2020-21: Another knock on the Champions League door

With the domestic competitions becoming somewhat of a formality, the only challenge that is currently presenting itself on the home front is, frankly, beating records having been set by ourselves.

This season, we managed to go unbeaten, drawing only four times, and shipping just 6 goals in 28 league matches. The FA Trophy was just as easily won, although we did concede 2 goals in the first match, only to go on to win it without conceding again.

In the Champions League, we managed another run to the Playoff stage, seeing off Andorra's Santa Coloma (5-2 agg) and the Estonian side Flora (4-0 agg) before falling again at the last hurdle to Swedish side Örebro (2-4 agg). This meant participation for the second time in the Europa League group stages, where we were pitted against Trabzonspor (0-0h; 4-0a), Braga (1-0a; 1-2h) and Real Madrid (having a certain 35-year-old Cristiano Ronaldo in their ranks, 2-0a; 0-3h), thus we finished bottom of the group with just 1 point and 1 goal.

This run, however, brought another windfall, meaning the bank balance now rose to a beautiful £10M, a fraction of which, after the end of the season, is being spent on further expanding the stadium, and in building a youth academy.

After seeing no progress for quite some time, I decided to step down from my post as Malta Under-21 manager, which I felt, for the time being, was becoming an unnecessary burden. In the rankings, both the Maltese Premier League and Mdina Knights did well, rising 49 to 142nd and 57 to 252nd respectively.