It's taken a few days longer than we would have liked, but finally we have new signings to announce. But firstly, we would like to take this time to say goodbye to Mattia Cattaneo, Yonathan Monsalve, Samuel Ssabagwanya and Josh Atkins, and wish them luck in their future careers elsewhere. In their place we have three new riders to introduce, who we are hopeful will make up for their departure down the line!

Yoann Paillot

4.100

29yo

Time Trialist

€135.000

A rider that we never thought we would realistically be able to sign at the beginning of transfers, Yoann Paillot joined us for a fee of 1.25 million euros - expensive, but well worth it for his skillset. He'll lead our team against the clock, with his abilities going uphill the main reason we decide to go all out to sign him. While we avoided TTs in our original planning, we're confident we can put together a schedule to maximise his full potential - even if he ends up hunting stage wins from time to time.

Gaspar Goncalves

3.78

25yo

Puncheur

€50.000

Signed in a swap with Josh Atkins, Gaspar Goncalves is an exciting talent for the future - and we hope he may be able to contribute in breakaways this season. While he'll never be the most powerful rider, his explosion combined with good abilities on both short and long climbs mean we look forward to seeing him when he realises his full potential in a couple of seasons.

Inigo Elosegui

1.00

22yo

Stage Racer

€130.000

Our first free agent signing so far is a rider we're very excited about due to his unique abilities. While Inigo Elosegui will never be the strongest climber, nor particularly impressive all round - though he can manage hills and TTs more than adequately - he has a gift very few riders have in terms of his ability to suffer, and his ability to recover. We envisage him being a key domestique for us in the final week of stage races once fully developed, and although 130k is more than we would have ideally liked to pay we believe it's a wage worth paying considering his potential.

Progress with new signings has been slow this transfer season, but we’re finally able to confirm that a number of riders have joined the team. As they come in, we say goodbye to Kyeng Ho Min, Jay McCarthy and Sebastian Lander and thank them for their service, while Siim Kiskonen leaves on a temporary basis as he heads out on loan. In an ideal world we’d like to add another rider or two, but unless we can agree other loans then this may be the end of our business this window.

Ruben Guerreiro

4.100

26yo

Puncheur

€210.000

Joining us for a fee of 800k from Berg Cycles, Ruben Guerreiro definitely didn’t come cheap. However his versatility and relative youth for a rider that has already completed his development made the deal too good not to do in our eyes. He’ll be one of our main helpers for Hugh Carthy and Adam Yates, as well as potentially getting some of his own chances in the harder hilly races. Add in his ability to act as a first man in a sprint train on flat stages as well, and we think it’s 800k well spent.

Frederico Figueiredo

4.100

29yo

Stage Racer

€100.000

The deal that saw Kyeng Ho Min leave the team saw Frederico Figueiredo join us for a discounted fee of 110k. It took a while to negotiate the deal, but we’re delighted to have ended up with a rider we believe is one of the best stage racer domestiques around riding in our colours for the next season – and perhaps even longer. While he’s older than our usual signings, he’ll have a key role to play in support Hugh Carthy, as well as hopefully picking up some solid results of his own when the opportunity arises.

Xhuliano Kamberaj

4.81

26yo

Sprinter

€60.000

A rider we have long coveted, Xhuliano Kamberaj joined us in a swap deal involving Sebastian Lander plus a fee of 150k. While he still has a step to take in his development, we expect that next season he’ll step up to replace Tosh Van der Sande as our second sprinter, with the Belgian soon to start to decline and now our only rider over the age of 30. For this season, he’ll be given his chances in those stage races we can’t send Kemboi and Van der Sande to, where we hope he may spring a surprise or two.

Enzo Wouters

2.03

24yo

Sprinter

€50.000

Joining us as a rider we think will be a key leadout for Salem Kemboi in future, as well as potentially having opportunities of his own in the right fields – particularly in the latter stages of Grand Tours - Enzo Wouters is someone we have long coveted. While we couldn’t make a deal to bring him on board work last season, we finally managed to get our man this time around completely uncontested.

Viktor Verschaeve

1.00

22yo

Stage Racer

€65.000

Our final new signing, unless we manage to strike a couple of loan deals, Viktor Verschaeve joins us as the long term replacement for another new signing in Frederico Figueiredo. While he could arguably develop into a rider with a higher ceiling as a puncheur, we believe that he will be a more consistent and ultimately more useful rider for us developed into a top of the line stage race domestique.

While we didn't make anymore moves in the final 48 hours of the transfer period, we did add a couple of special national champion jerseys, thanks to the great work of the_hoyle. Salem Kemboi and Xhuliano Kamberaj are the lucky riders who will get to wear them, making sure we'll be a colourful presence in the sprints this year.

Xhuliano Kamberaj

4.81

26yo

Sprinter

€60.000

Salem Kemboi

4.100

25yo

Sprinter

€300.000

But that's not all, as over the off-season Salem Kemboi has been working hard to improve his sprinting ability further. Already a Grand Tour stage winner at the age of 24, he now enters the exclusive sprinting elite at the age of 25. And he gets to do it in what we think is one of the most beautiful NC jerseys in the peloton.

