll definitely talk!
Michal Kwiatkowski 
Dayer Quintana 
Niklas Larsen 
