Lestri

Good to see low crosses with a front three is still dominating in FM23 as much as it did for my FM22 Vaduz save. I also the STCL and STCLR to drift wider which made it especially good.

Huge performance! As a Palace fan IRL I gotta love the Matheus Franca signing!

Just caught up with the save. Gotta love a Model Citizen personality! Agree with the sentiment re Argentina over MLS, though I'm a sucker for punishment and make bad choices in life, so I'd go for the MLS

Just caught up on the save! Huge congratulations with what you did in Belgium and hope Benfica don't let you down in that quest for the UCL. Gonna take any of your Liege players over?

Something beautiful about the 25 man squad!

Will be quiet on here for a bit as I'm going to a bunch of games for the Women's World Cup, so my time on FM is pretty much nonexistent.

Welcome back! Similar here re the real life taking up all the mental space. Great call regarding the midfield analysis. I often try to get the best player rather than the best player for the roles I need to play, so I enjoyed the breakdown with their roles.

We shall miss him!

The plan is to keep the same formation but I suspect my regista days may be numbered if I can't get the same possession numbers.

Lovely use of the in-house data analysis. I must admit I've looked at the data at a player level this save so far, so this gives me some drive to look at it from a team level! What's Milosevic value at the moment?

Non oggi, Palazzo di Cristallo - Season Two April to May '23 Who could say no to this? Although the Palace job would have been a great challenge, what’s the fun of bailing out of a challenge with a small broke club in North East Italy? I walked away from the contract negotiations and put my head down into seeing if we can achieve something that has never happened before for A.C. Trento, promotion to Serie A. Seven games left, seven games from those sweet TV rights. Let’s get to it! Our first two games against Frosinone and Foggia saw us do what we do best, pass the bloody ball around. Over 1570 passes over two games, with a 2-1 away win against Frosinone and 3-0 home win against Foggia. Foggia was an interesting game where we had them at 0 shots up until the 60th minute where a change to their pressing game led to them having a spell on top. I immediately pushed our WCBs back to Centre Defenders, which gave us more numbers at the back, and with our passing style, we were able to play through the press while maintaining some defensive stability. Two assists and 13 progressive passes from our left wing back gave Federico Simonti the PotM. The press considered it to be a game of contrasting styles, and the six yellow cards given to Foggia encapsulated that nicely. We then had a disappointing 2-2 draw away at Crotone where we had more clear cut chances, progressive passes and more possession but couldn’t put the game to bed. YOUTH INTAKE Late April also saw our annual Youth intake come in, with not much to write home about. Which to be honest, isn’t unexpected considering we have 1* or “Basic” Youth Facilities and “Fairly Basic” Youth Recruitment. At the start of the season, we lost our Head of Youth Development to divisional rivals Modena who was a handy coach as well. We replaced him with ex-Swindon and Sunderland assistant manager Fabrizio Piccareta who was similar with the HoYD attributes, but with less coaching attributes and a balanced personality. Which did show with more negative personalities in this year’s intake. As you can see below, we have four players considered “Top Talent” but with a 3.5* Potential Ability, we shall see how they go. We signed all the Top and Good Talents mainly to see if we can get up bolstering up our youth team. Golden Generation my arse. But now we come to the fun (not fun) final four games of