El Payaso

Fernando Forestieri is the player I can remember from 2008. Almost perfect attributes for a number 10. Same applies to Emiliano Vecchio on FM. I think he had the most 20 attributes that I have ever seen on FM.

If you are interested in giving me some insights, feel free to check my career update thread: Obviously I am not stuck into any style of play but I think the latest tactic is quite close to what I have been using for most of the season so far.

That is one of the attributes but I have also noticed in replays that this is often down to one or two if the centre-backs being dragged out of position which can leave huge gaps. Also another common scenario are these falling asleep situations which are probable caused by low concentration. Obviously it is a bit difficult to say as I don't use a skin that shows the attributes. Just should be more reactive to things but watching games in full doesn't sound appealing as this game already is quite time consuming.

I am seeing it a lot with my Palermo team. Quite often the defending can be just fine for 85 minutes in the game but then I tend to get hit by big errors. But then on the other hand I don't see my team doing that against the AI which means that it is likely down to my own tactical errors and the lack of quality in players. My best centre-back is not doing too badly but the ones with Serie B and C current ability are quite error-prone.

The last signing Antonio Raimondo - the fact is that we would have been in a deep swamp if Matteo Brunori ended up injured. This is why we brought in the 20-year-old striker to fill the void. Raimondo played last season at Ternana scoring six goals for them in Serie B. He is currently ranked only as a leading Serie C player but he should have loads of potential. With his player traits “winds up opponent” and “argues with officials”, I imagine him as a new Antonio Cassano who was a different type of player type but anyway. That is also why he was given the number 99 shirt at Palermo. A fairly determined personality is not the worst one but I think there is something underneath it as it was really hard to find the young forward a mentoring group where he would benefit from. Anyway, I love personalities and this is one. We’re hoping to get some scrappy late goals from him and celebrations in front of the opposition fans. August 2024 As mentioned in the season preview already, we had quite a kind schedule for the start of the season which we needed to take advantage of. I was still surprised at how well the team was playing straight from the start as there were no signs of that insecurity that we saw in the pre-season. We did concede two unnecessary goals in our two first fixtures, yet we were also lucky with a big deflection in our season opener against Lecce. Our defensive midfielders had a fantastic month both winning the ball back as well as moving it forward. Tactically the team is looking exactly like I would liked to. The movement of the most advanced trio seems fluid, and we are winning the ball a lot close to the halfway line. The opposition is quite often close to getting those dreaded through-on-goal chances after mistakes in closing down but so far these have turned into narrow offsides. The biggest difference has been seen down the flanks where we have been way more solid than last season. After three rounds of Serie A, the team was sitting in third place. Transfer deadline day We didn’t manage to do anything in terms of transfers. I was trying my best to both sell and loan out Federico Di Francesco, Francesco Di Mariano, and Edoardo Soleri but had no offers whatsoever. Antonio Raimondo’s arrival meant that we probably won’t need to make any real signings even in the upcoming summer. The only ones we are looking for could be some mentoring options with good personalities and enough influence to make a difference. Someone like Mattia De Sciglio for example who Juventus released in July. September 2024 At the beginning of the month, we finally beat Parma at home by totally nullifying them and making good use of our chances. The right-footed Messi made it two in three games while the Polish Kacper Urbanski also got off the mark in a dominant performance. After the international break things started to go wrong in terms of defending. Sassuolo first punished us for our big mistakes three times inside five minutes and we also gifted two cheap goals to our rivals Frosinone whom we luckily managed to beat. We were not giving away many chances as Albero Brignoli had quite a torrid start to the month, conceding four out of five shots that were toward his goal. This tells you that we were giving away easy chances for the opposition to utilize. Either this was showing our tactical frailties or the real level of our team, which still is full of players suitable for playing Serie B or even Serie C football. Against AC Milan we did ourselves a lot of justice. We faced a lot of shots here but about 75% of them came from set-pieces from which the home side always seemed to win the first ball. It’s not a big surprise that the second goal from the league leaders came from one of them. October 2024 The honeymoon was officially over with a really poor performance against Torino where we didn’t create absolutely anything going forward. Except for that one hit of a crossbar which also led to a narrow offside goal from Antonio Raimondo. We expected nothing in the next two games but somehow managed to extend Fiorentina’s run of losses into three as Raimondo scored the winning goal in the 94th minute. The biggest upset was the fact how well we were able to match them away from home. Probably not that well-deserved victory but we weren’t the weaker team either. AS Roma were the first Seria A team who took us to school and showed the difference between a mediocre and a great team. We weren’t run over but they struck ruthlessly to the mistakes that we had been doing both in possession and with our passing throughout the last couple of months. All the four goals came from quick turn-overs. Simply a fantastic display of quality from the visitors. We continued our tactical experiences also against Cremonese and managed to add to their misery with a rather sub-par performance. 