Despite a quiet transfer period by our standards, we're happy with the squad we've built for the upcoming season. While the departures of Yonathan Monsalve, Mattia Cattaneo and Jay McCarthy had the potential to be huge losses, we think that they should be comfortably offset by the improvements Hugh Carthy, Anthony Turgis and Salem Kemboi have made over the off-season, as well as the signing of Yoann Paillot.

A conscious effort was made this transfer season to make our team more versatile, moving away from one dimensional riders towards building a core that can score well on multiple terrains. This starts with our stage racing core - while Hugh Carthy will lead us in most of the purely mountainous races, Adam Yates will seek to be a constant thorn in the side of the likes of Beltran and Buchmann in the hybrid hill-mountain races. They are joined by Frederico Figueiredo, who we view as an elite stage race domestique to complete the fully developed portion of our stage race squad.

On the hills, in the easier races where Yates won't be present leadership is in the hands of Anthony Turgis. While he isn't the strongest climber, he should be a hard man to drop and a keen attacker - especially in longer races and on the steepest climbs. He's backed up by Alberto Bettiol, who we have high hopes for due to his all round versatility, and Ruben Guerreiro, who will be Yates' main lieutenant throughout the season, as well as a constant threat to steal good results in reduced bunch sprints.

Yoann Paillot has high hopes on his shoulders, as potentially the strongest TTer in the division who has any sort of ability to get over a hill. Where he lacks is in support, although that was a conscious decision on our part - unless you have multiple strong all round TTers, we believe they're a pointless investment. However, Stefan De Bod may surprise when he rides in Paillot's main races, although we'll focus on him more later when we discuss our talents.

Our cobbles department is probably the strongest it has been since the days of Jerome Baugnies at the team, but once again we are depending on three talents who will discuss in more depth later on. Milan Menten and Jodok Salzmann have the added bonus of being able to contribute to our hill squad, while Julius van den Berg will be used to wreak havoc on the flat. With no C1 cobbled races on our calendar and the level of the PTHC and HC races likely too high for our trio, our hopes rest on the three C2 cobbled races we're riding.

Finally, our sprinters. It should be no surprise by now that our sprinters aren't the quickest, but that they make up for that by being some of the toughest riders you'll find in any field. Salem Kemboi's improvement over the off-season should hopefully make him more likely to try his luck in stronger fields, although we have avoided sending him to pure flat races as far as possible - instead, he'll seek to dominate stage race sprints and the division's prologues. Tosh Van der Sande will once again get his chances in those semi-hilly flat stages as well as in a number of other stage races, while Xhuliano Kamberaj will also get a few leadership opportunities.

With all that said and done, we present Farfetch Pro Cycling 2020. As ever we have a young team, with an average age of 25.43 (aided by only 9/21 riders being maxed) and a focus on strong support stats - our team's average stamina (74), resistance (74), recovery (72), acceleration (72), flat (71) and hill (71) are all above 70. Will it mean anything in practice? Who knows!



As ever, the exciting thing when looking at our roster is how it looks a few years down the line. In three seasons all of our talents will have maxed, with Tosh Van der Sande the only one of our riders declining in that time (which we all know means he'll leave next season). In addition to our current climbing strength, we'll have two superb sub-top stage racers in Inigo Elosegui and Steff Cras coming through the ranks, both making up for their weaknesses in pure climbing strength with incredible support stats. They're joined by Viktor Verschaeve to complete our climbing squad, who will develop into Frederico Figueiredo's natural heir.

On the hills, after Anthony Turgis and Alberto Bettiol maxed this season we decided it was time to bring in another rider for the future alongside Zisis Soulious, with Gaspar Goncalves joining the team. Both riders will be very similar when they reach their full strength, able to handle both short and long climbs and highly explosive. We hope that this duo, in combination with Adam Yates and Ruben Guerreiro, will make us a real force in hybrid hill-mountain races in a few season's time.

As previously mentioned our TT strength is nothing special currently, but our talent pipeline should change that. Stefan De Bod will develop into a very useful stage race domestique as well as a reasonably good TTer, while Edoardo Affini will be slightly weaker on the climbs when maxed, but slightly stronger in prologues. Similarly, while our cobbles squad is probably our weakest department, Julius van den Berg, Milan Menten and Jodok Salzmann will all complete their development this season to form a solid group - which we hope to one day add a top leader to.

Finally, our sprinters. While we don't have another future Kemboi in our ranks, we do have three solid riders who we think will have a key role to play in his future leadout train if he continues to improve as we hope. Xhuliano Kamberaj is ready to contribute this season and should seamlessly replace Tosh Van der Sande when maxed, while Enzo Wouters has everything needed to be a great leadout - and even a threat in the final week of Grand Tours. And finally, Siim Kiskonen (loaned out to Duolingo this season) is our wildcard option, not the quickest on paper but a rider who gets better and better as races get harder.

