Lestri

Season Three - August to October '24 Update With the speed that I play that, I’d be surprised if I get another season done before FM24 Beta comes out, so I have decided to blog Season Three as three chunks, so apologies in advance for some long updates. As said previously, I am still getting my flow/style sorted for these blogs, so I know each one has been a bit different in presentation, so I appreciate each and everyone of you who reads them. To be brutally honest, the moment we were promoted from Serie B to Serie A, I had very low expectations for our chances. We have a formation that is allowing us to be very strong at the back and giving us enough opportunities up top, but the step up to Serie A is, in my opinion, a bridge too far for Trento. To put it in context, our weekly wage was less than 5% of the Inter who topped the chart, and less than 20% of the second lowest teams. Commercially, we took in 2.1% of Juventus’s commercial revenue, but at least we were less than half as low as Spezia’s revenue. At least we sold five times more season tickets than last year! All about taking the wins where we can. We still have the ongoing “will they/won’t they” takeover saga going on, adding more intrigue to the usually quiet life in an entry point to the Dolomite mountains. More twists and turns than a bad soap opera. August GAME 1 vs Reggina (A) As mentioned in the last update, our first competitive game of the season was against recently relegated Reggina, and we started very poorly, going into the break 2-0 down. I put it down to a mix of a poor pre-season where we didn’t get a chance to play much quality opposition and nerves, so a change of formation to Wangball and a reminder of our quality seemed to galvanise the team, with loanee Ryan Johansson being influential off the bench and Giovanni Terrani, who I mentioned in my second blog as coming to life after being retrained into the mezzala role, scoring a late winner after throwing him into the deep lying forward role. GAME 2 vs Spezia (H) Our first game of Serie A saw us welcome Spezia to Briamasco for a sellout crowd of 4,227. Our home form will be crucial to our success, considering we were 17 games unbeaten at home in all competitive games. So of course a gritty game with a lot of shots for both sides, but not a lot on target. Once again Terrani was there to save the day with an injury time penalty to give Trento’s first Serie A point in history. We finished August with a deadline day loan signing, bringing in Alessandro Cortinovis from Atalanta for the season. My scouts raved about him, and with an expiring contract at the end of the season and a low salary, this could turn into a very accessible free transfer. I plan to play him as a centre forward in the Deep Lying Forward-support duty, but I suspect he’ll also spend some time in the Mezzala role. SEPTEMBER GAME 3 vs Atalanta (A) Away to Atalanta is always a tough game in football, and we got a huge result with a 1-0 win where we weren’t at all troubled. To be fair, neither did Atalanta until we scored with a quality goal, but we do have to thank our superstar captain Armini for this goal line clearance just after we scored. Armini Goalline clearance vs Atalanta.mp4 GAME 4 vs Verona (H) We went 20 games unbeaten with a 2-1 win at home to Verona where Terrani continued his excellent start to the season with a brace. Once again we had a sellout crowd, giving me some thought about asking for an expansion, if I was going to continue the save. Not a bad way to score an injury time winner. GAME 5 vs Lazio (A) Unfortunately our unbeaten start to the season ended with a 1-0 loss to Lazio where we were outshot, outpassed and outperformed. I wasn’t too disheartened as you can tell from the picture we still had chances, and wasn’t too far behind on xG. The change to Wangball did put Lazio under pressure, which confirmed to me that it was a formation that can cause the best of teams some trouble, so I took that as a big positive. GAME 6 vs Torino (A) This game came only three days after the Lazio game, so we had to rotate and because of this, it was a bit of a shocker where even on comprehensive highlights there was barely anything shown. We controlled the ball but lacked any incision and were lucky that Torino didn’t bring their shooting boots. As we haven’t had much need to rotate so far, I’m not too disheartened, however my back up players will need to step up much better in the future. GAME 7 vs Genoa (H) We finished September strongly with an efficient 2-0 win against Genoa. Two shots on target, two goals from Pellegrini and Garcia from a set piece corner. While I’d love more creativity, I am very happy with our defensive structure and performance, where we are being very hard to break down. While I don’t pay too much attention to match ratings, I can’t help enjoying seeing all the green colours across my defence. OCTOBER GAME 8 vs Internazionale (H) Our first game of October saw us entertain Internazionale in front of our rowdy small crowd, which I’ve decided is the reason why we are chugging along with our unbeaten home record because once again we draw 0-0 with not much to write home about. What was even better was it came with our backup goalkeeper Melli starting as our starting keeper picked up an injury What is quite interesting is my strikers who scored 37 goals between them last year, and as mentioned in the last update, rated statistically very high compared to Serie A strikers, have struggled to get going this year. I had started Pellegrini as the Advanced Forward and Spalutto in the Deep Lying Forward roles, which was opposite to last year. My reasoning for this was because it matched their attributes better, however as we could see, their output wasn’t the same. So I decided to switch them back, hoping that we’ll see an increased output. GAME 9 vs Fiorentina (H) Well as you can see, every other member of the starting XI got a greater than 7 rating, except for our strikers, so it wasn’t instant success. Fortunately for us, our right wing back Di Cosmo scored the winner after a lovely throughball in a deserved 1-0 at home to Fiorentina, continuing our excellent unbeaten home record. Another clean sheet for our backup goalkeeper. GAME 10 vs Brianza/Monza (A) Brianza, aka Monza, set up a little differently to our previous opponents and came out swinging, making me change our starting formation to a asymmetrical midfield with our usual Box to Box Centre Midfielder dropping back next to our Regista as a Segundo Volante in attack duty. We also pushed our Wide Centre Backs back into a defence duty and pressed higher, enabling us to get control of the game and apart from a lack of concentration early in the second half, control the game with a 2-1 win with goals from Pellegrini taking full advantage of a shocking error and Terrani with what is becoming a trademark first time volley winner after a gorgeous through ball from Milanese. GAME 11 vs Bologna (H) Our final game of this update saw us finish how we started, with us going down 2-0 early in the first half to my favourite city in the world, named after the dangerous bolognese. Fortunately for us, Spalutto ended up finding his shooting boots and scored a brace, the first being a commanding header from a ball from the left wing, and the second a cracking first time volley from a great through ball from the right wing. Not a bad time to score your first goals in Serie A this season. Another example of a rotated team not clicking. Considering we were able to play a lot of friendlies with our Under 20s last year, allowing them to get match fitness throughout the season. I may need to organise some of these, as although I haven’t been burnt yet, I don’t want to risk it. STATE OF PLAY Absolutely over the moon with the start to our maiden Serie A season. We’re holding our own, however we haven’t played the likes of Juventus, Napoli/Parthenope, Milan or Roma/Capitoline yet, so we need to keep things rolling. Joint third for goals conceded and scoring more than a goal a game (just), great signs. I'll leave you with our upcoming fixtures for the next update. Until next time.

