The Neapolitan Revival

[Revotsew]

TROUBLE IN NAPLES

In the summer of 2024, Italian giants Napoli found themselves relegated to Serie B, finishing in 18th position with a mere 37 points.

The 2015/16 Serie A champions found themselves struggling under Austrian manager Adi Hutter with key players under-performing. Toward the end of the season, Hutter was fired and ex-Italy international Angelo Palombo was given the chance to prove his ability, with the daunting task of motivating a group that had been struggling.

After a mere 98 days in charge, Palombo's contract was terminated after he failed to keep the club in Italy's top division.

With their top players earning up to £100,000 a week, the Naples based club's next manager will struggle balancing the clubs finances and big ego's, but also making sure the club bounce straight back up to Italy's top division.

WESTOVER'S HISTORY

In the last decade, Charlie Westover has worked hard and quickly become one of the leading managers in world football.

Taking over from Russell Slade at his local team, League One side Leyton Orient in 2014, they managed to bounce up the leagues, getting promoted twice in 3 years, taking Leyton Orient to the top division in English football for the first time in their history, becoming a legend at the club.

With 3 premier league titles, a Europa league winners medal and a Champions League winners medal in his trophy case, alongside 4 manager of the year awards from the 7 years he managed in the Premiership.

At the end of the 2023/24 season, Westover left his position at Leyton Orient, claiming that he'd won all he could at the club and needed a new challenge.


P.S. I decided to do this half way through a season, so first couple posts are gonna be back dated.

 

[Revotsew]

WESTOVER HIRED AS NAPOLI MANAGER

Charlie Westover's was joined by the chairman and a translator as he signed a one year contract and attended his first press conference as Napoli manager. The Italian media quizzed Westover about his ability to adapt to a new country, something he's not done in his 10 year football career and whether he saw this as a step down from his previous role with the English and European champions. Westover responded with "of course, while I learn Italian it will be difficult to communicate with my players and enforce my philosophy on the boys." he also drew similarities with his previous role, saying he has "full confidence" that he can get Napoli back in to Serie A.

SQUAD EVALUATION

I decided to have a big clear out, selling and releasing the clubs highest earners. Diego Costa, Davide Santon leaving for 500k each, strong centre back Maicon joining Barcelona for 925k and "main man" Hector Villalba leaving for Russian giants Zenit for £17.5m. Three other first team players left on free transfers and first choice goalkeeper Onur Kivrak forcing a move to Celta for 425k.

A handful of other key players were trying to force moves back to top European divisions, but I managed to hold on to them which will give us a big boost in going back up. These are the the three players that will provide a strong core to the club:

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With the squad down to the bare bones, I tried to build an attacking formation around the players I managed to hold on to and decided on a 3-4-3.

I brought 8 players in, 5 of which from my old club, 2 on loan.

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A rush to sign a goalkeeper toward the end of the transfer window resorted in signing 37 year old Sirigu. Also signed after we officially entered Serie B, meaning there's a £4.5k/week wage cap on new signings.

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A strong centre back from Leyton Orient with great mental's, him and Santos will provide a good centre back partnership. Picked up for 3.2mil.

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Another player from Leyton Orient, this time on loan. A great creative player that can provide great assists and also play a range of positions incase I need to switch it up at any point.

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Clive Jerome, another loanee from Leyton Orient, this time a good target man. Useful player for if I decide to play direct football, somebody for the wide men and goalkeeper to aim for.

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Another striker from Leyton Orient, picked him up for 350k. The plan is to have him next to Jerome - Heskey/Owen style.

 

[Revotsew]

PRE-SEASON AND ITALIAN CUP

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A strong pre-season was followed by the qualifying rounds for the Italian Cup. Although we had some gelling issues along with tactical unfamiliarity, we scraped through the first game against Vicenza 2-1, after going down in the first minute.

The second game of the Italian cup, however, didn't go quite to plan.
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Both halves were as bad as each other. Sampdoria capitalised on our teams mistakes, with 2 new defenders and a new goalkeeper, I knew it would always be a tricky start in Naples, but a 6-2 defeat was difficult to take.

