Outta This and Inter Something Better

It's Happening!!

Back to the Future

So as you will have seen above I have decided to revert to the original objective of this save with Inter. As we stand (and if you can remember) we had just won the domestic double in Italy but struggled to get anywhere in Europe, being knocked out at the first hurdle by eventual winners Real Madrid. A couple of players started getting itchy feet about wanting to go to a better club (namely main man Santon who in the alternate future I signed for Bayern) and so there was a big summer ahead.

In other news, Serbia managed to win Euro 2016, beating Switzerland 4-0 in the final. One of our younger players Luka Jovic even netted in the final, expect to see him in and around the first team in the next season or so.

Transfers

This summer we were given a monster £70m to spend and a lot of wages to play with, but that did not stem the outgoings. Remember, I am still looking to nationalise the squad (or at least make it home grown) and so a few foreigners were on the move.

Out


Gary Medel was the first to leave as Liverpool (another of my teams from the alternate future) came in with a bid I couldn't turn down. With 2 years left on his contract, monster wages of £90k p/w and only being valued at £6m, £22m is a monster offer that I took instantly.

Sadly we did lose Santon to Man City but again, the fee probably justifies the move. We had a nice chat as he left too:

What a nice lad.

Tim Krul headed back to Newcastle in a cut price deal, mainly down to the form of Scuffet who had an exceptional season in going from Italy's U19 keeper to European Championships number 1 in a single season. Krul was never going to feature much this year and so I figured I'd cut ties before he became unhappy.

Someone who was constantly unhappy was Mr Osvaldo/Kahl Drogo. Followers of this story will know that whenever there was a problem at the club he usually piped up and wasn't really worth the trouble. He headed off to Marseille for a slight profit on what we paid for him. In true Osvaldo style he signed off with this gem:

Good luck floundering in another league, pal.

Osvaldo was joined by Taider who did well last year but I felt I'd rather give Odegaard the opportunities that Taider took last year to aid his development.

Bardi became unhappy at being second choice keeper and so moved on to Palermo in a deal that was agreed in April

Longo was a youth player that I didn't really see a future in, recouping £2m on his was a steal.

Finally the most disappointing (for me) was that we lost Mauro Icardi to Atletico after kicking up a fuss about wanting to go to Benfica of all places!! £10m is probably low for him but it is laden with clauses, even if he is sold on at the same price we'll make a good 40% of that.

£99m in. Not a bad summer. I'll pick up the 'Ins' in the next update

Summer 2016 Continued

We had a big summer as you can see in the previous post, raking in £99m to add to our already inflated pot of £70m to spend. Here's how we did it:

Transfers
In


I'll mainly go through 'first team' players as there are a lot of players here who join us aged 15-17 for the future, I'll do a report on them at some point in the future.

To start Dodo was our only non-Italian signing this season, a signing I did not make too. His agreement was sorted wayyyyyy back in 2014 before I arrived and before he went to spend a season with rivals Roma. Italian football is an odd creature. I'll keep him around a little while as he's young and the outgoing Santon means that we need someone to fill the void at left back. Dodo did well for us there previously and so hopefully he can repeat it.

Ceria comes in from Juventus as a young attacking midfielder who, to be honest doesn't fit our current system but his potential (and stealing that potential from Juve) and value were too good to turn down. He'll be in and around the first team and may be a bigger part of it if we begin to change our system.

Florenzi was sorted in February, filling the gap left b Kovacic who left us in January. I feel he'll be a big part of this season for us, reflected in the cash that we've thrown at him.

Our next first team signing is Valerio Verre comes in from Udinese as a holding midfielder, replacing Medel and competing with Benassi and Pugliese for a starting berth in the midfield.

Alex Meret also comes in from Udinese, joining former team mate Scuffet in our goalkeeping department and most likely watching him all season. He probably isn't ready for first team football but I'll give him the chance in cups etc to get the experience. In those two and Audero we have three really good young keepers.