Huge effort there. It's frustrating but understandable when you're fighting on all fronts and something slips, ever so slightly. Let's go!

Just a quiet day then!

A few games in and so far it's been this and the 3-4-3 "Wangball" formation I included in a previous update when I've needed to go for the jugular. Do hope to stay with the formation though but I suspect a change will occur!

SEASON THREE - TRENTO IN THE BIG TIME - OFFSEASON REVIEW AND PLAYER SIGNINGS Apologies for the delay, this fella was enjoying the FIFA Women’s World Cup, going to nine games over four cities across the tournament. Highlight was watching Sam Kerr’s goal against England. I must say, what a player. Highlight was seeing England get to the final, not a highlight was seeing the "kiss" live. It was also interesting to see England switch from a 4-3-3 to a 3-4-1-2 during the group stages, and seeing how they used Alex Greenwood as a Wide Centre Back and moving Lauren Hemp into a Centre Forward role. Standard was very impressive. But back to Football Manager! We left the save with our loveable Englishman taking A.C. Trento to Serie A with back to back saves from Serie C. A truly chaotic, but momentous occasion. He was rewarded with two Manager of the Year awards; the Serie B and Serie B “Scopigno” Awards. Our best signing of the season, Nicolò Armini, was rewarded with the Serie B Defender of the Year. A great year for Armini, where he was one of only three non-Juventus players to make the Serie B team of the year. We were also able to tie him down to a new contract and appointed him as captain after he indicated he was looking to explore his options at the end of the season. Still can't get over how Juventus got relegated, even with the 15 point deduction. They'll probably do the back to back. With the promotion sealed we got the old runaround about a takeover occurring, only for that to run its course. We also had some good news regarding our coffers, as recently we were like the Lannisters of Casterly Rock, broke but without the incest, I hope. The State of Play So this is good news I’d say, with realistic expectations from the board, we’ll be lucky to stay in Serie A. Italian football has some interesting rules around minimum wages and squad restrictions, so I wanted to have a look at what Serie A has in store for us before I started my recruitment strategy. What does this mean? We’ve got flexibility with transfer rules, however with those with promotion wage increase clauses and those over 25 getting a wage hike. We will need to be savvy with our finances, even though I suspect with TV rights and such, our bank balance should be a little less precarious than it has been in the past, even though our ability to rake income is a bit tiny. SIXTY-TWO TIMES SMALLER THAN INTER'S!?!?!?! Player Analysis So it is time to look at how our players stacked up in Serie B and how they compared to their counterparts in Serie A, to get an idea of how many may have the ability to stack up against the giants of Italian football. As always, we will use @FMStag's Goalkeeper and player performance analysis, with 1,000 minutes as the metrics for this. 12 outfield players played more than 1,000 minutes, showing that I had a core squad of players, but also didn’t have a lot of weeks where I was playing two games. I would say this contributed nicely to our form, as more often than not I play the equivalent of a first and second team when we have multiple games a week. Samuelle Spalutto was both the second best striker based on this performance analysis in both Serie A and B, with only Juventus striker Gianluca Scamacca outperforming him. To put it in context, he had a better season as a “Striking Threat” than Lautaro Martínez, Victor Osimhen and Ciro Immobile. Not bad at all for the Serie B Golden Boot Winner. Gabriele Marchegiani ended up the third best performing goalkeeper of Serie B and 13th out of both Serie A and B, so I don’t have any pressing need to replace him. I may need to pick up a keeper to be a solid backup though in case of any injury or he leaves as the back ups are average at best. Most of our players placed in the top 10% in their most important metric, so those are good signs for not having to go too hard at replacing them in the transfer window. Our depth at a Right sided Wide Centreback, Wingbacks, Regista and Deep Lying Forward is low, so that’s where I’ll be focusing, especially with the retirements of our starting Regista, Pasquato and Deep Lying Forward, captain Brighenti from last season. So where to go from here? Getting more cash in the kitty has given me a bit of a pickle. Our training and youth facilities are rubbish, and if we want to be a long-term sustainable team that is attractive for players to come to, we need to make them better. But that costs a lot of money. At the same time, our staffing levels do need a refresh and upgrade, and the promotion has given me new staff for the first team. We averaged around 6th best for coaching and 14th for scouts, but I haven’t focussed on this as I have been relying on external analysis for