[FM22] A.S. Roma - Chasing European Glory

[baggsie]

A.S. Roma

 

History

 

AS Roma was founded in 1927 and managed to make their mark on Italian football relatively early, by reaching many high positions in the top league until winning their first Scudetto in 1942. The post-war period saw them fall off the map a bit, as the club consistently found itself in the bottom half of the league. As a culmination of their troubles, the club was relegated in 1951; however, they managed to return to the first division the following year and remain there until today.

The 60s saw A.S Roma enjoy some cup success, winning the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1961 and two Coppa Italia titles (1964, 1969). This was followed by a major barren spell in the 70s, however, which lasted all until 1980.

Under the leadership of manager Nils Liedholm, the club turned a new leaf and again entered the top echelon of Italian football. After they lost the title race in a controversial manner (regarding a disallowed goal, "gol di Turone") to Juventus in 1981, the club finally won their second Scudetto in 1983. They would go on to win four more Coppa Italia trophies before eventually declining to mediocrity in the latter half of the 80s and the entirety of the 90s.

In 2001, Roma shocked the football world by winning its third Scudetto over the favoured Juventus. While Roma had a strong team at the time, this title was mostly the work of one man: Francesco Totti, the King of Rome. Totti would spend his entire career in Roma, breaking many of the club's records along the way, including that of a top goalscorer.

After the events of Calciopoli, Roma would prove to be the only true rival to the seemingly unstoppable Inter. Yet, they only managed to win two more Coppa Italia trophies during that time, while finishing runners-up in Serie A for the better part of the decade.

Despite being a respected team in international top football, AS Roma is still waiting for winning one of the three major European Cups (the victory in the Inter-Cities Fairs, that was kind of predecessor to the UEFA Cup, may on the other side count). They were very close in the European Cup 1983-1984 losing in the final against Liverpool on penalties.

 

The Plan

For this save there are a lot of steps needed to be taken to reach our end goal of becoming the biggest and best club in the world, for example we need to first try and catch up with the clubs ahead of us in Italy, as we are predicted to finish 6th in our first season. We need to mix our team full of youth and ability to accomplish this, meaning one of the most integral parts to our development towards the beginning of the save will be improving our youth facilities and recruitment, so we don't have to spend all of our money on youth projects as we can develop them ourselves. 

I also want to place importance on the domestic cups as it will improve our income and reputation, while allowing us the opportunity to break records as we are only 5 Coppa Italia wins behind equalising the current record of 14 wins set by Juventus (obviously). We also have the goal of chasing down the Supercoppa Italians record of 9 wins,  set by Juventus who we are currently 7 wins behind, on 2.

The one domestic record that will be almost impossible to achieve is the Serie A record, being 36 set by Juventus. While the hope is we will become the biggest club in Italy, we are a staggering 33 Scudettos behind them, so the save would likely have to last 40+ seasons before we would surpass Juve. This would be without any off seasons, or a resurgence of Juventus.

 

Trophy Cabinet

As I stated during the plan, Roma has won many trophies in there history, they are:

• 3 Serie A
• 9 Coppa Italia
• 2 Supercoppa Italiana
• 1 Serie B
• 1 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup

 

Tactical Plan

The tactical idea is to try and smother the opposition, and push them back to their defensive third, to win the ball high and play it around them until they tire out. We almost want to try and mix a Gegenpress system with a slower, more thought out passing system, to create a small amount of good quality over a large amount of low quality chances.

Looking through the squad, we have quite a technical squad, while also having a high physicality in the team, meaning our team should be able to cope with the high intensity of the press while also keeping us playing high quality football when we do have the ball.

 

However, looking at our average stats compared to the rest of the division, the main area I am concerned with is how our attacking players are going to fare compared with the rest of the division. These stats show that compared with the rest of the division, our overall attacking ability is slightly above average at best, meaning that I'm going to keep a close eye on our attacking output in pre-season and make sure that we are performing well compared to our xG and chances created.

 

Formation

Looking at the squad, the only places that I noticed are lacking is the striker position, attacking midfield, both full backs and the goalkeeper spot. The 2 that limit us most are the lack of strikers and attacking midfielders, this means we are likely going to have to play with 1 striker and without an attacking midfielder. This means that we will most likely have to use wingers, which isn't an issue due to the abundance of quality in our wingers. 

I was initially drawn between using a 433 or a 343, and after looking through the squad and considering the tactical plan I wanted to implement I decided on using the 433.

