In the first part of this series of four posts, I covered the bottom five teams in the Serie A table, giving a Stroitel Pripyat view on what I thought they would accomplish before the season began, what they have actually done, and what the future may hold for them. It can be read here.
Now, following in straightforward fashion, are my views on the teams who find themselves between fifteenth and eleventh in the table – the real midtable sides, in other words. No need for a preamble beyond that, let’s get right into it with Sampdoria.
Sampdoria
Where I expected them to finish: 14th
What I thought at the beginning of the season: The main thing which really characterizes Samp’s summer has been the lack of activity in the transfer market. The squad was not exactly deep to begin with, and they’ve seen the likes of regular midfielder Jakub Jankto leave for Getafe while the fee for him looks to have gone towards making the signing of Ernesto Torregrossa permanent. Very late in the window, two moderately big-name arrivals came in the door, but the Blucerchiati appear to be ready to rely on the same set of players that they did last season.
The first player signed was striker Francesco Caputo on loan from Sassuolo – the 34-year-old is not the most attractive player to watch but his movement is clever and he has the attribute of being able to finish effectively even from fairly improbable positions, having ably led the line and scored at a rate of about once every other game for Empoli and Sassuolo in Serie A. The other is teenage attacking midfielder Mohamed Ihattaren on loan from Juventus, who signed him from PSV in the summer but sent him to Samp straightaway.
It’s doubtful that Caputo would have arrived had Manolo Gabbiadini not picked up an ankle injury in the team’s first match of the season to leave them extremely shorthanded up front. Ihattaren is highly-rated and will likely back up/ compete for space with EURO 2020 star Mikkel Damsgaard as a the team’s main creative spark. These aren’t terrible additions on paper, but you have to wonder how much Samp are struggling financially if this is the best that they can do for new additions to the team.
This lack of investment in the squad is reportedly a big part of the reason why Claudio Ranieri decided to leave after doing a decent job at the club last season, and in his place has come Roberto D’Aversa, former Parma coach. D’Aversa was something of a chameleon tactically speaking with Parma, but his preference always looked to be for a low defensive block which only really seeks to put pressure on the ball when they can stay compact and not leave spaces at the back. I don’t think he’s a terrible appointment, although as a neutral I would have rather seen Andrea Pirlo given a shot with this team after he was straight into the deep end at Juve, or perhaps even a return of Marco Giampaolo.
This season will at any rate be characterized primarily by the question of how D’Aversa does with the group that Ranieri guided to upper midtable last time around. I think he’ll keep them in midtable, but would definitely not hold my breath for a finish as encouraging as the 9th place position which the Blucerchiati secured last campaign. The squad is now one year older than at the start of last season, and I would expect them to struggle to find the right balance which sees them function in attack without leaving their defenders overly exposed. Ranieri managed this well enough, and it will be a big test for D’Aversa to do the same.
There is a lot of experience in this team, and not just in the form of the ageless Fabio Quagliarella up front, still one of Samp’s key attackers. Albin Ekdal seems like he’s been around forever and basically has, while Adrien Silva is a European champions with Portugal, has plenty of experience, and will probably start a lot of games in the centre of the park as well.
Antonio Candreva was one of the more consistent performers, and he is a player who every Serie A follower will be very familiar with. Not blessed with searing pace, and not someone who tends to score all that many goals, what he does give the team is flare and creativity from wide. The 34-year-old’s first thought is always to cross, and he can mishit them or look a bit one-dimensional when he just hits the first defender when perhaps another option was on, but when it comes off it *really* comes off. When he gets cooking, Candreva is still capable of orchestrating the team’s attack from his position on the wing.
Another experienced head in this team is former Southampton defender Maya Yoshida, who will almost certainly form the first-choice central pairing alongside Omar Colley. These two looked effective enough last campaign, although they’re not a tandem who I would have said would look better with another full season in each of their legs. For Yoshida in particular, I think that the key will be making sure that the Japanese international is not too exposed for pace, as he is still certainly capable of looking very assured in duels and blocks provided things are organized around him. I imagine that the defense will not be too much of an issue for Samp as I don’t think D’Aversa will try and stretch what he has at the back too thin to commit to a gung-ho attacking style.
Polish right-back Bartosz Bereszynski, meanwhile, will hope that he can form an effective partnership on the right with Candreva, where the 29-year-old’s legs and energy can make up somewhat for the less dynamic presence offered by his winger, while his more supportive and varied passing range dovetailed very nicely with Candreva’s instinct to just put a delivery into the box on sight under Ranieri. Tommaso Augello on the left is quite nice too, but I expect Bereszynski to really be key, especially as the player backing him up is Fabio Depaoli who has looked worse than useless both in buildup and in the final third over several seasons in Serie A.
Morten Thorsby has gained some fame for his earnest if somewhat cringeworthy climate change awareness advocacy, but his performances on the pitch have gained him admirers as well. The young Norwegian has been linked with Atalanta, and I’m not sure I see the level to warrant it just yet, but he has some great qualities, Thorsby was a real physical presence in Claudio Ranier’s 4-4-2 midfield alongside the steadier Ekdal last season, and will likely be crucial to Samp’s capacity to really compete in the midfield battle this campaign as well, whoever he is partnered with and whichever system the team goes with. There is a bit of West Ham United midfielder Tomas Soucek to the Norwegian, by way of comparison.
Meanwhile, the gem of this team must undoubtedly be Mikkel Damsgaard, whose star certainly rose at the Euros. The 21-year-old joined as a very highly-rated prospect from Nordsjaelland ahead of last season, where he was eye-catching though I found lacked end product. Seemingly every time I watched the young Dane he would dribble into trouble, dribble into trouble again, and so forth. At the Euros, however, he looked a different player, playing much closer to the centre rather than out wide, forcing him to be much more efficient with his touches.
International football differs pretty dramatically from its club counterpart in terms of team compactness and pressing intensity, but should the 21-year-old really focus on this style of play unlocking situations with simple actions in tight spaces rather than taking on defenders from out wide, he could transfer it to Serie A nevertheless and in the process become a really devastating attacking midfielder without question.
What the team looks like around Damsgaard is both certain and uncertain – the squad is thin enough that you pretty much know who the key players are set to be, but how a lot of these key players fit together with Ranieri and his 4-4-2 from last season gone will be in the balance. There are goals up front and a decent level in the defense, not to mention an excellent keeper in the form of Emil Audero, but I would worry about how injuries, tiredness, or a patch of poor form for any of their key players is likely to hurt them.
