“I considered leaving Dijon after this incredible season because I don’t think I can make it again.” That was one of the last sentences of the previous blog post about this save when I reviewed the 2026/27 season with Dijon FCO. I stayed for another season and I also signed an extension of my contract until 2029. I just resigned a little bit and I thought it would give me one season to build some quality squad ahead of the third and the last season with the French club. But I got ahead of myself in time. Why? Let’s find out in this blog.
Transfers
The main priority of the transfer window between seasons was to make the first team squad bigger and to have stronger backup/rotated squad. I signed a couple of young players from around the world. I also decided to sign Mario Mercurio, the left WB or ML, from Perugia as I was happy with him and his development during my first three seasons of the save.
There were some great incoming transfers like Bayron Carilao from Universidad de Chile for €5M, Mário Vieira from Lorient for the €5M(€6M), Jean-Michel Wolf from Metz for €3M or Pablo Cardozo for free after the end of his contract with Nacional.
The outgoing transfers were significant in terms of the bank balance improvement and we earned €113M during this season. There were some big transfers like Vincenzo Trentadue for €11.25M to Manchester City, Yan Fei to Arsenal for €11.75M, Baye Mané (my favourite player from the first season) to Manchester United for €23.5M or Vusi Sergel to Galatasaray for €19M.
All these, and many more, outgoing transfers were more or less forced because these players were wanted and some of them wanted to leave to play for a bigger club. But for example, a transfer of Vusi Sergel to Galatasaray was just because no club wanted to pay his transfer fee around €100M and I decided to hire agent and it took a couple of days to finish the transfer.
He, and some more players, just didn’t want to be in the club and I really don’t want players who don’t want to be here. So, I rather took the money.
Cash transfers 2027/2028 without loans, it would not fit to the screen despite changing the zoom to 85%…
Tactics
The main two changes within the 4-4-1-1 tactics were in terms of player roles’ tweaks and I decided to be more aggressive in terms of out-of-possession. I decided it was enough to play with the shadow striker & wide playmaker roles combination and these two roles were the first changes I made. I changed them to AM(A) and IW(A) as I wanted the more productive and more straightforward role on the right side of the pitch instead of the playmaker.
Another important change was that I got rid of the CM(D) role in the MCR slot. I played mainly with DLP(S) or AP(S). The second option with the advanced playmaker role was useful while playing against weaker sides and the DLP(S), as the more static role in my eyes, was useful while playing against stronger/more reputable teams or stronger teams away from home.
One of my favourite tweaks was to change the winger role from the attack to the support duty. The reason was that I didn’t like how many times the winger received the ball with his back turned to the opposite half/goal. That meant he had to make the turnaround with the ball and our play was slower this player also lost many balls because of his dribbling ability. When I changed it to the support duty, the ML player had more space ahead of him and he received more balls with the possibility to run forward rather than only to the side or pass the ball back to the defensive line.
Also, just to mention, I changed the lone striker role from the complete forward to the advanced forward because I didn’t have good enough players for this most demanding attacking role.
One of my favourite goals after changes.
Coupe de France
In terms of the competition review, I would like to start with the domestic cup - Coupe de France. We won it in the previous season when we beat Nantes in the final 1:0. We made it to the final again in the second season after beating Saint-Étienne after penalties in the Ninth round, two comfortable wins against Villefranche and Guingamp and a tight win over Lens.
The semi-final against Monaco was scheduled during demanding weeks of playing every three days and I rotated the squad completely. But we won 3:2 and the second and third goals were scored by our own players. One of my favourite things in FM and football overall.
We played against PSG in the final and we went down after 22 minutes but Bayron Carilao scored a brace including the 111th minute winner and we won the domestic cup again.
Ligue 1
We needed the goal difference rule to decide about the league title holders in the previous season when Lyon lost in the last league round and we moved top of the table.
What about the second season? We were second or third most of the season. Olympique Marseille was top of the table between rounds 14 and 30 but they finished fourth in the end. We moved top of the table after a 2-0 win over Nantes in the 32nd round and we needed a win in the last league round against Nice.
We won 4:1 and Lyon drew 1:1 at home against Olympique Marseille. That meant we finished first again with 79 points (12 points more than in the previous season), Lyon finished second again, three points behind us this time. We improved our goal difference thanks to scoring 12 goals in the last four rounds and we had it better than Lyon again in the end. Just if it would be needed again.
Champions League
I think we were lucky and we had a great draw for the Champions League “league” phase as we faced Adana Demirspor, Boavista, Partizan or Vitória Guimaraes. We lost only to Sevilla 2:4 but we finished 5th with 19 points after six wins, one draw and one defeat.
It meant we went straight to the Round of 16 and we faced Bologna. We won 3:2 in both away and home match and we progressed to the quarter final. We faced PSG in this round and you can se two goalscorers were able to beat them - Bayron Carilao and Mario Etxarri who scored three goals in the second leg away from home as we won 4:1 and made it to the semi final.
We faced another European giant - Bayern München. Despite drawing in the home first leg, we won 1:0 in the second leg in München and German U21 national team player Alexander Lieberknech was our only scorer in both legs.
The final agains Manchester City in Vien was tight but we scored two goals and we were a little bit more dangerous in my eyes and more dominant. Goals by Pablo Cardozo and Bayron Carilao secured the Champions League trophy.
How did the other two (past and future) clubs do in the 2027/2028 season?
Perugia finished 15th in Serie A, just three points ahead of the relegation zone. They scored only 33 goals in 38 matches and conceded 44.
Reading survived in the first season back in the Premier League just one point ahead of the relegation zone with 34 points and a goal difference of -20.
The average age of the squad was 19.55 at the end of the season…
What next?
“I considered leaving Dijon after this incredible season because I don’t think I can make it again.”
This is not true anymore. I did it even better and won the Champions League together with a domestic cup & league. Now, I’m sure I can’t beat it or repeat it and I decided it’s time to resign and leave Dijon despite the Reading FC job is not available right now at the end of the season. But I’m sure I would want to stay with Dijon if the third season is not as successful.
It’s time to click continue button now and hope the Reading FC job will become available…
FM Slack alert!
There were a lot of changes within many social media including Twitter (now “X”) and it’s not the same as in the past. We can’t see many things due to the algorithm, weird preferences and many other reasons I don’t even want to know.
There are many Discord servers and I’m sure they are good and useful. But I will probably always be a bigger fan of Slack. Or better worded the Football Manager Slack. Feel free to join us with this link.
You will find a short channel summary in the ‘generalchat’ so it will be easier for you to navigate through the channels.
Thanks for reading.