The 433 will allow for the high pressing of the opposition while also meaning we have a good defensive and midfield structure. This formation will also allow us to more easily deal with formations using an attacking midfielder as we can utilise the defensive midfielder to mark them out of the game.

The 433 will also be helpful as while the squad has 4 Central defenders, with Chris Smalling being 31, meaning that a 3 back would mean that we would need to sign at least 2 high quality centre backs within the next 2-3 years, so a 433 will save us money in the long run. A 433 will also allow us to better use Amadou Diawara and Bryan Cristante in their most proficient positions.

 

The Tactic

After a lot of research in watching videos and looking through forums, I came up with both a home and away tactic to use, along with using the opposition instructions from @Rashidi Translating Klopp video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6CiTPoJPXo as it fits the formation and the 'heavy metal' pressing style I want to implement.

 

 

PI's

• GK- None
• RB- Take More Risks, Cross Less Often, Cross Aim Centre, Cut Inside With Ball, Shoot Less Often, Sit Narrower, Tighter Marking
• RCB- None
• LCB- None
• LB- Cross Aim Far Post, Sit Narrower, Tighter Marking
• DM- None
• LCM- Close Down More, Tackle Harder, Mark Tighter
• RCM- Close Down More, Tackle Harder, Mark Tighter
• RW- Stay Wider, Close Down More, Mark Tighter
• LW- Sit Narrower, Close Down More, Mark Tighter
• ST- Close Down More

Downloads

Roma home.fmf Roma away.fmf

 

 

Any Tactical help/criticism welcome

Edited February 10, 2022 by baggsie

[Skywalk3r83]

Good luck with Roma👍🏻

[baggsie]

Transfers

Soon after my first post, I had another look at my squads depth compared to the teams I wanted to be competing against and found 4 areas that needed immediate attention. The positions I needed more depth in were Striker, Both Wings, Midfield and Full Backs. With my limited budget of around 10 million this wouldn't have been possible, so someone had to go. After looking through which players were viable options to sell I came to the conclusion of Carlos Perez. This is because his stats didn't suit the inside forward role that he would've been playing on that right wing, for example, his 10 finishing, anticipation and composure combined with his 11 off the ball made me think of multiple missed chances and poor movement from him would lead to minimal output, so he had to go. There were offers from teams like Arsenal and Leicester, but he ended up leaving to RB Leipzig for £7.5 million.

This left us with £16.5 million in the bank to buy a minimum of 4 players, meaning that I had to search around for some good deals, and it didn't take too long to find the perfect quartet of players.

First of all I found the backup striker I needed in Diego Costa on a free. His high mental and technical stats played a key role in the decision as he can play the deep lying forward role to link up the attack while also scoring goals. The only worry I have about the signing is that I had to offer him a 3 year deal to try and make sure he joined us.

The next player to sign was Dani Ceballos on loan, with a £13 million optional fee. Although he is very talented, I'm not sure that I will pay the fee, as he will most likely be replaced by Gonzalo Villar when he comes back from loan at the end of the season. He will mostly be played in the AP or Mezalla role, but the fact that he is somewhat able to play on  the wing will be helpful at some points I'm sure.

Next up to join us was Munir on loan from Sevilla until the end of the season, with another optional future fee, this time being £9 million. While this is cheaper than the one in place for Dani Ceballos, I'm less convinced on how high he will be able to perform for us, but I hope he proves me wrong. However he is going to be a very high level back up option for both wings, and if we get an injury crisis he could even fill in up front.

The last (so far) and my personal favourite signing is Mert Muldur to play on both flanks in the full back position, him along with Ainsley Maitland-Niles should be able to deputise for Karsdorp and Vina while Spinazzola is out injured. He is the only player we actually payed for at a fee of £19 million (around £12 million upfront), which is a relatively low fee for someone who can play both on the right and left full back position to a high quality, while still having a high potential to reach.

We also had a few of our youngsters: Tripi, Missori and Zalewski sent out on loan to develop. Riccardi and Darboe stayed as they will play in competitions such as the Europa Conference League and Coppa Italia.

 

Pre-Season Matches

We had a very promising pre-season, only losing 2 games, against Inter and Napoli. While these results sound like we're still quite far behind, as you can see below we deserved to win both games, or at the very least draw them. The rest of pre-season was very good, with results such as a 4-0 thrashing of Juve and a hard fought 1-0 win over Atalanta.