Where they currently sit: 15th
How they have done so far: For a team who have been the quintessential nondescript midtable outfit so far, there are quite a few talking points about Samp so far. I’ll start with the fact the D’Aversa remains head coach in spite of countless rumours that he would be sacked. The latest candidate to supposedly replace the Italian has been Lazio and Inter legend, and current Red Star Belgrade coach, Dejan Stankovic, although this came right as the club fell into a bit of chaos when President Massimo Ferrero was jailed for financial fraud unrelated to his running of Samp.
I won’t get into the Ferrero drama beyond acknowledging that it is almost certainly related to the club’s thriftiness, and that it is a very funny subplot to the season, but it did come about right when D’Aversa’s head was supposedly on the chopping block once and for all. It may have taken a complete higher-order decision-making paralysis brought on by absurd external circumstances to keep the Blucerchiati from sacking the coach, but in truth almost any other club in Serie A would have parted ways with him much sooner.
And yet, in my view, this would hardly have been warranted. Rumours swirled earlier on in the campaign that the club were ready to turn to Marco Giampaolo who had enjoyed a great spell a few seasons back, and were willing to back him financially. My perspective on this is that realistically, D’Aversa deserves as much of a chance with renewed investment in the squad as much as any replacement coach does short of Pep Guardiola or someone along those lines. There’s no doubt that the team have been sliding, but their start was enough to convince me that D’Aversa is not at all out of his depth, while the slide has had as much to do with an injury to Damsgaard as anything else.
In the Blucerchiati’s first couple matches of the season, the Dane was incandescent, as he was given a much freer role which allowed him to play in the channels, between the midfield and the striker, rather than running up and down the wing and trying to create from wide. Moreover, the whole team was forming a very effective, compact pressing shape around the young playmaker, leading to a very unfortunate 1-0 loss to Milan in their opening match of the season where Rossoneri keeper Mike Maignan was the clear man of the match, and a thoroughly-deserved point at home against Inter.
D’Aversa’s Samp pressed high enough to keep opponents from really establishing their passing rhythm on the game, but without leaving their defenders exposed without support, while Damsgaard and Candreva were each given creative responsibilities that suited their own games. It was not revolutionary football but it was well-executed and gave the Blucerchiati a much likelier chance of finishing in the top half than anywhere near the relegation zone. Given this, an injury to Damsgaard which has ruled him out since the October international break could hardly have been more badly-timed.
In the 21-year-old’s absence, the responsibility has increasingly fallen on the shoulders of Candreva who has had something of a virtuoso season in all fairness. The former Lazio and Inter winger has led Samp for both scoring and assisting goals, with long-range bangers into the top corner alternating with pinpoint deliveries to find teammates on an almost weekly basis. This is not the level at which that the 34-year-old has played for his entire career, but it can hardly be denied that on this form he has been one of the protagonists of the Serie A season, and has almost single-handedly fired an otherwise thoroughly mediocre team into midtable.
Neither Ekdal nor Silva have consistently been at their best, while the role of Thorsby has been one of the most intriguing aspects of Samp’s play especially since the injury to Damsgaard. I’m not the biggest fan of player comparisons as a way to describe how someone operates stylistically, but every time I watch Thorsby now I immediately think of Marouane Fellaini. The 25-year-old has played quite high up, usually supported by two midfielders, and he has used every ounce of his large frame and physicality to hold the ball up and bring teammates into the game. If you are a connoisseur of a fine chest control, then you really owe it to yourself to watch Samp more this season.
Other than Thorsby and Candreva being pretty interesting there has been little worth noting in this Samp team. The defense has barely held together and has no depth, while Fabio Quagliarella seems to finally be showing his age. Caputo and Gabbiadini have had enough end product to bring the Blucerchiati’s goal tally to a respectable 27 after half a season gone, owing also to the form of Candreva. But even this flatters them, if I’m being honest, at least since Damsgaard has been out.
Where I expect them to finish: 14th
What’s to come: Sampdoria supporters will hope that Damsgaard comes back very soon, as I sorely doubt Candreva will keep this level up forever. Should the Dane return and contribute consistently, then they should be quite a bit easier on the eye and also see results improve.
If Damsgaard stays out for a while, however, things could get rather dicey. Samp have not been showing relegation form this season, but nor have they played well enough to absolutely preclude a descent down the table. What the team needs, realistically, is for the board to intervene, hopefully with signings and very possibly with a change in coach.
Ferrero is not likely to be given decision-making power again as he immediately stepped down in what I personally feel was a chickenshit move as I was hoping we’d get to see him running the team’s every move from prison. At any rate, it remains to be seen how the outspoken mogul’s most likely richly-deserved imprisonment will affect the club’s decisions, but they really could use some clear direction after the first half of the season they’ve had.
D’Aversa is still head coach, and it remains to be seen if the club will sack him after all and execute a plan to hire Stankovic or Giampaolo or whoever in his stead. More importantly in my view, however, must surely be thinking about reinforcing the squad. The depth issue has been glaring all season, and there’s only one way to fix that. The options that Samp have behind Colley and Yoshida (and realistically, on form, to give them some competition), have been abysmal, and the position is crying out.
More pertinently, some kind of versatile creative option to back up Damsgaard is virtually a must. Ihattaren hasn’t played a minute for the Blucerchiatti since joining on loan and as far as I know has formally left the club as problems in his personal life have brought him too much difficulty to contribute. One hopes that things get better for the young Dutchman, but also must observe that this theoretically leaves a spot open not only in Samp’s squad but also in their wage bill.
I won’t do any fantasy football on precisely who Samp should sign, but only say that they have a great need to sign someone after a summer window of disrepair in the squad. Should they do so, perhaps by looking to offer playing time to out-of-favour players with the right profiles in the top half of Serie A, the team should be perfectly fine. Otherwise, it could be a season which only gets more unpleasant for Sampdoria fans.
Udinese
Where I expected them to finish: 17th
What I thought at the beginning of the season: Udine have seen one of the most high-profile departures from Serie A in the form of Rodrigo De Paul to Atletico Madrid. This is the big story of their pre-season preparations for most people, and it looks to be a double-edged sword for the Bianconeri. De Paul had been far and away the most creative midfielder in the team for some season, and so his loss could be close to calamitous to their ability to play the ball in the direction of the opposition goal.
The Argentine’s stock will never be higher than after a couple fancy displays at the Copa Libertadores which convinced one of the few teams in Europe with real spending liquidity to move in for him rather than a big Italian side who would likely swoop in like a relentless vulture for a loan containing a purchase obligation which sees the last of the fee in the hands of Udine sometime after De Paul is dead. The loss on the pitch, however, could be incalculable.