 

[Timmzeh]

Enjoying this mate! Those 3 key players you mentioned at the beginning look unreal for Serie B sides! Keep it up

 

[Revotsew]

Enjoying this mate! Those 3 key players you mentioned at the beginning look unreal for Serie B sides! Keep it up

Yeah, they're pretty crazy, I don't know how they got relegated in the first place. Hopefully none of them kick up too much of a fuss in the Jan window and force a move!

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER

I'm not gonna show all off the individual screen shots for every game, just the best/key games, but if you'd rather see every game I can show you!
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Seven wins on the trot put us quite strongly at the top of the league, with the only team going in to October with a 100% record. Despite issues with unhappy players wanting to leave and players needing to gel we managed to score 23 goals and conceded only 6.


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We went in to the first game against Lanciano, who were predicted to come 4th in the league, playing a tactic that I'd worked around a big striker. Lanciano played a formation I'd never seen in English football, so I wasn't too sure what to expect. They were hard to break down with 5 men back at pretty much all times, but a weak attack saw us have more possession and shots. We forced them to take shots from distance with a flat back four pushing high and they didn't get a shot on target. In the 70th Minute, Falcinella tucked away a rebound, scoring the only goal of the game. The only thing that worried me was the amount of yellow cards we got, getting 6 in total.

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The 5-1 demolish job against relegation battlers Pro Vercelli was the 2nd game, this time we opted for an attacking 4-4-2 with Jerome and Rossiter doing excellently as a big man/little man team. Rossiter scoring 4 goals, the pick of the bunch being a lob from just inside the box.

We played the 4-4-2 for the rest of the games in September. Key man Reyes got injured in pre-season and was due back, but the performance of the two strikers made it difficult to put him in for the Cremonese game but the performance of Jerome and Rossiter made it difficult to put him in to the side.

Heres some stats from September:
Pat Rossiter has already scored 10 goals this month, Jerome has scored 4 but has also got 7 assists. Reyes has scored 3 in 4 games.
Francesco Panico and hard-hitting defensive midfielder Carlos Ayala are the only two players to have started every game this month.
Panico has the worst discipline record in not only the club, but the league, with 4 yellows and 1 red card in 7 league games.

 

[Revotsew]

OCTOBER

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Going in to October I had already seen us as unbeatable in this division, and the month started well with us continuing our 100% record against promotion rivals. However a loss to bottom of the league Varese knocked me, and the team, back to the real world. With 9 out of a possible 12 points, it was still a good month for us.

vs Genoa
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A hattrick from right winger Giorgio Falcinella secured us the win against the league favourites. Knowing Genoa's potential, we dropped the wingers back slightly for this game and had Carlos Ayala man marking their key playmaker Unai Lopez, who in the 2019/20 season had been signed by Manchester City for a huge £43m! They also had ex-Leyton Orient midfielder Lionel Enguene playing in centre midfield. Clive Jerome got an injury in the 90th minute but was fit to play the next game.

vs Varese
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Going in to this game, I was confident of another big win. We were playing Varese, who were captained by ex-Manchester United youngster, Richie De-Laet, who was now 36 years old. With De-Laet providing width on the right and 35 year old Sanchez Milo on the left, I was sure that Helal and Falcinella were going to run rings around them. However, an early freekick from Fernando Llorente gave them the lead 17 minutes in and Danish Target man, Hanssen, doubled their lead in the 31st minute. They did a good job of not letting us play, cramming players back and at points, having 9 men behind the ball.

Just so you understand how annoyed I was, this is our wingers attributes in comparison to their wing backs:
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I'm not quite sure how we lost, but we did.

Other games
We stuck with our 4-4-2 and bounced back well, with Jerome scoring a hattrick against Trapani and Rossiter making it 4. The next game we won 2-1 against Brescia, scoring two before half time.

 

[Timmzeh]

Nice results mate, your faces look different, what facepack are you using?

 

[Revotsew]

Nice results mate, your faces look different, what facepack are you using?

I actually can't remember! I'll look in the files and see if it says what its called.

EDIT: It's called OLT Expanded hair pack I think!