 

These matches show that despite losing we are still performing at a relatively high level, while also showing that we need to become much more clinical in our finishing, reflecting our squads average attacking stats at the beginning of the season.

Our first 7-8 games should be relatively easy, and we shouldn't be dropping too many points during this period, maybe a draw here or there but we definitely should not be losing.

[baggsie]

1 hour ago, Skywalk3r83 said:

Good luck with Roma👍🏻

Cheers mate I'm very interested to see how this first season goes

[baggsie]

Transfers

After lowering the bonuses the staff and players would get based on competition performance I was left with £13 million in the bank. At first though I decided to save it until January unless any good deals came up towards the end of the window. So there I was minding my own business until, I saw that a former Roma player Luca Pellegrini was being sold by Juventus for £1 million (we sold him in 2019 for around £20 million). Obviously it was an easy enough decision to make, as he also helped with our registration, being both eligible for HGC (home grown club) and HGN (home grown nation). His high work rate and off the ball will help us in the attacking phase, as it means he will give everything for the team and get into helpful positions.

For the second signing I thought that with Chris Smalling getting older, it's better to sign a centre back sooner rather than later, so I looked about and found a promising young Italian centre back playing for Cagliari Andrea Carboni. While his fee was somewhat steep, being around £10 million in total, with about half being payed up front. In the future he will be used as my RCB if he can reach his full potential. I didn't see him reaching that without consistent gametime however, so I loaned him back out to Cagliari for the remainder of the season.

 

An Amazing First Few Matches

Going into our first month of games I was cautiously confident of being able to pick up most of the points, having seen the tactics perform well in pre-season. Safe to say I did not expect to be performing this well. 4 games, 17 goals scored, only 2 conceded. While I did absolutely expect to beat Osijek by quite a few goals, 10-0 on aggregate was a lot higher than I had expected. However, where I was really surprised with my team was the 2 Serie A games, the 4-1 win against Sassuolo showed the mentality my team has as we were 1-0 down until the 70th minute, even though we were dominating the game we couldn't seem to score. Then out of nowhere we score 4 beautiful goals, building up the play well after winning the ball back with our high pressing. Then, the Cagliari match again reinforced our mentality as after going 1-0 up, again dominating the game, we conceded a quick counter attack goal. However, our team didn't panic, and we continued to dominate the game, again scoring beautiful goals to take the game away from Cagliari. 

The clear standout performer so far is Nicolo Zaniolo, with his 5 goals 1 assist in 3 games, he is so far integral to the kind of football we are trying to play, and has single handedly pulled us through in games already, and we're only 4 games in. Just after the Cagliari game he came and asked for a new contract, and I agreed within a heartbeat. I can see him becoming a key player in our eventual push for European glory.

Group Draw

I'm not going to lie and say the Conference League is an easy competition to win, because it's not. But with the group we've been given, there should be no way that we don't go through and perform in this competition. This is our main push for silverware this year, and to be given such an easy group is integral to be able to keep pushing on all 3 fronts: League, Cup and Europe. We should be able to rest some of our key players in the early rounds of the Coppa Italia and the Europa Conference League, so we can keep up the early league form and try to finish as high as we can.

 

[baggsie]

Season So Far

Well, so far we have definitely been exceeding even my most unrealistic of expectations from the beginning of the season. While we have only played 2 of the big teams, the derby domination against Lazio and a hard fought victory against our rivals Napoli, to win every single game is insane. The only tactical tweaks I have done is to drop the away tactic altogether and to sometimes drop the defensive line to higher mid game. These changes have helped in games like the Napoli one where we dropped the line in order to deal with the pace of Osimhen, which stopped him from scoring. Results like that have meant we are top of both the league and our conference league group, heading into a hard run of Genoa (A), Shakhtyor Soligorsk (H), Juventus (A) and then Inter (H) which will be integral in keeping up our high performance standards and try to build a lead in the league.

 

 

Key Players

Jordan Veretout has been an absolute star in the team, far surpassing what I though he was going to do at the start of the season. His ability to score goals and play in teammates when we need a goal is unmatched in this team and he is honestly looking like a world class midfielder. His 9 goals and 5 assists in only 7 league games is showing how much we need him in our midfield, which is exactly why even though he's 28 already, I was considering offering him a 4-5 year contract just to make sure other teams stay away from him.