Last campaign Udinese managed to finish fourteenth in the table by playing a defense-first style in which the bulk of the creative burden was put on the shoulders of De Paul while he was not given too much responsibility defensively speaking. It was a balance that worked although it didn’t exactly result in the prettiest football at least when the Argentine was not on the ball. Now the balance must change significantly, and much more will be needed from the Bianconeri’s attackers and wide players should the club not wish to see a decisive chunk of their forty-point haul from last season leave alongside their star midfielder.
Udinese should be perfectly fine defensively, as head coach Luca Gotti has proven himself to be more than adequate at organizing the team around the strong defensive trio of Samir, Rodrigo Becao, and Bram Nuytinck. Goalkeeper Juan Musso is another big-money sale, to Atalanta, although I’d be less worried about his departure than that of De Paul given that they’ve managed to replace him with one of the form goalkeepers of last season in the form of Marco Silvestri. He’s quite rubbish with the ball at his feet, but pulled off any number of brilliant saves last season for Verona, so should do fine behind this defensive unit.
Another arrival from Verona is young Italian wide-man Destiny Udogie, who is likely to be blooded into the rotation of wide players along with Nahuel Molina, Marvin Zeegelaar, and Jens Stryger Larsen. I have been impressed by both Udogie and Molina going forward, and I anticipate that any success that Udine have this season will come through their ability to stretch teams on the break while also supporting the defensive unit.
In midfield, the Bianconeri now look more oriented towards defensive solidity, with workhorses like Tolgay Arslan and Walace highly unlikely to replicate the passing range and ability to take opponents out of the game that De Paul gave the team centrally.
Even if Roberto Pereyra is used more as a deep-lying number ten on a consistent basis to make up for De Paul’s absence, or if Gerard Deulofeu is played behind two strikers or some similar set-up, this will not likely be a fun team to watch most of the time. Udine have a well-established identity at this point that’s focused around protecting their own penalty area and being very selective with when they look to win the ball and launch counterattacks, and will not look to play too much in the way of fancy central passing combinations.
Apart from the wide players, the contributions of the forwards will also be all-important in determining how effective this counter-attacking style of play is, obviously. Kevin Lasagna and Stefano Okaka are gone, meaning that more and more responsibility will likely fall on the shoulders of Gerard Deulofeu, Fernando Forestieri, and Ignacio Pussetto, with former Watford man Isaac Success also an option.
Deulofeu is a joy to watch and actually has excellent end product despite his reputation as a mercurial flake. The rest of those guys, it’s harder to see how a functional attack congeals out of. I can already see Deulofeu doing his absolute best to ball out and make things work in the final third while his striker partner is an out-of-position Roberto Pereyra and he has not] service from midfield or the wings, and it’s not a pretty sight. I imagine that Udinese will have enough to them defensively in particular to avoid the drop, but not by much.
Where they currently sit: 14th
How they have done so far: I’ll start with the quick note that, as with Salernitana, Udine have played one fewer match than the rest of Serie A after the newly-promoted side were unable to travel to Friuli to face them on the last matchday of 2021, due to a COVID outbreak in their squad. Winning this game in hand would not move them up a position in the table, but it would bring them to 23 points, within a point or two of the cluster of teams ahead of them.
Udinese sacked head coach Luca Gotti despite him having done a fine job for his entire time in charge of the club, and if you know anything about the Pozzo family’s philosophical outlook on the correct running of a football club you should have some insight into why this happened. Gotti’s assistant has been put in charge on an interim basis, but lord knows who comes in permanently, if anyone. Perhaps they decide to appoint a Beppe Iachini or a Gian Piero Ventura and subsequently become worse, who knows.
With that out of the way, Udine have definitely been a pleasant surprise to me this season. Not just in terms of their results, but in terms of the entertainment value of their matches. A 4-4 draw with Lazio early in December was one of the best matches of the season, maybe the best full-stop. In general, while they have not looked to control the ball or territory, they have proved more than apt at quickly using both to create danger even without De Paul.
This has owed partly to the excellent seasons which both Udogie and especially Molina are having, but I would place the bulk of the credit for this counter-attacking proficiency on the forwards. Deulofeu has been having a very good season, to the point where he has arguably been the Bianconeri’s outstanding player. The most important piece of the puzzle, however, has undoubtedly been Portimonense loanee Beto.
Sharing a name with the Texas gubernational candidate who makes calves cramp, the young Portuguese striker came into the team and immediately made an impact with his aerial presence. However, over subsequent matches it became clear how much more he offers than the typecast big target man, and to be honest he has become one of my favourite players to watch at the moment. The 23-year-old is quick and fleet of foot, and he can get past a defender in any variety of ways, while he seems to be in full technical command of his finishing. It is undoubtedly too early to call Beto the next €50 million export from Serie A, rationally speaking, and he could also stand to add more creativity to his game. As a goal threat, however, he has regularly barged his way straight through to the back of the net.
And really, that has been about it. Udine are one of the better defensive teams in Serie A, let alone in midtable, and they have enough about them going forward to counterattack fluidly and decisively in most of their games. Full credit to the team for moving past the departure of De Paul and looking hardly worse off for it.
Where I expect them to finish: 14th
What’s to come: To be perfectly honest, the sacking of Gotti really threw me for a loop. He suits the squad to the ground and I can’t imagine anyone getting better results out of this material than he did, while I can think of plenty of managers who would do a lot worse.
The defenders are resolute but not all that comfortable in possession, so I think a coach who prefers more expansive football would surely have to bring in someone new. And for bus-parkers in Italian football, Gotti was as good as you’re going to get.
As such, I struggle to really make any firm predictions for how the Bianconeri’s season will go over the second half of the campaign for the simple reason that it’s not at all clear how they’re going to approach it. In this sense they are probably one of the more interesting teams to watch in January as they haven’t spent much of what they earned from the sale of Musso and De Paul, so they could conceivably be thinking about a new project around players like Beto and Molina which could well take them back to the heights which they hit around a decade ago. Getting the jump on this project in January when they have a clear buffer from relegation wouldn’t be the worst idea for them, hypothetically.
But in truth this really sounds like optimistic fantasy thinking, and what we are nearly certain to see is a similar but worse coach compared to Gotti get the same results as they have achieved in the first half of the campaign, playing a compact defensive block and hitting out on the break just enough to finish comfortably midtable.
Sassuolo
Where I expected them to finish: 11th
What I thought at the beginning of the season: The Neroverdi have seen the back of a highly-thought-of and unique coach in the form of Roberto De Zerbi. The young Italian coach made a mark for himself in Italian football by taking over a Benevento side who had gotten off to the worst start in the history of the league and making them look decent, while his brand of football has become burned into the retinas of Seria A fanciers after three years at Sassuolo. The Italian left for Shakhtar Donetsk and in his place comes Alessio Dionisi, who led Empoli to promotion by winning Serie B last time around.
