I kinda knew going into it that we’d need 1 or 2 big performances to really keep us up but we just didn’t get them from Martin or an underperforming Ulissi.
Relegation by less than 100 points hurts but we were on track to relegate from the first few updates so it’s surprising we got as close as we did to staying up.
The real challenge will be holding onto what the team now has. The older guys will be released, that’s for sure. Borisavljevic had a poor scoring season now that he’s not U25 so his wage should drop and then we’ll see what happens with all my talents come renewals.
Congrats to those who are moving up and to those joining me in CT next season, good luck!
No good luck for me - honestly I don't deserve to go even in the CT
Have followed the division closely as most of my reports were C1/HC, and had fun following throughout the year. Congratulations to the promoting teams, conmiserations to the relegating teams.
Seems like I'll be joining you next year with the Fablok disband. Looking forward to it. Always sad to see (long time) members go, thanks for your help/activity troughout the years, sgdanny. Think you might have missed a lot of your races though, as you definitely didn't go two months without a race
To TMM I'd just like to point out that Altur won a (C1) cobbled classic against Summerhill and the others Malopolski or Macskako iirc, can't remember which is which.
Thank you for the nice words, Sykkel!
I do hope we don't see too many disbands anymore, and some managers like kentaurus, Atlantius, etc still come back
It definitely pains me to see a bunch of teams going down who have been struggling to stay in PCT for several cycles now. Commiserations and best of luck in CT.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Thank you for the congratulations everyone! This may be our 4th promotion from the PCT to the PT, but the title makes it extra special.
While it was close towards the end as Repsol scored big in August and September and took the lead off us, even I was taken aback by the level of dominance we had. To go from the TDU to the end of the season in the top 2 is impressive enough, but to be top from the end of January until the end of the season (bar that one week blip in September) is remarkable. Past experience has taught be to expect a late season collapse, but somehow we managed to avoid it for once!
This season has also been the vindication of the long term strategy I'd been hoping for. Of the 21 riders on the team, only 4 joined as maxed riders (and 3 of them just this season) and so it was good getting to see the emphasis on talent development pay off. At the start of this season I expected to be scrapping in the 8th-12th range, and deliberately didn't sign more talents for that reason - clearly I've finally worked out a balanced squad in that regard
The other part of the strategy was focusing on specific types of riders, both as talents and as maxed riders. When building shortlists I like to use formulas to rank riders, and while they're imperfect the emphasis they put on the importance of STA, RES and ACC (plus MO and HIL to a lesser extent) has definitely helped. Countless times this season we won races due to riders being hard to drop (Van der Sande in TDU, Kemboi in Jelajah and Paillot in Britain the best examples) and having a team able to dictate the pace of the race. The four teams I see as most similar in approach are Isostar, Evonik, Puma and Xero, so on the evidence of this season we're on the right track.
However, it will all be for nothing if we don't manage to finally break the yo-yo curse next season. Considering our history, the signs aren't good:
As you can see, apart from 2013 there is somewhat of a pattern
Looking ahead then, we probably need major surgery on the squad to be competitive. Repsol (should Aquarius return), Mapei, Desigual and MOL all have far more PT ready squads, and Xero are likely to have significantly more cap space to work with despite having a similar roster construction (emphasis on hills, hybrids, talents and depth). Of my current leaders, Yates and Kemboi are the only ones who are at a good age and have proven they can do it in the PT, while the likes of Carthy and Turgis are not ideal PT leaders, and Paillot and Van der Sande are now at an age where their value will soon begin to drop.
The other thing to consider is the need to keep a balanced squad. This season I went for a 9/12 split of maxed/unmaxed riders, but for next season that is more likely to be along the lines of 12/8. Having five riders maxing will help, but even then it promises to be a busy transfer period for us. Hopefully we can finally sign a truly elite rider (83+ main stat, or a strong 82), but finding one who fits the type of rider we like, who is at a good age and who we can afford is likely to be a struggle. Which leads me to say I fully expect to be back in the PCT in 2022
Congratulations to all the other promoting teams, and commiserations to those relegating and once again a huge thank you to everyone who helped out with reporting and the rest of the behind the scenes tasks this season!
Haven't yet had the time to comment on this final classification, so here's my 2 cents.
Gutted to see ourselves miss the mark another year. Was banking on the Gesink + Borges + TTT combo to give us enough of a competitive edge but our lack of depth prevailed. Still a solid season. I don't think I've had these many victories in a good number of years.
Congrats to Farfetch for all their dominance. Clear victors by a sizeable margin. Congrats as well to all others who have promoted.
Also just want to second all these guys have said.
Marcovdw wrote:
Thanks roturn for the organizational work, all the reports for the great work, everyone else who plays part behind the scenes and of course every fellow manager. Nice to see the ManGame still going strong!
Sykkel_Freak wrote:
Thanks to all the reporters, Roturn and all the other people helping out behind the scenes. Your work is truly appreciated A special thanks to Nemolito for the enormous workload you took upon this season and yet delivered with such quality. I think I have a favorite for reporter of the year in the next awards
And finally I'd also like to thank sgdanny and Tamijo for all their previous work with the game. Hope you guys can find the time to come back one day,
Very happy to promote myself, looking forward to being the newly promoted team again Quite happy with the season, we have been a bit unstable, but managed to get many good results over the year. Too bad Fiedler will continue to decline now
But this season was strong, Pluchkin, Padun, Ackermann, Lutsyshyn and Prevar all did what was expected of them, more or less.
Only logical conclusion is that Bakari underperformed and cost us the promotion
Oh well, another season in PCT isn't too bad, just hope I can somehow manage to get the finances needed to make overpowered Padun even better.
maybe it will work out next year. I'm afraid that with Pluchkin you will have to drive more PTHC races and then not always win. Or just sell Pluchkin and buy 2-3 other 80s mountain riders. This is going to be a difficult year for you if you want to move up.
A difficult season for me to follow personally and I'm sorry for the lack of comments the more the season went on. Delighted to survive and a good starting point to build on
Well done to all those promoted and bad luck to all those going down...
Malopolski or Macskako iirc, can't remember which is which.