the season. So unless points dry up for Venezia like the Venice Canals have done a few times recently, the third promotion spot will go to a playoff. Signs are good for us in that we have the points advantage and the easier run in, but anything can happen. Especially when some of your squad starts to have an extended stay in the physio room. Match day 35 vs Ternana (H) - nothing like conceding a soft goal from a corner and then one of our players deciding that on the pitch in the 40th minute was a great time practice his audition for a new action movie by what I can only call a half rugby tackle/two foot lunge. Desperate times call for desperate measures and Wangball came up trumps getting us a well deserved point thanks to a brilliant throw in set piece leading to the below goal from Christian Barberini. Barberini to the rescue.mp4 Above us is a lovely indication of the domination we had even after the red card. Definitely more chance conversion training though! Lucky for us Cremonese who are in danger of back to back relegations, decided to get their act together and get a draw against Torino, meaning we were still in the pole position for automatic promotion to Serie A. Take a moment to feel for former Wonderkid Sebastian Esposito, who due to agreeing to a loan-to-buy from Inter to Cremonese, could be playing Serie C football next season. Venezia also lost, meaning with three games to go, there is a nine point gap between third and fourth. Match day 36 vs Como (H) - Como have underperformed this year and found themselves in that mid table position where they can’t be in the playoffs or relegated so I was hoping for a response from my players to take advantage of any apathy. Boy did I get a response. 4-0 up within 20 minutes with some gorgeous play, resulting in a 4-1 win. Pol García received the PotM with a goal and an assist. Coming into the penultimate match, Juventus did us a great favour by beating Torino 2-1, meaning that if we were to win, we will be confirmed runners up of Serie B and more importantly, promoted to Serie A. What a great moment it would be. Our opponents? None other than our closest rivals, Südtirol at their home ground, who are an outside chance for reaching the playoffs. Positive sign right? Why have the FM Gods forsaken me?! Remember, he was the sixth best keeper in all levels of the Italian leagues at the winter break by statistical analysis. Two games to go with promotion to Serie A on the line? Nothing like the present for a debut eh, Gabriel Meli? So I decided to follow this up with something that totally never goes wrong, a Team Meeting. Maybe the FM Gods do like me? Match Day 37 vs Südtirol (A) - Everyone was feeling it, especially the board and supporters. It seemed to rub off on both teams, with a scoreless game at half time with a grand total of four shots on goal in the half. But more worrying for us was that we had zero shots at all. Oh I love a derby. My usual approach to move to a high press and a higher defensive line at half time did little to change this. So with 25 minutes left on the clock, it was time for a bulk substitute change and a move to Wangball. 10 minutes later. Suditrol Goal.mp4 Our retiring club captain Andrea Brighenti, who had only played 190 minutes of football in 2023 due to injuries and what I can only assume is joints made out of metal, came off the bench and headed home the winner to give us back to back promotions and our entry into the promised land of Italian football. Trento, in Serie A. Against the local rivals as well. You love to see it. Matchday 38 vs Modena (H) - We finished off the season with a pretty tame 1-1 draw to relegated side Modena. But who the hell cares! Only one way to celebrate this. Join us next time for the end of season review/squad analysis/Initial Planning for Serie-Bloody-A!!