Last season Sassuolo were broadly effective at both controlling the ball and creating chances, although their absolutely unshakeable determination to circulate the ball through short, mechanical passes could occasionally lead them to resemble pure uncut Liverani-ball, which I do not mean as a compliment. In the form of Dionisi, they take on a coach whose reputation was for a more vertical style of football, which could either make them more fun to watch or simply unbalance them from what De Zerbi spent three seasons constructing.
Out the door has gone Manuel Locatelli as well, with the former Milan midfielder’s excellent form last season and with Italy at the Euros earning him a move to Juventus. I don’t think that this will necessarily make things too difficult for the team in midfield mostly because I think Maxime Lopez has shown excellent growth, and increasing proficiency playing deeper, in the two seasons since he joined from Marseille and should be able to form a coherent double pivot with either the experienced and perpetually underrated captain Francesco Magnanelli, or with Pedro Obiang, behind the club’s wealth of attackers. Magnanelli, despite his advancing years, is still one of the more competent regista-type midfielders in the league, and I felt that over the last couple seasons they played their most incisive footballers with the 37-year-old partnering Locatelli, and so it will be up to Lopez to really take this mantle up.
Davide Frattesi has also returned from loan with Monza in Serie B, and I understand that the club have every intention of blooding him into the first team, so I am intrigued to see if he can complement Lopez and form an effective partnership.
Another key departure comes in the form of Marlon, who followed De Zerbi to Shakhtar to link up with the many Brazilian players already at the club. The 26-year-old was the Neroverdi’s key centre-back last season, and so making up for his absence will be no small feat for the likes of Tottenham Hotspur legend Vlad Chiriches and Gianmarco Ferrari, who I presume will constitute the first-choice central pairing from now on.
At full-back I think Rogerio on the left and Mert Muldur on the right is a fine pairing, with the former an underrated and fairly orthodox full-back while the latter is flat-out one of the most underrated players in the league in my view, showing a range of creative passing that is vanishingly rare for his position.
The wealth of attacking options that Sassuolo can boast is close to ridiculous, as they have filled nearly every slot which is is possible to fill in terms of forward profiles. One aspect I liked about De Zerbi’s management was how many different functional combinations he was able to get out of this complement, as no one really got frozen out. Francesco Caputo has left on loan to Sampdoria, while Gianluca Scamacca has returned from loan with Genoa, and I think that the club will be happy with this changing of the guard in terms of the two strikers’ respective ages.
I didn’t find that Scamacca always lived up to the hype at Genoa, but the sky really is obviously the limit for the 22-year-old centre-forward. Big, reasonably fast, and a technical marvel, I am personally hoping that he is made the focal point for this Neroverdi team’s attack and that his quality shines through on a more consistent basis.
Giacomo Raspadori is another jewel from the production line at Sassuolo, and he is another one who I had my doubts about but who really came good down the stretch last campaign. The young striker has a dynamism and deftness in small spaces that reminds me a little of Sergio Aguero, though I think in an ideal world he would focus a little more on being an all-rounded forward than purely on creating opportunities for himself as Kun has tended to throughout his career. As with Scamacca, if Raspadori plays I think there is a good chance that a clearer picture will emerge of a player who can have a future with Champions League clubs, in Italy or abroad.
Jeremie Boga is also still at the club in spite of persistent links away over the past few windows, and is a very effective threat on the dribble from wide who I would imagine will get significant playing time. Filip Djuricic is another who ought to be a regular in the team playing as an attacking midfielder, while Hamed Junior Traore can interpret the number ten role totally differently, starting deeper and using his dribbling ability much more than passing to destabilize defenses.
Last but certainly not least is Domenico Berardi, a player who has remained at with the Neroverdi despite links away for years, which either the player or the club has always turned down. This summer it was Atalanta and Fiorentina who failed to sign the 27-year-old, who is a virtually unstoppable and terrifyingly well-rounded force when he is on form. I have the feeling that Berardi will once again lead the team in both scoring and assisting provided he stays the full season, and this is a real testament to the complete skillset of the attacker, who found more of an audience with his appearances at the Euros but has been a real neutral’s favourite in Serie A for years at this point.
Where they currently sit: 13th
How they have done so far: In the vaguest terms, Sassuolo have been the team that most people would have expected them to be. The Neroverdi have pressed high and looked to monopolize the ball in most of their games, and have “played good football” broadly speaking, in the way that they have done for much of their Serie A existence. And yet I can’t help but feel that across nineteen games they’ve been somehow a disappointment.
To start with the positive, the Neroverdi’s best player apart from possibly Berardi has been Maxime Lopez. The Frenchman has thrived with the change in role to more of a regista, where he has been a key driving force in the Neroverdi’s most positive play. I expect a move to a top club soon at this rate, as his profile is worth its weight in gold for big teams across Europe, and he has made himself undroppable this season.
Partnering him has been Frattesi, who rather than being slowly introduced into Sassuolo’s first team has instantly become one of the first names on the teamsheet for Dionisi. I admittedly haven’t been as impressed with the 22-year-old as I have been with Lopez, nor have I perhaps seen what many others see in him as a Barella-like “future of Italian football” type of player.
Part of the reason that Frattesi has gone straight into the first team has been that Obiang has unfortunately missed the season so far through health issues, while Magnanelli is either unfortunately past it at 37 or simply not rated by Dionisi who prefers a younger and more dynamic profile of midfielder. At any rate, Lopez and Frattesi have been pretty much undisputed as the central pairing for this Neroverdi outfit, and while they have sometimes lacked a bit of calmness and guile there is a tremendous amount of forward-thinking verve to them as a pairing around which the team can move up the pitch. Lopez has really stepped into the regista role quite well, while Frattesi covers a lot of ground and doesn’t look afraid to try and make things happen despite this being his first season in the top flight.
Elsewhere, I have been a bit disappointed to see Muldur less in favour than former Hoffenheim and Borussia Dortmund right-back Jeremy Toljan. The German has looked fine, but I’ve found the team to look a little more incisive from a playmaking standpoint with Muldur in the team, whereas Toljan seems to offer much more dynamism, which very clearly appears to be the focus for Dionisi all over the pitch.
