THE WOLF'S DEN - Tana dei Lupi II

[maro]

http://www.forzaroma.info/news-as-roma/ ... cial-foto/
By way of returning to an old discussion.

[Italiamia]

I cannot see the picture but I can imagine what the little weasel was doing.

[maro]

Little weasel indeed. I do take a little pleasure whenever I see him mucking up for Bilan.

[Italiamia]

Little weasel indeed. I do take a little pleasure whenever I see him mucking up for Bilan.

I have not had occasion to see much of Romagnoli but I have no interest in Milan whatsoever. In fact, as you know, my interest in general is at an all time low. Lately, I have been watching Roma but here we are again. The league is pretty much decided and our team is now simply positioning for the CL. 16 years since the last scudetto. May I say that is simply ridiculous.

Anyway, hope all is well with you and yours, Tomasso. Ciao.

[DavidP]

Some thoughts about out mercato so far

-salah, rudiger and paredes were sold at good prices. all 3 are replaceable. i would however have preferred to see manolas leave instead.

-if we don't sell nainggolan this summer, it means we're going all out for the scudetto. we seem to be getting insane offers for him. rejecting them is a huge statement of intent.

-can't help but feel we've missed out on an real gem by not signing torreira from samp. gonalons seems a safe enough signing for 1/4th the price however

-lack of depth was a major problem last season, and we seem to be determined to fix that. good enough a start, let's see how it pans out.

[romawi]

I think we've had a bit too much turnover though. I understood the Salah sale had to happen, and he wanted to leave, but it's still going to be difficult to replace him. His speed alone caused so many problems for opposing teams. And I'm not all that convinced convinced by Mahrez as a replacement.

The Rudiger sale was a bit strange. I would've liked to see us keep some stability at the back line for once. When was the last time we had a CB pairing for more than a season?

Gonna be interesting to see what the final squad looks like.

[DavidP]

sure we've had turnover, but remind me again what these punks won last season. i feel it was the right time to make these changes, sell those who wanted out, and bring in winners. we won't get very far with mentally weak players or players who want to leave. i agree that replacing salah won't be easy, and neither berardi or mahrez sound like better options to me at the moment (especially mahrez who reminds me too much of menez). that said, it's hard to remember the last time we had a better squad than this. not to mention it's almost complete in mid-july. it will be interesting to see where florenzi fits in as well.

[maro]

The problem, as I see it, is the squad, as under Sabreteeny, continues to be built not to win things but to make money. So the focus is very heavily on plusvalenza or value for money rather than on really building a team. Perhaps that's not right and with Spags' departure there were always going to be changes to allow Di Francesco to construct his own team. Still, I don't think Ruediger and Salah were sold because they wanted to leave or to balance the books but because the offers for them were felt to be tasty. Both are excellent players, but it's hard to imagine they'll ever be sold for more and so the club has collected on its investment, as it were. In terms of the fabric of the squad and the side, though, you wouldn't sell them if you really wanted to build something, to work with continuity, carefully assembling a top side. Paredes is similar - good money, so they took it, rather than thinking of building things around him, letting him grow within a stable environment. Perhaps he doesn't suit a 4-3-3 and clearly something broke down a bit between him and Spags or him and the club in and around January. Still, it seems to me that the practice is largely focused on the value for money of each individual piece rather than on building a winning collective.

[DavidP]

weren't we in a bind with ffp and forced to sell at least one piece of the puzzle before july? that was the explanation for the salah deal according to most reports anyway. i believe ruediger was sold to strengthen other positions in which we desperately needed depth, which is no easy feat after we had to go into most matches with a squad of 13 last season. it seems monchi and EDF wanted to free up some funds and actually make a side with 22 titolari, it was always going to take some moves to make that happen. i get the sense that the strategy has changed completely from sabatini's days and we are in fact building a team to win, and not selling radja for 60m to inter certainly gives me hope that you're wrong on this one.

[RomaShield27]

The right time to make all these changes, David?

Lets remind ourselves of what Roma achieved this season:

- Won more Serie A points than any other side in the club’s history
- Averaged 2.4 points a game
- Set a record for the most consecutive home wins in a season
- Scored more team goals than in any other campaign in the club’s history
- Scored more individual goals than in any other player in the club’s history
- Miraculously achieved all of the above without the genius of the injured Alessandro Florenzi (or Rudiger, or Rui)

Yes, records don’t really mean shit when you are not winning anything, but Roma finished 4 points behind a supposed all-conquering side Juventus side who won everything around them (bar that glorious Champions League final). A Juventus side which, now, it has to be said, looks like it could be weaker going into the new season with the loss of Bonucci and Alves.

