Pre-season & Summer Transfers
At the end of the season I was given a decent transfer budget of approximately 15m Euros (I’m writing this halfway through the second season, and my memory of the exact figure is a little hazy), so I immediately set about deciding how I was going to spend it.
As mentioned in the first post, I was happy with the depth of the squad – I reckon I had two good players for every place in the starting eleven. My immediate concern was at centre-back though, where both Davide Astori and Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa were both on loan. I did have Alessio Romagnoli returning from a year at Sampdoria and so decided I only needed one of the two. In the end it was a simple decision as Astori had slightly better mental attributes (certainly as far as his footballing intelligence was concerned) so seemed a better fit for my style of play, and more importantly the pre-agreed fee was approximately half of that agreed with Newcastle for Yanga-Mbiwa. He came in for 5.5m Euros and I spent the rest of the budget on Alberto Paloschi to give me a bit more pace up front. At this point in time I was looking to replace Totti’s creativity in the striker position with someone a little more direct. I also offloaded a couple of fringe players and bought out the second half of Radja Nainggolan’s contract for 3.5m Euros.
At this point in time I was happy with the squad again, and decided to stick with what I’d got and clear out some of the surplus players. Bertolacci was sold off to Palermo for 2.1m Euros and Marquinos went to Sassuolo for 2.7m. I also released a few players, most notably Marco Borriello in order to lose his 125,000 Euros a week wages(!). I then spent about a week (in-game time) reviewing the squad and looking more closely at the reserves/youth team. I’d noticed some very good young players lurking within, and the quality of a certain Silvio Anocic persuaded me to lighten my wage budget further by offloading Ashley Cole to West Ham for 245,000 Euros.
I’m sure you can see why Ashley Cole was given the boot!
It was at this point however that my best laid plans went out of the window. PSG came enquiring about the availability of Alessandro Florenzi, last season’s top scorer and someone I had earmarked as a major part of my team for the next decade. I decided to quote them a stupid amount, and told them I valued him at 90m Euros, thinking they would never stump up that amount. I wasn’t wrong, but they immediately responded with a bid of 82m. Despite trying very hard to justify rejecting it, I couldn’t, so off he went. And suddenly I was rich.
This now left me light in the wide areas and with no real back-up for Miralem Pjanic in central midfield. So off I went to the Netherlands, where I bought Memphis Depay and Davy Klaassen for a combined 30m Euros (plus a few add-ons). I think the Depay deal is the better of the two, as Klaassen lacks the flair and creativity of Pjanic, but he can also play up front. I also looked at a long-term replacement for Valdes in goal, and snapped up Mattia Perin from Genoa for a mere 3.3m Euros and loaned him back for the season. I already had De Sanctis and Gianluca Curci as cover, and wanted Perin to get as much experience as possible. I will almost certainly try to loan him out again in season 3 as Valdes should be good for two or three more seasons yet. Finally, I loaned in Marcos Llorente from Real Madrid as cover for Strootman and De Rossi, while simultaneously transfer-listing Seydou Keita who had aged badly over the last few months.
Competitions
After an encouraging pre-season, I plunged straight into the new campaign, starting with Champions League qualifiers against AZ Almaar. A 1-0 away win and a 4-1 home win secured progress to the group stages and also neatly bracketed a 4-1 win over Napoli in my opening match in Serie A. The only negatives from these games were the goals conceded when the game was already won, which I put down to personnel rather than my tactical approach. It turned out it was a sign of things to come…
I then went on a stuttering run in all competitions. I’d been drawn in a difficult group in the Champions League, featuring Bayern Munich, Manchester City and Viktori Plzen (as an aside, I thought it a little coincidental that in the first two seasons Roma had been drawn with all three of their opponents from the group stages of 2014/15 in real life), and narrow defeats in there to City and Bayern as well as an equally narrow loss to Juventus in Serie A whilst churning through some routine wins in the league meant that I didn’t completely realise the issues with my tactics until too late.
As you can see, late October and early November was a horrible time. The goals weren’t coming as easily, and yet they were flowing in at the wrong end. Those six games without a win pretty much torpedoed my season and forced me to really look at how my team was playing and make some changes. The 2-2 draw with Bayern in early December was the last match played with the old system. The Palermo game a few days later was the start of a bright new era.
Evolution not Revolution – Tactical Changes
The first hints that not all was well were coming with my attacking trident. In the first post, I mentioned that I had found that playing my wide men as Wingers on their wrong sides gave me the movement I wanted. However, I was increasingly finding that my attack was playing in front of the opposition defence, and not getting in behind. Secondly, my striker wasn’t making runs into the box with the frequency I wanted. I started fiddling about with the roles, without much success. I switched the striker to a DLF (attack) with mixed results, and also tried Totti there as a Trequartista. I also gave Gervinho a couple of games as a Raumdeuter, and switched his duty to support, all without making a significant difference. In the end, I had a moment of sheer bloody-mindedness, and switched all three roles. I now have two Inside Forwards (attack) flanking a False Nine. It also convinced me that Babacar wasn’t good enough for a regular starting spot and was unlikely to progress to be good enough without regular football. As I already had Destro, Totti and Paloschi, I decided that if I could recoup my money I would happily sell him. Slightly deeper, I felt that there wasn’t enough forward movement from my midfielders, so I changed Pjanic from a Roaming Playmaker to an Advanced Playmaker (attack).