In attack, Dionisi came in for some criticism for playing Raspadori as a wide forward earlier in the season, leading to a real drop in influence and end product from the young striker who was starting to cook at the end of last campaign. He has, in fairness, used the 21-year-old in a more familiar role behind a target man in the last few games before the break, where he has looked better and started scoring and assisting goals at a fine clip. Freed up to find space between opposition midfields and defenses, Raspadori has shown some sparkling footwork as well as a cutting edge with his decisions, suggesting that this is definitely his best position.
Scamacca has been arguably the Neroverdi’s form attacker this season. The team as a whole looks better with the 22-year-old leading the line than they did with Caputo, as the former Genoa loanee is simply a more physically and technically gifted player than Caputo had been. The young striker has yet to really explode and show that he can be in regular contention for the capocannoniere title in Serie A, but he is just behind Berardi in Sassuolo’s scoring, having shown an array of finishes that he’s capable of including some spectacular volleys. If the 22-year-old can even slightly raise the sheer volume of shots he gets then he should be a genuine force to be reckoned with as he’s got the technique to finish his chances very well.
Djuricic has not played regularly thanks to an injury picked up in October, while Boga has managed a couple of assists and generally made himself an option to wreck full-backs on the dribble. Traore has also played on the wing fairly often, more than he has played through the middle, and experienced French forward Gregoire Defrel has also both led the line and played off the right, although he has produce very little in the way of end product or memorable moments apart from perhaps his collision with Inter goalkeeper Samir Handanovic which the Neroverdi felt hard done by not to see result in a sending off for the Nerazzurri captain.
These options have looked decent if hardly spectacular, but it has been Berardi once again who has led the team in both goals and assists. There’s not really much to say about the 27-year-old beyond that he is a sexy player to behold when he’s in form, he’s always in form, and that the Emilian club will do well if they can keep hold of the attacker beyond next summer given that he’s absolutely in his footballing peak. I’ve been a touch disappointed by how Dioinisi has assembled the attack around Berardi (owing partly to Djuric’s injury it must be said) but I’ve been anything but disappointed by Berardi.
The result of all of this has been a team which has gotten plenty of famous results over the course of the campaign – they completely deserved their wins over Juventus and Milan while they probably deserved better for their efforts in a loss to Inter and had a late winner chalked off against Napoli. On the other hand, the team has also looked far from ruthless when it’s tried to get results against their direct competition in midtable. This has been no fluke, as they really have looked up for it against the big team before routinely failing to convince against the smaller sides. My best bet as to why is simply that the high-energy approach which they utilize can unsettle anyone, but that they struggle to manage ninety minutes against teams over whom they have a talent advantage and a more proactive approach. It’s made them an interesting team to watch no doubt, if frustrating, and leaves them very much stranded in midtable rather than pushing into European places.
Where I expect them to finish: 10th
What’s to come: I haven’t been totally impressed with what I’ve seen from Dionisi, but he has basically kept the club’s approach going by giving a lot of playing time to all of the intriguing or downright great players in their packed squad, and keeping them very comfortable in midtable. It’s what you’d expect from the Neroverdi at this point and it makes a lot more sense as an approach than if they’d decided to appoint someone like, let’s say, Beppe Iachini again.
As mentioned, the former Empoli coach has not managed to push them into midtable, and I think that a lot of people would blame the departures of Locatelli and, to a lesser extend, Rogerio for this. I’m not really sold on that explanation mostly because I think Frattesi and especially Lopez have been excellent in midfield, while Ferrari has been one of the better centre-backs in the division to pick up the slack without Marlon there.
The first issue that I think has kept this team from unleashing its full potential has been that the sheer quality of their attacking options hasn’t really been unleashed due to how Dionisi uses the players together. The Neroverdi are solidly in the top half of Serie A for goals scored, but they are not exactly nipping at the heels of the Atalantas and Lazios in this regard. Their attacking approach has meant that they look capable of scoring, but not really resulted in them “flying high” with a group of players who are absolutely capable of it.
One positive sign that this could improve over the second half is the form that Raspadori has shown in his last few games of the autumn where the coach trusted him to play centrally off a striker. The 21-year-old could be entering his last nineteen-match run of Serie A games for the Neroverdi, but he is also arguably second only to Berardi in terms of pure talent and impact in the final third that he can summon. If Dionisi trusts Raspadori to cook alongside Scamacca and Berardi and plays him in what could be called his natural position, and does so week to week, the team should carry more of a threat.
The second reason to think that the Neroverdi could enjoy more consistent attacking form across the second half of the campaign is that Djuricic could return. I have long felt that the 29-year-old was key to keeping the team ticking over around the penalty area under De Zerbi, and he had been trusted by Dionisi up until his injury. A consistent run of games for the Serb should bring both rhythm and end product to an attack with more flashy ballers like Berardi and Raspadori in it, moreso than some of the players who have appeared more than him as part of the front four. This is, if he stays fit.
Boga looks to be on his way out to Atalanta, and so his departure will represent a loss of a certain dimension for Dionisi to call upon, but frankly, I think that should be more than offset by Raspadori being better-integrated into the team.
I would also continue to beat the drum that Muldur ought to play more as I think his presence on the pitch improves the Neroverdi’s ability to build up from the back compared to when Toljan plays on the right. This really actually points the larger issue that I think the Neroverdi play too direct and vertical a style compared to under De Zerbi. The current Shakhtar coach’s vision could occasionally have Sassuolo looking like paint dry as they went through their carefully tested maneuvers building out from the back, but they could control matches against all manner of opposition and then suddenly and dramatically up the tempo and flare too, and they lack that so far under Dionisi.
There is every chance that Dionisi makes the whole team just that little bit calmer and more calculated in possession and finds the Goldilocks balance which sees this team as clearly one of the top eight or nine teams in Serie A. There is also every chance that he doesn’t and that this is just how he wants them to play, and so I’m factoring that into my prediction. I don’t think that the Neroverdi will hurdle too far up the table, but their squad is better than thirteenth and I have to imagine that things will come together just that little bit better in attack such that they can overtake some of the sides just ahead of them.
Hellas Verona
Where I expected them to finish: 15th
What I thought at the beginning of the season: I think that there is likely to be some confusion in the commentary and punditry this season to the effect that new head coach Eusebio Di Francesco is continuing on the way that they were playing under Ivan Juric for the past two campaigns. The Croatian left for Torino because he felt that the Granata could offer him a far more ambitious project spending-wise, and it’s hard to feel that the clubs’ respective transfer windows have not proved him right on this. But we’ll get to that in a bit.