Too kind! I've used it very sparingly so far and it's been successful at causing some panic and a few goals here and there. The importance is getting the AFs to go wide and get in the channels.

Get in!!!

THE RETURN OF WANGBALL - Season Two January to March '23 Update Above you is the regional Victorian town named Wangaratta, which gets it name from the local Indigenous Australian nation of Bpangerang's word for the long neck of the cormorant. 'Wanga' meaning long neck, and 'Ratta' meaning cormorant. These birds are a common sight on the two rivers that meet in Wangaratta, the Torryong (Ovens) & Poodumbia (King) Rivers. This was the place I moved to from the Australian capital, Canberra, as my partner moved for work. You can tell I didn't go too far from real life for the inspiration of the save. While a regular player of editions of Championship Manager/Football Manager from the early 2000s, I am a relative baby when it comes to the world of FMCreators. One of the things I appreciated from that community was how they were able to play the game in their own identity. Whether it was a specific brand of football, saves based on something, or creating a whole side story to their saves, I loved it all. So while in isolation due to the good old Rona, I decided to join the world of FMSlack and started a save as Vaduz with the usual save parametres we love to impose on ourselves. Now a little about me, I love my whisky peaty, my musicals camp and my Football Manager tactics mental. So in light of my move to the Victorian country town of Wangaratta, Wangball was born. A grossly overpowered attacking formation that lined up as four at the back, a defensive midfielder, two centre midfielders and three centre forwards. It essentially was a 3-0-7 in possession. It was high pressing, high tempo and high pressure football that essentially left anyone in my team with <15 stamina in a heap on the floor after 60 minutes, let alone 90. When it worked, it worked, taking my Vaduz team to the Europa League final after what can be called a Blitzkrieg on established teams. But when it didn’t work, it wasn’t pretty, losing 6-2 in that final. Its finest hour was being used in @FMEadsterand FM Grasshopper's MLS twitch save where Eadie used it for the first part of his MLS All Stars game where it completely destroyed the Mexican All Stars team. You can see how that went at https://coffeehousefm.com/fmeadsterblog/2022/4/12/north-meets-south-portland-timbers-bring-samba-to-mls-fm22. Some say that you still hear the call of Wangball in the air. So why bring up Wangball now? Well because I find a good old fashioned all out attack tactic is handy to have in the armoury in the games where you want to shock the opposition. Often at the end of a game when you are going for broke, but I often find a nice change to the system at the start of the game can cause some chaos, especially if they set themselves out for your standard tactic. And what better way to introduce it then when you are up against Juventus, who as we saw above, somehow found themselves in Serie B and as expected, are running away at the top of the league this season. But I wanted to incorporate the wide centre backs into the style of play, so my updated Wangball tactic was born. The expectation is when we attack, the Half back will slide back to create a back two, with the wide wing backs joining the Segundo Volante in pushing up. This, with the attack minded centre midfielders and the wing backs on CWB-A duties, will essentially have us playing a 2-0-8 of sorts. With the usual high press, high tempo and closing down more than the UK high street, it isn’t a sustainable formation, but it is one that has that shock value. It also is one that doesn’t involve too many players being out of their natural or accomplished positions, so we won’t suffer from tactical ineptitude. Well that is the plan anyway. We started the game in the Wangball formation, and had some early success by breaking down their play, but you can’t keep the quality of Juventus quiet for too long, and we fell behind. The tactic was used at the start of each half and at the end when we were aiming for the equaliser, but we can’t complain too much about the 2-1 loss away to the Old Lady of Italia, ending our 9 match unbeaten streak. One downside to Wangball style is it does make my team look a bit like the Crazy Gang of the 1980s Wimbledon, with 6 yellow cards dished out. Whoops. It was back to normal programming with the second and final game of January (thank you European leagues and their winter breaks) with Reggiana taking an early lead against us, but we clicked into gear and had arguable our most complete game of the season so far, with a 3-1 win with 70% possession and 700 passes completed. Scrumptious. Transfer Window The transfer window closed with three players leaving Trento, two on loan and one permanent transfer. Outs With our 2022 Youth Intake top prospect Giovanni Marini becoming close to first team level, I decided to promote him and let 32 year old Luca Ferri go on loan to Serie C as he was on the downward trajectory and wasn’t getting the game time he wanted. We also saw 23 year old Croatian striker Leon Šipoš leave on loan to Serie C side Carrarese to get some