It was only a matter of time. It began with a few people coughing, they thought it was the radiation but the dosimeters said otherwise. Soon everyone was coughing, before long people started dying.

Chepiga's workforce was full of men who had seen too many winters, and those who were too ill to work in conventional sectors of the economy. The only way to stop the spread of the virus was to have a cull, the fledgling city could not support widespread illness.

One death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.

Chepiga knew this would fall to him. Killing never bothered him, usually it was quick and he never had to clean up. This was different, he had come to respect these men, they worked night and day together, sweat dripping from their brows as they laid bricks and mortar in this Ukrainian hell hole.

Poison wouldn't work, these guys were radioactive, he would have to get up close and personal with them.  As long as they closed their eyes, Ruslan could compartmentalise the horror of it.

It took most of the day but he completed the mission, as he always did. He wanted to sleep but he had a promotion push to plan.

Last season Chepiga's men just missed out on promotion after a narrow defeat in their  penultimate game against fellow promotion chasers Prykarpattya IF. A fourth placed finish was still something positive to build on. Finances were fast becoming an issue so Chepiga knew promotion would have to come to Pripyat soon.

Trimester One

I've broken the season into thirds again as we play the other nine teams three times.

The season preview still predicted us to finish 8th so this start still represented some level of over achievement, but given last season's performance I was disappointed. Recruitment hadn't gone well as we battled just to keep hold of those players who performed well in season two. August was horrific, the 4-4-2 was struggling more and more against the five men midfields that most teams deployed against us. Two good wins in the start of September gave some hope as we moved into the second trimester. 12 points from 9 games.

Trimester two

A much better period for us. I have started to vary our mentality during the matches a lot more than I normally do. Especially if we get ahead, I will often drop down to cautious or even defensive if I feel we need to. Veres-Rivne prove to be a tough nut to crack and they top the league after Trimester two. 17 points from 9 games.

Trimester Three

A trimester of two halves, if that is such a thing. After our third win in a row against Podillya we sat top and Chepiga felt promotion was a matter of a couple of wins away. However, a draw and a defeat to ODEK Orzhiv and Kalush respectively meant that we travelled to Polissya Zhtomyr needing to at least avoid defeat. Our poor goal difference meaning we must overcome our contemporaries.

Probably the biggest game of the save so far would take place 200Km to the South-West of Pripyat in the city of Zhytomyr.

Tactics done, team briefing held, team talk completed with green interactions across the board. Now was the time for Pripyat to rise.

Thirty seconds in, and Zhytomyr win a free-kick, nothing to worry about.

It was 1-0 to Zhytomyr before Chepiga had sat down. It would remain that way as Pripyat once more failed to create anything of note, their midfield unable to cope with the opposition's extra man.

This defeat meant that barring a massive goal difference swing in the last game, Pripyat would be spending a third season in the third tier of the Ukrainian football pyramid. As it was, a poor defensive display saw us draw 3-3 with Bukovyna at home, a side we had beaten twice already this season. So once again the penultimate game proved a match too far for us as we finish the season 5th. This represents a slight fall from 4th last season. We also attained four points fewer than the season prior which, in the end, is disappointing. 12 points from 9 games

End of Season

The board awarded Chepiga a 'B' for his performance this season and I think that is fair. Too often we failed to gain a foothold in matches and I struggled to change this while maintaining a 4-4-2. Looking ahead we may need to drop this to a 4-1-4-1 or a 4-4-1-1 to try and give our two central midfielders some help.

Yuriy Fedosenko was voted fans player of the year, the veteran right winger showing that hard work, determination and teamwork go far in Football Manager.

Fedosenko operated as our Wide Midfielder on the right with an attack duty. He finished the season with 10 assists from 20 matches at an average rating of 7.00.

All in all I am content with the club's progression. I do feel promotion will be required next season to keep the club afloat. We need more cash plain and simple, we are losing 70-80k per season and this can not go on indefinitely.

Finally I'd just like to wish everyone well, we can not be sure how serious things are going to get in coming weeks and months. So please follow advice and keep safe. #stayindoors #readtheblogs

If you have some time on your hands in lockdown then you can catch up on my FM20 save  here.

You can find me on twitter here and I will also be providing sporadic updates about the save and various other things on my slack channel #fmeadster.

Over and out FMEadster