Giallorossi | Part 10 | Attack Is The Best Form Of Defence

AS Roma wrapped up a third successive Serie A title in 2026, confirming their domination of Italy. Now, with the FM23 Beta period coming to a close, we decide to go all-out attack in a bid to get the best out of wonderkid Endrick.

The summer began with being offered interviews by Man UFC and Chelsea, which I had zero interest in taking. We moved out players that weren’t up to it, including Dani Olmo and centre-back Abakar Sylla, while Toni Kroos retired. And that gave me a £90m transfer kitty to work with.

The key areas we needed to strengthen were left-back and up front. We filled the first requirement with Italian left-back Destiny Udogie for £25m from Spurs. And we filled the latter with exciting striker Lenílton Andujar, who joined for a hefty £18.25m from Bragantino. Joining them were two promising 18-year-olds in winger Oscar Mendoza and brilliantly named attacker Jesús Resurreción. That leaves us with seven five-star potential players and 13 of the 23-man squad have 4.5-star potential.

We also had a staff overhaul with Ruud van Nistelrooij coming in as assistant manager alongside possibly the best Director of Football in the world in former Sevilla man Monchi. And we bolstered our scouting and coaching teams to become the best in Serie A for the first time.

And with the squad and staff strengthened, it’s time to discuss the new tactical approach. I’d spoken to a few of the guys on the FM Library Discord channel about the struggles I’d had with Endrick and they recommended trying to play him up front. So I decided to give this Beta save one more season deploying Endrick in a little and large strike partnership with Tammy Abraham. To do that, we’re going to take a more attacking approach and play a 4-2-4.

All-out attack begins now!

The media still have us as second-favourites for Serie A at 4/1 behind Milan (9/5), followed by Juventus (5/1), who finished sixth last season, Napoli (11/2) and Inter (9/1).

Our title defence against Verona began well as captain Nicoló Barella scored a trademark 25-yard curler. We dominated the game and made sure of it as Endrick scored before Andreas Schjelderup bagged a late third. So the new tactic started very nicely indeed!

Barella scored again to nick a 2-1 win in our first away game at Sassuolo and Tammy Abraham and Endrick both scored as we won 2-1 at home to Parma. Then Abraham bagged a hat-trick, including a 30-yard header!, in a 3-0 win at Fiorentina. And the strong start continued with a 7-0 battering of Bologna led by another Endrick goal, Andujar scoring on his debut and Isak Jóhanneson scoring and bagging an assist hat-trick.

The winning start ended with a 1-1 at Napoli thanks to Endrick’s strike. But we got back to winning ways as Endrick and Abraham scored in a 3-0 success over Sampdoria. The unbeaten run looked to be ending at Inter as we trailed 2-1 after 75 minutes. But a wild final 15 minutes saw us equalise, go behind again, equalise again and an Inter goal ruled out by VAR within seven minutes. I went defensive but we nicked it with injury-time goals by Abraham and Ibanez securing a 5-3 victory! Another big test saw Juve come to town and, after they equalised in the final minute of the first half, we again had a wild second half and won 4-2.

Ridiculously, we were forced to play a Friday night match after an international break and the entire squad was exhausted. Luckily, Cremonese are rubbish and a hugely rotated side strolled to a 4-1 win through Andujar and Marvin Wattiau braces, of which both the latter’s were screamers! A string of easier games saw us stride clear at the top, including Dominik Szoboszlai getting all four assists and centre-back Gabriel scoring a hat-trick in 4-1 thumping of Empoli.

But despite only failing to win twice and still no defeats we only led Milan by four points going into the winter break! While Verona are doing really well in third, but trail us by 11 points. We’ve blown the league away with 48 goals in 16 games and only conceded 12.

Champions League league phase

We got easily our best Champions League draw under the silly new format, with a tough trip to Man UFC (again) the only fixture you’d say was really tricky.

The campaign began at Ajax, who battered us early on. But we held on and a switch to the 4-3-3 saw us nick a 2-0 win. Another Dutch side followed as we hosted Feyenoord and an Abraham brace led an easy 3-0 win, before a bizarre 3-2 loss at Fenerbahce and a 1-1 at Sociedad. We stayed strong at home with a 4-0 thumping of Dortmund led by Roony Bardghji’s superb volley, which was his first goal of the season, and were unlucky to lose 2-1 at Man UFC.

With two games remaining, both of which are at home, we trail the top eight by two points, so we really need to win those final two games. But I’ll say it again, I really don’t like this format!

Is Endrick good yet?

Having changed our tactic purely to try and get more out of Endrick, that’s a very good question. And the answer is… kind of. He’s scored seven goals and got three assists in 22 games this season and, having started the season well, he’s gone nine games without scoring to finish the year. The arrows on his profile suggest he’s improving and there has been some, considering the comparison of him at 20 to him at 18 below. I remain unconvinced he’s “the next big thing” but my coaches still believe he can become “much better” than Tammy Abraham and he still has that 5-star potential.