minutes. I’m hoping a good spell will have him challenging for minutes next year as he is quite solid, but with Pellegrini and Sapputo playing out of their skin, Sipos was way down the pecking order. Finally we said goodbye to Sergiu Suciu who left us permanently for $23k as we cashed in before he left on a free. These departures also were necessary for our precarious financial situation, where due to the need to get our top players signed to longer contracts as they were close to being available for a free transfer. These allowed me to get our wages under budget, but not by much, which unfortunately meant that our starting CB(C) Patrick Enrici will leave us at the end of the loan as Foggia were able to offer him triple the wages we were able to. Ins No players were to join us for the second half of the season as I didn't have any money to play with. We were able to pick up Steffano Cella on a pre-contract from Serie A team Cremonese who will join us at the end of the season. He’ll be a solid replacement for Enrici and has bags of potential, though some of his cons regarding being inconsistent and not enjoying big matches may be an issue. February was a field of green with four wins on the bounce, with Spalluto getting his finishing boots on scoring all five goals in the wins against Cosenza (2-1) and Palermo (3-1). We followed that up with wins against Brescia and Venezia, giving us five straight wins on the bounce. The highlight was this exceptional goal against Venezia by our box to box midfielder Antonio De Cristofaro. Bellissimo February did come with some sad news with our two veterans, starting Regista Cristian Pasquato and our club captain Andrea Brighenti announcing they will be hanging up the boots at the end of the season. As previously mentioned, Pasquato was essentially staying in the team due to his strong set piece attributes, and Brighenti’s body was starting to give up on them, so on the pitch it won’t be too much of a loss, but their influence is something that will be hard to replace. Knowing the Regista role replacement was already made earlier in the sesaon with the free signing of Alessio Riccardi, I went back to the free transfer market and picked up Marco Da Graca on a free transfer, who was let go by Juventus midway through the season. While he is earning a pretty significant wage, his potential, physical and mental attributes got him over the line. As always with a #fmhack, getting them on a trial first usually reduces their wage demand by quite a significant amount compared to if you offer them a contract straight from the scouting window. March started with a wild game down in the land of the Leaning Tower, with a 3-3 draw including a cracking goal by Jacopo Pellegrini the highlight. We followed that up with a tense 1-0 win against Ascoli where we dominated possession but lost the shots and xG battle. Our next two games were against Parma in fourth and Torino in second, with us right bang in the middle in third. These two games are super important thanks to one of the many oddities in the Italian leagues that has made me fall in love with it. So if you land third place, you are only automatically promoted if there are at least 15 points separating third and fourth. At this point, only four points separates second and fourth placed with nine games left in the season, so the likelihood of third to eighth going to a playoff is very high. And with Juventus running away with it, the battle for second place was on! We went away to Parma, a team we comprehensively beat at home earlier in the season so I was expecting a pissed off team itching for revenge. I kept faith in our usual tactic that has been successful against the 4-3-3 DM Wide throughout the season and it came up trumps with a 4-2 win, once again dominating possession but not the shot and xG counts, something to definitely have a look at. All the goals were quite nicely made, but my personal favourite was the first goal from a throw-in routine inspired by @keysi (read more about his approach to setpieces at https://coffeehousefm.com/fmrensieblog/fm23-my-beloved-set-piece-routine-short-throw-in). Goal 1 v Parma.mp4 Love to see something like this pull off. Torino slipped up against 16th placed Crotone, allowing us to leapfrog them into second place with eight games left. A win here would be crucial, allowing us to open up a four point gap and them regaining second place. So I expected a tight game, and so were the board and fans. Were we right? Dire STATE OF PLAY - End of March By current positions, we have an easier final seven games than Torino, but anything can happen! On a personal note, this period of time saw another three interview requests from La Liga and Ligue 1, with the highlight being Lyon sending a cheeky DM. But as you will see from my profile, I am a Crystal Palace fan, and a standard rule for me for all FM saves is that regardless of my imposed rules for the save, I will always apply for the Crystal Palace job when it becomes available. Which it did thanks to Patrick Viera placing them in 19th place in the Premier League with 8 games to go. Will Steve Parish and the board entertain the half English/Australian fan doing solid work in Serie B? Decisions to be made. Until next time.

