All is not lost obviously the big one their is Ewan not getting to level 3 the rest don't matter so much, it's a real shame but not so bad.
With regard to relegation I think it's very open at the moment in terms of if you do or not I think Hornbach are there for catching and Privitbank have been sliding very quickly as well.
IMO though I can see Mobil catching you and leaving you 26th with Hornbach taking their place.
Oh my, you really trained potential best sprinter in the game for cobbles or i am getting it wrong, as table is somehow wrong?
Dont get me wrong, i would be very happy as owner of Grosu and Ewan is yours to decide, but i havent seen crazier thing for a long time, even more when he failed to reach lvl3.
Edit: Now i see it, as table is moved to the right by one column. I almost had a heartattack. Edited by Avin Wargunnson on 19-01-2015 14:49
September. October. Two months to pull off an escape and bring home one of the best cycling seasons ever. We do love to make things hard for ourselves so we'll begin the battle in 28th position, our lowest all season. Climb three spots by the end of October and we are safe, just three little spots. If you believe in the Projected Rankings that task becomes easier, just one place between us and safety. We've been sliding backwards since March and this is a good thing. We really can't get worse than where we are right now.
Tour of America
The big 21 day race in California. Last year we got half our wins in this race (1, Bucciero). We need to do a bit better this time around. Cayetano Sarmiento leads the team. GC not his best suit we'll hope for some high stage placings and se what happens GC wise. Cayetano has shown good form at times this season and we need that once again. Behind that it's a team for breakaways with Georgiev, Bardet, Ewan, Robov, Fritsch and Stoenchev. A stage win would be a good start, two would be great and anything GC or Jersey wise a nice bonus.
Tour of Britain
8 Days across the nation including a time trial and many hills. Geraint Thomas comes home looking for a few breakaways or to get his sprint legs going. Matthew Lloyd and Gorka Izagirre will sort leadership out between them. Both have had good flashes and Lloyd has a habit of being quiet but up there. Capecchi and Yates hope the undulations can get them some reduced sprinting competitions. Bolivar, Cholakov and Losch complete the team. It's all on Matty and Gorka to pick up some form of GC result, maybe a lucky breakaway as well.
GP de Quebec
One day, all-in in Canada. Geraint Thomas will be loking for something possibly, probably not. Petar Panayotov again shakes his head at the race planning. "Home-boy" Routely might be the best chance for something, and isn't that worrying. Capecchi and Yates can look for a reduced sprint whilst Mihaylov and Sparling will certainly not really do anything. A lost cause of a race, any points are good points here.
Wanze-Arenberg
Cobbles! The final major cobbles of the PCT season. Thomas of course is our leader supported by Grashev as lieutenant. The it's the standard line-up of Routely, Gyurov, Sparling, Hristov, Bolivar and Losch. This is crucial race for us. A win here, and Thomas really could win this one, will be serious gains in points and in closing the gap to Hornbach. Anything outside the Top5 is a catastrophic loss and almost season over. Huge huge huge race for us. In football it would be termed a 6-pointer, i hope we get more than 6 points!
Philadelphia International Championship
October kicks of back in the States. Chicchi... Yep this won't go well. Hoping the climb can boost Capecchi or Ewan forwards to some kind of result. Robov, Fritsch, Cholakov and Losch will go for a lucky breakaway. Sprinting is never good for us so probably another zero pointer. Anything will be welcomed with open arms. The upside is that Chicchi recently finished 17th on a flat stage, perhaps the old man has some last power in his legs?
Paris-Tours
Same thing as Phili. Swap Fritsch for Yates and add in Thomas. Is anything expected, not at all! Hopefully the length can play into Thomas hands and he can use his power. I would rather get a result here than Phili though because this is an HC race and just gives out more points. Still expecting zero though.
Giro dell'Emillia
Italian one-day, classic in cycling. Panayotov must hate me with this late season planning. Izagirre can't be much happier either. Routely, Cappechi, Bardet, Robov, Fritsch and Stoenchev complete a mixed squad. Mixed squad, not many expectations. To be endured rather than enjoyed.