After a transfer season that saw a great deal of upheaval, it was always going to be tough to come out the other side with a degree of confidence that we could actually achieve our goals this season. However, with Hugh Carthy and Adam Yates always in our plans from before the season started, we've chosen goals that we hope they can help us achieve.

Our win goal this season comes in a race where we've had reasonable success in the past, with Yates taking 3rd place here in our most recent participation in 2017. We believe the combination of hard hilly stages, one summit finish and two short TTs should suit us - although we know already that we won't win the race, a top 5 is possible.

A race that we've not entered before, our first top 5 goal comes in the Tour of Cyprus. While we know we'll have a fight on our hands against the top climbers in the division, we figured that as a HC race the field may be slightly weaker, giving us a chance of a top 5.

Similarly to Cyprus, the Tour of the Middle East is a HC race for the climbers where we hope the field is slightly weaker than usual. Yonathan Monsalve took 4th in our last participation here in 2018, and we're hoping for more of the same from Hugh Carthy this year.

We had to choose a PTHC goal, and after the Volta a Portugal broke our heart once again last season we decided to go with the Tour du Maroc. A top 5 should be achievable considering that we would have had both Monsalve and Yates finish there if not for an ill-timed puncture for the latter last season, and the length of the race should hopefully prove offputting for the likes of Pluchkin and Tenorio.

A goal that even I think is overly ambitious, but one we decided to go for as we expected not to be too far off. I expect us to finish 10th having studied the other squads in the division, but 5th should be possible with a little bit of luck - watch now as we end up fighting relegation.

Race planning is always tough for our team, as the last time we had a dominant rider on any terrain was back in 2013 when Danilo Napolitano was the best sprinter in the PCT. As a result, we have to be creative in order to maximise our point scoring potential - making the best use of clashes, hunting stages and trying to score big in weaker fields. You'll see more of how that played out when we release our leaders' race schedules, but first you can see our race calendar below. Races in bold are our goal races.

After revealing our goals and calendar in the last few days, we can now reveal the race schedules of our leaders. This season we've decided to do things a bit differently, taking a few more gambles safe in the knowledge that whatever happens we should be comfortably mid-table, with promotion less of an ambition than it has been in our previous PCT seasons. While there is undoubtedly a chance we've made a horrible mistake, you never know what'll happen unless you try!

We've taken a different direction to what many would have anticipated with our planning for Salem Kemboi this season. While we believe that on paper he can compete with the top sprinters in the division, we didn't think that sending him to a series of flat races would actually maximise his point scoring potential. Instead, apart from the PTHC and HC flat races on our calendar, he will target wins in stage races - particularly those featuring prologues. He'll also lead us in our wildcard PT appearance in Qatar, where we're quietly confident of a top 10 from him.

Our planning for Adam Yates is perhaps our biggest gamble of the season. Having noticed last season that explosive climbers like him tend to go well in the harder hilly races, we decided to give him more chances in those kind of races this season. It may backfire spectacularly, but considering how close he came to a podium in Lombardia at the end of last season we thought it a chance worth taking - especially as we think the profile modifications will have a limited effect in many cases. He is also tasked with our win goal in the Tour of California, though we expect a top 5 at best.

With Yates focusing on the hybrid hill-mountain races, Hugh Carthy is given responsibility for the majority of the stage races on our calendar. We have tried to limit his exposure to TTs, knowing his weakness in the discipline, preferring to send him to those races more likely to be decided going uphill. He also has responsibility for our top 5 goals in Cyprus, Maroc and the Tour of the Middle East, plus will get the chance to lead us in our wildcard appearance at the Tour de Suisse.

As we didn't plan on having a strong time trialist in our ranks this season, Yoann Paillot's schedule is mainly focused upon C1 races and hunting stage wins elsewhere. With his strength on the climbs we hope that he can be a useful domestique in some of the stage races he rides, as well as in his appearance in Milano-Torino as support for our puncheur squad. He gets to ride twice in our PT wildcards as well, backing up Kemboi in Qatar and getting to showcase his talents on home turf in the Chrono des Herbiers.

For those hilly races which Yates won't ride, Anthony Turgis will get to show that he belongs with the top puncheurs in the division. With his weakness on longer climbs we have tried to put him in races with easier profiles, although on a few occasions he will also ride alongside Yates, giving us two strong options. As he had a number of spare racedays and is an incredibly versatile rider, he will also ride a few cobbled and flat races - we expect nothing from him there, though he could be a threat in breakaways.

For those races where we haven't sent Kemboi, Tosh Van der Sande will be our lead sprinter. As we've avoided flat races as far as possible this mainly means stage hunting for him this season, although we fancy his chances in the Lisbon Classic, and think he could surprise a few people in what is likely to be a packed field in Barbados. With his strength on the hills we anticipate him being a threat on stages other sprinters struggle on, and we hope that his point scoring will reflect that.