Echoing everything everyone has said so far. Great stuff and hope the season ends on a high!

Six goals against Atletico! Magnificent stuff.

OCTOBER - DECEMBER 2023 UPDATE It's coming up to the end of wine picking season in Trento and just like the vineyards of the Trentino-Alto Adige wine region, A.C. Trento and their plucky English/Australian head coach are finding out if they are on track to have a bountiful season. Our first couple of months saw us finding out feet in Serie B. We were picking up points at home, but our away form was shocking at best. October saw us continue our shocking away form with two losses against local team Venezia and Ascoli with us shipping seven goals over the two games. The Venezia game was particularly embarrassing for us with two of our players being sent off in the space of two minutes. di Cosmo red.mp4 Pain Thankfully for us our home form allowed us to pick up six points over the four games. The 3-1 win against Parma also had some very nice build up play for the goals, but what was more pleasing to see was that we restricted them to just 37% possession and two shots on target. November 2023 will forever be known as Spalutto’s month in Trento after he single handedly dragged Trento from being in a world of trouble. Six goals in four games, including one lovely hattrick against Foggia allowed us to pick up seven points across the month. Which was especially helpful after a shocking start to the month with a 2-1 loss to Torino, though expected, came with only two of our players contributing to our xG. This hurt as we had 61% possession against one of the top sides in the league. We followed up that game with a comprehensive win against second place Frosinone where we had 72% possession and completed 860 passes. Our results were starting to show that while we were regularly outpassing the opposition, we were lacking a bit of bite upfront and leaving ourselves exposed on the break. With the injury to our captain Brighenti resulting in a necessary change, I made the tough call to drop our stalwart left wing back Alessandro Fabbri who although had been solid, was being exposed quite a bit. Single handlely winning us games - though I've never played him as a target forward. Cheers internal FM media December started with a chaotic game against Jose’s Ternana with Jacopo Pellegrini giving the first 10.0 match rating of the year in a 4-3 win. I don’t think I’ve experienced this type of game before where everyone else played a pretty average game except for our two strikers. "Don't need to play well if our strikers do their job" - the other 9 players, probably The battle of Trentino-Alto Adige - Part 1 After a bore scoreless draw against Como, which I can put down to our team enjoying the views at Lake Como a little too much, we faced our local rivals Südtirol for the first time. A 45 minute drive up north, Südtirol were placed similarly in the Serie B table and a win here would allow us to gain the upper hand against our local rival, as well as some well timed momentum. The reason why it is a pretty intense rivalry is because of geopolitical history. Huzzah. A quick google tells us that: Trentino-Alto Adige is composed of two autonomous provinces. Trentino is almost entirely Italian speaking, while Alto Adige has a predominantly German-speaking population. The latter know their province by the name Südtirol (South Tyrol in English). This is due to the region's former status as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from which it was reclaimed by Italy in 1919. The region's population of more than a million people is divided fairly equally between the two provinces. As a whole, approximately two-thirds of them speak Italian as their first language. Looking at a map, Trentino-Alto Adige is divided almost perfectly, with Trentino in the south and Alto Adige in the north. So Italian speaking Italians versus German speaking Italians. Shall be spicy! The game was relatively tight but our quality up front prevailed with a two nil result. The second was a lovely finish after a gorgeous one-two between our strikers. One-Two Suditrol.mp4 Chef's kiss. We then followed that up with a 2-1 win over Modena with our regista scoring a cracking free kick and Christmas came a day early for us where we completed the double against recently relegated Cremonese with a 3-0 win at home. We completed an unbeaten December with a 1-1 draw against Benevento. So after all of that, where do we find ourselves as we open a bottle of local sparkling wine to celebrate the New Years? We find ourselves very nicely placed in fifth place, five points behind second placed Parma. As expected Juventus are running away with it, being unbeaten so far. Player Analysis - thanks to @FMStag's Player and Goalkeeper Performance Calculators I do love a spreadsheet. Gabriele Marchegiani sits 6th for all goalkeepers in the Italian leagues averaging 3.6 saves a game and a designated “safe pair of hands”. For a small team who needs a strong keeper, Marchegiani has been doing great so far averaging over 7 and conceded only 23 goals so far in 21 games. Samuele Spalluto sits at the top of the Striker Threat chart in Serie B, with him topping the golden boot race at the moment with 14 goals. Our defence is solid, especially with our starting Wide Centre Backs of Nicolò Armini and Pol García doing well with their Creative Output numbers as well as their Defensive Performance. Our golden oldies Cristian Pasquato and Andrea Brighenti are doing well, however Pasquato is starting to deteriorate with his physicals and Brignhenti has missed most of the last 3 months with injuries that Armini has taken over the armband. Jacopo Pellegrini has taken his chance to be the starting DLF-S like a kid in a candy shop and has been teeing up with Spalluto quite nicely. With Brighenti’s injuries, this has given Anthony Fontana some more minutes that I expected. He is a solid allrounder who can play any of my midfield or forward roles. Pasquato’s good set piece attributes is holding his spot in the first team, but I suspect new signing Alessio Riccardi from the unattached list will get more and more minutes as we go deep into the second half of the season. Not rocket science with the individual metrics above, but good to see that the in game team metrics for general performance shows we have been above the Serie B average on most things. On a personal note - I had five teams offer me interviews for their head coach roles. All been rejected of course as I will need to stay close to North East Italy, but it was nice to have unsolicited offers for interviews from Ligue 1 and Bundesliga teams. I’ll leave you with this. Until next time. Ta ta.

The benefit of the cricket being delayed means I have been able to get up to the winter break, meaning an update should be coming within the next 24 hours!

This will be a focus regarding recruitment.

Been a slow period of FMing so hopefully have something up in the upcoming week. Was planning to get through to the mid season break and do a bumper update.

Good point - it's been either the 4-3-3 with a DM, 3-4-2-1 or the old 4-4-2 diamond. I think because they are in the Regista role and they both take corners, the combination of the progressive passes you get from that role and the corners gives them a bit of a bonus rating.

