Football Italia: Season 9 – Pleasing start

Season Nine: Pleasing start

As the transfer window closed and our transfer business was rounded up, I was reminded that both our wage expenditure and commercial income sit way behind the teams that we have, on the pitch, being battling with. Over the next two or three years, we’ll – hopefully – reduce this deficit but that will come at a cost to the finances and I need to ensure, that, short term, we have this surplus of sellable talent: another reason for the increased motivation to create a pathway to our/a first team.

Our Europa League fixtures were also announced as we kicked off our second season in Serie A:

And we’ve done pretty well!

Just the one defeat to table toppers Milan and some strong performances in a big run of fixtures: Roma, Milan, Lazio, Inter and Juventus in the space of six games. In our bigger games, I’ve utilised a more counter-attacking style, increasing the tempo and passing directness but also stopping some of our counter pressing, which has worked quite nicely. However, the little in-game tweaks I have made to supplement our normal style have been the most interesting, for me, and I’ve written about three – below:

1. I noticed that all of the play was going between Pescara’s right back – an IWB – and their defensive midfielder, in a single pivot. I used the AM – Zapelli – to tight mark him, despite the fact it would pull him out of position, asking the VOL – Pisilli – to move up and mark their pivot. A change from a DLP to a DM in the other central mid role allowed for this extra offensiveness. What it meant was that their wing back would no longer sit centrally in their early build up, which was allowing him loads of the ball. Once the ball had then made it to their pivot – through a different route – we were able to jump on this with two men and win the ball back. Our goal came from this move but it was a success three or four times for the near-hour before Patrick Vieira was able to change to a different approach.

2. Roma play with a diamond so the SS(A) moved to IF(A) in order to create offensive overloads with my wing backs and move themselves out of the congested centre. It also meant that Bellino, the VOL, was able to move into so much more space and often occupied the 10 role, laying on an assist and, probably, should have scored, too.

3. Against more passive presses, like Boavista’s, I was able to move the WCB(d) to a L(S) to create a 2v1 in really early transition but also allow another man in a more offensive build up, giving us more ball playing opportunities progressively and more men in and around zone 14 when the time came.

With these little changes and nuances in-game, we’ve secured a nice top half position in the early table:

We’re a little off last season – but so are Fiorentina, top last year but now in 11th – whereas the likes of Milan and Inter have really sorted themselves out. What I am most happy about is that we’ve got through a really tough spell of fixtures and none of the next five in the league are against top half clubs, which gives me hope for – at least – ten points or so from this next run.

Forza Biancoscudati!