4 shots against 10 wasn’t great but one precise through-ball to the struggling Matteo Brunori was enough to seal the deal. We finished the month in eighth place which is way above where we should be. Still waiting for us to run out of luck. November 2024 The level of our squad is often quite easy to see in these matches against bigger sides. Jon Pachedo’s goal-of-the-season candidate and quite convincing performance in the first half turned into shocking marking errors in the second half where the opposition hit our lower defensive line with three lofted balls and no defenders to be seen when the finishes were applied. These kinds of errors should not happen but it is hard to come up with a solution when the team is just all over the place at times. Antonio ‘Baron’ Raimondo’s third late winner of the season gave us the vital points against 15th-placed Monza. This was once again a much more solid defensive effort after some changes to the system. And again a game where we won the rather lucky deflections two to one. After 12 rounds played, we had 10 points cushion to the relegation zone. The month ended in agony once again as two horrendous marking errors late in the game saw us throwing away three important points against Bologna. December 2024 The final stretch of the year started with fixtures against two of the bottom teams of the league. Against Udinese, there was once again very little to be happy about. Matteo Brunori had injured himself keeping the experienced striker out of the lineup for the next couple of weeks. Antonio Raimondo answered the call with two beautiful goals but otherwise, the team was once again far from their best which saw us escaping with yet another lucky draw. When we traveled to face the 19th-placed Cagriliari, I had only two things in mind: a solid defensive display and a clean sheet. We fared well against them and probably should even won the game based on stats. The closest we came though was Alessio Buttaro hitting the crossbar in the 91st minute. Against Lazio errors once again destroyed all the hopes for points even though otherwise we were able to match them. The weak form then continued in a Coppa Italia exit against Salernitana where 3 of the 4 goals came from corner kicks and one from a throw-in and the home team managed to turn 1.45 xG to 4 goals scored. Such a performance that I for the first time thought about resigning. Facing Inter was always going to be an uphill battle but I think that we did ourselves proud here. An early goal didn’t shake the team but luck was now truly against us as Matteo Brunori crowned his woeful debut with a missed penalty in the 38th minute. The striker now has 0/3 penalties converted since my tenure started. Expected nothing from San Siro but should have gotten a draw for sure. We ended the year against Juventus who had been behind us in the table almost throughout the season and who were once again led by the newly appointed Antonio Conte. We fared well against them, had an excellent chance to score in the 77th minute through Antonio Raimondo, and then lost in the 95th minute through a shocking mistake from Jon Pachedo. The defeat made it seven without a victory in Serie A and our cushion to the relegation zone has narrowed to six points. General thoughts about the first half of the season After the rather promising start to the season where the team was even close to the European spots for the next season, we have been hit hard to the face. 11th place is way above what our performances would merit us. We have been one of the worst teams in Serie A both going forward and defending. Most of the time the performances have been really painful to watch as we don’t do many things well in the pitch. We are an error-prone team that doesn’t produce anything going forward. Even though we don't score any goals, we are still overachieving in this department. The reason why we do not score goals is on the other hand just because we don't create chances. To add to this, we have also been quite lucky in terms of defending as we are facing the second most shots in the league. We also let the opponents dominate the games in terms of passing. The ten-point cushion that we had at some point is slowly dripping away and if something dramatic doesn’t happen in terms of performance, I would say that we are the likeliest team to go down. Tactically we have tried many things so far but at any point haven't ditched the three important roles that are hard-coded to our tactics. A bit of Ancelotti's Christmas Tree, Antonio Conte's direct counter-attacks at Chelsea, Simeone's new 3-3-2-2 system, and other quite hopeless attempts but nothing has been working for us. We aren't really beaten down or hammered in any of the games but the big errors that we make have become regularity and we are quite deservedly losing games. The board seems to think we are in a crisis at the moment which has led to them inviting me to an emergency recruitment meeting, even though there isn't any money left in the budget. I would personally rather manage the team in Serie B but obviously, we are not going to purposely get ourselves relegated. The kids aren’t alright Developing our younger players was considered crucial at the start of the season. When your players’ level of quality is one or even two levels below where you are playing, the individuals need to step up and fill that gap as soon as possible. Sadly this hasn’t been happening so far. Antonio Raimondo has quite surprisingly been our best performer both in training and in terms of scoring goals. The young forward came into the club with a bit of a reputation as a rebel but a good goal tally, successful mentoring, and enough game-time have seen him grow a lot as a footballer. His fairly determined personality has now changed to resolute, the same as Matteo Brunori, which is good. At the age of 