Lovely photo of a castle in Trento from a travel blog called Almost Ginger. Lucky I am completely 100% a ginger, but what a lovely castle. SEPTEMBER 2023 UPDATE Game 1 vs Juventus Knowing we were going to be up against it from kick off, I made a few tweaks to our set up to try to negate that. Firstly I changed my Wide Centre Backs from attack to defend duty, as much as I loved the overlap, I knew Juventus had the quality to exploit the space left compared to other teams. My other change was moving my Advanced Forward to a Pressing Forward on attack duty, to hassle the defenders as Juventus played from the back. If I could make Juventus have to play longer earlier in their progression, then I was happy with that, even though they’d probably have the players to make it work. As expected, we were well beaten, with Juventus matching their xG, however I was very happy with us getting one up on them on the possession side of things. Their first came from a high press from a kick off and us trying to play from the back and our keeper misplacing it to their left wing back who intercepted and scored a cracker. The second came from good play down the right wing and a bullet header by their huge lump up front (as both an Englishman and Australian, I can’t help falling in love with a big lump of a number 9). Watching the game I could see that their defenders did take their time getting the ball forward, playing with a pretty low tempo, so with 15 minutes left in the game, I cranked up the pressing duties in the “out of possession” team instructions, moving from a mid block to a high press, and my defence to ‘Step Up More’. We then caused a bit of panic and got a goal back in injury time from a throw in set piece. Overall, I can't complain too much. Though we did have a nice piece of news from the game. Bums on the seats, you love to see it. Game 2 vs Reggiana A game against one of the fellow promoted teams that we beat 1-0 last year in the Serie C Super Cup. It was history repeating itself picking up the 1-0 win here. Back to our usual style of play and we did a great job holding the ball, outpassing them by just over 200 passes. We won by a late penalty in the first half which did inflate the xG but we had the better chances. Am a little disappointed by the amount of shots we gave up and our own wastefulness, but I am not going to complain about picking up three points on the road against a team we are predicted to fight against for relegation. Game 3 vs Consenza A comprehensive win at home against the southern brethren from Consenza who take their long trip home without troubling the scorers. Over 250 passes more than them, restricting them to only 1 shot on target with over double the progressive passes. Lovely stuff. We got off to a flyer with some incisive passing leading our left wing back to slot a beautiful through ball to Spalluto to score his first goal for the club. We then consolidated our lead with a goal from a corner set piece, a near post header being parried straight into the path of captain Brighenti lurking at the far post. You love to see it. Game 4 vs Palmero A two day break and we were down to Sicily to recent City Group acquisition Palmero F.C. Because of the short turnaround, I have swapped the whole outfield team out to the backups, risky I know, but I do often like to play my second teams I do have a soft spot for Palmero as iconic Australian Mark Bresciano lined up for them in the late 2000s who was a regular pick up for me in the FM games of that era. Brilliant in the number 10 with exceptional technical attributes. They have picked up fellow Australian Ajdin Hrustic on loan from Hellas Verona to add a bit of intrigue to it. We had a shocker, outplayed and lucky to only lose by one goal. We didn’t have one shot on target, our pass map shows we barely got the ball forward. But considering it was our second team, I am not too disappointed, however it does shake my confidence in them a bit if they need to step up again. Game 5 vs Brescia We ended September with a 2-2 draw. We dominated the first half with Spalluto scoring a lovely goal that started from our keeper Marchegiani and 9 passes later it was in the back of the net. Two mistakes in quick succession were swooped on Brescia’s marksman Florian Aye, being fed in quite nicely by the Australian right back Fran Karacic and we found ourselves behind with 13 minutes to go. A change to a high press and stepping up gave us a turnover in the final third and our captain fantastic Brighenti rolling back the years by ghosting past their static centre backs with a quality finish to give us a well deserved point. So September has come and gone with seven points from four games, which I would have taken at the start of the month with the likes of Juventus and Brescia on the fixture list. We seem to be holding our own which is great, and the high press tweak to the tactic when we are pushing for a goal seems to be beneficial, but we may see a tweak if things don’t pick up. Our fixture list for October looks like Hoping to pick up 5-6 points here. PS. I have played around with how to present the update with the above match reports. Always keen for feedback if it works/doesn't work. All feedback is good feedback. Until next time.