So on the basis of all that, how can anyone not think the best course of action going forward would be to try and build on those achievements, to try get some consistency and stability and make a big push to finally get over the line. Yes, Spalletti had enough and left with a dark cloud hanging over the place, but I seriously have to wonder if more could not have been done to convince him to stay. The Totti situation was a mess which was completely botched by the club and left for Spalletti alone to face the press. We had an absent President with little clue as to what goes on in the club or the city who came over for one brief dinner meeting with Spalletti a couple of weeks before the end of the season.

I understand sales were necessary and Salah was off, and I could even understand cashing in on Paredes who, despite his talent, wasn’t a starter, especially with the return of Pellegrini, but anything beyond that, and ripping up the the entire back-line and heart of the defence yet again, is a joke.

Maro is right, the clubs method of doing things is all aimed toward making money, not building a team. Season after season under our American ownership we see massive turnover and lots of headlines of, however exaggerated, ‘revolution’ at Roma, and then somehow hope that whatever manager with whatever new players can somehow achieve something special. This season past was our best attempt at that (ever), and if ever there was a time for tranquility and stability it was now. But here were are again, new team, new manager, new DS, same old aspirations. 4th this season (which is enough for Champions League qualification) would be an achievement.

[DavidP]

yes, there were plenty of things to be proud of last season, but to me "building on that" means adding depth to the squad -- even if comes at the expense of 2 starters. those are the changes i was talking about. the 4 points difference was very flattering to us since rube played with their b team towards the end of the season. we also botched nearly every game that mattered - the lazio semi finals, the lyon matches, the lazio derby when making the final push for the scudetto. that's why we need players who want to be here, and who want to win. we were also not in a position to strengthen without selling first, so for the first time in a while, all of the club's moves are making a lot of sense to me.

[maro]

I dunno, Davit. I don't follow things closely enough these days to have a real sense of the quality of the players brought in viz-a-viz those who've been let go. I suppose I do know that every year the club for the past four seasons (or however many it's been), has sold a central defender who's been central to the team for massive money. It's hard to argue with the success of that in many ways - Marquinhos, Benatia, Romagnoli have all been replaced by players who've done very well for much less money. At what cost, though? The club has done some spectacular deals over the past four or five years. It's also won nothing. Is the depth really so much greater this year than last? Of course there were injuries and the question of Spags's use of Totti, but the real problem with depth, so far as I saw it, was a single one: Spags's failure to find a way to get some rotation out of his midfielders, above all, the mezz' ale. Grenier and Gerson were the two disasters of last year's transfer efforts.

[maro]

And it may, of course, be that history looks back on all of this as a period of serious consolidation before the building of the stadium and a quite new era of spending and financial clout. In which case there's always been a rather longer game hanging over it all. That seems to me a pretty generous reading, though.

[RomaShield27]

Everyone assumes the new stadium will lead to a glorious financial era of the club. Of course having your own stadium to generate revenue is vital for a club in the long run, but the money made from matchday revenue is nowhere near as important as TV money or Champions League money which is already in place. Roma also still get half of the matchday revenue from the Olimpico, and while it would increase significantly from owning a brand new 50,000 stadium (in fact, thats not right, it wouldn't be Roma who owned it, but Pallotta) we're still only talking around an extra €20-30m I think, or a player sale less if you like. Then there's the question of sponsorship, and why we don't have any. And of course with the building of a new stadium comes debts to pay, and who's to say the clubs owners won't want something back, some profit at the end of it all?

David, another way to look at it is that we've lost three starters – Salah, Rudiger, Szczesny – plus perhaps one of our first options off the bench in Paredes, plus the influence/brilliance of Totti. Szczesny was a two-year loan yes, but its systematic to the clubs short-term approach to just filling out the squad. Look at Mario Rui, it never worked out and he was hampered by injury, but he was a quick fix loan signing who's now gone after barely a handful of appearances, and was himself a replacement for Digne, another loan signing who was criminally never made permanent (and we had the chance). On and on it goes. Now we're on the look-out for another new left-back (please not that ex-lazie) and all this after seeing the likes of Zukanovic, Ashley Cole, Emanuelson, Holebas and Michel Bastos in the Sabatini era.

Nothing real makes me think its going to be any different this season or next. We do need more depth and perhaps we will have a better squad than last season, but we won't have new players of a better quality than Salah or Rudiger. And of course they will all take time to gel and to settle in. Monchi is the great at what he does but it all plays in to the same cycle of signing promising young players, taking risks and plusvalenza.

