A really interesting team. Very little difference between best and worst rider. It should give you lots of opportunities to score precious, precious points
Huge depth and leaders here for a CT team, should be a title contender I am guessing! Love to see Dyrnes on a home team as a big-time CT scorer even if he is behind home hero EBH, will be cheering for them this year!
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." [PT] Xero Racing
Awesome to see your team back contending for promotion where it belongs. EBH is an awesome acquisition as well as Dyrnes, and then hiding in among the rest are riders like Bertilsson, Waersted (78res?!) and Breen? Awesome team you've built yourself. Hoem should be decent enough in the mountains as a set and forget point collector also. There is almost no scenario you're not in PCT next season
I think Dyrnes will outscore EBH, but good planning for the two combined with Breen and your hills depth should get you right into the promotion converstation. Just in time to get up and re-tool as your leaders age out.
I agree that promotion should be possible for you. For that, you will need to massively score on the hills - and you've got all the tools needed for that. I guess Dyrnes will even outscore Moscon due to the massively stronger acceleration, and I agree with TMM that he should be a better scorer that EBH as well. I'm still not a fan of one-dimensional puncheurs - of which Hagen should be among the division's best, though. Let's see if you can find enough hilly races to get the best out of your punchy duo!
Breen looks nice, too, and should do pretty well - but it looks like many CT teams went for cobblers this year. With a rather limited amount of suiting races, it remains to be seen what you can really get out of him.
You should however be well set for the sprints. Bertilsson is a solid 79 sprinter, but I actually like Waerstedt even more. "Just" a 78 sprinter, OK, but good acceleration, and massive resistance! Will be interesting to see if he can turn this advantage into a bunch of points!
Probably your most notable weakness - besides the obvious lack of any TT skills - is stage racing. Hoem is just one more small fish in the huge sea of 77+ climbers, so it remains to be seen what he can do for you. The advantage obviously being almost complete freedom of race choosing for CT teams this year.
Will be fun to compete alongside you, although I already curse your puncheurs now Good luck!
Superb regional focus and impressive turnaround this transfer season! Our talks did not lead anywhere between us, but at least they clearly helped you in building a great squad, which I'm very glad about Promotion is definitely a possibility indeed this season. Best of luck during planning.
I agree that I think Dyrnes is a better fit with his skillset. EBH is maybe a better card in hilly stage races with a time trial, given the ridicilous fact that he is our third best time trialer with 68 TT
But there isn't too many of those types of stage races anyway.
Glad to hear that many are positive we'll promote. I hope so as well, beacuse, as already mentioned, this team isn't exactly built for long term success, so we really need that extra budget for next year or we'll only gonna get weaker and stay here for ever
I'm away from home now so don't have time to analyze other squads at the moment, but from what I've seen, there is a lot of improved squads and I'm impressed by the newcomers as well.
Looking forward to the first CT-previews to get a better picture of where we stands, compared to the others.
Edited by Bjartne on 01-09-2022 08:39
Today we received the upcoming seasons NC-Jerseys from our brilliant kit designer hillis91!
Spoiler
Three lucky riders will be proud wearing these jerseys to show off their country and stand out just that little bit more in the peloton.
We look forward seeing them in action
I really like your squad! Having a bunch of really solid regional leaders takes a lot of hard work during the transfer season, and you pulled it off really well. Breen is a favorite of mine, and Waersted as others have noted should be a beast with that resistance.
I'm not sure I buy what others are saying abotu Dyrnes outscoring EBH. I love Dyrnes and see him as a similar rider to Juul-Jensen in his prime, which is amazing in CT. But EBH, however one dimensional he may be, is still the only 81 puncheur in CT, and only Boswell is at 80 and complete enough to be better. There are tons of 77-78 puncheurs, yes, but most are almost as one dimensional as EBH. And you have one of the ones that isn't.
I'm joining you this year in having two puncheur leaders, so I guess we're in this together (though your depth is considerably better than mine). Given the expanded control CT teams have this year with C2HC gone, you should be able to split them up quite a bit if you choose too. I'm trying to do that myself, but it should be even easier for you given your depth. The key to promotion is prbably in that planning since you lack a top stage racer or time trialist.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Love the set of RR champions jerseys. Nice to be so well represented in the focus nations. And as other have said an impressive rebuild while maintaining regional focus.
Dyrnes/Boassen Hagen seems like a great one-two punch if the AI plays it that way. Boswell will definitely not have the same support.
Always loved the Scandinavian flags and irl jerseys like Denmark, and love the Norwegian and Finnish jerseys from you a lot as well. Still hurts to not have Manninen winning the flat RR, but think having the Finnish nc at Tafjord is very fitting as always great work by hillis.
I really like your squad! Having a bunch of really solid regional leaders takes a lot of hard work during the transfer season, and you pulled it off really well. Breen is a favorite of mine, and Waersted as others have noted should be a beast with that resistance.
As I've mentioned already, I really really love your squad as well BBL, so expect me to keep knocking on your door every single transfer window
The competition for danish riders was too tough for us now, but that's obviously a priority for the future, so I guess we'll meet there as well
Ulrich Ulriksen wrote:
Love the set of RR champions jerseys. Nice to be so well represented in the focus nations. And as other have said an impressive rebuild while maintaining regional focus.
Thank you very much Ulrich! You also have an really impressive core of american riders, with the fitting canadian and colombian to spice things up a bit. Will be searching for the McCormick jersey in the peloton
Nemolito wrote:
Still hurts to not have Manninen winning the flat RR, but think having the Finnish nc at Tafjord is very fitting
Thank you Nemo, very considerate of you, but we both know that Manninen is a much more deserved national champion, so hopefully Kaislavuo is only loaning it for a year
In some hectic final hours deadline drama, Tafjord was involved together with several other teams, fighting to get under the wage cap.
We have successfully done so, with the help of our wonderful Ethiopian friends.
They will receive Frederik Frison at a fee of 50K. While we acquired Eipor Eiriksson at the very last minutes on a 10K stagiare contract.
To be honest, he is utter garbage in every discipline, but he is the icelandic double champion and we figured out that alone was worth 10K salary
We will post his jersey here, together with the updated squad at the end of transfers:
Definitely gonna be the team I'm pulling for in CT this year, and it should be a pretty fun ride because the team is stacked. Hope Belevics has tons of success as a leader in CT, Asgreen supports Eriksson well, and Garby has one good final ride as a leader.