Football Italia: Season 4 – Recruitment Pathways

Season Four: Progressing towards the normal

January is always a time for procrastination, change and – sometimes – transfer related pain. It’s been no different here but it has given me the time to reflect on how I want to build the club and what my next steps will be in the transfer market, specifically looking at pathways of how I recruit.

With interesting rumours flooding in and bunches of trialists coming in and out of the club, I had agreed with myself that I did want some transfer activity this January window. However, the majority of it was those leaving the club. Merola, arguably my most influential player and top scorer heading to Serie A with Torino, in a deal that I negotiated as much as I could but, honestly, could not turn down. Not only does it give us until the summer to source a long term replacements – the timing of the installments immediately adds €400k to each transfer window for the next three years. It might not be a lot in the long run, but certainly feels like that right now. Next to leave was Ceresoli – who has headed for Australia on a loan to buy agreement. With my transfer action already solidified at this point, I felt that the fee to secure him permanently would be more use to us in the summer. Lastly, we lost Masudi as Lazio signed him from Napoli and then immediately loaned him out.

The plus though is that I immediately reinvested some of that money on the contract renewals of Owusu, Tripaldelli and Esposito – three important squad players.

With that, I was relatively content. The immediate money from the Merola deal will keep us in the black until the summer and, once we’ve got a better picture of our standing at this level, should be able to reinvest the €400k in either transfer fees or wages, using one of the two ideologies shown above: on statistical recruitment or project recruitment. However, three opportunities – across those bands – presented themselves to me, and I took advantage.

A longer term recruitment focus of mine was to bring in a ‘destroyer’ of a centre back – building on the metrics that I used in the last post to identify my central defender – of the three – was less useful at progressing and, as such, would be more useful winning the ball and moving it on. I identified my type: high tackle percentage, high header percentage, blocks and then aggressive, brave, tall and strong and came up with a shortlist. All of those players had their flaws, which slowed the process hugely – largely not enjoying big games or being able to settle within the country. The statistical element does not work for those players who aren’t playing football and, because of that, I was able to snap up Wisdom Amey, in what I’d call my project: a player who is currently at an elite academy – Bologna – but also potentially soon to be ‘ex’ as his contract is expiring, leaving me with a lovely loan-to-buy project, providing he agrees to join permanently. He comes with a handful of games over the past seasons and, hugely unrealistically, isn’t even playing age group football or demanding a move elsewhere, so a move here does class as a risk despite his obvious quality. Now I have him – the job is to see how he holds up with those statistics: headers won, tackles won, interceptions, pass completion – slightly different to the wide centre backs but equally as important.

I also bolstered my academy sides with two project players: Louceny Toure and Abdoulaye Cisse. The former had been on the books at Juventus after they brought him in from Stuttgart and the latter had been at Borussia Dortmund, with me spotting his performances whilst looking through the German youth leagues. Two absolute project players, who, whilst not having elite potential, could go on to possibly play a role for us at this level, with the right supervision across their next couple of years. I’d very much class Cisse as a ‘wildcard’ signing as I think, potentially, he could do a job at right wing back – somewhere he’s never played before.

With recruitment completed, here is how we’ve fared:

Another famous Coppa Italia run as we take the scalp of a second Serie A side in two years – holding off a bit of a late surge to defeat Torino. That couldn’t be repeated against Milan but we did ourselves very, very proud. The hit and miss form in the league was absolutely to be expected and we’ve gone down to teams – largely – above us whilst still maintaining a strong showing in each game, Pisa aside. Our trip to the leaders came just three days after we played at the San Siro and our legs were tired as they put the game out of sight within the first half an hour. To follow that up with a loss to SPAL was disappointing, but it was a game we really shouldn’t have lost.

Dropped points against Cosenza and Ascoli mean that we’re unlikely to make it out of this division but I would have bitten your hand off if we were offered this kind of performance level at the start of the season.

We’ve got quite a nice set of fixtures coming, Cesena aside, and I hope to pick up plenty of points of confidence from them. I do believe that – despite second to fourth placed having to play other top teams – that the gap, at this business end of the season, is already nearly insurmountable and our realistic hope is to ensure a gap of no more than fourteen points opens up between third and fourth and, with that, a playoff, taking the second placed to eighth placed teams is used to determine the other two promoted sides. We’re still huge outsiders for this but you can’t predict high pressure situations!

Forza Biancoscudati!