Football Italia: Season 5 – Promotion Hopes

Season Five: Promotion hopes still strong

Plenty of thought has gone into my tactical design over the last week or so, and, as such, I’ve made some subtle changes to my 3-4-3 shape, with specific differences for Michele Carboni‘s role and my January transfer business.

  

Luca Langoni was the first man through the doors as I wanted a proper second striker, who had pace, works hard and can finish. Luca was previously at Udinese, following a big move from Boca but struggled to settle and barely played. Whether that is an indicator for bigger issues, I do not know, but we all felt that it was a reasonable risk. His coach report has a couple of things to work on but his ceiling should be quite high and, because, technically, his last club was Udinese – I’ve been able to sign a non-EU player for the team, because he was still based in Italy. His arrival, as a right footer – made me think about swapping the sides of the box in the midfield, moving the SS(a) to the left, with the VOL(s) behind him and the more static AM(s) and DLP(s) on the right hand side. This worked really well with left footed Merola being able to cut inside on his favoured foot.

That meant that I also flipped around my wing backs, too. Opting to try and repurpose Carboni on the left to be a more static, but playmaking, wing back, I then had an opportunity to experiment on the right hand side. Jeremy Leon – a winger from Serie D side Alessandria – comes in to try and be part of that experiment. His coach report reckons he’s not quite good enough for this level but my intentions were clear: a wrong footed converted winger who is more about attacking than defending. He’ll still sit in the five when we do defend, but, ideally, I’m trying to create a deep inverted winger – hence the need for Work Rate and, for future players here Stamina and Teamwork. I set my recruitment team up to sign him, as he was available for around €100k but, for some reason, they decided to go down the ‘end of contract’ route, meaning I was left with the option to ‘Buy Now’ for €275k. A huge transfer record for the club, and, to be fair, one that fits the positive recent history of a form player but far more than I actually intended to spend. I wanted him now as I really don’t see him as an experimental wing back in Serie A – should we get there – and, therefore, wanted to try this whilst we’re among the better teams. There are much better players out there but this will serve a purpose.

This is, of course, to create more options within my tactical style. I still have Tripaldelli (quite traditional outside wingback), Frey (more defensive minded and a body in attacking play) as well as Ciurria (often on the physio table, like he has been for over 60% of the season) but it’s important that I can play in different ways within the same 343 shape and, even, within the same roles, duties and instructions from that 343 shape.

Lastly, the youngest of the sons of Patrick, Shane Kluivert, came in on loan from our parent club, Napoli. He’s on about €18k p/w but, thankfully, we have to pay nothing for this deal and will give him some exposure to first team football as the season progresses. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for two of our players out on loan – Salerno and Fucili – who moved to Mantova at the start of the season. I was excited to see them move to a recently relegated team, thinking they’d be in with a shout for promotion, but, instead, they’ve struggled, sacked youth-developer Ignacio Abate and replaced him with someone who plays a flat 4-4-2, meaning that neither of these two can play their favoured positions. To make matters worse, no recall clause was added so two of my hottest prospects have sat in the Modena youth side, rotting away!

We’ve been annoyingly inconsistent of late, but, then again, so have the entire top half of the league with only Taranto – down in eighth – unbeaten in their last five. Despite holding up our end of the bargain by beating Salernitana at home, where a nice run of form for Biagioni began, and beating the three weaker teams with ease, we then lost it, at the death, in the return fixture against the table toppers. That then started a period of some inconsistency, where we ceded ground to Verona by losing, pretty tamely, at home to them, before picking up one point from six against two of the relegated sides: Cagliari and Lecce, neither of whom are setting the league alight this year.

That being said, we’re still in a pretty strong position where we are. Our next five are quite comfortable fixtures for us and we’re also look at the gap between ourselves and fourth place; fourteen or more points removes the playoffs and just promotes the top three.

Lots to be excited about here! I’m continuing to try and build a squad that can survive in Serie A, so, if we aren’t successful this season – I’m in no way disheartened. I’ve just signed a new three year deal and the goal in that is to keep us in the top half, something which I see being achievable. Furthermore, in the next couple of weeks there’ll be a new youth intake and my favourite part of the season – the set for release day!

Forza Biancoscudati!