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[FMT 21] - The second kingdom of the Lombards - Take 2.


Muttley84
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We started off the official matches of the season in a pretty good form, only conceding a single goal in the Lombard derby against Cremonese. We have yet to lose a match which is more that I could have dreamed off. With three wins and two draws we are sitting near the top of the league, but it is a bit to early to tell how the season will pan out. In the same time, with a bit of luck in the draw we passed two stages in the Italian Cup, so maybe a good form of improving our finances. Our attendance though is nothing impressive, 10-12k for league matches and 2-3k for cup games.

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We continue our good run of results, but somehow drop to 3rd in the league following some crazy draws (3-3 and 2-2 with Lecce and Pisa). We did progressed another round in the cup, so things are looking rather good at the moment.

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Our attendance might not seem impressive when related to the capacity of stadio Mario Rigamonti, but it is the second highest in the league. Hopefully our performances would keep attracting people to the stadium, at a small club every ticket counts.

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It looks like we are going to get a decent intake over the summer, although I aint falling for the golden generation news, as I have been burned numerous times before with the announcement only to end in disapoiment when the players arrived. 

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Our first defeated of the season came in a Lombardy derby against Monza. To be fair, they are not as great in game (in my opinion they are not great in real life also), and we had better statistics then them in almost all parameters - except the one which matters the most - goals. It was bound that we will lose at some point, so cannot be to upset about that. In addition, I don't think we necessarily did something wrong, just the stars did not align in this match. Of course, we will be analyzing what can we improve after this game.

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We lost the second game of the season also - this time at home to Salernitana. Other than that we had 5 wins in December which see us finishing the calendar year in 2nd position, not to far behind Empoli, but with a series of other teams breathing down our neck.

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Our finances are not looking that bad. Used to the Serie C ones where teams are bleeding a lot of money, we actually find ourselves now in a solid position. Of course, this is partly due to the fact that we sold some players for good money. I am going to transfer some of the transfer budget in the wage budget as it is clearly we cannot attract quality players while in Serie B.

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Our first derby with Atalanta came this season in the Italian Cup. It's safe to say we did not stood a chance, even if we had ~30 minutes of playing with an extra man we could only pull one goal from behind and ended up losing 3-1 at Bergamo. Our fans were not that furious as we are still in Serie B and they are a squad qualified in knockout stages of Europa League. Maybe next season if we promote to Serie A we will have better changes against them. 

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We did not let the defeat from the Cup game to influence our league performance, winning all the 4 games we had this month, and conceding a single goal in the process. Therefore we have climbed to 1st in the league, but its still pretty tight at the top of the league - as we have passed the half of the season mark.

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We have a big name supporting the club. Andreea Pirlo, the current Juventus manager, has kick-started his career at Brescia, and it is pretty excited by the current form of our team. Of course he has time to check us out in Serie B, given that he is performing way better in the game world, his Juventus are leading the league by 13 points and a game in hand, while being qualified for the knockout stages of Champions League against Real Madrid.

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We continue our good run of results in February also, with just a draw at Lecee and all wins (five of them). We have consolidated our place at the top of the league, with 10 points before the 3rd place Salernitata. Looking good for direct promotion.

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A lot of our players (some at the club, some away) participated this break in the international fixtures. If for the polish or czech players that was to be expected, the real surprise for me is Papetty getting to start in the Italian senior squad against Albania, and playing 70 minutes for a 7.0 rating. Wonder which is the last player to play in the Squadra Azzura while he was in Serie B. On one side I am happy, on the other only makes it more difficult for us to keep him here. We renegotiated his contract and he how has a release clause of 35M, not sure if that is enough to keep the vultures from poaching him. We also had Maldini in the U21 team, and we would love to sign him permanently or at least loan him another year in the summer.

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Glad things are going so much better in Take 2.  Running away with Serie B!  These last two examples are why Brescia is definitely a good one to take on for a regional challenge with its youth recruitment/development capabilities.  You might not know this, but little known Sandro Tonali started there (ok, sorry, bad joke).

BTW - Your struggles in Serie B with Lecco have me properly terrified for my Livorno save. 

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We have the first youth intake since joining the club, and it looks pretty promising, with two players who could genuinely make the jump to first team in Serie A, and a couple of rotational options also. I have decided to sign all of them either way, as next season I want us to have a real reserves squad playing matches (most Italian teams only have in reserves a collection of players on loan at other clubs). Still not sure what is the best way to go about youth development, but at least for this career and the facilities in place at Brescia I am going to be keeping the kids at home and not loaning them out. We will see if that is a wise decision or not.

