Hello there, welcome back to France, and indeed, to the new blogging digs. It’s been a while, and as such, I’ll forgive you if you can’t remember how things stood back in April. Long story short, we’d just won our very first Ligue Un title, usurping perennial incumbents, PSG. For the full story, you could read the older blog posts that I’ve painstakingly transferred to the Coffee House…
The big news is…TED’S SACKED! Not really, but this season took an absolute age due to my on/off relationship with this year’s FM, and my overall playing speed was therefore glacial. As a result, Ted has opted not to renew his contract and this will be the final season with him heading up the transfer dealing. In a further blow to the quality of this save/blog, he’s become so big time with his Latte’s and his flash new series, that he’s become self-aware, and has binned me off.
Ted’s Transfer Tsunami:
Ted’s last summer in Toulouse involved massive amounts of cash. There had been surprisingly few transfers out to proper big clubs before this point in the save, but it seems that finally our talents have appeared on their radar.
In terms of the major outs, I’m sorry to see most of them leave. That’s not true of Ahmet Eris, who accomplished little for us. The price Ted got for him is quite incredible business.
TVHN looks a top right back, but with homegrown considerations, Dieng is always likely to hold on to that position. Also, Ted got him on a free just one year ago, and after a pretty mediocre season, he’s turned into €50m! Bacanin has always done sterling work off of the bench, but his lack of progression finally irked Ted enough to sell him. Vlahovic was good for us (72 starts, 48 goals), but that price tag, plus some of the strikers we’ve got on board already (:eyes:), mean the transfer makes total sense. Also, he wanted off.
Sarmiento and THB have become the latest victims of the limited non-EU players we can register. Sarmiento (92 starts, 25 goals, 29 assists) is another free transfer acquisition turned into big wonga, and has gone directly because of a player we’ve promoted from T2, the “New Hope” I’ve alluded to in the title, and perhaps the most overt example of me meddling with Ted’s squad building, using my primary weapon: unrelenting, borderline embarrassing, begging and pleading.
Ted really amassed some talented squad depth here, we have many, very high quality players out on loan now, and new €29m signing, Jarne Vandendriessche joins the loan army. Hopefully a year in the Bundesliga with Mainz will hone his skills even further. He’s a very promising 18 year-old striker.
First though, I’m going to refuse to channel my inner Redwood, (focusing on his final full-back crush Zoran Milevski), and I’m going to instead highlight Czech wonderkid Jiri Mazouch. Outside of those two, the remaining signings are for back-up purposes, or future investments. Here’s Jiri:
Another ginger signing. Ted’s the best.
A player so good, he could feature as a starter up top or in central midfield, but he’ll begin out on the right flank for us. He looks a perfect fit for the inverted forward role. Whilst admittedly playing on the opposite flank, I hope he’ll fill the hole in the squad left by Sarmiento’s departure.
A New Hope:
One summer ago, Ted signed a young Korean striker. He had a rather poor goalscoring record (8 goals in 27(8) for Pohang Steelers) when Ted brought him aboard for €3.8m, and he was one of three players sent to our Spanish affiliate club, Real Sporting, on loan. At this point, I hadn’t even noticed he existed. In my defence, Ted signs a lot of Korean players that go out on loan, and after a while, you kinda get sick of the bastards.
But then the rest of the staff kept badgering me with reports of his exploits. By the end of the 24/25 season, he had banged in 31 goals, leading Real Sporting into La Liga for the first time in the save, making their favoured personnel list, and the feeling was mutual, as they became a favoured club for him. When Ted started making noises about sending him back for another year, I started making noises about wanting him to stay. Really, really annoying noises.
Could this be the real reason for the FEO/Redwood divorce? For the inside story, send cash (to me)
He looks a proper talent, and I expect him to start putting the pressure on Nestorovic for the starting role pretty soon…
Behind The Scenes:
During this season we had another crap intake, and the board decided to build a new stadium. At this stage of the save (its deathbed/twilight, depending on how generous I’m feeling), I’m not sure either thing really matters.
August to December ‘25:
After all this change, the season began in its reassuring, traditional fashion, with us losing the Trophée des champions against PSG, this time on penalty kicks after a 1-1 draw.
Late last season, I changed from a 4231, to a 4123 formation, and that’s the tactic I started this year with, albeit an inverted version to accommodate Jiri Mazouch, in the position and role I favour him in, out on the right flank.
