Act I: The Great Summer Purge (or, Charlie Bucket Goes to Saudi)
The summer began not with a whisper, but with a roar. The mandate was clear: if you are not Champions League quality, pack your bags. We are no longer a charity.
First of all, pop the champagne. Ring the bells of the Duomo. Jacopo Fazzini is gone. Lecce inexplicably handed over £3m for the privilege of taking the ghost of the reserves off our wage bill. I personally drove him to the train station.
Then came the moment of the summer. Moise Kean, who spent all of last January sitting in my office hoping the phone would ring, finally got his wish. An offer came in from Al-Shabab. He literally burst through my door, clutching the printed email like Charlie Bucket holding the Golden Ticket, begging to be allowed to leave. I stamped his passport so hard I nearly broke the desk. Cheers for the £1.8m loan fee, lads.
The ruthlessness didn’t stop there. Veterans were thanked for their service and shown the door. Juan Jesus was shipped off to Al-Tai for £575k. Even David De Gea, the hero of last season’s European run, was allowed to leave. Sentimentality doesn’t win you the Scudetto; younger, hungrier players do.
To fill out the squad, we welcomed back our loanees. Alessandro Bianco returned to be a squad option, alongside Lucas Beltrán—who is essentially Moise Kean, but burdened with actual technical ability and a tragic lack of pace.
Act II: Rebuilding the Wall
With £40 million recouped in sales and the wage bill looking much healthier, it was time to spend.
The New Number One: Mile Svilar (£18m from Roma) When De Gea walked into the Tuscan sunset, the brief was simple: find a replacement, fast. Mile Svilar wasn’t just the best goalkeeper in Serie A last season; he was the man who personally robbed Iain’s Atalanta of points. That alone was worth the £18 million fee. David goes with our best wishes, but Svilar is the future.
The Coup: Marc Guéhi (Free Transfer) This was a masterstroke. Juan Jesus was gone, and we needed a serious upgrade. Somehow, I convinced a 24-year-old England international in his prime to swap Selhurst Park for the Artemio Franchi.
How? Well, I offered him £120k a week—comfortably outbidding Liverpool and the Saudis—and told him he’d look fantastic in purple. He agreed. Guéhi instantly elevates our defence and crucially, gives Harry Maguire someone to speak English to (after almost a year in Florence, the only Italian word Harry has learned is fuorigioco—offside). Guéhi will partner my wonderkid, Pietro Comuzzo, as the starting pair, but with Europe on the horizon, there will be plenty of minutes for Maguire and Luca Ranieri.
Act III: The Speed Merchants
If the defence was about stability, the wide areas were about pure, unadulterated chaos.
The Right-Back Solution: Marc Pubill (£7m from Atlético Madrid) Ever since I sold Dodô to Marseille in my very first week on the job, the right side of our defence has been a makeshift construction site. No longer. Enter Marc Pubill. At 22 years old, he’s a wing-back with bags of ability, stamina, and huge potential. Snatching him from Atlético Madrid for a mere £7m feels like daylight robbery. The right flank is finally secure.
The Fever Dream: Ben Doak (£30m from Bournemouth) This was the big one. The marquee signing. My scouts were scouring the wreckage of recently relegated Bournemouth and found this 20-year-old Scottish sensation languishing in the Championship. It felt like a fever dream. He is incredibly close to being the finished article, with the ceiling to become truly world-class. Bournemouth knew exactly what they had and played absolute hardball at the negotiating table, forcing me to part with £30m. It was a massive spend, but let the record show: he has already been worth every single penny.
Act IV: Veterans, Wonderkids, and the Proxy War
The transfer market is never just about improving the squad; it’s about sending a message. And this summer, the boardroom was a battlefield.
The Veteran Presence: Nemanja Matić (Free Transfer) When Edin Džeko hung up his boots and retired, a massive void of experience opened up in the dressing room. You need players who know how to win, players who aren’t intimidated by a hostile away end. So, I brought in Nemanja Matić on a free. Was it a questionable choice? Perhaps. I let Tommaso Pobega go to Iain’s Atalanta for a measly £2m, and completely ignored a free-agent Ruben Neves. But Matić brings a necessary grit. He is the dad of the dressing room now.
The Proxy War Victory: Simone Pafundi (£12.5m from Udinese) This transfer wasn’t just business; it was personal. Earlier in the window, Iain and I went to war over Brazilian wonderkid Vitor Roque. Iain won that battle. When Simone Pafundi—one of my all-time Football Manager favourites—became available, Iain came sniffing around again. We locked horns, but this time, the boy chose the purple of Fiorentina over the corporate machine. I paid the £12.5m, secured his signature, and immediately loaned him back to Udinese for the season to get some minutes (with a recall clause, just in case). Add the official arrival of Valentin Carboni, and the squad is complete.
Act V: The 4-2-3-1 Revolution
New season, new players, new protocol. The conservative, counter-attacking shell of last year has been completely dismantled.
With a brand-new, elite squad at my disposal, the 4-2-3-1 high-press revolution—codenamed Purple Thunder—was born. When we took a lead, we dropped into a conservative 4-3-3 called Purple Rain, and if we were desperately clinging to a result, we deployed a rigid 5-3-2 known as the Squeaky Bum.
The first test of this new philosophy? Bologna. Our local rivals. The bogey team that derailed our Champions League push with a stubborn 0-0 draw last season.
This time, the high press suffocated them. We dominated possession, dictated the tempo, and battered their defensive lines. In true Football Manager fashion, despite thoroughly outclassing them, we only scraped a 1-0 win. But against Bologna? I will take an ugly 1-0 win every single day of the week. The psychological block is gone.
Act VI: The Purple Machine
From there, the momentum simply snowballed. We rolled into Monza and comfortably dismantled them, keeping our former striker Roberto Piccoli quiet in the process. We swatted aside Cesena and Cagliari with the ruthless efficiency of a team that actually knows what it’s doing.
There was, of course, one minor heart attack. We played Modena, and despite us playing beautiful football, they somehow possessed the terrifying ability to just burst forward and score at will. We escaped by the skin of our teeth with a 3-2 victory. It was a stark reminder that while we might be brilliant, we are still Fiorentina, and chaos is never more than one counter-attack away.
But the stats do not lie. Five games played. Five wins. Only two goals conceded. We sit top of Serie A. Furthermore, the squad depth is finally showing its worth. I have been heavily rotating the starting XI for our Europa League fixtures, and the second-string side has casually picked up two wins on the continent without breaking a sweat. We are a well-oiled machine.
Act VII: The Roman Menace
However, there is a shadow looming over Florence. And it is wearing sky blue.
Over the summer, Iain executed a breathtaking display of managerial cowardice. He built a Champions League machine at Atalanta, realised people were actually going to expect him to win something, and immediately caught the midnight train down to Rome to hide in the capital.
But his move to Lazio has unfortunately borne fruit. While I was carefully rebuilding my squad with astute free transfers and tactical loans, Iain arrived at Lazio to find the Saudi Pro League waiting for him with open chequebooks. They have thrown absolutely obscene amounts of money at his players, funding a terrifying, mega-budget rebuild.
He currently sits right behind me in second place, with four wins from his first five games.
I know exactly what he is doing. He is going to sit in his press conferences, adjust his designer glasses, and talk about how Lazio are “in a transitional phase” and “just aiming for European qualification.” It is a blatant lie. He has built a financial superpower, and he is coming for the title.
The proxy war hasn’t ended; it’s just relocated to the Stadio Olimpico. The inevitable clash between Fiorentina and Lazio is going to shake the very foundations of Italian football.