Tour du Faso
My memor of what makes up this race in Africa is vague. That said Africa has been some of our best hunting grounds this season and one last hoorah would be magnificent on the continent. Thomas is here so i think there's some cobbles, excellent! In fact it's the whole cobbles squad so there must be cobbles, or desperation in planning... probably desperation. It's the penultimate race so i hope we hvn't left survival this late but perhaps the extra motivation could make the difference. I've got speeches lined up just in case.
Japan Cup
The end of the regular season. Izagirre, Capecchi, Routely, Yates, Ewan, Robov, Fritsch and Cholakov carry the pressures of a nation on their shoulders for this one. Final day, could it become legend? We hope so, we hope so very much. At the very least i hope it's better than our first race.
Honestly the outlook isn't great. Very few races left that suit out team we will be looking for good forutne and breakaways for most of our points. Still it's no worse than the last few months have been so perhaps there is still something to be found, we do pop in good riders here and there. The belief is still alive in the management and in the riders. We won't give up the PCT just yet, we will take it all the way to Japan if we must!
The battle for relegation will be fierce and tough as we discussed above. The opening two races, the Tour of America and the Tour of Britain, would be key grounds for building a points base to push onwards from. 21 Days in America had to deliver whilst the 8 Days in Britain provided a chance to sneek some extra points into the account. Well so far things are going pretty well!
Let's begin in Britain. The opneing 4 stages were very quiet but Lloyd and Gorka were looking ok. It wasn't anything special though and some poor positioning looked to have cost us big time and put us on the back foot in the fight. On the road to Caerphilly Matty Lloyd took matters into his own hands! A battling breakaway rider, where he provided serious pulling power, rewarded him with a 2nd place and a healthy time gap to the main groups. This has climbed him into 12th place, a position he could hold onto. It certainly makes a Top15 look very much on the cards.
But America has been even sweeter! Georgi Petrov Georgiev was fighting for his very contract going into the event. Two and 3/4 seasons of nothing put him under severe scrutiny. He has responded excellently so far. Sarmiento has struggled and Georgiev jumped in to rescue our GC hopes. At the end of Week2 he currently sits in 13th place and will be looking to try and crack the Top10 if possible.
Just to add some extra joy we bagged two stage wins already! Momchil Robov got his second of the year on Stage 11, slipping away from his breakaway pals with 10km to go. He powered it home in excellent fashion, clearly boyed onwards by his near miss at the Tour de l'Avenir. Young star Caleb Ewan has been having a good neo-pro season. He's shown flashes of his talent and picked up a handful of Top10 results. The lumpy transitional Stage 14 played well to his strengths and the young Aussie gave everything to defeat his rivals! His first ever win (more will definately come) gives us two in this race, a fantastic haul.
Nothing is secured in either race yet but we have more hope now than for the last three/four months. I always said we would fight to the end, if we can keep this level of performance up there is a chance we won't have to...
The Great Big Now Others Might Believe We Can Make It Post
The Tour of America ultimately ended in a bit of disapointment. For all our efforts a low tally of 80points, that's 3.8pprd, doesn't boost out survival chances. However it was more than Mobil got and was more than we usually pick up in stage races without Panayotov. So i guess we can't complain.
Wanze-Arenberg was marked out as a key race. The very flat profile fitted Thomas better than many classics, and it's calendar placing gave it significance for rankings battles. The usual cobbled team went hunting for late season success. Perhaps taking a boost from Dobrich last year where we scored amazingly in a late season cobbled classic....
Never one to make things easy on himself Geraint Thomas decided he'd start attacking with ~25km still to race. For a sprint-cobbler this isn't a super smart move and it's cost him numerous times already this year. Today however he found something new, luck!
An HC classics win is a massive result for any team but for us at this time it's beyond measure. Certainly not a survival result on it's own, combined with a huge spike in performances it might just make all the difference. New belief is already coursing through HQ and now, perhaps for the first time, others are starting to consider that perhaps we can make it. That change in attitude will spur everyone here at B3B onwards to survival just you watch!
74 Points is now the gap between us and Hornbach. Simple task, score 75 more points than they do. Unfortauntely we only have 4 races left, totalling 16 race days. Hornbach have 21 days ahead of them. To overtake them we must score 4.688 pprd and that's only if they fail to score points. For every 10points Hornbach get we have to increase our total by 10 points.