20, the temperamental striker can well be on his way to becoming a club legend. He was also quite surprisingly the third-best U-20 player this year in Italy. Franco Minerva was the player we had the most hopes for this season. The Argentinian has been a key player for us in terms of minutes but his weak performances and still just a balanced personality have seen his development stall. He finally seemed to kick off a bit in November and December but an ankle injury against Inter might hinder these steps. The thing with the young Argentinian might be that he has been thrown in too deep as a key player in Serie A and he would probably be the main beneficiary if we get relegated. As you might have noticed in his profile, we are also training traits with him to make him perfectly molded to the trequartista role. I'm probably going to talk about my thinking about this in the next post. Kristoffer Lund is getting there too. He still hasn’t reached the peak where he once was based on the charts but he is regularly our best trainer of the week. His mentoring has been a bit of a challenge as he has been an influential member of the squad straight from the start. The effects of mentoring can for a moment be significant for him in a new group but this usually changes to slight or none which makes it difficult. His personality now is fairly determined instead of balanced so there has been slight progress in this area. Even though Lund has only the United States and Danish nationalities, he is someone we would like to keep throughout this career. Alessio Buttaro has continued playing a big role for the club, mainly as a centre-back where he seems to be better than at wing-back. I consider him one of our own even though this is only his fourth season with the club after joining from AS Roma. Sadly his progress is also a bit weird here: a huge summer and autumn slump where he is only just starting to recuperate. Even though he has been in mentoring groups with average to significant influence, his personality has remained as driven, which isn’t the worst but neither something that creates a forever player for us. He should have the potential to be a good Serie A player which means that he is among those last ones that we would like to shift away. New signings Kacper Urbanski and Mikael Egil Ellertson have both done well in this regard. The Icelandic has also been by far the best player for us this season and the only one who regularly seems to be up to this level. Urbanski has struggled a bit on the pitch even though he started the season well but this hasn’t hurt his development. Both work in the same mentoring group with Jacopo Segre and the effects should be significant for them. If we manage to change their personalities to something else than ‘fairly determined’ and 'fairly professional' these two will be forever players for us. The changes that mentoring has had on Urbanski are the biggest reason I like this feature. We also have a few lost causes on our hands. At the age of 22, it is probably too early to give up on Patryk Peda but to be honest, his development has been disappointing. Just five games in Serie A so far is a bit too little and this is something that we have to change in the second half of the season. With a resolute personality, he should be all good to go on reaching his potential. In January we need to think about whether should we just throw him in the deep end and hope for the best by making him a starter or maybe loan him out to Serie B. This current style isn’t working for him and at that age, all the time is vital for his development. With Filippo Ranocchia it is hard to say if he is a fish or a bird or what. He simply hasn’t found his place in the team and this also shows in his development. He is a fairly professional personality and should have Serie A potential but is that going to materialize in Palermo? I’m highly doubtful that it will. There seems to be something under the hood with him that I haven’t yet figured out. If and probably when we are going to get relegated, I could easily give it another go and make him a key player for the team in one of the midfield roles and see what he can do. Giuseppe Aurelio and Aljosa Vasic are the two names that I have given up on already. Aurelio’s journey with my guidance started brightly as he was even clearly ahead of Lund as our wing-back. Injuries and Lund’s progress have changed things and the 24-year-old is now mainly a backup and with a balanced personality so far from reaching his potential that we might even let him go in January. Rather than developing he has more likely declined even though he is getting quite a good amount of minutes in Serie A. Vasic was a starter for us in the first ten or so games, did nothing on the pitch, and didn’t develop either. At the age of 22, he is still far from his ‘good Serie A’ potential and with his personality remaining balanced, I have no hopes for him anymore. His development has recently started again but when the summer comes, his ability is once again going to drop to Serie C level and during the season he is not going to be reaching anything else than Serie B level. The former Serbian U-21 player is more than likely to be shifted away either in January or the upcoming summer. The last one worth mentioning is Jon Pachedo. We signed the Spaniard at the age of 23 and as a balanced personality, which we didn’t know about then. The progress has been quite minimal and he still is only a good Serie B player, and despite mentoring still having a significant effect on him, he isn’t going to reach the Serie A level with us. He has been a decent player for us and not as shockingly bad in Serie A as we were afraid of. The Spaniard has been drawing some attention from his home country and it could well be that we cash on him here if the opportunity arises. To be honest, he was never going to be a long-term option for us, and with the cards we got with him, I am fairly happy with how we have done in terms of business. It should be fairly easy to sell him with a profit.