Ciro Immobile is our final signing of note and a big, big bargain at that. He comes in to replace Osvaldo/Icardi in a starting place, with the aforementioned Jovic moving up from the u20s after his loan and successful summer with Serbia to fill the 4th striker spot.

Everyone else there is a young player that is coming in for the future. Genoa seem to have had a great batch come in and I am happy to take advantage of it. Swedish/Italian Giovanni Carota from Grasshoppers is probably the pick of the bunch, costing £5m.

£75m spent, although around £30m of that is on youth players, meaning I have invested quite a lot of that in the future and have a hefty £80m odd left to spend if I ever need it or the opportunity arrives to sign a big Italian player like Balotelli, De Sciglio or Verratti. We're about £600k under the wage budget too!

Pre-Season 2016


Fairly standard, with a mini tour of the US thrown in there for good measure.

Supercoppa
As winners of both the league and TIM cup I think I should just automatically win this but it wasn't to be. Losing cup finalists Sampdoria stepped in to face us and this is how it went:


Débutante Immobile joined last season's top scorer Palacio in netting an early goal, settling the tie after 6 minutes and coasting thereafter. Trophy number 4 in just over 2 seasons.

Serie A


Just one game in the league this month and it was against Parma at home. We started very slowly, but once they went a man down we took full advantage of the 10 men and netted 4 goals, Immobile getting on the score sheet again with a brace. I probably should have played Bona here, if you remember back he scored an incredible 10 goals in 3 games against Parma over the space of a fortnight last season. I also noticed that our full backs weren't as attacking as Santon was last year, although Donati on the right did manage to bag a scrappy goal.

The Champions League
Last but not least we went straight into the group stages of the CL this year given that we are actually CHAMPIONS.


Barca is obviously a tough draw, but it will give us the chance to test our mettle against a big club over two games and test out some systems for the knock-outs. I don't envisage any problems with the other two teams but I've been wrong before.

The Squad (s)

As mentioned previously, I thought I'd take a bit of a look at our squads, saying that there's been loads of transfers but I've never really updated you guys on how we look! Here's the team as we stand:


As you can see we now have 16 first-team Italians, contrary to the mega low 6 that we had at the beginning. Mbaye is also home grown but chose to represent Senegal instead of Italy. Slowly but surely we're moving towards a fully 'home-grown' team. Odegaard and Jovic joined us young enough to be classed as home-grown by the end of 2017 and 2018 respectively, with Balanta and Juan Jesus as the only 'foreigners' expected to stay on any further than this season, unless Dodo and M'Vila have remarkable seasons.

We're keeping it young too, with Palacio, Vidic and Hernanes the only players over 26!

The Youth
It's about time I showed you a little of the youth teams I have been building. You'll have seen that in every transfer window bar the first I have signed young, Italian players to be the future of Inter. Here's a snapshot of them:

U20


U18


Those out on loan are already classed as home grown to the club, others will stay with us to earn that status before they are loaned out etc. The gems speak for themselves and when you consider that 16 of our first-team squad are U23, the future is really bright for us if all of these players develop as they should. An additional bonus is that the majority of 'future fee' clauses were removed from the transfer deals as I opted to buy them all in cash. This means that if these players do develop or even get sold on, the money is 100% ours after the obligatory minimal fees that go to former clubs.

Internationally, what we're doing is clearly being noticed too. Here's Italy's U21 squad:


12 of the latest squad hail from Inter (some out on loan), with the majority of the rest on our radar or deemed not good enough by our scouts, such as the current Udinese keeper Provodel. Clearly Udinese have a thing for developing keepers as both Meret and Scuffet joined me from there and this kid is showing promise.

September 2016


Well I've been avoiding this. After the Parma win we have made an awful start to Serie A, losing at Lazio despite leading early doors.

A rotated(ish) team dominated Kobenhavn in our only win this month, something that has potentially kept me in my job!

Juventus then came to visit, leaving with a point which in hindsight isn't an awful result but in the context of this month it really isn't helping. The goal that Verre scored will surely be up for goal of the month, a brilliant 35 yard free kick.