It is a task we have previously managed this season, outscoring Hornbach by 75 points. Not often but we have done it before. We CAN do it again and we WILL do it again. Prepare for a race by race countdown to the end of the season as this battle will, most likely, mathematicaly go all the way to the final day of our season. For reference we would need to outscore Allianz by 89 points to jump them. Kenya are 158 points ahead and probably safe from us barring some form of miracle.
75 Points
16 Race Days
4 Races
1 Position From Safety
Wow, that is really intense, and you really know how to put the suspense in words!
I like your team and we actually aren't too dissimilar with a lot of money going into top talents, so I don't really want to see you go down, especially in a direct fight against an inactive team...
Unless you relegating means Simon Yates will be available, in which case please go down
cio93 wrote:
Wow, that is really intense, and you really know how to put the suspense in words!
If you like that you should find some time to read Karl Hammarling where my writng skills have developed and improved. yes that's a bold advertisment but it's been a while since i did one
I like your team and we actually aren't too dissimilar with a lot of money going into top talents, so I don't really want to see you go down, especially in a direct fight against an inactive team...
Unless you relegating means Simon Yates will be available, in which case please go down
Partly the reason i'm in the relegation fight was my focus on talents rather than scorers. I'd planned on going down back in transfers, i didn't give real though to being in a genuine fight for survival. If we stay up, woo hoo i'm gonna have a nicely improved team. If we go down i can tear up the CT for a year or two and really quickly progress my talents
And like Ewan and Thomas, Yates won't ever be leaving me (unless it's to get an EXP loan). I can easily fit him in after he takes a wage drop
I didn't really expect Yates to leave you.
If I had known Herklotz went so cheap in the end, I wouldn't have had to spend the spare 500k on Bontenackels etc. but definitely would have invested in Yates instead, so consider yourself lucky!
In the hopefully likely case that we promote next season and Yates needs a loan to max out, I could definitely imagine to be up for negotiations as Demare will need leadouts that can survive as many hills as he does himself. Edited by cio93 on 18-02-2015 22:11
An attacking display from Geraint Thomas comes to almost nothing in Paris-Tours. Sprinting has never been kind to us so it was good to see "G" off trying something different, only to fall short with ~7km to race. He still rallied to put down a tired sprint to 27th place to pick up 5 points.
Ahead Allianz finished 15th to garner 11 points whilst Hornbach placed 2 in the Top30 to also pick up 11 points. Allianz grow their lead to 95 and Hornbach grow their lead to 81 points. It's 2 less race days for everyone and makes our job a bit harder, no needing 5.786 pprd to overtake Hornbach (if they don't score again).
Still got two HC classics remainig and a Cobbled/Flat Stage Race to go. There are comfortably enough points on the table but we need to find that bit more luck to move onwards. The boys are racing hard going for any chance to win. Digging deep with not long to go now.
81 Points
14 Race Days
3 Races
1 Position From Safety
Big G will really need to perform big in Faso, otherwise I can only see a miracle breakaway win in one of the classic save you. Best of luck there, allthough if the promotion spot that gets lost by Hornbach slipping in to the relegation zone is the one I'd need, I'll regret saying that.
Of course if you're very lucky, something like last year might happen, where the relegated PCT teams were allowed to stay up after all. Somehow can't see that happening though.
Dippofix wrote:
Big G will really need to perform big in Faso, otherwise I can only see a miracle breakaway win in one of the classic save you. Best of luck there, allthough if the promotion spot that gets lost by Hornbach slipping in to the relegation zone is the one I'd need, I'll regret saying that.
I can see Thomas performing well in Faso though so everything is still possible.
Dippofix wrote:
Of course if you're very lucky, something like last year might happen, where the relegated PCT teams were allowed to stay up after all. Somehow can't see that happening though.
Definitely not. It was a real shame that we had to enforce that rule, and luckily CT activity is at an all-time high as far as I can see.
After a couple of false promises to bring back The Sound to the Man-Game world plans are properly in place this time to resurrect the magazine! The resurrection will alter the style of The Sound somewhat but it's better to have something restructured than something that doesn't happen, right? The Sound will return in two formats. The first is as an Off-Season Magazine, the second as a during-season Interviewer.
