Football Italia: Season 3 – Push for the title

Season 3: Building a strong push for the title

Fifteen games in and things have very much clicked for us so far! Building on the impressive form from the tail end of last season, we have roared into quite a commanding lead at the top of the table and look good value for money.

The majority of these games were played before my holiday and, for some reason, I didn’t write about them. However, we’re unbeaten since the game week of September and are building some strong foundations for the remainder of the season. Statistically, our xG/difference per 90 shows that we’re actually performing a little worse, in terms of expected goals for an expected goals against, compared to last season. That being said, we’re on course, in terms of goals per game, to score 89 times this season and concede twenty-eight and increase of twenty-one and a decrease of four compared to the metrics last season, respectively. It’d suggest that we’re scoring more low xG chances and, overall, that is true:

• Owusu; 0.91 goals per game from 0.55 expected goals per game
• Merola; 1.08 goals per game from 0.46 expected goals per game
• Bellino; 0.47 goals per game from 0.27 expected goals per game

These things, of course, will even themselves out across the entirety of the season but, right now, we have points on the board, two players (Merola and Owusu) already in double figures and really high morale.

My real life team, Villa, have completed the signing of Amadou Onana whilst I was away and, with that, comes a whole lot of statistical stuff on X, which I follow – obviously – quite intently. It has really made me think about how I want to build my three central midfielder players (DM, DM and AM) as, in this case, I class my second AM – the SS(a) – as a Joao Felix (hopefully!!!) kind of second striker. I’ve recently made the move to put Lucenti back to a DM role, as a DLP, using the fact that he’s a ball player to keep him behind the ball allowing us to recycle and unpick. It’s worked really nicely and his overall performances from the DM to the AM role have seen a rise of 0.51 in his average rating in that time.

One of the posts that resounded most with me was what creates a true box-to-box midfielder – what Onana is and what I hope Bellino can become. Whilst the current comparison has my lad as somewhat less of a destroyer and more of a playmaker (largely down to his poor bravery, I’d imagine), the post identified two metrics that really shine in what a box-to-box player has: blocks, in the defensive third, and xG, in the offensive third. With that, I compared all Serie C midfielders with 500 minutes or more in this area and found that, as I’d hope, Bellino ranks pretty highly for both of those metrics. His link up, as highlighted by the triangle created between he, Lucenti and Clemenza is key to how I progress the ball forward and I want to create movement that keeps this triangle across all parts of transition and attack, where each can play a ball to each or, where we can attract players into the triangle of doom, so we can play outside of it, or, alternatively, create our own overloads here.

The other unexpected bonus of having 6’3″ Lucenti and 6’5″ Bellino is that we now have two of the best aerial central midfielders in the league, forcing teams to not play long from the back towards their attackers. With a 5-4-1 shape in defence, we are incredibly hard to play through but, with these two, we are becoming harder to play over now.

There is more to do in terms of solidifying us both defensively and building our style offensively – some of that comes through traits (Lucenti is learning to play one-twos as I feel that complements the give and go nature of what I want to achieve in the middle, whilst Bellino – poor dribbling aside – is learning to dribble the ball through the middle; I’ve made that decision because I want him to carry the ball and I do often see dribbling as an attribute that more closely relates to keeping the ball in tighter areas rather than ball carrying, which is what I want), and some of that comes through further role design and tweaks. There are, of course, elements that play out in the transfer market, as, given our financial state and his eagerness to go, I’ve agreed to let Owusu leave for an offer of around €1m, joining the really disappointing Bonfiglio, who has recently agreed a €30k move away.

Forza Biancoscudati!