(The tape recorder clicks on. It’s June. The stadium’s empty, the squad’s on holiday, and I’m sat with the finances open on one screen and a phone buzzing with a message from a number saved simply as “iain112.”)
Act I: The Board’s Verdict
Both the board and the supporters have delivered their end-of-season report cards, and they land in almost exactly the same place: a B- overall, “job security: secure,” with the same short list of praise and gripes attached to both. Everyone’s pleased with the 7-6 aggregate demolition of Napoli in the Coppa semi, pleased with the battering of Palermo, pleased with the Gegenpress and the pressing it produces — and everyone is, in the same breath, still smarting over the flat 0-2 Coppa final defeat to Lazio. The supporters have also decided this is the moment to single out Ben Doak and Elia Caprile for some pointed disappointment about recent form, which feels a little unfair given everything else that went right this year, but nobody ever accused fans of being proportionate.
The dressing room itself, for what it’s worth, remains in excellent health — “Very Good” for both atmosphere and managerial support, a settled hierarchy with Mandragora, Esposito and Janelt as team leaders, and only a single player in the whole squad who doesn’t currently fit into any social group. Whoever that is, I hope they’re finding their feet.
Act II: Someone Wants Janelt, Just Not Enough of Him
The market wasted no time. Genoa, Osasuna, and Real Valladolid have all tabled matching £19 million bids for Vitaly Janelt, whose agent has already made clear his client may get unsettled if he isn’t allowed to at least talk to two of the three suitors. Given we promised Janelt back in the spring that we’d help him move on the first chance we got, this is exactly the sort of interest I was hoping for — I just wasn’t expecting three clubs to turn up with the identical fee, like they’d all read from the same script.
Act III: The Numbers Behind the Curtain
The season’s success came at a cost the balance sheet was quite happy to remind me about. We finished the year roughly £25.8 million in the red — a stark contrast to last season’s £18 million profit — and for a nervy few days the club was projected to fail UEFA’s Champions League financial fair play regulations altogether. Not the kind of headline you want attached to a season that just earned you a spot in the competition proper.
It turned out to be a false alarm. Within days the picture had completely flipped: the board are now projecting a £90.75 million profit over the relevant thirty-six-month window, comfortably inside the FFP limits, with zero sanctions on the books. And just to make sure nobody has to worry about it again, the board topped things up with a further £21.5 million cash injection to help with running costs. Meanwhile next season’s minimum guaranteed transfer budget has been set at £28.58 million, with the current working figure sitting at just under £22 million and 100% of any transfer income made available on top. There’s business to be done this summer, and for once the finances aren’t the thing keeping me up at night.
A couple of smaller threads have also tied themselves off: no offers have come in for Valentín Carboni despite his earlier grumbling, though he’s now asked to discuss “personal matters,” which is never a phrase you want to see in an email subject line. And elsewhere in the league, Milan have moved on from their previous manager and installed Ruud van Nistelrooij in the dugout — one more name added to the list of people I’ll be trying to out-think next season.
Act IV: The One That Got Away, and the One Who’s Definitely Going
Every window has its own particular gut-punch, and this one’s arrived early. Giorgio Scalvini — the best centre-back available anywhere in the market this summer — has signed for Lazio. For Iain. I had a genuinely lovely picture in my head of an all-Italian back four next season: Kayode, Comuzzo, Scalvini and Parisi, built to last a decade. Instead I get to watch him line up in the opposite shirt, which is exactly the sort of thing that happens to me.
There’s better news elsewhere. Elia Caprile has completed his move to Napoli for £8 million, with our best wishes attached — a tidy bit of business for a goalkeeper who barely played, and one of several sales we pushed through in a hurry while that FFP scare was still live. Turns out panic is an excellent motivator for clearing out the fringes of a squad.
The one that genuinely stings is Lorenzo Lucca. He’s decided I broke my promise to challenge for Serie A this season — which, third place and a spell at the top of the table notwithstanding, is apparently not enough for him — and by all accounts he isn’t for talking down. He’ll be leaving the moment someone puts £23 million on the table. My top scorer, the man behind Goal of the Season contenders and a genuine handful of matches he single-handedly dragged us through, walking out over a promise I thought we’d more than delivered on. Football doesn’t do gratitude.
Next time: whatever the transfer window decides to throw at us.