Yes it is probably up there with International Management as my two biggest issues with FM in general. In the past my set pieces has essentially been near post outswingers to the biggest lump on my team, but this save I've tried to provide some variety. One of yours of having the decoy and ping the other post was very influential, so once again thank you for that! FM Creators. Assemble! For Juventus it was an interesting off season - their ins and outs this season are here. Seven of their starting eleven right now have either asked to leave or are exploring their options at the end of the their contract this season so it'll be interesting to see if they can hold onto them before their inevitable promotion. Regarding the standard of Serie B, it seems we are holding ourselves well so far, but it is still early days. The speed of play is the only difference I can see so far, but nothing too tough to handle. It seems a lot of teams are scared to attack, which could just be the old school defensive Italian ways. I'm sure when (if) we get to Serie A, the standard will get that little bit difficult.

Just got up to date. What an adventure! Can't wait to see how the manager landscape ends up at the end of the season. Could be some very big fry to land!

Hail Caesar August-us Meet Octavian, more commonly known as Augustus. He is considered to be the founder of the Roman Empire and arguably the greatest political leader in history. Seems apt to have a photo of him for this write up of how August went, considering he is the reason why the eighth month is called what it is. Couldn’t miss the opportunity as an Ancient Rome nerd to make that reference. Today’s blog will run through how our first month in the second tier of Italy went. Has life started well for the Englishman living in the Italian countryside? Let's find out. To quickly recap last season, we won the Serie C Supercup, beating the other teams that were also promoted. The teams that went down were Cremonese, Torino and a small team called Juventus that never recovered from the 15 point penalty that had been imposed on them. So considering we won quite convincingly against the other promoted teams, surely the media would place us above them for their predicted table right? Nope, not even close. I like to think is how the conversation went between my avatar self and the Juventus coach Photoshop is not my forte but I couldn’t help think of this scene in Avengers: Endgame. Another chuckle for me was looking at the Media’s Dream Eleven Or as you can call it, the Juventus starting lineup (spoiler alert, there is one change as you will see later) We’ve doubled our season ticket membership which is lovely, but around 500 is not ideal for a solid income stream. I hope we can consolidate this season so I can keep the home attendances to a level where we don’t go too far into the red. August Results Italian Cup - Round One versus Mantova (Serie C) Goal 1 - beautiful ball by my captain in the DLF role to Luis Hasa in the Mezzala role who scores a cracking goal on debut Goal 2 - nice build up play and once again a lovely through ball by our captain to Hasa who slots it past the keeper Goal 3 - saw us win the ball up the friend with our right wing back crossing the ball for Hasa who scores a hatrick on debut! Not bad for the second choice! Thanks to this win we were able to meet one of our objectives in our first game of the season! Who says this would be hard. Italian Cup - Round Two versus Empoli (Serie A) Goal - great ball from my RWB through to my AF-A (Spalluto) who finishes it nicely for his first goal for the club Red Card - while the scores are level, our substitute RWB decides to go full Tekken on their player resulting in a red card We fall short, however we do a great job up against a much stronger team on paper. Can’t help feel we had a chance here though Serie B - Game One versus Cremonese (H) Goal 1 - love a good set piece goal Goal 2 - rinse and repeat! @keysi Goal 3 - nice build up and a quality debut goal by Barberini What a great start to the league season beating a relegated team from Serie A. Strong performance but they were down to 10 for a while. Serie B - Game Two versus Benevento (A) Goal - what a goal from outside the box from our Haitian squad player Attys. A great result considering it was two days after the first game of the season, so I had completely rotated my team against a team that are predicted to challenge for promotion. End of Month Our backup Mezzala, Luis Hasa, who scored a hattrick in the first round of the Cup wins the U19 player of the month award with one assist in the two games so far. The end of August comes the closing of the transfer window. Juventus shows that it still has top European money outspending us by…. well €106 million. Goodbye Szczesny, I'm sure your back up will slot into the Media Dream Eleven easily. We're small fry indeed, I wonder who we are up against next. Brilliant. Happy September all. Until next time.