The Rise Of The Boro : Part 5 Life In The Top Flight

IMG_20180530_122414

Welcome to part 5 of my save with Middlesbrough FC, we have just completed our first season back in the top tier of English football (18/19) which is my second season at the club. If you read my last update you will know that I added the following players to the squad after our promotion winning season, Mo Besic, Lewis Baker, Helder Costa, Danny Ings, Nick Pope, Tomas Kalas and Loris Benito all on permanent deals, plus Moise Kean and Pablo Maffeo on loan deals.  I also promoted two of our academy players Harry Chapman and Callum Cooke in to the first team set up. At the start of the season my objective was to finish mid table by playing the same sort of style that won us the Championship last season.  So how did we get on?

Continue reading “The Rise Of The Boro : Part 5 Life In The Top Flight”

The Rise Of The Boro: Part 4 Transfer Special With Michel Herrera Conti

IMG_20180531_220145

Hello and welcome to part 4 of The Rise Of The Boro. The dust has barely settled from celebrating last season’s title winning promotion to the Premier League and we are working towards building a squad I think can give us stability in the top tier. We will stand by the system that I implemented during my first season at the club. The Smoggers 4-3-3 using 2 wide wingers served us well last season by producing some nice build up play from a solid framework. I am under no illusion that the forthcoming season will throw up a lot more problems for us. What I like about the Smoggers 4-3-3 is that it has a feeling of realism about the gameplay that it produces.

Continue reading “The Rise Of The Boro: Part 4 Transfer Special With Michel Herrera Conti”

The Rise Of The Boro : Part 3 The Race For Promotion

IMG_20180525_072019

So here we are with Part 3 of the save, a quick recap in my last post we had played 15 games of the 2017-2018 Championship Season and lead the table by 6 points after a fantastic start that saw us keep 9 consecutive clean sheets from the the start of the season and go 12 games undefeated however we had a somewhat bad October winning only 1 match which left me a bit deflated. If you want to catch up with the save you can read Part One here and Part Two here. I don’t know what it is but you know how you get attached to something, this club is most definitely become my 2nd club behind my Internazionale. The club and everything around it seems to have sucked me in like no other in all the years that I have played FM.

Continue reading “The Rise Of The Boro : Part 3 The Race For Promotion”

The Rise Of The Boro : Part 2 The Season Kicks Off

IMG_20180522_072435

Smoggies, Originally, this was a term of abuse for supporters of Middlesbrough FC coined by their Sunderland A.F.C. counterparts. The name was meant to refer to the pollution once allegedly produced by the local petrochemical industry, and from Dorman Long.  Though, at first, Smoggie was used as a pejorative term, it has become an example of reappropriation with many people now proudly calling themselves ‘Smoggies

Continue reading “The Rise Of The Boro : Part 2 The Season Kicks Off”

The Rise Of The Boro (The Story Of An Italian In The North East)

IMG_20180515_073918

Welcome to my brand new save with Middlesbrough FC a club based arguably in North Yorkshire or Teeside  England. So why Middlesbrough? Here is an introduction to the save, after reading @FM_Laudrup fantastic blog about Glasgow Rangers I was inspired so much so that I wanted to manage somewere in the North of England or Scotland. I also wanted to takeover a club with an infrastructure that over time will allow me to build a youth academy in the North of England that will mirror the likes of Sporting Club in Portugal who are renowned for their development of technical players  and be competitive in the Premier League, but first I need to get to work on getting the club out of the Championship.

Continue reading “The Rise Of The Boro (The Story Of An Italian In The North East)”

The Serpents Kiss (2.2) Campione D’Italia

IMG_20180430_075900

Welcome to the latest instalment of The Serpents Kiss. If you are viewing for the first time you might want to start at the beginning of my journey with Internazionale if this is the case you can click on the following text: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five. So you are up to speed with the story so far with us topping the Serie A table at the halfway stage of season 2. We had also qualified for the Champions League knockout stage of which we had been given a tasty draw against Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.  The January transfer window also saw one of our central defenders Milan Skriniar join FC Barcelona  for a fee of £35.5m which opened the door for our two young Belgian defender’s Vanheusden and Van Den eynden to battle it out with our promising Italian Davide Bettella for a first team place. I did enter the transfer window to bring Filippo Melegoni in to the club from Atalanta for a fee rising up to £14m which I feel is a reasonable price to pay for the talented youngster.

Continue reading “The Serpents Kiss (2.2) Campione D’Italia”

The Serpents Kiss (2.1)’The Rise Of Mazzocchi’

IMG_20180416_074822

Welcome back to The Serpents Kiss, the story of my managerial career at Internazionale which is well in to season two. If you are new to this blog you can catch up with the story so far by scrolling to the  bottom of this post were you can view the links to the previous four posts. A quick recap of whats gone on at the Giuseppe Meazza so far: Season 1 saw us finish 4th in the table and qualify for the Champions League thanks to a solid team performance throughout the season were we played a 4-1-4-1 system. Our top four finish owed a lot to the goals of Mauro Icardi who netted 23 during the season, Icardi then demanded the chance to talk to Manchester United which resulted in a £74m transfer and me looking at ways to fill the Argentine’s void.

Continue reading “The Serpents Kiss (2.1)’The Rise Of Mazzocchi’”

The Serpents Kiss (2.0) Calcio Mercato

Zk3CbCoo

With season one over its time to start building for the season ahead, but to be honest I was planning for season 2 many game months ago however I did not see the departure of our top scorer Mauro Icardi leaving the club because in January he said he would stay with us providing we got Champions League football, fast forward 5 months and his head was turned by Manchester United and he declared his desire to join them.  We agreed a deal worth £74m and Icardi departed closely followed by Vecino (WBA), Dalbert (PSG) and Ranocchia (WBA) from our first team squad along with a few fringe players bringing in a very welcome initial £86m that will rise very soon to over £120m with a few add ons which will be triggered after some short appearance clauses similar to Icardi’s which will bring in £16m after just 5 appearances for United.

Continue reading “The Serpents Kiss (2.0) Calcio Mercato”

The Serpents Kiss (1.2) Season One Review

IMG_20180323_074242

Welcome back to The Serpents Kiss and if this is your first time viewing my blog you can get up to speed by viewing Part 1 and Part 2.  Well to say my first season at Internazionale as been enjoyable would be an understatement. I am totally immersed in the save and loving every minute.  In part one of the save we had played our first ten games of the season and sat comfortably in 6th position just 2 points off of 2nd place and 8 behind leaders Juventus. So I will pick the save up from the end of part 1 because part 2 was a post about my objectives for the save going forward.

Continue reading “The Serpents Kiss (1.2) Season One Review”

The Serpents Kiss (1.1) Objectives

IMG_20180319_074015Let me welcome you to my 2nd post of ‘The Serpents Kiss’ that is tracking my managerial career at Internazionale.  In my first post which you can read here I talked about the tactic that I would be using and reviewed my first 10 games of the season. In today’s post I am going to talk about the objectives of the save, but first I would like to thank everyone who have made me welcome around the blogging scene and the feedback that they have given me.

Continue reading “The Serpents Kiss (1.1) Objectives”