One of the things that really marked the Gialloblu under Juric, to my eyes, was their defensive solidity. For all of the chatter about how the Croatian coach was replicating the high-flying style of his mentor Gian Piero Gasperini, I think the reality was quite different in most games. Verona largely accepted their limitations as a midtable team, picked their spots, and utilized a highly versatile approach mostly to frustrate opponents rather than trying to overwhelm teams as Gasp’s Atalanta do, or as both of his Genoa teams did.
You never knew precisely what formation the Gialloblu were liable to line up in under Juric, beyond that he strongly favours the nominal back three, but you could expect that the many versatile players he has at his disposal would be used in varying ways to go man-to-man against whatever the anticipated system being used by their opposition was, chiefly to suffocate the opponent and then play attacking combinations from there when they could.
Di Francesco is… not the coach I would entrust with keeping this idea of football in place, to understate the point. Whatever good work the 52-year-old may have done in building up Sassuolo a few years ago, he has looked out of sorts everywhere else he has went since. Roma managed to become a much less defensively solid outfit under his watch than they had been under Luciano Spalletti, while he showed zero acumen as a midtable coach with Sampdoria and Cagliari, both of whom he left in a complete shambles.
Di Francesco has spoken about his intention to build on the work of his predecessor with the Gialloblu, which I guess means that he plans to play with three at the back, although I’m not sure how he would ever be comfortable drilling the kind of complex marking schemes that were Juric’s stock in trade. What the former Sassuolo boss does like for his teams to do is force the issue, with lots of forward passes on at all times to stretch and dice up opponents.
It’s a noble enough vision of football, I guess, but he also showed no Plan B or capacity to arrest a slide while in charge of the Blucerchiati or the Gialloblu. And those were arguably better than what he inherits at Verona, no less. Juric was fairly clear on the point that he left because he felt that the team was not doing enough to get the players he needed at his disposal, and Di Francesco is willingly stepping in to work with a group that the Croat at least implicitly suggested are not good enough to keep themselves at a high level in Serie A.
Accordingly, I expect the Gialloblu to be a bit of a disaster area, albeit and entertaining and intriguing one. There is still some real creative quality in the squad, particularly in the form of sparkplug wide forward Mattia Zaccagni who was outstanding last season. Antonin Barak, meanwhile, has developed into a fine creator and also a source of goals from attacking midfield, while also having the workrate to have endeared himself to the demanding Juric. These are likely to be the team’s stars under Di Francesco as well and should be pretty fun to watch.
Federico Dimarco has returned to Inter from loan, and the 23-year-old’s deliveries into the box as well as positional versatility will be missed, while Bosko Sutalo and Gianluca Frabotta arrive on loan from Atalanta and Juventus respectively to join the wide rotation. I have doubts that either will displace the reliable Marco Faraoni and Darko Lazovic as the starting wide options, but they will at least provide depth and some intriguing high upside, with Frabotta in particular a player who could grow a lot and be very formidable for Verona.
In midfield I anticipate that Di Francesco will want to get the most out of Miguel Veloso’s passing influence if the Portuguese still has the legs for it, although based on last season I would be convinced by a central pairing of Ivan Ilic and Adrien Tameze, both of whom have a bit of everything to link defense and attack. Martin Hongla also arrived on loan from Antwerp, so it will be interesting to see if he can make the step up to the level of the options alongside him.
In defensive, probably the Gialloblu’s best individual defender from last season left for Atalanta in the form of Matteo Lovato. Pavel Dawidowicz remains as probably the second best left, but I am really skeptical of how Di Francesco will be able to get this defensive setup preventing opponents from reaching their goal frequently and with disastrous consequences.
Goalkeeper Marco Silvestri is another pretty notable departure, with the Leeds United legend having gone to Udinese. The 30-year-old is pretty notably not someone who you’d call a Manuel Neuer-esque sweeper keeper, but his shotstopping was a big factor in the Gialloblu’s strong defensive record at least until a few bad errors down the stretch last season. Lorenzo Montipo arrives from Benevento, a capable replacement if less capable of those brilliant Hollywood saves. He seems to be more adept with the ball at his feet however, and must surely be more comfortable coming out of his goal than Silvestri was, and this could well be a savy move just for the sake of the stylistic coherency of the entire team provided he just doesn’t turn out to be a shit keeper at his main job of making saves.
Lastly, in attack I think the Gialloblu have a lot less the call upon than they can in those wide forward or attacking roles, hence why I named Zaccagni and Barak as their likely star men. The marquee arrival is Giovanni Simeone who showed in his time at Fiorentina and Cagliari that he is a technical dribbler and immensely hard worker, but does not inspire confidence as a finisher. Meanwhile, speed merchant and top-ten-name-in-the-history-of-our-game Kevin Lasagna is pretty good although he didn’t exactly pull up trees over the second half of last campaign. Nikola Kalinic might still be a midtable striker as well. Between the three of them, Verona fans will have to hope that one can hit something like their best form to compensate for what I imagine will be quite a leaky defense.
If Di Francesco makes it to January and the team are still stranded close to the bottom of the table I could see them dipping into the market, very possibly to loan in someone from a bigger club who is not in favour. I am thinking of talented players like Atalanta’s Aleksei Miranchuk or Milan’s Junior Messias. For this reason, as well as the lingering quality still in their squad, I expect Verona to finish ahead of a few of the truly weaker teams in the league, but I would not bet on much more than this.
Where they currently sit: 12th
How they have done so far: Verona sacked their coach hours apart from Cagliari, both three league matches into the season and both going into the first international break, and so like the Rossoblu their story is naturally going to revolve around this. As with Cagliari, much of what I said pertaining to their coach goes out the window more or less. Unlike the Rossoblu, however, Verona have enjoyed quite a bit of success under their new coach.
I actually felt that the decision to sack Di Francesco was far from a straightforwardly good one, despite my deep skepticism about his qualities as a coach. A club in Verona’s position don’t exactly have the money to allocate to severance pay for a coach, and so getting rid of a guy you hired weeks ago hardly seems prudent in that respect. Moreover, the club immediately hired the guy who had been the other front-runner for the position of Juric’s replacement in the summer to take his place. Former Juventus midfielder Igor Tudor, who had previous spells in charge at PAOK, Galatasaray, and Udinese before acting as Andrea Pirlo’s assistant coach at Juventus last campaign, came in and took Di Francesco’s place.
If the decision was based on what was seen on the pitch, I’m not sure I could agree with it. Zero points from three Serie A matches is, obviously, not good, but the Gialloblu were hardly bad. Di Francesco saw the Venetians play defending champions Inter off the park for a good thirty minutes before the Nerazzurri’s superior quality told in a comeback win, but the blueprint was there for this team to be Serie A’s great entertainers under Di Francesco as they threw caution to the wind to rattle a much bigger-budget team than themselves.
