Well, I've started a new game with Aston Villa, probably my favourite Premiership team other than Liverpool. They have a pretty in-depth squad anyway, but I felt another quality striker and midfielder would definitely improve the team. Went out in search of four guys. Kevin Doyle, Kevin Nolan, Rafael van der Vaart and Mamadou Niang. None of my earliy offers we accepted so I had to pay big bucks for two of them. I picked up Doyle for £11.5mil and van der Vaart for £12.5mil.
Won all my friendlies pretty easily. Decided to play a very attacking formation with all my attacking players.
This is my starting line-up that I will use for my first game in the league:
GK - Sorensen
DC - Bouma
DC - Melberg (vc)
DC - Larsen
MR - Salifou/Young
MC - Reo-Coker
MC - Barry (c)
ML - van der Vaart
FC - Doyle
FC - Agbonlahor
FC - Harewood
Subs: Carson, Petrov, Young/Salifou, Moore, Knight
Got John Carew out with injury with fractured ribs. Once he's back it's going to be a massive fight for places. Harewood has been superb during the friendlies. van der Vaart was just awesome on debut. We had 31 shots, he had 12 of those! He scored two of them and won us the game. Doyle scored in the last friendly but is yet to show me his best. Salifou has been brilliant on the right meaning Ashley Young will most likely miss out for the first game.
I'm really excited about my chances. My tactic is a little risky, and it may need to be changed for the big-guns, but we'll see how it goes.