After my successful spells with Burnley and Dortmund, I have started a new save with the Italians Sampdoria.

They just got promotion from Serie B, so obviously the primary target is to stay in Serie A.

But I realized that we could achieve something more than just avoiding relegation because of some exceptional players in the squad.

Absolutely delighted to have players like Andrea Poli, Pedro Obiang, Gastaldello, Angelo Palombo, Maxi Lopez (on loan), Estigarribia (on loan), Romero (GK), etc. With these players in the squad, we should aim for atleast a top 10 finish.

TRANSFERS

Nothing really. The club financially in an 'okay' position and they have plenty of players on loan (to my surprise, maybe after the latest update) and they provided only half a million Euros or something as a transfer budget. So I decided to get someone on loan by adjusting the budget, so signed Alessio Sestu on loan from Siena, Sestu is a winger with reasonably good stats.

The preseason went well. I used a narrow formation to accomodate and make the most out of number of CMs in our squad. We went for possession based short passing game.

The fixures didn't do any favors for us as we had to face Roma, Milan, Juventus all in the first 2 weeks, but we did reasonably well. We got points agsinst Roma and Milan, but lost to Juventus. I had to scrap the narrow formation as we struggled to create chances, so I went for a defensive 4-2-1-2-1 formation with Poli as my key man in the center and it worked well as we slowly started to get more points and currently on an unbeaten run of 12 game.

7 consecutive clean sheets

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During this run, we got 7 consecutive clean sheets. We also managed to beat our rivals Genoa and a great win against Inter.

Here is some of our results in the league so far (as you know, pls click the images to enlarge)

Sampdoria 2-0 Genoa
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Sampdoria 1-0 Inter Milan
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Fiorentina 0-1 Sampdoria
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Torino 1-2 Sampdoria
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In this game against Torino I replaced my free-scoring striker Maxi Lopez with 19-year-old Icardi, and guess what he scored the winner and that was a great feeling.

Italian Cup

We are also having a good run in the cup as well, on the way to the semi finals. In the first rounds we had Serie B sides. The game against Spezia went to penalties and we won it 13-12

13 - 12 Penalty win!!!

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Then we played an in-form Udinese away from home in the cup and they were 2-0 up in the first half, but a slight change in the tactics worked really well and we scored 2 goals in the second half to take the game into extra time and then penalties, which we won. This time (only) 3-2.

Then we faced Palermo in the quarter final again away from home, but we won this game 2-0. They got two players sent off, but they still caused problems for us. Maxi Lopez gave us the lead and then later substitute Nicolas Anelka scored from the spot on his debut. By they way, I signed Anelka in January from Juventus.

more to follow........
 
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