Bryan Cristante has been an absolute brick wall in that Anchor role, he is such a calm, composed midfielder, reminding me of Thiago Alcantara with some of the passes he makes. While he has been amazing, he isn't a 'stats player' so you would have to watch the games to see the pure silky football that he brings to the team. This combined with the fact he wins most of the headers he goes for, and is relatively good at tackling means that most teams cannot break past him. He is another player that I considered giving a contract to, but this time I went through with it, giving him a new 5 year deal tying him down until he's 30, and making the price teams would have to pay for him quite a bit steeper.

Tammy Abraham has gone quietly under the radar for most of this season, scoring his goals and playing people through, he has been bringing a great balance of 5 goals and 4 assists in 6 league games, showing his pure quality in that deep lying forward role. His 15 decisions and 17 work rate are meaning he is pressing the defenders at the perfect time and allowing them hardly any time on the ball, leading to more mistakes and more blocks/interceptions for both him and other players. He, just like Veretout, has stepped up in the big matches, scoring a hattrick against Napoli as we won the game 3-2. Safe to say based off his performances I'm worried about the buy back clause Chelsea have in his contract.

Finally, Nicolo Zaniolo has been special on that right wing, constantly winning the ball and scoring absolute beautiful goals. I don't have too much to say about him because, he is usually one of the players who gets subbed off in the 60th-70th minute to try and make sure he doesn't get injured. Despite me basically wrapping him up in bubble wrap he's still managed to score 5 goals in 6 league appearances while also making 18, yes 18 key passes. Safe to say he's just a magical right winger who will be staying for quite a while.

 

Tactical Analysis

So, has our tactic been working the way we want. High pressing football combined with high possession play with an emphasis on clear cut chances over pop shots. Looking at the analysis we can see that we are absolutely playing the way I want, creating the highest amount of clear cut chances in the league.

Our possession stats are also amazing, having the joint highest possession in the league with Juventus with 60%.

The possession won stats are relatively average in terms of the league, but if we consider that we have the ball significantly more than the teams above us in the table, we win possession quite a lot considering how little of the ball the opposition usually has.

The positioning of where we win possession is very good. While we don't win the ball too much in the opponents half, we win a lot of the ball in that midfield third compared to the defensive third. This is shown by the analysts as they say that we have 'fewer possession gains in the defensive third that expected' so we're winning the ball higher up than most other teams in the league.

Our shooting has been amazing so far this season, with the second highest conversion rate in the league behind Venezia, who I can only assume have very few shots. Our conversion rate being this high despite our attacking stats compared to the rest of the division that we saw at the beginning of the season, show that either our attackers are overperforming or this league has a very high level of attacking talent who are getting less clear cut chances than our players.

Our combination of a high amount of clear cut chances and high conversion rate have allowed us to score the highest number of goals in the league this season. This graphic below shows how far above our competition we actually are in goalscoring, with everyone apart from Inter being leagues away from where we are. 

Inter are the one team that genuinely worry me in the league at the moment and they are managing to keep pace with us, so we have to make sure we keep up this pace until they hopefully drop off.

 

 

Next update will probably end up being in or towards the end of January.

Edited February 11, 2022 by baggsie

[baggsie]

Mbappe

Okay so I'm not going to spoil where we are in the league as that will come later on, but I'm sure you can tell how well we're doing by the title. So, Kylian Mbappe's contract runs out at the end of the season, and he's interested, do I get him. I feel if I try and succeed then it would ruin the realism of the save. On the other hand it does feel like he would be an amazing step towards our goal, and based off of how our league push is going and how we're playing, I do feel that anyone would want to join us. I'll consider the pros and cons of it as we move through January.

 

Any input would be helpful as I'm currently 50/50 on it

[john1]

23 minutes ago, baggsie said:

Mbappe

Okay so I'm not going to spoil where we are in the league as that will come later on, but I'm sure you can tell how well we're doing by the title. So, Kylian Mbappe's contract runs out at the end of the season, and he's interested, do I get him. I feel if I try and succeed then it would ruin the realism of the save. On the other hand it does feel like he would be an amazing step towards our goal, and based off of how our league push is going and how we're playing, I do feel that anyone would want to join us. I'll consider the pros and cons of it as we move through January.