Thank you. That explains a lot.

This is a good point too. At the moment you can practically change from one totally different system to another that your team has not trained at all without any real negative effects. Also training should work like so that you should be able and and forced to concentrate on small details within the tactic while watching how it works in your training pitch when the team is having a match practice. At the moment it's a bit too much like "let's hope" as you don't get any insight of the tactics otherwise than during matches.

But they do have staff able to tell them an estimation of that potential.

This is a well-written message which includes also many of my own thoughts about the difficulty. I'm going to once again use my home country Finland as an example as that is the football that I nowadays know most about. In Finland during the last 20 years or so it has been incredibly hard to strengthen even an established club and for example finding strikers that can score goals has been almost impossible to the domestic teams. They often bring someone from abroad but more often than not those signings end up being flops. It is a real rarity that a striker arriving from abroad scores regularly even though we're not even talking about that high level of football. Also it is fairly common that the real quality of the player is only revealed after a couple of months in the club while on FM you have both in scout reports and later on player report almost instantly a good picture of the level of the player. These make it way harder to actually sign players that turn into flops. This week I was playing online with a friend of mine who nowadays coaches in the second tier of Finnish football. He had never played FM before and was quite astonished about the tactical side of the game. He took the initial tactical setup and used about 30 seconds with that, proceeded to play games, did incredibly well and at some point was asking me: is this going to be difficult at some and are you at some point supposed to actually create a style of play where you have to put some effort on instructing the players how to play, how to attack and how to defend or is this going to be on autopilot. Then when we had our first fixture against each other and he had to for the first time starting to think things more throughly he was amused when he had no option to tell the team to stop the feeding for my pacey winger who was giving him a lot of trouble. I won that match and he was mainly just saying that in real life he would have plenty of options to instruct the team and tell them exactly what he wants them to do in different scenarios while on FM he felt that there was nothing he could do than just do "something" and hope for the best. In short his opinion was that the tactical side had very little to do with how things work in real life. I'm also on the same page with many things. Evem though I wouldn't want sliders to be in the game anymore, the tactical side of the game feels way too much of scratching the surface and setting up a system works too much like we are on auto pilot. In the Finnish online save I used 17 seconds to set up a tactic, never really did anything after that, played with extended highlights and won the domestic triple with a team that was predicted to finish seventh. If you compare my gameplay to what it was on 07 or 08, I have definitely become really lazy with different kind of features. In the past I used to use hours tinkering with tactics and training but these have both become so overwhelming and difficult to control that I am usually just auto piloting with them. Would love to use all the features and putting a lot of effort but as the game doesn't force you to do it or give you an option to really be in control and make a big difference using them, I really don't bother anymore. Would love it if FM 2025 could change many things in terms of the existing features by making them more in-depth and again possible to make big difference so that players like me would again get interested in using them. And most importantly: give good instructions how to use all the features instead of leaving people guessing and just seeing out what happens.

Could well be so. But definitely these graphs make you confused. Really hard to know what they are on about and sadly they also apply in the same way to our younger players.

' Yeah, the training is something that I don't get at all. Especially during summer, you get these huge dips in the progress, after which it takes months for the players to reach the same level and then the summer comes again and the same cycle starts all over. I don't understand how you're supposed to develop players if there are dips like this. It's confusing and doesn't make much sense that a short summer holiday has a drastic effect like this. That is a good insight on the tactics for sure. And something that I also thought about a lot during the first half of the second season which I have now completed. Will be publishing an update about it either today or tomorrow as the text part is already ready. Just need to create visuals for the post and that is going to be a bit of a pain in the butt as I still don't have a clear idea how I should present the results.