[romawi]

We've already signed the ex-lazie. I see a lot of people happy with the signing, but it's one that I wish we didn't make. And, I don't really understand how selling Rudiger to add depth to the squad helps us get closer to a trophy. We've weakened the starting XI when the priority should have been to strengthen it. We've added depth, but we still haven't replaced our starting CB.

Agreed about the stadium, Ed. It won't fix our problems. And with all the constant setbacks, it looks like just another dream that Pallotta is selling.

[DavidP]

as one of our players said a few weeks ago, we lost out to rube because of a lack of rotation options. their bench is very deep, ours was non existent and our starting XI was played into exhaustion. player for player their starting XI was hardly that much better than ours. in fact our midfield was probably a little better than theirs, and their defense was better than ours. attacking and keeper positions pretty even. i don't think strengthening the starting XI should have been the first priority at all, never mind that it was probably impossible due to ffp. the first priority should have been filling the bench. depending on the replacements for the 2 starters we sold, who we have yet to see, we might be getting very, very close to rube. i'll be surprised if we don't win the scudetto within the next 2-3 years.

[RomaShield27]

And, I don't really understand how selling Rudiger to add depth to the squad helps us get closer to a trophy. We've weakened the starting XI when the priority should have been to strengthen it. We've added depth, but we still haven't replaced our starting CB.

I fully agree. Lots of people are praising Monchi for a lot of the new signings. We have added depth and there's no doubt the man is a shrewd operator and can spot talent and made some good buys with Under and Karsdorp (Defrel is a good signing too but is also a risk given the value and profile), but its hard to see how we can improve upon the likes of Salah or Rudiger (or even Paredes in a couple of years). Even Mahrez, who is too costly anyway and not worth it, wouldn't be an improvement over Salah in my view. I highly doubt our strongest starting 11 will be better in the new season then it was for last, and while we may have more depth throughout a long season I just can't see us being a big a threat. Especially when you factor in a new manager in his first real big test who'll need time to settle, new tactics, a new defensive unit (again) which needs to gel, and lots of new players to acclimatise to Serie A.

[DavidP]

that was the roma i know and love. failing to close out the game, missing sitters and heart-attack inducing defence in the last 10 minutes, nothing like spalletti's machine from last season, it was wonderful. juan jesus was a pleasant surprise. bruno peres should be nowhere near the starting line-up. kolarov is an excellent player, probably for no more than 50-60 minutes. defrel looks like a hard worker, let's see if he can be more than just that. i was excited to see cengiz play, but it's understandable that the coach didn't want to give him his debut in a tough away match against a very solid team - if i remember correctly, one which spalletti lost 5 points to last season.

[romawi]

Wasn't the best performance. Downright awful at times and I think based on how the squad is set up, that's what we should expect to see this season. Seriously, that midfield three of DDR, Ninja, and Strootman is the stuff of nightmares. Really ugly stuff.

[DavidP]

some thoughts about today's game:

-i wonder if edf asks just a bit too much of his mezz'ale. when in possession, the midfielder whose side we are attacking on drifts wide and acts as a winger, while the actual winger tucks inside, a bit like the 'inside forwards' LE used with us. now unless our mezz'ale have 4 lungs, this is going to leave us extremely vulnerable to counter attacking teams with one or both of them out of position after losing the ball. we will probably see the back four and DDR getting charged at by 3-4 players very often this season. and strootman is an excellent player, but a bad fit for this system. edf doesn't seem to do triangles, which is where strootman shines. i wonder if this is the role florenzi has been waiting for.

-if there's one reason inter turned this game around, it's the defrel-el shaarawy substitution. just terrible from edf. what we saw from minute 45 to 65 was some really excellent football while not even giving inter a whiff of a chance, and then he made this sub. el shaarawy is completely uninterested in tracking back, while defrel helped jesus out all game and made him look like a better RB than peres has ever been for us. he also helped out nainggolan and just covered a tremendous amount of ground. he seems like the quintessential edf player and i'm starting to see why we paid 20m for him.

-i never realized how hard it is to take the ball from perotti once he gets going. really lovely to watch him live, just so unlucky today.

-de rossi is still brilliant at many things, but he makes mistakes when he has time on the ball and is launching an attack. this is where i think gonalons will be valuable.

all in all a decent performance. our players are not all the right fits for edf's system, but some of what we saw today was excellent stuff. if edf really gets these guys playing like he wants, we're in for a treat.