 

Any input would be helpful as I'm currently 50/50 on it

Should definitely go for him  

[baggsie]

13 minutes ago, john1 said:

Should definitely go for him  

cheers, might have to sell veretout who's been a revelation to get him though

[baggsie]

Halfway There

After an amazing start to the season, we had some big games against Juventus and Inter. Juventus beat us 2-0 in a game that could've honestly gone either way, but we made up for it a week later with a 1-0 domination on Inter. After that Juve game we've dropped points 2 more times, both we're down to bad finishing/defending. That being said we still find ourselves top of the league, through to the quarter final of the cup against Inter, and waiting for the draw in the conference league after topping our group with 6 wins. If we can keep up this pace until the end of the season, we have a treble on our hands.

 

Transfers

First of all, Kylian Mbappe talks are still ongoing, we have the wages available but the board aren't allowing me to spend them so we'll see what happens.

Jordan Veretout. The man was playing mythical football for us, dominating against every team we played, leading us to glory and he got unsettled by Spurs. While I'm not going to complain about getting £68 million for a 28 year old, it was a mad scramble to try and find someone who can even somewhat replicate the levels that Veretout reached. After looking for a while I remembered someone from a past save I had done, Oihan Sancet from Bilbao. Safe to say this guy is going to turn out special, to have these stats at the age of 21 is very promising, and for a fee of £25.5 million we can't really lose money on him. So far he's been alright, but he needs to get used to the way we play.

Next up I decided I was bored of watching Mkhitaryan putting in 6.4s and 6.5s and decided to sell him to Leicester for £5 million, which left us with around £19 million to replace him. Immediately I knew who I wanted, Mikkel Damsgaard. My favourite thing about him is that he can play 3 or 4 positions in our team so he will he very helpful if we get any injuries. We payed around £50 million for him, with around £17 million coming upfront, so he did cost quite a bit, but my hope is he can take us higher than Mkhitaryan ever could.

So that ends up our transfers for this season, barring an Mbappe agreement coming though (which at this point is fairly unlikely), or another pre-contract coming up which interests me. We allowed 1-2 youngsters who didn't have enough potential leave, and entertained a £60 million bid from Newcastle for Cristante, until we decided he would be too hard to replace.

 

 

 

[baggsie]

Mbappe

So, it was close but Madrid just beat us too him. But all I'm going to say is that release clause looks very achievable in a few seasons time.

[baggsie]

A Successful First Season

Some small European success first season with the clubs first ever Uefa organised competition win. A 3-0 win was enough to beat out Tottenham in the final. The victory was made even more sweet by the fact that Jordan Veretout forced a move to Spurs after they put in an offer, this game showed we were still able to compete at a very high level, even against one of the best midfielders in the world. The win in the league was smooth sailings after January, and we kept up the 14 point gap over second, allowing us to focus on the conference league. In the cup we were very unlucky as during the game against Inter there was a red card, and players out with injuries, so we were destined to lose from very early on in the game.

 

Highest Performers

As I predicted earlier on in the season, Nicolo Zaniolo was a very high performer, scoring a lot of goals and getting a good number of assists. Because of this, he won young player of the season, further showing how Important he is to both the present and future of this club.

Tammy Abraham is an absolute monster upfront. His astonishing ability to get both goals, assists and to contribute to the overall play of the team was integral to the success of the team. He was able to get goals in key moments, is one of many reasons why he won player of the season.

 

 

Edited February 15, 2022 by baggsie

[baggsie]

Transfers

This summer after I allowed all of the loans to leave without triggering any clauses, we needed a big turnover of players to try and improve on the squad of last season and push on in the chase for European success. We sold quite a few of the fringe players/players that didn't play as well as I wanted. We also took a chance on selling Gianluca Mancini for £60 million to Arsenal, an offer we honestly couldn't refuse.

This gave us a lot of money that we could spend to bring in some new talent to improve the squad.

First of all we brought in De Sciglio on a free to provide backup on both flanks after the sale of Vina and return of Maitland Niles to Arsenal. The next player that came in was Merih Demiral to replace Gianluca Mancini, the relatively low fee of £19 million (£14 million upfront) was the main reason that I signed him.

Next we brought in 2 youngsters, Garcia and Pellegrino for combined £3.5 million (from Valencia and Lazio respectively), 2 absolute steals to strengthen the future of the club.

We took a chance on Thomas Lemar who was transfer listed, but for £25 million we can't really lose money on him if he doesn't live up to what I believe his ability should be. The main thing I love about him is his versatility, he can play 4-5 of the positions in our team.