The draw at Catania can definitely be seen as a poor result, that's for sure!

We then travelled to Napoli where I set up a little more defensively to try and halt the run of poor results... somehow this resulted in us conceding 3 in the first 14 minutes, switching back to attacking to chase the game and levelling it up with 20 to go. Things like this really annoy me as I wonder how we would have done if we had just stayed attacking.

Taking the last game into account I thought I'd attack from the off in my next one... Barca away. We went in at the break at 1-1 through a Jovic equaliser after Lord Messi gave them an early lead. After the break Mr Donati received 2 yellow cards in 4 minutes, putting us well under the cosh as Suarez, Volland and Neymar all netted. Damn.

Lots of lessons learned.

October 2016


Needing to right the wrongs of September we set out to improve our form with a much changed team. I decided to trust some of our younger players with starts, dropping the likes of M'Vila and Palacio and they did not disappoint.

Sassuolocame to visit and 2 goals from corners saw us take the points. Bona(zzoli) came in for Palacio and grabbed the winner for us with a bicycle kick after the corner was headed back to him

We then went to our Supercoppa opponents Sampdoria and took another win from them. Immobile was unplayable, ran them ragged and scored a great goal before assisting Romagnoli for his tap in.

We then travelled to Maribor in the Champions League and I gambled with a rotated team. Jovic scored a great goal before getting injured 2 months (IIRC) with a hamstring tear. Juan Jesus and Hernanes wrapped up the win there

Struggling Livorno then came to visit and we were a bit lacklustre. Florenzi scored a great free-kick early on to put us ahead with Immobile grabbing our second. We then coasted to the end of the game which is disappointing as I would have liked more goals

We then went to Fiorentina which turned out to be the only game we didn't win this month. We went a goal down very early, only for Florenzi to score an identical free kick to his last one at an almost identical time, with Juan scoring from a corner 30-odd seconds later to put us ahead. Unfortunately we couldn't hold on but IMO that's a good point away from home.

To wrap the month up we managed a comfortable 3-0 win against Palermo, Immobile was unplayable again, scoring either side of Balanta.

Table

The early table looks a lot better that you'd have expected, give September. We currently chase a revitalised Juve and Roma, two teams who are yet to lose a game and don't seem to be conceding many goals. The Other Lot are down in 15th and have just sacked Inzaghi. It's looking like Slaven Bilic will replace him, the nutter.

November 2016


Out of context, this month looks a little awful but in fact it isn't the worst. The only game I'm actually disappointed about is the Roma defeat.

Having already secured enough points for the 1st Round Knockouts (which is what the board wanted), we sent a much rotated team out against Maribor and secured a comfortable win.

I mentioned that I wasn't too disappointed about Bologna and that was because incredibly we went down to 9 men after 34 minutes with M'Vila and Mbaye both receiving straight red cards for tackling. In an even more ludicrous turn of events, BOTH were rescinded on appeal, something I've rarely had success with in the past and I don't ususally bother to do.

Roma then came to visit us and despite 15 chances we couldn't score a single goal. This is the one game that annoyed me this month!

The same team that faced Maribor went out against Kobenhavn and fought out a 0-0 draw against a team that have been managerless since July when Stale Solbakken left. This keeps getting brought up in conferences around who will replace him/will it have an effect etc and I wonder if it is somehow a bug as they aren't in a loaded league.

A comfortable win against Torino saw Juan score from another corner and Florenzi score from another free kick.

Finally, Barca and their ridiculous forward line came to play. We fought valiantly, with a full strength side in an effort to test out our system against a tough team (in a better manner than last time at least!) We conceded in the 3rd minute via Suarez who has haunted us in both games, we levelled and then Suarez scored a heartbreaking winner in the 93rd minute pretty much against the run of play.



As predicted, we finished runner up in the group quite comfortably, losing only to Barca who won every game. I don't look forward to meeting them at a later stage if we can get far enough to do so, they are pretty formidable right now.

