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
.
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.
I think too many people on here are looking at it as the great Juventus totally ignoring the personnel.
This is the worst group we have had in close to 15 years imo and if we are being totally honest if this group were playing against teams 10 or 15 years ago in serieA then we would be around 12 or lower position.
How can you say we are as strong as Fiorentina and that Prandelli has made a puzzle out of pieces that dont fit.
He has Pasqal, arguably the most gifted natural left footed, left back in the country and the guy has not improved in 3 years or so, he should walk into the Italina side but no progress. Pazzini is the same, talented but yet to improve as a player under prandelli.
At the back they had Dainelli, Koldrup, gamberini, Potenza, a very good right back and Ufjalusi. A lot of them are very dependable
Compare that to Chiellini, Andrade (injury prone), Molinaro, Legrottaglie, Zebina, Birindelli, Grygera
It comes to something when you start to say Legrottaglie is someone to be relied on at the back
Chiellini apart, if you were going to pick a back line most would come from Fiorentina
In midfield we have Camoranesi(injury prone), Marchionni (rubbish and injury prone), Tiago (ordinary, but on here, the great hope), Almiron (ordinary), Salihamzidic (no comment) Nocerino and Zanetti
I am sorry but for someone that has seen players like Zizou, Davids, Jugovic, paolo Sousa, Tacchinardi, Vieira, Emerson, Conte, Di Livio, Haessler, Laudrup, Moeller etc
This current midfield is scraping the bottom of the barrel compared to those names
It saying something when the only source of creativity comes from a 35 and a 34 year old in Nedved and Dp respectfully.
Fiorentina have potential in Montilivio and Dossena and its still potential as with their talent they should be in the Italian squad by now but most of them are in comfort zone.
Its not just the manager that is not good enough but these players are no where good enough.
If you are talking about Juventus in its pomp then from the board to the players are not good enough but times have changed and we need to lower the expectation a notch.
You say squad wise we are a lot better than Sampdoria and Udinese but I dont agree with that we have Buffon, Nedved, Dp, Trez and Camo that are as good as anything in the country in what they do but a squad is made up of 23 to 26 players and though Udinese and Sampdoria dont have that many players as good as those guys, Montella, Cassano and Di Natale excepted, the rest of the squad is comparable to what we do have.
Inter Milan have a far superior squad to Udinese and yet they have failed to beat them in 4 matches so it does not mean anything and its certainly not Mancini's fault.
@Snoop with the calibre of players we have if we decided to open up against Milan and play an expansive game to win, we would have been massacred and personally I dont think we merited the point at Roma, penalty miss or not but we were the better side at Florence.
I am not like I have said on too many occasions, a Ranieri fan, in fact before the season started I opened a thread called Dear Mr Ranieri or something stating that he would not have been in my top 10 choices but I cannot start faulting him when I know what he is capable of and what he is not capable of and yes SerieA is awful as Andy has pointed out in the past but thats not his fault.
His team is 3rd, the football is awful, his substitutions have not been to your liking but he has just lost 2 games and 1 was highly dubious.
He has had to contend with injuries to key players for large parts of the season, his signings Almiron and Tiago have so far let him down badly as he may have played a different way if things fell into place for him and I dont think he deserves the abuse as he has had to adapt with what he has.
Do you think it was his plan to play Nocerino and Zanetti in midfield? Nope he seemed to have prefered to have played with Almiron and Tiago, Chiellini at left back, Andrade and Criscito in centre but his plans due to injuries and bad form and judgement have gone off kilter so he had to adapt.
Fabio capello as Dominic mentioned lost 8 games in Spain, still won the league but his style was not popular at all to Madrid fans so he had to go.
Ranieri has not lost 8 times and does not have Barcelona or Rijkard in particular to aid his cause, he has Inter Milan who just refuse to lose so thats why I am not calling for his head
Do I want him there next season? Perhaps not but I would not want 70% of the squad next season either but if they are still here then there is no point in bringing anyone else as I cannot see any manager doing better than he has with this lot and I really do mean that
Buy on AliExpress.com