Next we signed Sebastiano Esposito from Inter for £25 million, again his versatility will play a huge part in our future, with him being able to play 2-3 of the positions in our attack. I also signed him as his high potential linked with him being able to help with our registration means he'll be a mainstay in our team for years to come.

 

Transfers From Salzburg

As you can see by the title, we raided Salzburg for 3 of their up and coming youngsters, 2 of which I'm surprised were still there to be honest. First of all we ended up signing Karim Adeyemi to deputise for Zaniolo and Lemar on that right hand side, the fee of only £19 million is an absolute steal for a player of this quality and how high his ceiling of potential could be.

We also signed Oumar Solet, who can play in both Defensive Midfield and Centre Back to a very high level, meaning we can use him as a very good squad option, who will probably take over from Cristante if and when he leaves. He only cost £15 million because of a release clause, meaning we had just enough money for one more signing.

Last but certainly not least, Benjamin Sesko. I have used Sesko in the past and he took my Norwich side from 15th one season to 3rd the next, then the Champions League semi final the year after so I have extremely high hopes for him. However, at the moment he simply isn't at a high enough level to even somewhat challenge Tammy Abraham, Diego Costa or Sebastiano Esposito, let alone displace them out of the team. With this in mind, along with the £25 million it cost to sign him, I let Salzburg keep him on loan until the end of the season so he can develop and take Diego Costa's role when he leaves at the end of his contract. Out of all of the signings made Sesko is by far my favourite and the one that I'm most excited about for the future (even with his potential looking relatively average)

Edited February 16, 2022 by baggsie

[warlock]

I don't want to seem like a grumpy old git (although I am), but for a thread in the tactics discussion forum there's precious little tactical discussion in this topic. Seems like a better fit for the "good players & team guide" or "career updates" forums.

[baggsie]

53 minutes ago, warlock said:

I don't want to seem like a grumpy old git (although I am), but for a thread in the tactics discussion forum there's precious little tactical discussion in this topic. Seems like a better fit for the "good players & team guide" or "career updates" forums.

Sounds fair, I'll try to start adding more tactical analysis and stuff

[baggsie]

Draws

Just quickly here are who we've been drawn against so far this season

[FrazT]

This is a career review so I will move it to the correct forum.

[jackripper]

Some great signings there. Should be a fun squad to manage.

[baggsie]

3 hours ago, jackripper said:

Some great signings there. Should be a fun squad to manage.

It really is, been playing very well so far this season

[baggsie]

Halfway Point

After the signings in the summer I was expecting more consistent, convincing performances and so far we have done just that, dominating every single competition we're in, shown by us being unbeaten in every single one so far. Some of our matches have been true domination, but even despite how well we've been playing and how many points we've picked up, behind us the gap still isn't big enough for me to be comfortable with dropping too many points, with us only being 11 points ahead.

 

Competition Performance + Silverware

Here are how the competitions are going, and who we have been drawn against so far this season. You can also see that we beat Inter Milan 2-0 in the Super Cup, which will hopefully allow us to push on and use that momentum to enhance our performance and push us on towards the latter end of the season. As much as we did win the game , it was one of those games which we deserved not to win, and probably deserved to lose, however our big players turned up to win us the game. Moving on to the draws, both of the opponents we're going to end up facing do worry me a slight bit.

 

Key Players So Far

Here are the 2 players I think have really allowed us to play the way we do and to keep on performing at a high level like we are. Lorenzo Pellegrini has been so composed on the ball and ensured that we can keep the ball at a lot of the time. Tammy has been composed and clinical in front of goal, and has made chances out of nothing, as seen by the game against Inter. 

 

 

I'm very confident of how far we can go in every competition we're in and I also believe we have a chance to go very far in the UCL, let's see what happens

[baggsie]

Deadline Day Deals

After Kumbulla picked up a 4 month long injury I decided we would need someone to play his role until the end of the season. The player I decided to bring in was Sven Botman, as he had the ability and experience to pick up that mantle until June. He also has an optional future fee, that most likely won't be used, but it is nice to have in the event we want to make the deal permanent.

Then after looking at areas I wanted improvement/depth in I brought in Rodri on loan with an optional future fee as he was listed by city. He will be the one that i more consider buying as he will most likely become a key player during his stay.

[baggsie]

A Statement Season

Champions League: Round of 16

Serie A: Winners

Coppa Italia: Winners

Super Cup: Winners

This season really showed a statement of intent for our future. Winning a domestic treble! A 100 point league season, 2 games from being unbeaten really asserted how dominant we were over the course of the season, and picking up the 2 domestic cups along the way was a welcome addition to the trophy cabinet.