I don't know if this only an issue with me but in the tactics screen I'm having a really difficult time in moving players to other positions. This is because when you try to move the player icon around, the circle where you need to place the player is almost exactly the same color as the whole tactics screen. At times I have to try even 5+ times to hit the correct spot.

Arguing? And in bad faith? I don't follow. I don't tend to study these kind if things but hadn't ever heard or thought that the AI would cheat on AOE 2. With a quick googling I found just some declarations that this is not the case. As this is a football manager forum, I didn't pay much attention to the things you wrote about AOE. Just wanted to correct you on the statement about FM's AI. And I do apologise if you understood my writing as some kind of arguing.

Serie A season preview Last season's domestic double-winners Inter Milan are thought to be the frontrunners for the upcoming season. In terms of the title race, it is thought to be a Milan derby as their local rivals and Coppa Italia runner-ups AC Milan are predicted to finish second like they also did last season. The traditional Italian big-7 are manning the top spots of the table, followed by Atalanta who have been the biggest losers in the transfer window so far this summer as they lost both Gianluca Scamacca and Teun Koopmeister through big-money transfers. The three promoted teams have been ranked as the favorites to go down. Last season Udinese were the final team to avoid the drop with 36 points and that is where we are aiming at this season. The chart above shows you only 19 teams in the league but it gives you a good general picture of the league. This Palermo side is not built with big money and the only realistic aim for us is to stay up. We have quite a kind starting schedule which we need to be able to make the most of. The media dream team features players mainly from three different teams: Inter, AC Milan, and Juventus. The only one making the team outside the Italian giants is Fiorentina's 20-year-old Michael Kayode who is thought to be the best right-back in the league. Lautaro Martinez, who scored 23 goals last season for Inter is thought to be the front-runner for the Golden Boot Award for the second consecutive time. What tells a lot about the fire-power of the Nerazzurri side is the fact that Marcus Thuram, scoring 18 goals last term, is ranked fourth. The forever young Olivier Giroud is predicted to have his word to say as well as Lazio's veteran striker Ciro Immobile. Lautaro is also the favorite one to win the Best Player award. He is followed by already familiar names from the previous image but this prediction also includes some players from other positions. One of the most interesting ones is AC Milan's trickery winger Rafael Leão looking to set the world on fire with his dribbling skills. The Young Player of the Year trophy could well drop in the hands of a defender this season if this prediction is anywhere near the truth. Fiorentina's Sávio who had a rather poor season last year at Girona is one of the most interesting new names in the league alongside AC Milan's Emile Smith Rowe. The commercial income in the league takes Palermo up to tenth place. This alongside the likely growth in average attendance, more expensive ticket prices, etc could see the club having a profitable year in Serie A.

I think FM 2007 was a fantastic game in terms of transfers. The AI worked so that if you placed a bid for a player that was listed as wanted by AI clubs, they would immediately also bid for the player. For years it has been such that even if a player had ten AI clubs interest in him and when you place a bid, none of them competes against you. Not even if it would be a bargain if a century. I remember also that in this version in small countries like Finland it was very difficult to improve the squad. Practically no one wanted to come from abroad and if you managed to get a newgen, Norwegian and Danish clubs would soon come after them. Some better players even won the Champions League with Finnish clubs (usually by signing some of well-known starlets in the game) but I even found it difficult to make it to the group stage. The last time I played in Finland was on FM 2019 where I guided RoPS from Rovaniemi to the Europa League groups and to Finnish championship in the first season while in real life that season's team was the worst in history of the Finnish top-tier, only winning two games the whole season if I remember correctly. Yeah, and I also signed Maicon to that club by paying him a bag of peanuts a week. Such amount of money that you wouldn't even pay a rent in Finland.

And so it should be. And also the importance of tactics should go down in my opinion and the quality of players should on the other hand matter more. If you have a limited quality in players, you should not be able to fix this with just the right tactic.

That isn't true. For example, Rashidi has mentioned several times in the past that SI has been able to produce way more challenging AI in the beta phase of the game that the testers had difficulties beating. So, this is not down to a limitation as far as I know.