So let's deal with the Off-Season Magazine first. This will be in the more traditional The Sound style. A mutlti-page magazine including news and interviews during the off-season. We will deliver a post-season edition looking at the season just passed and analysing the final results. Then we will go over the new additions to the game and pay tribute to those teams passing onwards. A third issue will tackle the tricky issue of transfers. Last season this didn't go well but having learnt we are sure we can provide an issue on the subject without annoying anyone (except Avin who's always angry). Post-transfers we will have an issue analysing the chaos times. Finally we will release a Preview issue looking at the season ahead.
That's 5 Off-Season editions of The Sound. Quite a number but we are confident they can all be delivered to a high standard. Naturally this will require some community input but that will all be explained in due course, and come primarily through interviews.
Finally there is the new in-season format. Taking a leaf from our affiliate #LeSon we will conduct various short interviews with riders and managers through the season. Short chats about current events mostly just the provide something extra to enjoy alongside the racing.
Ambitious? Slightly but work has already gone into formating and planning the various changes and issues ahead so this time we are 99% confident of delivering on the promises made. The only slicking points being real life events possibly getting in the way. You'll also notice @The_Sound will have vanished, with The Sound moving over to the @TMM_PCMD account to tie in with the managers other activites. Just keep an eye out for #TheSound to keep up to date.
Oh and finally, yes the #TheSoundTakeover will be back during transfers! Yes the wildly successful and only briedly controversial Twitter takeover will be back again to keep you abreast of the Transfer period action.
Fingers crossed for G in Faso. You have an easy supporter in me there, since G is my favourite real life rider, and has ridden for both of my MG teams in the past. Brits do have a decent track record there, so maybe G can add to that.
Return of The Sound in the off season will be most welcome, just don't do the lazy guys homework on the db for them please!
And yes, its hard not to have a soft spot for G even if he does ride for the robots IRL. I vividly remember him winning one of the last ever rounds of the U23 National series in UK when still a junior (maybe 2004/5ish?) - impressive stuff all the way back then.
Long Term Goals
As part of our work with Bulgaria we have agreed to a certain number of long term goals for the team to aim for and keep. If we can do this it will be a major success and cement our place in Man-Game history!
1) Promote and Develop Bulgarian Cycling
2) Take a core of Bulgarian cyclists to the WT by 2017
3) Get a Bulgarian squad to the World Championships by 2017
So that was the long term plan we put in place at the start of the season. Number 1 was to continue to Promote and Develop Bulgarian Cycling. A nice on-running theme to the team provided Bulgaria keeps supplying us with funding. Number 2 was to Take a core of Bulgarian cyclists to the WT by 2017. Ambitious but a key factor behind our run of talent stacking. Number 3 was to Get a Bulgarian squad to the World Championships by 2017. This adds onto the previous targets through growing our Bulgarian core into real winners.
#1) Still going excelently. We picked up a number of new Bulgarian talent in the off-season. They've been riding well and growing nicely this season. Momchil Robov has been a real star taking as many wins as Matty Lloyd! The whole growth of that core of riders will be a big boost for future seasons. Ideally a new talent or two will appeaer this transfer period as we continue to hone our focus regions.
#2) Trickier to judge. We are in the relegation fight and might go down. But i don't see it affecting a run to the PT. We certainly wouldn't be challenging promotion next year as we continue to grow our own talents so 2017 is a best case scenario whether we are CT or PCT in 2015. Ideally we wouldn't like to rely on back-to-back promotions, but with Ewan and Thomas and the rest who knows what will happen down the line.
#3) I'm tempted to call this one a success already. Petar Panayotov, Martin Grashev and Momchil Robov have been great this season in their own ways. The whole team has worked hard and Bulgaria qualified for the B-Worlds event! Not the main World Championships but it's all part of the same umbrella of event. To get to the main Worlds will require one or two more talents to come through the system though.
Very much positivity inside the team at these goals. Bulgaria is very happy with our progress and is making noises about a long-term sponsorship deal. We're also looking at tighting our team up somewhat and the off-season hopefully will bring us some Canadians and PNW's to match up with out sponsors. Thoughts are going around of extending our philosophy to these regions, but they are much more competitive environments and our resources are limited. Transfers will dictate that but we are drawing up some expanded Long Term Goals
Tour of America
Tour of Britain
GP de Quebec
Wanze-Arenberg
Giro dell'Emillia
Tour du Faso
Japan Cup
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
