It has been quiet on the blog for a while so I thought I’d break the silence now that the first team has returned to the training field after the Christmas and New Year break. Coach Mika Suonsyrjä recently wrote on the club’s web page that the upcoming season will be the most challenging so far, and it would be difficult to argue with that. In the past two seasons we competed with less than a handful of teams that had real competitive goals, but now more or less every team in Nelonen are well-managed teams that train together regularly. This is not to say that every team has promotion as their goal; however, there are no teams that take the competition lightly.

Right now all TamU-K supporters are craving for news about new player signings. So far we have only had eleven players from last year re-signed, and it has already been more than ten weeks since the last ones were announced. With all the rumors about certain players and player-types flying around by word-of-mouth and even on twitter, the fanbase is a bit anxious. However, from what I have heard beyond the rumors, it seems good things will come to those who will wait. The only official piece of news that we have heard in a while is that veteran midfielder Vesa Suonsyrjä won’t return next season, and I’d like to extend my personal thanks for the service for the club.

Two players from last year’s squad will feel almost as if they were new players. The first of these is the play-making wizard Anssi Saiha, who played a few brilliant matches in the spring, but then started to suffer from injuries to the extent that towards the end of the season he was not able to play at all. He has not yet been re-signed, but since he has been able to train healthy, it should only be a matter of time until that happens.

The second one is Jan Irjala, who seems to be dropping from the striker position to the center back position. He was one of the best players on the field when we played our first training match this season against the second team of Ilves in December, so this looks like a very promising experiment. I also hear that he has plenty of experience in central defense from earlier on in his career, so the move might not be as drastic as it might seem.

That training match, by the way, was part of a new winter league that is played among the five Tampere-based teams in Nelonen. The indoors training facilities in Tampere are very limited, so in previous years there has not been anything like this, but this year the five clubs were able to lobby for a Saturday 8 am time slot in Pirkkahalli (TESC), the venue where we expect to play our upcoming Finnish Cup match as well. The early morning start time may seem horrible, and of course as such it is, but at this point in this city clubs on this level need to be happy with whatever they can get.

The winter league is completely unofficial, but still a nice addition to the winter schedule, and perhaps in the future it can be developed with, for example, better kick-off times and more publicity. Two matches have been played and TamU-K is on the top of the table as the only team to have scored a goal so far. There is a page in Finnish that has the results and the table. Our next match is on the upcoming Saturday against FC Melody, the team that beat us for the Vitonen title in the fall.

And talking about Finnish Cup, TamU-K was drawn straight to the second round, and the match has to be played by February 13. Our opponent will be decided in the first round match between Leki-futis and Parolan Visa, to be played sometime in late January or early February. Our match will be a home match, and as said, it seems likely that it will be played in Pirkkahalli just like last year’s two matches.

So a lot is going to be happening fairly soon. Of course if we drop out of Finnish Cup during the winter, we won’t have more competitive matches until sometime towards the end of April, but there will be more training matches in addition to the winter league ones, and in fact I have on good authority that the next one will be on January 18 away at FC Rauma.

And as for the player signings, we should hear about them very soon, because quite a few additional players will be needed for the Finnish Cup fixture that is coming in about a month. So far we have seen four new players on the field in the training matches since the end of the 2013 season, and on Sunday we’ll see if there are new ones still. Exciting times!