I have no idea what happened to Ted’s squad number game this year
We stumbled out of the gates in the Champions League. Despite a much easier group than last year, we drew our first three games, only scoring a single goal. A pair of narrow home wins eventually saw us through, though our points and goals totals were suspect.
Goals had not been an issue domestically however, with the change in tactic yielding a similar amount up top, though tightening us up in defence. At the end of the first half of the season we were on top of the table, and feeling cute.
At this point, I did have a mounting concern about the wide players. Apart from our Czech new boy, no-one had been impressing on the wings, with former mainstays, Mazek and Camara being especially useless. After an impressive start to the season, firing in 9 goals in the first two months, Nestorovic had gone quiet, with only 2 goals since the beginning of November. Hwan Solo had 6 goals from his limited appearances by this point…was it time to properly bust out the new hope?
January ‘26:
Ted certainly thought so, giving him a start and an appearance off of the bench in the Coupe. Solo duly bagged five goals, and although two were penalties, a) the rest of the squad are shit at penalties, and b) three goals in 115 minutes is still pretty good. Ted’s got us through to the Coupe quarters again, though the eleventh round victory, 4-3 over Nantes, was a close run thing.
Ted finished his tenure with six victories from six, the three in the league taking us eight points clear at the top, with PSG surprisingly dropping points at Nancy.
January Transfer Window:
Ted’s final window was a relatively quiet one, in terms of its impact on the first team squad anyway. He did spend another €40m on players for the future, one of whom I love the look of, but he’s yet a further non-EU headache. We’ve loaned him to Juventus, and if there is another season, I hope he’ll be a part of it.
Actually, looking back on it now, I think maybe Ted was trolling me. He signed eight players, and seven of them are non-EU…
The Toulouse 2 squad is heaving with players on various loan deals. At the very least, they’re a future revenue stream.
February to May ‘26:
The Champions League is where the real fight is, and this season the knockout stages presented us with Inter Milan, and a chance to face off against Sarmiento and Vlahovic. Well, the former anyway. After spunking €30m on our Serbian target man, Inter couldn’t register him at all as they had exceeded their own non-EU quota. Poor lamb.
After our pretty poor showing in the group stage, I wasn’t anticipating much from this tie, but the first leg was a doozy. An end to end first half finished three apiece, with Sarmiento naturally amongst the scorers.
The second half continued in a similar vein, although with less clinical finishing. Colin Prent banged one in from the edge of the box in the 53rd minute, and Arnau Tenas confidently claimed corner after corner, to see us take a slender lead to Milan.
Speaking of less than clinical finishing, the second leg was a shitshow of dreadful efforts, but we did enough to secure our second Quarter Final appearance in three years.
And for once, we avoided Liverpool. Though we got Chelsea, or “Blue Liverpool” as I think of them, and another of our former players in TVHN. For forty-five minutes, we bossed them. Two nil up, we were really good. After half time, we weren’t, and yes, TVHN scored. They equalised in the 93rd minute, which was a real kick in the unmentionables.
In the second leg at the bridge, we were completely dreadful. We only lost 1-0, but it could’ve been more, and we only mustered a single shot on target.
Let’s get back to France. The Coupe was kind to us this year, by which I mean, we didn’t have to face PSG (who were knocked out on penalties by Lille in the tenth round. As a result, the trophy was ours TOULOUSE.
In my experience, there’s no such thing as luck.
Even if a couple of those games needed a late goal for the win, we were on top throughout the entire run, and a second Coupe in three years is deservedly ours.
In the Ligue, things were if anything, even simpler, as we went through the season unbeaten. Even PSG failed to overcome us, as we drew with them 0-0 in a pair of desperately dull matches.
A point less than last season, and a distinct lack of quality out wide (Mazouch excluded, who bagged 15 goals from the wing) if I’m being really picky, but it’s a season of utter dominance.
Nestorovic and Hwan Solo finished as joint top scorers with 21 goals apiece, although Solo’s came in 531 fewer minutes, as he tore up the second half of the season. Perhaps the time is right to go two up top, especially considering that young Belgian from earlier…
Hwan Solo won the Ligue 1 Most Promising Player award, and Manuel Ugarte finished the season as our only representative in the Team of the Year, somehow. His division leading 15 assists crowning another great year for the captain.
We’ve grumpy players o’plenty, I have a desire to get more of our second team loansters involved, plus it’s my first transfer window, so things could change a lot in the coming pre-season…assuming I can sneak one more blog post in…
Thanks for reading, stay safe x