(The tape recorder clicks on. I’m slumped in the manager’s chair with the Serie A table open on the laptop and a cold espresso going untouched at my elbow. I do not look ruthless. I look like a man doing the accounts after a bad month.)
Act I: The Manita at the Franchi
Let’s start with the bruise that hurts most. On Saturday 21st February, Inter came to our own stadium and beat us 2-4, and they didn’t even have to work especially hard for it.
The numbers are the real insult here. We had 41% possession and generated a total of 0.82 xG to their 1.19 — for once, not even our usual crime of profligacy. We simply didn’t create enough to waste.
- Morten Hjulmand opened the scoring in the 10th minute.
- Sávio made it two on 24 minutes.
- Pedro Gonçalves and Marcus Thuram added two more either side of the 70th, back to back, just to make sure the point landed.
- Francesco Pio Esposito pulled one back for us on 22 minutes — yes, the same Pio Esposito currently telling my Director of Football he wants out for a bigger club, still scoring against the actual champions-elect.
- Albert Guðmundsson added a stoppage-time consolation.
The post-match verdict from my analysis staff read: “We can be a little disappointed with the result. We didn’t play well but we’ve really been punished for it.” Nine words doing the work of an entire post-mortem. I’ve had worse reviews. I’ve had worse from Iain, certainly, though at least he had the decency to send his gloating in-game rather than showing up at San Siro to do it in person this time.
Act II: Cup Chaos, or, Samu Omorodion Remembers How to Play Football
Four days later, Napoli arrived for the first leg of the Coppa semi-final, and I did the only sensible thing available to a manager staring down a fixture pile-up: I picked a team that looked like it had been assembled by a random number generator. Cucurella — the loan signing who still doesn’t fit anything I’m building — started at left-back. Janelt, Miretti and Mandragora were left to run the midfield between them.
Somehow it worked, in the way that a car crash “works” as a way of stopping the car. Final score: 3-3.
- Fabiano Parisi scored in the 54th minute, which is always a nice bonus from a full-back.
- Samu Omorodion — my £170,000-a-week problem child, cursed with delicate ligaments, a stomach that once staged a full mutiny against a hotel buffet, and a general air of a man his own body is actively trying to sabotage — came off the bench and scored on 60 minutes. He finished with an 8.6 match rating, comfortably the best of the night.
- Albert Guðmundsson, also introduced from the bench, added a third late on.
I don’t know what to do with the information that Omorodion is, apparently, fine, except write it down and wait for the other shoe to drop. It always does. We finish the tie away at Napoli in April, honours even, everything still to play for — which either means I’m building real squad depth or means I’ve simply postponed the disappointment by eight weeks.
Act III: A Win, and What It Cost
Saturday the 28th, away to Bologna, and this is the one that should have gone wrong and didn’t. We were, by most sensible measures, the worse side — 41% possession, xG almost dead level at 1.23 to 1.25 in their favour — but Giorgi Mamardashvili decided this was his day. He saved a Lewis Ferguson penalty in the 18th minute and didn’t concede again for the rest of the afternoon.
Final score: Bologna 0, Fiorentina 1. Man of the match rating: 8.30. The post-match note actually used the word “happy,” which is doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting for a performance we didn’t deserve to win by scoreline alone.
There was a cost. In the 42nd minute, Albert Guðmundsson went down under a tackle and didn’t get back up. Pulled ankle ligaments. Out somewhere between twelve days and a fortnight — a brutal way to reward a man who’d scored off the bench against Napoli four days earlier.
The physio’s report also informs me we are down to just two players in the treatment room — joint-9th in Serie A for injuries. For a squad that has spent most of this season running its own field hospital, that is either genuine progress or the universe quietly reloading.
Act IV: The Boardroom, the Departure Lounge, and One Very Expensive Apology
While all that was happening on the pitch, the building itself was not exactly at peace.
Luca Ranieri has run out of patience watching from the bench while Shanghai Port circle him like men who’ve spotted a bargain — four separate bids rejected across the last fortnight, each one bigger than the last, with Roma reportedly sniffing around too. My own liaison officer tells me Ranieri is now “seriously considering his future” after a promise that didn’t survive contact with a fixture list. We’ve discussed it. I’m not sure discussing it changed anything. Piero Hincapié and Vitaly Janelt are both filed as unhappy despite reasonable game time, and Pio Esposito — Inter goal notwithstanding — is still filed as wanting to leave. I said back in the winter I’d sell him without a second thought come summer. Nothing since has talked me out of it.
There is, at last, one piece of good news, and I’ve made you wait long enough for it. Michael Kayode — the Brentford right-back I chased on loan in January and got politely sent packing for my trouble — is now signing for Fiorentina outright. Permanently. For a fee that could rise as high as £77,000,000. He arrives on 1st July on £120,000 a week as, and I quote the scouting report directly, an “elite full-back.” The right-back crisis, three months in the making, ends not with a whimper but with the single most expensive defender I have ever signed. The board gave the whole winter window a C+ and complained I hadn’t signed enough players under 23. I’d remind them the one arriving in July turns 24 in October, and I’ve chosen not to think about that too hard.
Five days on from Bologna, we sit fifth. 52 points, fourteen adrift of Inter, two behind Milan in fourth. The challenge isn’t dead. It’s just having a difficult month, much like its manager.
Next time: Ajax away in the Champions League last 16, because apparently Serie A wasn’t punishing me enough on its own.
