5. Growing up!
Are we ready to face Serie A again after 96 years?
The certain thing is that this year Pro Vercelli have not won the league in which they took part in this Football Manager 20 career, after two back-to-back titles, which have led us from Serie C to Serie A, the goal required by the board this season was to bravely fight against the relegation.
Perfectly in line with what the media predicted (17th place).
Our final league standing (12th place) sums up well what happened this year, a safe season where we had no problems to stay up with some pretty dull performances in the second half of the season, where the team looked generally lazy and our game quite involuted.
The strikers were awful, I know about their limited skills for the league we are in, but I had hoped for some improvements in the last part of the season, I got the opposite.
Nicolai Frederiksen, our best scorer, made 7 goals in 24 games, Erik Gerbi 4 in 21 and Demirovic 2 in 16 matches played, an utter disaster.
You’d understand that finishing 12th with these numbers is a brilliant achievement, surely Nicolò Fagioli (Mvp of the season), promising midfielder on loan from Juve, helped a lot with his 6 goals and 3 assists, the same did Lucien Agoume, signed in the summer for 3.5M, my most expensive player so far, who had another consistent season, best average rating of the team (7.13) for the French rising star.
The crazy thing was that we were 4th at the end of October after 10 games played, not bad for the youngest squad in Serie A.
There are positives too, of course, this first Serie A season boosted our bank balance up to 22M, even if we spent 10.75M for new players, and the board finally accepted to improve our training facilities, regarding the stadium it will be a tougher affair, we can’t expand the Silvio Piola, only build a new arena but it’s a bit early for that.
As a matter of fact, we’re still playing the 3–5–2 formation I talked about some posts ago, I only tried different strikers combinations for some time (the oddest one was a false nine paired with a target man on support duty) but I’m officially tired of it and I’m going to make some changes to the tactic for next season.
I must confess that match engine involution (no logical crosses, no through balls etc…) after the last patch played a role in my decision, but somehow it’s a chance to try something different so I’m not complaining here.
Surely such things need to be fixed, the game could improve a lot.
5 Quick facts about Pro Vercelli in 2021–22 season
- Most expensive signing: Lucien Agoume, 3.5M from Inter
- Top earner: Lucien Agoume, euro 747.000 p/a
- More assists: Manuel Nicoletti, 7
- More dribbles made per game: A.F. Bjorkan, 4.70
- More interceptions per game: A.F. Bjorkan, 2.61
By the way, these are Nicolò Fagioli, Lucien Agoume and A.F. Bjorkan:
Club progress over the years
We started three years ago as a cash-strapped team and lots of things are changed since then, firstly our balance and our training facilities (improvements will be soon ready), but most importantly we are an established Serie A club, finally we can afford to purchase the players who were previously only available on loan, adding great value to the club.
There are rumours about a new stadium but nothing has been decided so far.
The goal for next season?
Playing a more attacking style of football (the board will have something to say about this…) and improve this season 12th place, top half would be nice.
See you soon guys…