At the other end, goals were proving too easy for the opposition to come by. I checked the limited analysis pages of FMC and saw that the majority of the goals I was conceding came from within the area, directly in front of the goal. The assist locations were more telling, with a significant proportion coming from the right-back zone. There could have been a number of reasons for this (Gervinho, my AMR not tracking back much, the fact that my MCR is Pjanic, the least defensive of the central midfielders….) but my in the end it was the final nail in the coffin of Maicon’s Roma career and also convinced me that Torosidis wasn’t up to the job even in the short term. So, with money still to burn, I spent 9m Euros on Matteo Darmian from Torino, arriving in January. I also decided that my defence was dropping too deep (I was employing the Drop Deeper instruction on top of a Counter mentality) and not closing down until the opposition was too close to my goal.
So, along with the role changes, I also made some small but significant tweaks to the team instructions. I removed the Drop Deeper instruction, and asked my players to Close Down More. I also asked the team to play at a Higher Tempo as I felt a lot of our play had been sluggish. Finally, to get the attack working, I removed the Pass Shorter instruction as I felt that having both that and Retain Possession was overkill and replaced it with Pass Into Space. I wanted this to get my pacy wide players in behind the opposition defence more. I also added the Work Ball Into Box instruction to reduce the instances of my wingers cutting in and letting fly from 25 yards when a little more patience could have created a better opportunity. Finally, I asked for Low Crosses as none of my forwards are likely to win too much in the air.
The results?
I’ve left the Bayern and Palermo results in to show the overlap. Now, clearly this isn’t an uninterrupted string of green dots. However, the only two results I’m unhappy with are the defeat at home to Juventus where we conceded three goals from wide areas and the away defeat to Zenit having taken an early lead. The draw with Cagliari was mostly down to Davide Astori having an uncharacteristic shocker, and the second legs with Sassuolo and Zenit featured weaker teams. The Udinese game was frustrating as a slightly rotated side mustered 13 shots on target only for a retreating Romagnoli to deflect a hopeful cross into an empty area past Valdes as he came to collect.
As you will see from the goalscorers, Depay hit a rich vein of form and is now my top scorer. Not only that but I’ve revamped my front line. I think signing Paloschi was a slight mistake, and he will never be more than third choice, so I ventured into the transfer market again and splashed 11m Euros on Simone Zaza, who really hit the ground running.
On the subject of Zaza, I have come across something strange in FM. He was only valued at about 9m Euros when I enquired, and Fiorentina quoted me 13m. I negotiated them down to 11m and they accepted straight away. Fiorentina’s financial status is described as ‘rich’ so it’s not as if they had to accept. At about the same time, my scouts found a one-star 16-year-old right-back with five-star potential playing for Lyon. I enquired, and was quoted 43m Euros. Where’s the logic in that?! This isn’t the only occasion that signing an established player is working out cheaper than an untested prospect, Perin’s transfer from Genoa was very similar.
In other transfer news, I agreed a pre-contract deal to sign Brian Oviedo from Everton on a Bosman, and back at the beginning of the season I agreed an 8m Euro deal for Gaston Gil Romero from Estudiantes to be my long-term replacement for De Rossi, or possibly to retrain as a right-back. However the latter idea has slightly faded due to realising that wonderkid Tin Jedvaj is due back from Leverkeusen this summer and can cover at right back, along with a couple of highly rated youngsters. As long as Leverkeusen don’t exercise the agreed fee in his loan deal, I should be free to offload Torosidis and defend happily ever after. I’ve also loaned Destro to Everton for the rest of the season in the hope that he’ll get regular football and show me that he can score goals regularly.
Below is my remaining schedule for this season. I’m really looking forward to the Coppa Italia final against Napoli in May, but there’s a lot of football to be played until then. Fortunately, it looks like we’ve got most of the big clubs out of the way already – only Lazio, Inter and Fiorentina remain.
Transition update
A quick note on how I’m doing with regard to replacing the ageing players listed in the first post:
De Sanctis – replaced completely by Victor Valdes. De Sanctis has just announced his retirement at the end of the season.
Maicon – replaced completely by Matteo Darmian and sold to Besiktas.
De Rossi – still a regular in the first team. Romero is lined up as his replacement and is arriving this summer.
Holebas – Rotating with Silvio Anocic and putting in decent performances. There is interest from Spain and I’m tempted to offload him as I have cover coming in at the end of the season. Romagnoli can also play at left back and I’m keen to get the average age and wage bill down as much as possible.
Totti – Still an important player, but on the smaller end of an approximate 60/40 split of playing time with Simone Zaza and Alberto Paloschi. I’m also auditioning Adem Ljajic as a like-for-like replacement. Both Iturbe and Depay can play up front too, but I think are more effective as wide players cutting in.
Again, he’s got exactly what I want and seems to be picking up his new position pretty well. Even better, he only cost me 7m Euros.
So despite getting Roma two Italian Cups, one Europa League and regular Champions League football, and nearly 100m Euros in the black, I’ve been told to win Serie A or lose my job.
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On the whole, I don’t like playing as big teams, mainly because I find the level of expectation is such that there isn’t time to bed in and also because there is only really one direction one can take a big team and that is down. However, there were a handful of reasons that I chose Roma. They are my second team, having followed them since the great days of Football Italia with James Richardson, and I find I do better if I care about the club.
Facci Sognare: adventures in Football Manager 