December 2016



We recovered from an average November with a great win against The Other Lot. Immobile dropped to a deeper role of 'complete forward' to accommodate a starting birth for Bonazzoli as an advanced forward and it seemed to work to great effect. 2 goals for our summer signing but our rivals to bed in their new managers first game... some way to start Mr Bilic!

We then left it very late at Udinese, stealing a point in what must be Fergie Time on a very narrow pitch which really seemed to hamper us and the use of our attacking full back as they had little room to manoeuvre.

We then wrapped up the month against Cagliari in strange circumstances. At 1-1 we went down to 10 men as Juan was sent off and so we looked at damage limitation... this however wasn't the case as we went on to score a 2nd before the break and then really rout them in the second half, with Bonazolli again scoring late to wrap the game up.

Table


As we enter the winter break we trail both Roma and the newly revived Juve with quite a gap between us and 1st but not so much between us and 4th. We need a run like we did in the second half of last season (unbeaten since December) to have any hope of retaining the title. I knew it would be a tough season but I did hope for a little better.

Champions League


The German Champions are our next opponents in the Champions League (yes, Champions - not Bayern) and they could prove tough. Lets see if we can get past the first round knockout for the first time since returning to the elite.

January 2016


After the mini winter break, we've come back well although admittedly it is against some of the poorer teams.

In the league we travelled to Empoli, the scene of a first day slip up not too long ago. This time it was different, we took the lead early on and dominated the game from there after.

Empoli then came to visit us in the TIM cup and our new 11 scraped a 0-0 draw with them and lost out on penalties, goalkeeper Meret missing the decisive penalty for us... taking the 5th one for some reason! This doesn't both me too much as it lessens our games for the rest of the season (if we don't go all of the way in the CL anyways) and the board aren't bothered about it either.

The return to league action saw Bonazzoli step in for the injured Immobile and step into his shooting boots, netting both goals against Cesena.

Against Atalanta, Bona bagged another brace, one goal either side of another Florenzi free-kick making it 5 so far for him this season. Incredible.

He made it 6 free-kicks with the solitary goal against Parma to bag us the points

Incredibly Florenzi was at it again against Lazio netting his third free-kick in as many games and his 4th goal of the month. He's some boy! Hernanes also scored having finished off a well worked passing move in which 9 of our players touched the ball before it hit the back of the net. Hernanes and Florenzi have really come into form this past month or so as I switched them around so that Flo is now AMC and the little Brazilian is MCL, the opposite of the early season.

Table


We closed the gap on the leading 2 this month and still have both of them to play, with out trip to Juve coming next month and **SPOILER ALERT** it doesn't end well...

Transfers


It's worth noting that January is silly season and we had a few players head out on loan. Ceria, Audero, Adu, Smekal and Castellano all went out to get some game time under their belts to aid their progression. Of this list, only Ceria asked for a loan move as he had watched a lot of games from the bench in the first team squad so far.

I tried to sell Mbaye as I feel we have 4 strong full-backs and he was just whining a lot. He heads to Sampdoria with the hope (from me at least) of a permanent move in summer.

Finally a look into the future, skipper Vidic moves to Russia having featured only once for us this season and really showing signs of getting on a bit to be honest. Juan steps up to skipper and Florenzi is his new deputy

February 2017


If we can all just calm down and avoid the Juve result that would be great. In true FM style, their main man Eriksen went off injured in the 3rd minute which I was very pleased about. What wasn't so great is that they replaced him with Tevez and 4 goals later we were getting hammered by half-time! Damage limitation ensued in the second half and we kept it down to 6. I was livid. God knows what happened

We then travelled to Catania making 7 changes because I was in a huff and we walked to a 4-1 win.

We then faced our home leg against Dortmund and left ourselves with it all to do really, we should have won but a score draw means that we have to go to Germany and score at least 1 goal to have a chance of progressing. Good to see Mr Immobile score against his old club

The Napoli game was essentially a chance to right some wrongs from the Juve match, hammering our rivals 5-0 with an outstanding performance. We scored our 2nd and 3rd goals within a minute of eachother and that left them shell-shocked with no reaction coming after half time. Happy with that!

