Football Italia: Season 6- Not where we want to be yet.

Season Six: Not yet where we want to be…

Amid rumours of a board takeover – which, honestly, would be amazing given the fact not a single request – affiliates, improvements, coaching courses etc – has been granted – have somewhat dragged us off course and the season hasn’t started in a way that I’d really wanted it to.

Nicely prepared for the new season, we took on Serie A side Empoli and, again, showed our class in cup competitions. A nicely struck goal from Biagioni, bending it to the far post from the edge of the area, was the highlight but – overall – our play restricted the hosts, as they toiled to just 0.42xG to our 1.52. Our Serie B campaign, however, started far from ideally – Venezia may have recorded just 0.74xG to out 2.03xG, but, ultimately, they had the ball in the net twice and we had it in just once, and it came far too late to spark a real fightback. We dominated from the start but it was just one of those days! Our domination continued against Sampdoria, but, this time, we made it count. Allowing the visitors just two attempts at goal, totalling just 0.05xG and allowing them to progress the ball just 26 times, we racked up over three xG ourselves, with a lot of that coming from a Langoni shot from a matter of inches out! Spezia were our next opponents and the utilisation of the deep inverted winger was perfect; their less than aggressive press allowed Cubarsi to play as a L(s), occupying much higher up the pitch and de Leon moved to a CWB(s), cutting inside twice to bend strikes into the corner of the net. These two performances made the Venezia game feel like a distant memory. Riccardo Vinci doubled his tally from the entirety of last year with two lovely goals in a strong win over Cremonese, who are still a top side. Amey’s own goal brought about some pressure but we saw it out nicely.

But then Brescia tore us apart, in spells. Striker Sardini scored twice and, when you consider he had four shots in total, amassed 2.33xG himself across the course of the game as we just failed to stop Brescia getting the ball into our six yard box. A Pedro Santos strike had us back on level terms but we succumbed to defeat. The run continued into the Sudtirol game – we won this one on pretty much every metric except for the scoreline, mirroring the Venezia tie at the start of the season. Nothing wrong with our plan but an issue with Owusu running very low on confidence, among others. We almost went 0-3 in this run until Biagioni spared our blushes at home to Catanzaro – a team who we should be beating. 2.52xG to 0.69xG, where the visitors scored with both of their shots. It does, maybe, raise some questions about Matteo Esposito and his 10% difference between what he has saved and what he should save but, without any kind of realistic depth, he knows his place is secured. We bounced back a little with a win over Benevento, creating under 0.8xG but scoring twice; at this point though, the three points are really important. Again, we outplayed a team but failed to take three points as Modena scarpered back from Sicily with a draw, netting one of their three shots in the whole game.

The xG table has us top yet we sit nine points back from a Parma side that we visit next. Honestly, the board – at present – are more interested in bickering about who’ll be in charge to worry about my performances and that should certainly buy me a little bit of time to get our confidence back up and get going again. We’ve done nothing wrong, as such, but haven’t quite clicked yet.

Cutting the squad from 25/26 players to around 21/22 has meant that we’ve been more demanding on the minutes that need to be played, but the theory behind that was to ensure that I shared the minutes among higher quality players. However, with thirteen injuries already this season, quite some way above last year, we’ve been on the rails:

Moderate injuries, ones that last a few weeks, have the potential to absolutely derail our season, particularly when they include important players such as Owusu, Lucenti and Amey. I’ll never blame injuries and, maybe, this little hit comes at a different time to last year and we can push on in February, March and April – where last year we struggled – but I’m certainly noticing it feeling a little tougher.

But the overarching concern is that we should’ve picked up more points against Brescia, Sudtirol and Catanzaro. October does see us play two of the newly promoted teams and we’ve already beaten Benevento once but Perugia, like Como last year, have started really strongly.

We’ll get there – I’m sure of it.

Forza Biancoscudati!