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5 hours ago, 13th Man said:

BTW - Your struggles in Serie B with Lecco have me properly terrified for my Livorno save. 

Should be a bit easier for you, as Livorno are definitely a bigger club, both in facilities and potential, than Lecco. I figure if you don't restrict to much your players ins, you can easily survive in Serie B. Good luck with that, who know maybe you can even make miracles and push for promotion!

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3 hours ago, Sheriff7 said:

Is R.Baggio somewhere near the club?Always when i am thinking Brescia i think R.Baggio too.:)

Don't think he is involved in football anymore, probably concentrated working for the movie Baggio: The Divine Ponytail, which Netflix is going to release next month. If you watch that Copa90 documentary I posted last page, you will see a special section dedicated to him and how important he was at Brescia. Me, due to my nationality, when I think Brescia I always think Brescia Rumena (with Lucescu and Hagi in the front run).

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We have slipped a bit in March by losing two games (both away at Ferrara and Cittadella) and also drawing away at Pordenone. Somehow we won clearly the home games and that was enough for keeping us in first place, just 4 points above Empolit and with a 7 points margin for direct promotion. Should make for an interesting season ending, but I think direct promotion is ours for the take, we surely cannot blow this lead at this point in the league.

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6 hours ago, Muttley84 said:

Should be a bit easier for you, as Livorno are definitely a bigger club, both in facilities and potential, than Lecco. I figure if you don't restrict to much your players ins, you can easily survive in Serie B. Good luck with that, who know maybe you can even make miracles and push for promotion!

True!  The regional challenge changes things a whole lot.

Little rough patch of form here (for a title/promotion challenger) but the losses were way against two solid teams, and everyone has dips in form from time to time.  Should still win the title and, at the very least get promoted!

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We did it! The league is not over yet but we managed to hang on to our lead and win the league - therefor earning promotion to Serie A. The owner was rather generous following this, and a big overhaul of the squad is coming up this summer as we look to making the squad more... Lombard!

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We did not finish the season in great form, but it was enough to get us promoted. Empoli and Salernitana both did way worse than us and in the end they were overtaken by Cittadella who joins us in Serie A. Happy to see Monza struggling in the play-out places and looking forward for the Lombard derbies next season with Milan, Inter and most of all - Atalanta!

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What happened in Serie A with the rest of the Lombard teams? Well, they all qualified for Europe, but won nothing in between them, with Inter finishing in 2nd to go to Champions League, Milan in 6th will play in Europa League and Atalanta in 7th in the newly established Europa Conference League. 
It was Andreea Pirlo at his first season as a head coach so close to making the treble with Juventus, but in the end they had to settle only with the league - winning Serie A with an impressive 96 points and looking in control all season. Unfortunately for them they have lost both the Champions League final (on penalties against Manchester City) and the Italian Cup final (3-2 defeat to Lazio). PSG won Europa League after a 2-1 win against Spurs, so they got their first European trophy (albeit not the one they were chasing). 

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It was a hard fought season but we managed to win Serie B. Marko Pajac was the player of the season from the LB position, while Papetti and Cistana were a solid pair in the middle of the defense. In the attack we had to rely on Alfredo Donnarumma to bag in the goals. We are happy that only 2 players from the first 11 were loaned in from another clubs (and will be looking to keep Maldini for the next season also). We did exactly what the board requested us - control possession and finish in top 3, so they should be pretty satisfied with our performances.

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We had the board meeting for setting up the club vision. We continue with playing possession football, but they also added to it defensively solid and high-tempo pressing, which might be a difficult task considering our stature in the league as a newly promoted team. For our league performance the expectation is minimum - Fight bravely against relegation. Hoping we can achieve that while still overhauling the squad to remove most of the foreigners at the club.

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Five of our players have made it into the Serie B team of the season, and it is not a surprise that most of them come from the defensive compartment. Will be a shame to see Pajac and Labojko leaving this summer the club, but well, a challenge is a challenge...