Finally we went to bottom side Sassuolo and comfortably won 3-0, avoiding any shocks and getting their manager the sack at the same time

March 2017


Sampdoria then came to town and we beat them for the 3rd time this season

The second leg in Dortmund was disappointing as we just couldn't break them down after they stole an early lead. Again, we fall at the first hurdle which is something we really need to improve

Against Livorno we nearly lost 2 points, conceding in the 88th minute to level the tie. Thankfully Martin Odegaard stepped up for the injured Florenzi and grabbed a late screamer to secure the points

Florenzi then returned to win us the game against Fiorentina. How? A free-kick of course! He's on an incredible run with them. One bad thing did come from this game though:



This means that we have to recall one of our youth keepers from loan and Alex Meret steps up as our number one. It'll be good for him to get game experience but I'd rather that happened at a less important time!

Table


With 10 games to go, it's still fairly tight in the top 3. I wish the Juve result wasn't what it was as we'd be above them if we'd won but hey-ho. We still have Roma to play and the fact that they're going well in the Europa League may actually play into our hands. Fingers crossed that they slip and we can continue our solid run of form, we do still have The Other Lot to play again but other than them and Roma the remainder of our opponents are outside of the top 8.

Youth Intake


Here's our intake for the year, very excited about the prospects of left back Castelgrande and Biava in the midfield. Everyone with 'bid' beside their name has been signed on youth terms as has Dominic Shipton for the sheer fact that I thought it was hilarious to see a lad from Preston somehow end up in our youth ranks.

April 2017


After a steady start to the year we headed into April knowing the it was pretty much still in our hands if we wanted it. Two wins against Palermo and Bologna set us up nicely.

We then went to Roma and our title hopes died. I feared a similar result to the Juve game but it just wasn't to be. We're now battling to ensure a Champions League place

We continued the disappointment with a goalless draw at home to Torino but then turned it around by coming from 2-1 down against The Other Lot to win 3-2 and do the double in derby games.

Finally, thanks to an own goal we squeezed 3 points out of Udinese

May 2017


After an early Bonazzoli goal we dropped 2 points at Cagliari meaning we fell a little further behind second placed Juventus for the automatic Group Stage spot

Thanks to another Bona goal and then a Hernanes penalty in his final appearance for the club (due to injury and then leaving in the summer) we got back to winning ways against Empoli

Two goals each from Immobile and Florenzi saw us hammer Cesena before conceding 2 late, daft goals to make it 4-2

The season ended with a drab 1-1 draw with Atalanta, Yann M'Vila scoring a farewell goal as he too would be leaving in the summer as we cut the foreign contingent once more

Final Table 2016-17


Third place, can't complain but I am gutted that a side lead by Walter Mazzarri has won the title, due to the fact that he keeps telling everyone I'm only successful due to him... a really annoying feature in the game! Not many of this current side were around during his reign. Despite coming second, Juve sacked Allegri and replaced him with Van Gaal which I imagine will make for an interesting season next year

Awards
Not too much going on in terms of individuals but Florenzi, Scuffet and Immobile all made the team of the year

Onwards and upwards, an important summer ahead

Summer 2017



Our expectations for the season mirror the season before, hoping for a title challenge in Serie A and minimum of Champions League 1st Round Knockouts (we're in the qualifiers) whilst pretty much disregarding the TIM Cup again. Our budget was quite incredible with £62m to spend and £600k p/w to play with in the wage department having managed wages very tightly thus far, keeping the total bill down to just over £1m. It'll be hard to spend that money though as there isn't too much Italian talent available at the moment

Transfers

We'll start with the OUTS and for the first time I've included loans as you it will allow you to see where our future starts are developing.