I'm dearly hoping that in the future the game would have at least two different mods which would cater both long-term and new players of the game. And of course those kind of long-term players that like the non-league to legend type of save games that are quite popular I think. This would be because these kind of "winning the league in season one with Everton" or "taking my local non league club to the Premier league" don't have anything to do with being challenging or somewhat realistic simulation. But I do accept the fact that some people actually do enjoy this kind of gameplay. Currently this is the only mode of the game and this makes it a bit difficult for players like me to play long-term saves or even stay interested after just one season. Winning virtual trophies or always knowing that I am going to be overachieving don't apply to me at all. It was maybe appealing for a couple if first years of the game but I think this repeating record has already been spinning long enough. Even though we talk about quite different kind of games, look at what for example the developers of Age of Empires 2 are doing. They are catering all levels of players and making the game all about skill and different skill levels. I for example am not able to beat the hardest AI in campaigns or random maps while some players do it quite easily and trying to achieve that level and losing to the AI is making the game interesting to me. On FM I have never been sacked for example and this should actually be the likeliest scenario that you face. I hope that the game developers would also see the bigger picture like this.

Definitely another season. And if you end up changing clubs, I would rather see a new save game and maybe Italy... This is of course just my opinion.

One tiny detail and a question too: has anyone seen a single poor delivery from corner kicks or indirect free kicks? For me it seems that the deliveries are always spot on.

There seems to be surprisingly much love toward FM 2017 here. As I am not willing to reinstall that version myself, have to rely on YouTube. I think this video and the goals quite well summarize the horrors of the match engine even though the take is of course small. In short: the defenders completely ignore the deep-dropping striker when defending and this leads to constant short passing moves at the edge of the penalty area. This is even when the opposition has a clear man advantage when defending. I think Rashidi also has a lot of videos from this version which shows how the middle of the park works. It looks like football being played in an airfield as there is so much time and space and the defending side is all the time running around and trying to chase the ball way too late. It's a bit like little children playing football. I think that especially Tottenham and Harry Kane especially broke that match engine. Decided to give it a go anyway: This is an away game against Manchester City. Created a regular 4-2-3-1 tactic with Kane playing as a DLF(A). Those stats and the highlights were just crazy. Kane was about 10-15 times unmarked in front of the defensive line and freely able to feed the overlapping inside forwards and attacking midfielder. Those stats look more like a deep-lying playmaker's stats but when he always operates in dangerous areas, the amount of damage that he is doing is huge. Won the game 4-0 and even though Kane didn't get any assists, he was working like an attacking anchor for us: always available for passes and able to feed his teammates. One game with this match engine was more than enough. Can't even imagine how the striker would work against a weaker side and at home. Or with a narrow tactic that exploits the match engine... Or if I would have used more than 15 seconds to set up the tactic. Have to once again give SI a lit of credit on how they have managed to be able to balance these kind of things in the newer versions of the game. I rest my case: FM 2017 had a shockingly bad match engine. I guess so many people enjoyed it because it was so easy to exploit and to make your attacking players to perform unrealistically well.

Why not do it in the first place? Of course it is dependant on where you want to manage but in general there are really good data updates available for the game. If I would start a game in Finland, for example, then I would definitely use a data file that has been created by someone domestic. The data in those much more accurate than the general database.