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We have a huge financial step up following our promotion to Serie A, and we received no less than 41M from the TV rights for this season. Talk about money baby, sure it's good having that financial safety. Not the same can be said about the safety of our schedule, as after the debut away at Pescara we have 3 huge games with Roma, Inter and Juve. That is going to be a hell of a debut for me in Serie A, but I ain't gonna park the bus Italian style, and rather will attack like savage medieval Lombards :)

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Here you have the full list of players who joined and left the club in this summer, with the promise that I will do a complete presentation of the current squad next (hopefully over the weekend). Almost all of the strangers left (for good money). The only player I wanted to keep at the club was Tonali (somehow MIlan did not activate their buy clause and he returned). He was only 1 year left on the contract and wouldnt want to hear anything about a new one, so decided I would not risk losing him on a free next summer, and cashed in on an offer from Hertha Berlin (not sure that is really the Big Club he kept moaning about wanting to join). Although we sold for 32.5 M and bought for 23 M we didnt make that much of a profit, as we pumped most of the difference in the wages. Of course we only brought Lombard players, we kept Maldini for another season and also loaned in Colombo from Milan, but we did some pretty good deals for Goldaniga, Sprocati, Grassi or  Dickman also. I think we overpaid a bit for Viviani (returning at the club) and Zanellato, but hoping they can grow with us as they are both pretty young. Unfortunately could not bring another pure striker to join us, Cutrone was to expensive and Lasagna was already sent away on loan. Hoping Donnaruma can make it at Serie A level also, if not Colombo can also play there.

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Full squad for our first season back in Serie A. In goal we have kept Turati on loan, but despite his greater potential he probably won't start for us. Going to start the season with Di Gregorio, but this is definitely a position I am not all that satisfied with. In defense we have a superb pair of central backs in Papetti and Cistana, and having added the experience of Goldaniga to them I guess we are covered there. Not the same can be said about the RB and LB position, where though we are pretty good in numbers, we have no standout players. Going to start with Dickmann on the rigt and Lunetta/Mangraviti on the left (according to how they do in the friendlies).

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In the middle of the field we are going to keep the same combo as last season: one DM (probably Bisoli) and a pair of MC (going to be tight between Fossati, Zanellato, Viviani or Grassi) - a lot of options in there, including the first product of our academy intake to be kept in the squad (Baldelli). The wings and attack are the weakest positions at the club - with only Maldini, Colombo and maybe Sprocati good enough for Serie A.

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Our debut of the season was not all that bad. If we ignore the friendlies, where we rotated a lot and tried to build up some play connections between all the new players at the club, we won in Copa Italia third round, won away at Pescara in a meeting between newly promoted sides and managed to steal a draw at home to Roma. Lets keep it up.

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Been playing FM Touch for some years now, and still not sure how the mentoring works in it. I've asked the assistant to assign players to groups and this is his suggestion. To be fair does not look that impressive to me...

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We are not sitting well compared to the rest of the league when comparing statistically the attributes of our players. That refers to both our attaching and defending potential, but we hope to compensate that difference with the passion and grit specific to Bresciani. :)

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Of course we could not keep up with the solid start and we started losing matches (not easy when you met Inter, Juventus, Napoli or even Fiorentina). We did manage to win games against teams of our level (Cittadella, Spezia and Parma), and after 10 games in Serie A we are lingering in mid-table. It is to early to tell anything of the way the season will go, but hopefully we can at least keep up with this pace and not slip down to the relegation battle.

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Surprisingly well positioned in the list, with no less than 11 players currently playing in Serie A being produced by Brescia. It is true that most of them are now at our club, but still, being 5th in Serie A in that statistics is not something meaningless for the quality of the youth we are producing.

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More losses than wins, but it was a bit bound to happen for a newly promoted teams. Bad aspect is that we scored only in to matches, and struggled a bit on it. We are out of the Cup after losing at bottom placed Sampdoria, and only won two matches against Cagliari and Sampdoria. We slipped down in the table but we are still not really threated by relegation.

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We have rejected the current offer from Inter, but don't know how much longer we can keep a hold of him. He currently has a release clause of 35M and someone might come close to it during the summer, therefore I am considering seriously that next season he won't be here with us anymore.

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The first offer for our manager comes from a badly performing Verona who are sitting just above the relegation places, but somehow still have decent finances to offer us. Of course that I have rejected their contract, but it's still nice to get a bit of recognition. 

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Maybe it was not a clear deserved victory, but its always nice to win one against the big boys. We were clinical in finish, with 2 goals from 2 shots on target, while they were a bit messy (including 15 shots off targets and from distance). We had the possession (as we do in most of the matches, but I guess our quality upfront is not good enough to allow us to create more chances). I'm seriously thinking switching to a 4-2-3-1, problem is we lack a class AMC (sure, Maldini can play there, but then who will play on the right). Going to see what we can update in the summer in our squad.

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We continue our up and down performances which see us cementing our role in mid-table mediocrity. In a busy January we won 3 games (Verona, Pescara and Juventus) and lost 4 games ( Sassuolo, Lazio, Roma and Inter), to comfortably be 14 points ahead of the relegation places. 

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