A 1-0 loss to Bologna was perhaps more damning, as it gave an indicator that this was going to be far more of a typecast Di Francesco team. The Gialloblu dominated possession but were unable to create any telling chances, while they lacked defensive organization when they did lose the ball, losing their third straight match and damning Di Francesco to his third miserable sacking and the possibility that no Serie A club will hire him again. With that being said, I just genuinely did not think they were bad enough to sack any coach after just three matches in charge, especially one who had evidently impressed them enough with his ideas to get appointed in the summer.
The other possibility is that the results were not the only thing that led Verona to push the eject button, and that in reality their apprehensions had grown as much from watching the coach on the training pitch. Letting it get to this point doesn’t reflect well on the club’s directors no matter what, but if they recognized that the foundations were not there for good performances over the rest of the season then I completely sympathize with getting rid of Di Francesco before more damage could be done.
Tudor had been the other major candidate for the position in the summer, and the Croat quickly showed why this was the case as he inexplicably took the team that were bottom of the table upon his arrival and made them the form team in Serie A, at least for a period.
Tudor’s first match in charge at the Bentegodi was a brilliantly entertaining 3-2 win over Roma, the Giallorossi’s first dropped points of the campaign, while subsequent matches saw them draw 2-2 with Salernitana and then 3-3 with Genoa. A 4-1 shellacking of Lazio followed, while the other major highlight of their campaign was surely a 2-1 win over Juventus. The Gialloblu also got a deserved 1-1 draw with Napoli, while they only lost 2-3 to Milan thanks to some individual errors and bad luck. Their form has been a little erratic since, but this Verona side have been credibly midtable and deserve their spot ahead of Sassuolo and Sampdoria, for example.
How the Gialloblu have arrived here has been about as dramatic as the destination would suggest. First of all, the departure of Zaccagni just as the summer transfer window slammed shut deprived Di Francesco of pretty clearly his most gifted attacker. In his place came a player with a similar profile of a creative winger who is good on the dribble in Sampdoria loanee Gianluca Caprari, but also a player who has shone far less up to this season.
Caprari’s debut, in the aforementioned one-goal loss to Bologna, was something of a personal highlight of the season for me. The reason for this was that the 28-year-old twice beat a defender to enter the penalty area using an elastico, and on neither occasion looked like he had any idea of what to do with the ball once he got into this position. I’m not sure exactly what this portended for the winger’s time at the club, but I think he’s exceeded my expectations by quite a bit. Caprari has been one of the main creative forces in this team, and his direct running has made him a highly effective threat in the many moments of chaos that the team’s overall style tends to force within a match.
Arguably even better than Caprari has been Barak, who has kept his upward trajectory going in a more or less linear fashion. The Czech international has not exerted quite the playmaking influence that Caprari has, but he has done marvelously well as an all-action attacking midfielder playing off of the main striker and wreaking overall havoc.
The topline story for Verona’s season, however, has undoubtedly been the emergence of Giovanni Simeone as a goalscoring machine. I don’t personally think that the Argentine will keep it up at a rate of nearly a goal a game over the rest of the campaign, but there’s no ignoring how good his form has been at the tip of Verona’s spear. Aside from the fact that he is behind only Dusan Vlahovic and Ciro Immobile in the scoring charts for the league, Simeone actually leads the division outright when penalties are excluded. Cholito is on fire.
I don’t think I’ve noticed anything drastically different to Simeone’s play that has precipitated this explosion in form and goals, but his quality has always been apparent and if he can hit Lazio for four in one match I think he deserves the recognition as much as anyone in this league. I have yet to see the Argentine really turn into the kind of penalty box predator who will get enough chances at goal to be a serious threat to ever finish as Capocannoniere, especially without taking pens, but he is undeniably playing with an aura of confidence. Defenders are taking a more aggressive approach to trying to counteract Simeone, while goalkeepers rarely look like they have a prayer when he gets a finish away.
Meanwhile, in defense I have found versatile loan returnee Nicolo Casale to be a good shout for the Gialloblu’s best performer, whilst Koray Gunter alternates between great performances and rash moments that cost his team virtually by the week. And in midfield it has been Ilic and especially Tameze who have shone under Tudor, both looking up to the Croat’s demanding system.
Where I expect them to finish: 13th
What’s to come: Verona are not a one-man team by any stretch and I’m certain will do better to rely more on contributions from Barak and Caprari than on trusting that Simeone’s unbelievable form continues as it has been doing.
I don’t really see any reason why this won’t be the case, and I think that their midfield also looks very tidy. There’s a lot of material here on which Tudor can rely, while the whole team does certainly appear up for their coach’s methods and system. One major worry will have to be the season-ending injury of Pavel Dawidowicz, who was a regular fixture in the defense before he was ruled out. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see the Gialloblu look to bring in a defender on loan, or even on a permanent transfer, to take his place.
Overall, the form that Verona showed since the return from the November international break is probably a truer reflection of their level than their heroics in Tudor’s honeymoon period. Even so, I think they’re certainly doing better than I and many other people expected when Juric departed. I think they’ll keep it up even if they probably shouldn’t be targeting an upper midtable finish of the kind that Juric guided to, or that they were fantasizing about a couple of months ago.
Torino
Where I expected them to finish: 9th
What I thought at the beginning of the season: The Granata have not been shy about using the summer transfer window to reinforce a squad that came perilously close to relegation as they slumped through last campaign with a squad that looked too good to go down. Wolfsburg’s Josip Brekalo, Still-somehow-Juventus-owned Marko Pjaca, and Milan prodigy Tommaso Pobega reinforce the team in midfield and in the creative inside forward roles, and as if this wasn’t enough, former Sampdoria midfielder Dennie Praet also comes in on loan from Leicester City.
Factoring in that Karol Linetty and Sasa Lukic are already still here it is probably safe to say that there won’t be any lack of options to support captain Andrea Belotti. Conducting this orchestra will be Ivan Juric, whose work with Verona over the past two seasons has made him one of the more widely-admired managers in Serie A.
It will be a surprise if Juric decides to take any approach to this team other than playing with a nominal back three and wing-backs, while I think everyone in central and attacking midfield positions will get a fair bit of game time given that I think that how the Croat sets his team up will inevitably be dependent on their opposition. At any rate, they have creativity from deep, the ability to unlock teams on the dribble, and even some goals somewhere in all those players just mentioned, and so I anticipate that Torino will be one of the easier-on-the-eye teams when they get forward. Belotti is also a pretty steady scorer usually, and capable of getting the best out of his teammates in the final third.