PRE-SEASON 2024 We have now completed the pre-season of summer 2024. The preparation for our first Serie A season turned out to be both challenging and interesting. Once again, I had a summer where there were no holidays used by the manager as we had to keep awake and do our best to be able to strengthen the squad. Departures On the departing side, we were able to move two familiar names away from the club as Greek side AEK signed our unreliable first-choice goalkeeper Mirko Pigliacelli for 2.5 million euros. I was happy with the business as the 30-year-old had the nerve to ask for a new contract after an error-prone season in Serie BKT. The amount of money was something that I was expecting and was happy with. The second big departure was also a good one as Leo Stulac made a surprising move to Spain. Real Betis were placed 19th last season in La Liga which saw the Andalusian giant falling to the Segunda. A 4.4 million euro bid was something I was immediately happy with and with the Slovakian’s departure, also 33 thousand euros per week were lifted from the wage budget. Arrivals Alberto Brignoli is a familiar name for Palermo fans from season 2018/19 when the Italian played 28 games for the club. For the last couple of years, the 32-year-old has earned his living in Greece where he played 34 top-flight games last season. Despite his history with the club, he was once again a player from whom we had minimum data available. The 1-week scout reports showed that he should be a much better player than Pigliacelli and this is the thing also, even though he is only considered as a good Serie B goalkeeper by our staff. Gian Marco Ferrari played 32 games for Sassuolo last season which added to his Serie A experience that he has been piling up ever since 2016. At the age of 32, Ferrari is a player in his prime years as a central defender and he should be an ideal addition to our squad both as a player as well as mentor. This is exactly what we were looking for when searching for a new centre-back. Edoardo Corvi will work as our backup keeper this season. This is again another arrival from our last season’s rival Parma who had three or four good goalkeepers at their disposal but were relying heavily on the experienced Leandro Chichizola who also got a contract extension for the upcoming season. As Corvi practically didn’t play last season, at the age of 23, we need to give him enough game time for him to be able to reach his good Serie A potential. Like Ferrari, Corvi is also a player that suits our squad-building strategy almost perfectly. Mikael Egill Ellertsson is an interesting name that popped up in my scout reports last spring. The Icelandic international also now holds an Italian passport which makes him fairly suitable for our club DNA. His player profile is really interesting and well-rounded which sees him capable of filling in for multiple roles in the midfield: both in DM and AM positions. Even though his personality is not the best possible and he is a player that probably will not benefit a lot from mentoring, I could very well see him as one of our forever players. Kacper Urbanski is another interesting name. The Polish U-21 international will turn 20 in September and is now looking to break into the Serie A level after an abysmal season last year at Genoa. He came into the club as an ambitious personality but already after just a few weeks at the new club, he has become ‘fairly professional’. His personality was well-shown in the contract negotiations where Morgan De Sanctis was forced to include a minimum fee release clause of 6.75 million euros. This is something that we need to fix in the upcoming months as this price is way too low for the player that we are looking to develop into a fine and versatile player. Like his Icelandic companion, Kacper can also play in both attacking midfield and defensive midfield positions and why not even as wing-backs? Franco Minerva is probably the most exciting name. The thing with him was kinda of mysterious as even though the club is only able to still scout South Europe, we are constantly receiving these minimal scout reports, especially from Argentina. I have no idea why but this added a really interesting twist to the transfer window. I had about 5 different Argentinian attacking midfielders lined up for signing but opted to cancel all of them until we came across Minerva who is currently a U-20 international for the country. We took the risk with him and it seems like this could be a good one. He still needs a lot of work with his physical and mental attributes but I would say that this signing already fills one of the biggest dreams of this career: finding a young Argentinian to fill in for the number 10 position. Despite his profile showing him with the number 22, I am going to give Di Mariano’s number 10 shirt to him. What made the transfer window interesting to us was the fact that about 9 out of ten players that we were interested in, had no desire to join Palermo even on loan. I loved this fashion, and in general, I am quite happy with how we did in the transfer market. Many of our last season’s key players came in to demand new contracts in the summer, and I had nothing against it. All of them also got what they needed and the negotiations were handed to Morgan De Sanctis who came to terms with the players with no exceptions. Even though I am fairly happy with how the summer transfer window has gone for us so far, the fact is that only three of our players are considered Serie A level based on our backroom staff. These two are our captain Matteo Brunori, midfielder Jacopo Segre, and new center-back Gian Marco Ferrari. They are all considered ‘decent Serie A players’. I would be surprised if anything more than a battle against relegation would happen this season. Tactical approach for the upcoming season The tactical approach has changed a bit from last season. This is because we will be huge underdogs compared to most of the teams. The 3-4-2-1 was the one that worked the best for us last season and this is where we are going to be building around this season too. The main idea is to try and stay as compact as possible, win the ball back close to the halfway line, and try to hit the opposition with the counter. This, and also the three roles that I won’t be changing. I want to once again try something very simple by minimizing the amount of team and player instructions. The additions and removals of instructions will again happen based on my observation. The things that have changed from last season are the striker role which is now more supporting. The aim in terms of this is to allow Brunori to link up better