my signings, so it is less of an interest. So I will take the opportunity to improve my coach and physio staff as that shouldn’t be too painful on the finances, because I’d rather have good coaches at crap facilities, than crap coaches at good facilities in the short term. After a discussion about it with my seven different personalities and some of my fellow FMcreators, I decided that my best use of the money would be to minimise transfer fees, focus on using it as a wage budget and get into the free transfer market. So off we go! Transfers Recapping from first post, my main restriction of the save was to only sign Italian, Australian and Irish players, so those are constants in my search parameters. Because of the increased revenue and prize money, I was able to have our scouting range to be Worldwide, which allows me fully pick up players who meet my criteria. Yes, a bit of an additional expenditure, but I feel this would help, especially as my approach to player signings in this save is based on stats and attributes, rather than using the scouts. An issue I found was that before 1 July came along, there was limited interest in players coming to Trento because “They do not want to sign for a Serie B team”. This is a gripe of FM for me - how players treat a promoted team when you are trying to sign them. So I went back to a favourite approach of mine, searching for unattached players that fit the bill, offering trials, and then offering contracts. This gave me zero players to sign, as they either said no because of my standing, or wanted too much money when I offered a contract. So I followed this up with looking at those on the transfer and loan lists that met a specific search of World Reputation of one and above and determination of 13. Long story short, here are the players that I signed in chronological order. Marco Sala comes in from recently relegated to Serie B Empoli for an initial €75k and will be our starting left wing back in the wingback-support duty. While not great in the air, his work rate and teamwork attributes were very appealing. Also loves a big match, which could be all 38 games of the season. Looks like a great bargain. Tommaso Milanese became our record signing from relegated to Serie C Cremonese for an initial €700k. SImilar to Sala, his teamwork and work rate attributes, combined with his Serie A potential, made this a worthwhile signing. He will be our starting Regista, utilising his “Dictates Tempo” trait. My personal favourite signing of the save so far, Australian cult hero Jackson Irvine comes in from St. Pauli for €400k to be our go to player off the bench as a squad player. In fact, his attributes are pretty handy for all of our positions, so I will be turning to him for that calm, experienced head when we need it. I suspect he will be our Vice Captain by the end of the year. We got our first Irish signing of the save with Alex Murphy coming in from Newcastle for €375k. While very left footed, he will be our starting right sided Wide Centre Back with his pace and height a very appealing combination. Assuming we can keep hold of him with a relatively low minimum release clause of €750k, I suspect Murphy will have turn out to be a good piece of business. We turned to an Australian who grew up close to where I live in regional Victoria for our striker depth for the season, with Alou Kuol coming in from Stuttgart for a very cheap loan. Unfortunately his younger brother, Garang, is on a long term loan from Newcastle in Mexico, but Alou comes with his own strengths, with his speed and consistency was enough to get over the line for me, knowing he isn’t the most skillful of players. His goal record in Stuttgart’s second team also bodes well for him to be handy as a backup to my starting forwards of Spalluto and Pellegrini. We managed to pick up Luxembourg born, Swedish and Irish citizen Ryan Johansson on loan from Sevilla for the season as our final signing of the off-season. Ryan will be our back up Right Wing Back in the Wing Back-Attack duty, however with his versatility and his potential, I suspect he will become our starter as the season progresses. In fact, nothing really concerns me at all, with the natural fitness, consistency, big matches combination making me very excited. We have a €1.4 million optional buy clause as well which could come in handy. We backed this up with getting most of our core first eleven from last season to sign new contracts who only had one year left, which tied them down, but did end up causing our wage expenditure to double and include some generous minimum fee release clauses. How we shape up We have kept faith with our tactic that has taken us from Serie C to Serie A in two seasons. Our pre-season wasn't ideal, with most teams not being available for games, so I had to play our Under 18s and Under 20s. We start the season with a Coppa Italia Round One match with Reggina, who came bottom of Serie A last year, a good test to see how we are set up for our first crack at the big time. Until next time.

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.