Juric will not be satisfied to just see the Granata play fancy passing football, however – the former Genoa and Verona coach is sure to expect that this team work very hard to deny opponents a rhythm in matches while giving them the tools to impose one of their own. If Juric can get a song out of these players, then the Granata could will be a real surprise package in the league.
Both Genoa and and especially Verona under Juric looked to play a man-to-man style of marking which generally made it very easy for them to have plenty of defensive options when they were out of possession, as well as passing options when they had the ball. The coach is not afraid to tinker with his team to ensure that the right players are on the pitch to exploit specific matchups, to counteract opposing formations, and so on, both in terms of his starting eleven selections and his in-game substitutions. For this reason, the big and diverse squad of fairly high-quality players who Torino have assembled for their new coach should be put to good use.
One area I haven’t spoken about yet is the defense, mostly because this is not really as exciting as the thought of players like Lukic and Praet playing Juric’s system in full flow. In truth, however, the defenders are often expected to be very aggressive and join in midfield or even attack, while their quality and alertness in reading danger and winning duels is pretty imperative to avoiding a really bad defensive record and also to keeping the team on the front foot.
Armando Izzo is a pretty experienced head who always did a job in a back three under Walter Mazzarri, while I could see Ricardo Rodriguez having a big role to play as a wide centre-back. The former Wolfsburg man has done very well in the position for Switzerland under Vladimir Petkovic, and can act as the first line of attack with his able passing range in buildup and even join the attack. The player to watch will surely be Bremer, however, The Brazilian has been linked with the big teams in Serie A as well as Liverpool, and I think I can just about see it. Bremer will be asked to do a dogged job and put under a lot of pressure as he will in all probability be given the central role in the back three, but I think he is something of a prodigy and should just about cope. If he can do so, it will set the tone for the rest of the team.
The wide areas also promise to be important for this Torino’s adventures this season, and I have saved the player I am most excited for last to talk about. 21-year-old Ivorian wide-man Wilfried Singo was the brightest spot in a pretty dreary first half of the campaign under Marco Giampaolo last term, and he was almost a player I’d tune in to watch on his own. I was a little surprised that Inter did not consider the 21-year-old to take the place of Achraf Hakimi, as his runs from in to out bore more than a little bit of a stylistic resemblance to the Moroccan.
Singo didn’t really explode in terms of end product in a fairly poor Torino team last campaign, but I would not bet against him doing so in what promises to be a significantly better one. Even if he is not regularly scoring or assisting goals, the Ivorian can offer this team a tremendous amount for breaking teams down from wide areas. Meanwhile, Ola Aina returns from loan from Fulham to give some competition to Cristian Ansaldi on the left, with the latter still being a great creative presence with his deliveries into the box but perhaps not reliable to start all the time in Juric’s difficult playing system.
Where they currently sit: 11th
How they have done so far: Torino are a respectable eleventh in the table after nineteen matches played, and a world away from the relegation peril they were in this time one year ago. And yet, there’s a feeling that this season has not been all that it could be, at least so far.
To begin with, Andrea Belotti being mostly out of the team through injury has deprived the team of a high-volume goalscorer, somewhat blunting their edge in attack. I like watching Antonio Sanabria for his movement and he is technically decent, but I don’t think he’ll ever be a great finisher. The result of Sanabria mostly leading the line while no one single teammate among the options behind him has really made their mark in terms of end product, has been that the Granata have one of the less prolific attacks in Serie A.
On the plus side, Torino’s nineteen goals conceded so far is a better record than all but Juventus, Napoli, and Inter across the first half of the season. I tend to take this as a better bellwether of how the team have played both sides of the ball than their attack. The defense owes partly to excellent individual quality (which I’ll get to) and the attack to the lack of a natural goalscorer, which is admittedly a worry, but the fact remains that this team can control matches enough across ninety minutes that most opponents simply fail to get enough of a foothold in games to score against them much.
Bremer has been one of the outstanding defenders in Serie A this season, and his dominant presence has been quite vital to making sure that the backdoor is not open for the overall quite suffocating defense that they play as a unit. He’s good in the air and especially on the ground, and is probably the closest thing to Cristian Romeo at Atalanta last campaign in that he’s a defender who people who like watching defenders defend will like to watch defend.
Meanwhile, goalkeeper Vanja Milinkovic-Savic has been another very notable presence in this team. Notable, for one, because he is the younger brother of Lazio star Sergej Milininkovic-Savic, and two, because he is a 6’8 man mountain. I’m not sure how this guy was not previously ever a regular starter at this level, but he has the outright size to simply cut dangerous deliveries out by reaching out his arm, and also seems technically well-suite to turn his presence in goal into highlight reel saves when he is needed. I think Bremer has been the more important overall player, but I’d probably name Milinkovic-Savic as the player who has done the most outright to keep their goals conceded tally not just low, but to only a goal a game in a league where Catenaccio is very much a thing of the past.
Singo has been excellent and once again a player I just find entertaining to watch, although he has not quite made the jump up that I might have hyped him up as ready to do before the season started.
Lukic and Pobega looks to be the preferred central midfield pairing here, and certainly has been the most effective one. Up front, I have been a fan of Praet more than Brekalo or Pjaca, although the Belgian has missed some games due to injury. I think he makes them tick over and can both score and assist goals at a good rate and should get a run of games in the team, however.
Ansaldi got the season off to a wonderful start with three assists, but he has mostly been out of the team. I like watching him as a neutral but it wouldn’t surprise me if the Argentine is simply not trusted to do a job in this formation.
Where I expect them to finish: 9th
What’s to come: Belotti is out injured for a couple more months yet, while he is also nearly certain to leave the team in the summer when his contract expires. This is a problem for them up front unless signings arrive, or unless he has one last big hurrah between his return from injury and the summer.
Aleksei Miranchuk had been linked for a while but now looks closer to some other teams, and truthfully the Russian was hardly the obvious profile to add goals to this team. If this Granata side were to take a loan gamble like Simeone at Verona, or sign a prospect such as Vlahovic at Fiorentina, and have it turn out anywhere close to as well as those two have at their respective clubs, then there is little doubt that they would be able to surge up the table. However, those kinds of players obviously don’t grow on trees, so Torino’s struggles in front of goal could continue to be a theme even as their football wins them admirers.
This struggle for goals is likely to be the most pertinent theme for the Granata in both the January transfer window, and in determining the overall trajectory of their season across the business end. I am inclined to think that a team that has performed as they have so far this campaign will get better rather than worse with more time together, and comfortably hold onto what they have or even move up a couple places. Doing any better than this, however, could prove tricky without a fit and firing Belotti.