with the attacking midfield duo as well as to help us a bit more in terms of defending. As we still have a trequartista in the team, the rest of the pack has to work just a tiny bit more. My main worry is going to be the wide areas where we were the most vulnerable last season. One of the biggest goals is to find a way for our wing-backs not to allow themselves beaten by the opposition’s wide dribblers and let in too many crosses. I have added the ‘trap inside’ instruction to encourage the team to try and guide the opposition to the middle areas of the pitch, where we have the most players. Last season we also played mainly with the higher defensive line which we cannot do this season. I have no doubt that despite us manning the middle of the park with five players in total, especially the better opponents are going to find ways to play one-twos which could easily lead to through-on-goal type of scoring opportunities that tend to be deadly in football. The mid-block and standard line are combined with a ‘step up more’ instruction. The idea behind this is the aim of winning the ball back in the channels between our midfield and defense. That area must be a place where the opposition will find themselves something else than comfortable. I am a big fan of mixed passing as this will allow the players to decide what kind of pass is suitable for the scenario. I think this thinking also suits the counter-attacking style of play. After all, you are never going to be playing quick and direct passes into space for 90 minutes. Sometimes a counter-attacking system is going to be spending most of the time playing safe passes, and it only gives the killing strike when the opportunity arises. What remains the same compared to last season is the ‘play out of defense’ instruction. This is because the defense is still quite bad in possession which means that most of the more direct passes are going to go to waste. Only Jon Pachedo is a player who would be comfortable with a more direct approach. Pre-season friendlies We had a training camp in Italy and six friendlies with domestic clubs. Unlike last year, the results were not as good but I am not putting too much importance on these. Aljoša Vasić was the pick of players here as the young attacking midfielder scored five goals as a trequartista. The 21-year-old Serbian is now only considered a leading Serie C player which means that his development has been going in the wrong direction. Ensuring enough game-time and continuation of mentoring could be considered vital in an attempt to reach his ‘good Serie A player’ potential. Our new goalkeepers continued where Pigliacelli had left off. A shot on goal seemed to mean a goal for the opposition. Thoughts about player development Vasić is not the only one whose progress hasn’t been going in the right direction. The situation with training has been confusing as many of our players seem to have declined a lot starting last spring. This is odd as we were doing well at the beginning of last season when players like Roberto Insigne, Jacopo Segre, and Matteo Brunori took leaps forward and were at some point considered to be good players for Serie A level. I would say that we have an okayish coaching staff at Palermo but something isn’t clicking well for the team, and this is something that we need to sort out. I have asked many times for more coaches to be added to our rather narrow backroom staff but the board is not willing to budge. The good thing in terms of pre-season was the fact that we didn’t suffer from any injuries even when having the workload quite high since the first week. Not even the man made of glass, Giuseppe Aurelio, managed to get himself injured this time. Mentoring is a really important part of training for me and setting up mentoring groups can be interesting. I think we currently have a good mix available, and even important players like Kristoffer Lund and Alessio Buttaro have found groups where the effects should be significant. I tend to build these groups based on both squad hierarchy and social groups. The process is usually slow but I have no doubt that things are happening under the hood, and we are slowly also seeing some visible changes in players' personalities. Financial improvement The TV money came into help with a hefty addition of over 20 million euros. This has made our financial situation stable once again. I think we are doing good things with the money in hand. Investing most of this in youth recruitment, coaching, and facilities. This should in the long run mean that we will be able to both produce our talent and make these players reach their potential. Kicking off with Coppa Italia Even though it was only Bari that we faced, I have to say that I am a bit encouraged. We only had 36% of the possession when playing at home but didn't give them even a sniff in our area. To add to that, we scored all our goals through counter-attacks where we won the ball back close to the halfway line. All three goals were also simple through-balls played with quick combinations against unorganized opposition. The Icelandic midfield dynamo could not have gotten to a better start and Aljosa Vasic continued his strong scoring form. Could this be the season for the Serbian talent? In the second round of Coppa Italia, we will travel to Salernitana to look for revenge for our pre-season loss. Next up is a brief Serie A season preview before we kick things off at Serie A. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Would love to hear some thoughts about the tactical approach as well as insights on training! I have no idea what I am doing wrong with the team.

Yeah, it was really a worthy battle. I think we had the first place in our hands for 35 or 36 rounds last season but have to give some credit to Parma's end of the season and how well they defended against us. If you lose twice to your title rivals in one season, you could say that they deserved it. Thank you for the positive feedback. As the FM interface, even with a custom skin, is a bit meh, I decided to try use something else instead. And as graphics are something that I enjoy a lot when reading other people's career updates, decided to add some of that to mine too. Luckily with the paid version of Canva, these are really quick and easy to create. It's also funny to always watch the first graphics of the update and notice how ugly they were. Tells you that you also improve by time when you get the basic framework done.

I've done the 4-3-3 so many times that it's nice to try something totally new for once. It's highly likely that this will turn into something else than success but I'm going to keep trying.