 

While we didn't keep our unbeaten season going we did come very close, losing only 2 league games and 3 games in total. The 3rd game we lost was to Liverpool, in a tie we lost 4-3 on aggregate, which was a very close game against the eventual winners of the competition. 

 

Best Performers

Tammy Abraham is possibly the most clutch player I have ever seen, his goalscoring ability in the big games and in the most important moments really cannot be replaced, and a lot of the time he is the first to score in games, or the one to win it for us. He was also voted Serie A player and striker of the season, both for the second year in a row. He has the potential to become a Serie A legend if he continues at this level.

Thomas Lemar has been a very influential maestro in the midfield. I didn't expect him to play as well as he did in the midfield, but he really has taken our team to a new level, playing in tandem with whoever he's next to and becoming a key player in our team.

After Lorenzo Pellegrini's disappointing performance last season, I was looking at possible replacements for him and considering thinking of this season as the season we begin to phase him out of the squad. But boy did he shatter the doubt over his ability, he put in class performances again and again, not putting a foot wrong all season. He has now cemented himself as a key player and possibly a future captain.

 

[HugoLazgo12]

7 horas atrás, baggsie disse:

A Statement Season

Champions League: Round of 16

Serie A: Winners

Coppa Italia: Winners

Super Cup: Winners

This season really showed a statement of intent for our future. Winning a domestic treble! A 100 point league season, 2 games from being unbeaten really asserted how dominant we were over the course of the season, and picking up the 2 domestic cups along the way was a welcome addition to the trophy cabinet.

 

While we didn't keep our unbeaten season going we did come very close, losing only 2 league games and 3 games in total. The 3rd game we lost was to Liverpool, in a tie we lost 4-3 on aggregate, which was a very close game against the eventual winners of the competition. 

 

Best Performers

Tammy Abraham is possibly the most clutch player I have ever seen, his goalscoring ability in the big games and in the most important moments really cannot be replaced, and a lot of the time he is the first to score in games, or the one to win it for us. He was also voted Serie A player and striker of the season, both for the second year in a row. He has the potential to become a Serie A legend if he continues at this level.

Thomas Lemar has been a very influential maestro in the midfield. I didn't expect him to play as well as he did in the midfield, but he really has taken our team to a new level, playing in tandem with whoever he's next to and becoming a key player in our team.

After Lorenzo Pellegrini's disappointing performance last season, I was looking at possible replacements for him and considering thinking of this season as the season we begin to phase him out of the squad. But boy did he shatter the doubt over his ability, he put in class performances again and again, not putting a foot wrong all season. He has now cemented himself as a key player and possibly a future captain.

 

Wow Roma just became Another Juventus and dominace the Serie A

Imagine Roma winning 4 titles of Serie A in future and manage to win the champions league

[baggsie]

Transfers

After the domestic success of last season I wasn't very worried about the ability level or depth in our squad, but I did feel like we needed 1 or 2 players to take us to the next level. First of all, after a fairly disappointing return season for Justin Kluivert, and a £55m offer from Juventus we needed somebody to try and replace him. Up stepped Jamal Musiala for £40m upfront, £55m guaranteed and a potential of £70m. He should end up good value for that price though and has already shown shades of greatness throughout preseason.

Next, after sending Carboni out for 2 seasons and getting no development from him at all, we sold him for £10m and decided to bring in someone to contend for starting positions, Alessandro Bastoni. While I don't really like signing a player from a competitive rival, we couldn't really turn down the option, especially for a relatively low fee. £40m upfront, £55m total and a potential of £70m. He is one of those players who will hopefully stay with us for a while and become a key player in our search for European Success.

Finally, I saw this guy pop up in the NxGn top 50 wonderkids and decided for less that £1m it was worth a chance, and some of his stats are already looking very promising. While it is a risk, if it doesn't work out we will still definitely make a profit off of him either way.

 

 

Hopefully these additions will allow us to strengthen our grasp on Italian football and give us a better chance of going far into the Champions League knockouts. Maybe if we perform well enough we could even gain so much prize money we won't have to sell some of our highest value players every season to bring new additions in, but that is probably very unrealistic at this stage.

[baggsie]

UCL Draw

We're going to have a tough route into the knockouts this year with possibly the group of death.