January
Looking back, January probably altered the trajectory of the season more than any tactical tweak I made.
The squad had been good enough to compete, but competing isn’t quite the same as believing you belong. The previous year I’d thrown money around with all the restraint of a teenager discovering Football Manager’s transfer budget editor for the first time. This winter was different. The recruitment felt more deliberate.
Hakan Çalhanoğlu arrived from Inter, bringing experience that couldn’t really be measured by attributes alone. There are some players who simply make everyone around them calmer, as though they’ve already seen every possible situation unfold before. Josh Doig strengthened the left-hand side of the defence and quietly went about proving that not every successful signing has to dominate the headlines.
The biggest arrival, however, was Jonas Urbig.
Thirty million pounds is an extraordinary amount of money for a goalkeeper, particularly when your club’s accountants were already treating my transfer strategy as a form of psychological warfare. At the time it felt like a gamble. Looking back, it may have been the best piece of business I completed during my time at Lazio.
Great goalkeepers don’t just make spectacular saves. They change the behaviour of the ten players in front of them. Defenders hold a slightly higher line because they trust what’s behind them. Full-backs attack with a little more freedom. The entire team plays with a confidence that’s difficult to quantify until it’s gone.