Livorno in good form still isn't a good side, to be honest.
I agree that we rarely to never played brilliant football before, but we used to play determined, precise and strong football on a very consistent basis. Consistency used to be one of our strong points, especially under Capello.
Talking of coaches doing well in their first season.. look no further than the Capello you love so much

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While I agree that Ranieri is being given much more abuse then he should, it's not the whole story. None of us expects champagne football with the current squad, but sadly a lot of us had imagined that we would've been able to gather a better squad than the current one we have.
Results are in Ranieri's favour so far, but again.. that does not tell the whole story. In the coppa we faced lowly competition so far and we ony barely got past Empoli, which really was an unneassarily messy encounter. Though possible, getting the better of inter to get into the semi's is still far away.
Capello's side was indeed much better, but this side isn't weak at all. IF everyone was fit, our side wouldn't be much inferiour to that of Roma and we are several levels above Fiorentina. Prandelli doing a bad job ?!
Fiorentina has one great player in Mutu, but that's it. They have several decent older players and some nice talents to complement that, but no way do they have a great squad. If anything, Prandelli made a puzzle out of pieces that did not fit.
Squadwise we're also still a lot better than Udinese and Sampdoria, yet these are two of the sides we failed to beat. Especially against the latter opponent the preperation was not adequate, so a result that does fall under Ranieri's responsibility.
Milan have only themselves to blame, for their current position.
All in all, results have been decent, but we could've done better in a lot of games and also in gathering a good squad in the summer.