Empoli had made a solid start to the 2023/24 Serie A campaign as, despite a seven-match losing streak, we found ourselves firmly in mid-table heading into the new year. The hard work continued now as we looked to avoid the risk of a relegation battle.
I began the new year by selling three pointless players, midfielder Alberto Grassi, wantaway left-back Giuseppe Pezzella and both backup strikers Francesco Caputo and Mattia Destro, for £2.3m then terminating 10 loan deals, which freed up £140k of wage budget. And I turned to the loan market to bolster the defence with Wisdom Amey from Bologna and Ibrahima Cissé from Schalke.
A Tricky Run Of Fixtures
2024 began with our game in hand at home to Hellas Verona, who were flying in 7th place. We started brightly as homegrown stars Jacopo Fazzini and newly-monikered wonderkid Tommaso Baldanzi had us 2-0 up inside 26 minutes. The duo combined to finish the game off as Fazzini teed up Baldanzi to fire home from 20 yards and earn a 3-0 win.
We then faced a repeat of the tricky run of games from earlier in the season. That began at home to Tuscany rivals Fiorentina, in which we dominated the first half and got our reward as Ardian Ismajli stepped out of defence and spanked one in the top corner from 25 yards. Baldanzi’s cheeky chip doubled the lead and we held on despite Arthur’s screamer.
We took a surprise lead at Roma as the keeper’s clearance bounced off Baldanzi for Fazzini to score after 29 seconds. Winger Nicoló Cambiaghi doubled the lead with our second shot, Lukaku got one back, but Baldanzi made it 3-1 from three shots! However, Roma came flying back to win 4-3 led by a Lukaku hat-trick. We only lost 2-1 in a terrible game at home to Milan but were pathetic in 3-2 and 3-0 defeats at Verona and Atalanta.
Fazzini and Stiven Shpendi edged a 2-1 win at home to Cagliari, which moved us 14 points clear of relegation ahead of games against Inter, who thumped us, and Napoli. We quickly went two down to Napoli but Ismajli stepped out of defence to halve the deficit and Napoli went 3-1 up. At this point, I decided to try an approach I’d been mulling over in my head and, surprisingly, it worked! Baldanzi nodded home then Shpendi came off the bench to finish off a lovely team move for an 89th-minute equaliser.
I stuck with that approach – largely because only left-back Liberato Cacece was ruled out for six months by a destroyed achilles tendon – for a trip to Monza. Baldanzi won a penalty that Marin missed then put us in front with a 25-yard strike only for Pablo Mari to score twice in four minutes from far post corners. Baldanzi got us level again but Monza nicked it late on. Despite that, I was happy with the lads’ application of the new formation, which I’ll attempt to tweak through the conclusion of the campaign.
Looking To Avoid A Relegation Scrap
With nine games remaining, Empoli sat in 14th place on 33 points, nine points clear of Frosinone in 18th. I was relatively confident we were safe, but we had a few must-win games coming up.
That began with entertaining 17th-place Salernitana, in which we were terrible, gave up 3.22 xG but somehow rescued an undeserved point through Shpendi and Matteo Cancellieri. Despite that point, our gap to the bottom three was reduced to eight. And another big game followed as we travelled to now 16th-place Frosinone. Both teams were inept but Razvan Marin delivered the only moment of quality from a direct free-kick, which is the first I’ve seen scored in FM24 and won goal of the month.
That moved us 11 points clear with seven to play ahead of entertaining Torino, who were fresh from beating Napoli. Cancellieri’s excellent solo goal gave us an early lead but Torino levelled through Zapata and we held on for a crucial point. Cancellieri did it again a week later at his parent club Lazio, cutting in from the right and curling a beauty into the top corner. Lazio took control and turned things around with goals by both holding midfielders. But I tweaked a few things and it had the desired effect as Cancielleri won a penalty that Marin cheekily panenkad down the middle then Baldanzi smashed home twice from 20 yards to earn a famous and pretty unlikely 4-2 victory!
That huge win moved us 15 points clear with five to play and just two points behind Lazio. And a 2-2 draw at home to bottom side Genoa confirmed survival. We celebrated with a wild 3-2 win at home to 7th-place Bologna with goals by Cambiaghi, Cancellieri and Marin’s 95th-minute winner before nicking a 2-1 win at Lecce through Cancellieri and Shpendi strikes. Our final home game saw us get destroyed 3-0 by Juventus and we wrapped up the campaign with a slightly unlucky 1-0 defeat at Udinese.
Despite that, we finished in an impressive 11th place in Serie A with 48 points. We won 14, drew six and lost 18, scoring 55 and conceding 70. Our reward was prize money of just £3m, of which we dished out £650k in bonuses, so it’s easy to see why managing in Italy is such a struggle.
Breaking Down Season 1 At Empoli
Impressively, we scored the joint-fifth most goals in Serie A, scoring 55 only bettered by Milan (88), Inter (81), Napoli (69) and Juventus (61). That was despite only having the 13th-most shots (338, compared to Milan’s 517) and 14th-most chances created (105), plus an xG of 44.52, which was the 15th lowest in the league. And a sign of our predatory ability was having the best shots-on-target ratio in Serie A (51%) and the third-highest conversion ratio (16%).
That said, only Cagliari and Frosinone (79 and 71) conceded more than our 70 goals, which we obviously need to address. We also had the third-worst tackles won ratio (74%) and the 15th-worst pass completion ratio (86%).
Baldanzi led the way for us with 14 goals in 40 games in all competitions, but had a really poor run of form to conclude the season. But arguably our best player was Cancellieri, who scored nine with a club-high eight assists from 35 games, which prompted me to sign him permanently from Lazio. Cambiaghi scored eight with six assists and Shpendi scored seven with three assists and Fazzini and Marin both got seven assists with seven and six goals respectively.
Our mission to promote homegrown youth was boosted by a decent youth intake, that was actually described as “poor.” It delivered two 5-star potential players in goalkeeper Primoz Kompara and attacking midfielder Alessandro Fuschi, plus 3.5-star potential winger Lorenzo Sinigaglia. I also decided to break the bank to keep Baldanzi for now, locking him down to a new 5-year contract on £46k-per-week (up from £9k) with a £60m minimum fee release clause, when he wanted £29m.
We’ll have a big task on our hands next season as we look to rebuild a squad that will be extremely light as six of the loanees won’t be returning. But I’m excited to see how we can bolster this young Empoli side!
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