Hernanes, Mbaye and M'Vila left as they are foreigners and didn't really impress last season, Mbaye pretty much being forced out from January onwards as he demanded to be a Key Player, which he is not. M'Vila is a miserable man and so it was less trouble to let him go than keep him and Hernanes only had a year left on his contract and at 32 after 3 good seasons I thought it was the right time.

As for loanees, those of note are essentially the 4 at Serie A teams as I'm hoping they'll get the experience to come into our squad next year. Rugani is one of those who we've just signed from Sampdoria but decided to leave him on loan there this season to continue in his first team role



A deceivingly busy one again but only a few of these players will see first team action. Borini will obviously be one of those first teamers, coming in to partner Immobile and hopefully give us a double threat up front. The other is the wonderful Mr Pirlo who caused a panic as I agree a deal with him in May, he declared his retirement in June and then joined us in July fit and raring to go. Strange, but I'm glad he's here as I plan to bring a 'half-back' into my system so that I can play with wing back and I feel that he would be perfect cover for it. 3 senior foreigners out, 2 senior Italian in and then the obvious promotions from our junior sides.

Everyone else signed is under 20.

Pre-Season and CL Qualifiers


I went for a jam packed schedule with some fairly decent teams and managed to score 2+ goals against all but 1 of them. That is pleasing as we seemed to scrape a lot of 1-0 wins last season which aren't great for the heart.

In our CL qualifiers we drew Toulouse and gave away a soft away goal in the first leg making the second a little tense. After a 2-2 draw in France thanks to new signing Borini, we move forward into the group stages in relative ease.



Here's our group and would you believe it's identical to last year only replacing Kobenhavn with Basel of Switzerland. Somehow we were drawn as first seed (not sure what Barca's coefficient is doing) and so we play them at home first

September 2017


September started with a very tough run on fixtures, against the Champions, the runners-up and then Barca in the Champions League.

The Roma defeat was hard to take as we lead early on but couldn't hold onto it. It does appear that the game has clocked onto what we are doing in building this squad as Mr Mazzarri commented on our home-grown talents. The defeat did little to prove I was in the right. Makes a change from him claiming all my success as his

A similar story against Juve, another spirited performance in which we lead and lost, this time doing so at 1-0 and 2-1 before falling to the 3-2 defeat. Gutted. Even more gutted by this:



Heading up to Christmas without our main man. This was potentially catastrophic to our chances of doing anything this season, especially domestically where he ran the show last season. I expected Odegaard to step into the fold after the injury but just a day before we faced Barca, he too dropped out with a knock. Step up 18 year old Simone Del Gallo, signed from Genoa last summer for under £4m



Not only did he have an instant impact in dominating Barca, but he set us on a run of wins. AS mentioned we were a force to be reckoned with as the Catalans came to town, our possession was around 69% and Del Gallo created a number of chances, all 3 goals being assisted by his boot. He then ran Livorno ragged in a comfortable 2-0 defeat. The youngster even clinched the points for us, late on at Catania before setting up both of the goals to see off Verona.

October


We gambled in resting lads for the Maribor tie as all of but our front 2 changed to rest those tired legs in midfield. The two most senior players showed their class as Immobile sealed a first half hat-trick, allowing him to have the second half off and Borini to step into his advanced forward role and grab a 4th.

We finally lost a game after a good run, away to Parma a tie which always seems to bring goals. Another 3-2 defeat really hurt us, Borini again a top performer for us.

We then faced bottom side Cittadella and seemingly struggled to get going, scraping a 2-1 win after being a goal down at half time.

In the Champions league we were lacklustre once again but super-sub Bonazzoli stole us a win late on

Finally we drew away to Napoli which to be honest, I would have taken before the start of the game

All in all, a fairly decent 2 months once we got the first 2 games out of the way. 3 league defeats at this stage is poor, but the fact that they came against the two best teams in the league, as well as the manner of the performances we put means that we can't be too disappointed with it. We're playing catch up, but that's no more than I expect with Serie A

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This might be the last update in a while as I'm off to adventure on the new update. This save will be kept alive though, so keep an eye out!