Football Manager 2023 – Genoa CFC: Sir (2)

Always Bigger

ciaoand welcome back to the second half of Genoa CFC’s first season. In this section, you will read about winter transfers, see how we finished the second half of Serie B, and the financial impact of being in Serie B alongside my transfer business.

Winter transfer

After the loss to Frosinone, Albert Guðmundsson had the courage to come up to me and challenge me about the way I spoke to the team during the team talk. I didn’t appreciate his tone, so he went straight on the transfer list, was put up for sale, and dropped into the U-18 team for good measure. A number of teams have come forward to sign the Iceland international, but it was Mainz who sealed his signature for £2 million. As you will see below, this gave us a positive net financial return on its time, namely the club considering its remaining book value, as well as a very useful £2m in cash to help support our cash hemorrhage.

For similar financial purposes, I would like to sell Milan Badelj. At 33 years old, and turning 34 in February, I want to get any value out of it. Realizing I would have a bad impact on his book value, I didn’t care, considering he was earning £43k/week. Selling him saves £1.2m purely on his basic salary. The fact that I only received £86k from Cruz Azul, the equivalent of a fortnight’s wages for Badelj, is of no consequence – I took out an unhappy player who wasn’t playing and wouldn’t be offered another contract to add to it. which expires at the end of the season. On balance, this sale makes financial sense.

Another player who left was Caleb Ekuban. He has since returned to Yeboah, but whenever he was given a chance to taste a few minutes in his place, he looked like he was struggling to score in an empty net. His shot wasn’t on target, and that doesn’t mean we didn’t create the same quality of chances for him. When he came to me and asked for a loan, it seemed like a good idea for both parties. Hopefully during his time at Sturm Graz, he will be able to show his best performance to rebuild his confidence.

Despite the financial difficulties mentioned above, I considered bringing in a player as Yeboah’s cover on a permanent basis, realizing that if we could continue our current form, we would most likely gain promotion to Serie A. Therefore, I did not. wanted to sign someone on a permanent contract who might be suitable at the moment, but in six months’ time would be left with someone who did not have the necessary qualities to compete in Serie A. Therefore, I decided it would be better to look at the loan market, and add to the loan recipients we. The search for a target didn’t take long after I saw the name Ezequiel Ponce. The 25-year-old Argentinian striker was unloved at Elche, and a deal was quickly agreed to take him to the Luigi Ferraris stadium.

This means the squad looks like this after our Winter transfers:

League updates

In fact, we won Serie B in a very easy way – the league closed with four games remaining and promotion had been achieved two games before. We dominated the league, going twenty-four games unbeaten, as we barely needed to rotate after suspensions and relatively minor injuries, except for Alessandro Vogliacco breaking his ankle. Our relative goal difference tells the story of our superiority over our peers – in only four games have we had a negative xG-xGA difference.

Player analysis

This achievement, as stated in the mid-season review, was due not only to the performance of Kelvin Yeboah, but also Mattia Aramu, Aldo Florenzi and Henrique Pereira – my front four (after the sale of Guðmundsson). It’s only right that we take the time to investigate how good they look.

In the player analysis below, rather than simply copying the in-game graph from the spider chart to show how good each player is in Serie B, I’ll look at how well they performed compared to other comparative leagues. The reason for doing this is that, for example, there may be a small number of players with enough minutes played as wingers in one league, so using other leagues to make comparisons makes it more reliable. The leagues I chose were 2. Bundesliga (Germany), PKO Bank Polski Ekstraklasa (Poland), Fortuna Liga (Slovakia), Ligue 2 BKT (France) and of course Serie B. The reason for choosing these leagues is because they are all European leagues, with the same calendar for their respective sessions, and roughly comparable to Serie B based on their league rankings. All players for whom data was collected had completed 1,000 minutes or more to avoid a small sample size of minutes skewing the data.

Kelvin Yeboah – Serie B Capocannonieri winner

Yeboah usually plays with incredible freedom, utilizing his fantastic pace to run in behind the defense when they push, allowing him to mount a number of one-on-one attacks which he calmly finishes off with regularity. I’m not going to pretend that he’s scoring goals every week – while he’s scoring fantastic numbers, he’s had some barren spells. But it was often his goals that set us apart from our opponents – his pace, composure, movement off the ball and finishing ability saw him end the season as Serie B’s top scorer.

Aldo Florenzi

As the first player I negotiated with after I took over as Genoa manager, it was fantastic to see Aldo Florenzi perform to the standards he achieved throughout the season. Playing as an advanced playmaking 10, he showed the ability to play lethal passes and score goals in one uniform. His radar shows how brilliant he is in front of goal, taking the burden off Yeboah, while also being close to the top (5th of 109) assists per ninety in the five leagues selected.

Henrique Pereira – The best young footballer winner

Another new signing early in the season under my leadership, when Pereira received his chance to play in the side, he took it. He became our team’s chief creator, providing many opportunities for Yeboah and Aramu to score. You can see from the radar on the left in the graph below how elite his chance creation was for our side, while also not being shy in creating shots (radar right). For reference, the rankings come from a total of 182 players.

His performances earned him the ‘Best Young Footballer’ award for Serie B. Unsurprisingly when he agreed to be spoken to regarding a pre-contract agreement, I jumped at the opportunity, and am delighted he is keen to extend his tenure. time with us beyond his initial loan.

Mattia Aramu

If Pereira is the ultimate creator, Aramu is the swordsman – a superb striker with an eye for goal. League leader in Serie B, and as good if not better than anyone playing on either side as a winger, it would be a shame if his loan spell with us ended. I considered signing him on a pre-contract basis, but the salary he is asking for would destroy the existing salary structure. While he’s clearly good enough for Serie A, I can’t risk financial ruin and live up to his basic weekly salary of £40k+.

The graph below combines Pereira and Aramu’s metrics into a bar chart, and compares them against the same players across five leagues. I also added a metric for Güven Yalçın, who plays in the reverse wing role that Pereira created after Yalçın was injured. This gives you an idea of ​​the level of ability of Pereira and Aramu in the same side as Yalçın.

If you want to see more graphics about side gigs, you can click here for center back metrics; here for fullback defensive metrics And here for their attack metrics (it’s worth a look); And here for our halfback defense metrics, here for their creativity And here for their goal-scoring exploits.

Financial analysis

With promotions riding on the form these players have achieved, resulting in prize money of £2.15m, and some prudent cost-cutting, one would be forgiven for thinking that the financial side at Genoa CFC would also see growth. but unfortunately it’s far from that.

Despite players trading and collecting over £8 million in incoming transfer fees, player sales (which are in red) and amortization costs from this year’s incoming transfers alone lead to an annual net loss of £5,626,667 in player trades alone, before considering residual amortization costs book value of the entire team, including those on loan (in purple).

Total amortization costs for the year were £20.3m, which contrasts with potential trading profits throughout the year:

That said, no profit was booked for the 2022-23 financial year, further evidence of which is contained in the year-end cash flow analysis below:

This graph highlights the high level of spending on player salaries, bonuses and loyalty payments as a proportion of revenue:

A player spending rate of over 80% is uncomfortable and a sign that if we don’t achieve promotion we will be in trouble as a club, but it cannot be taken for granted that life in Serie A is a bad thing. roads paved with gold too. I have to be careful about spending money, assessing and addressing gaps in the squad, both in terms of numbers and quality, so that we can make enough improvements to stay afloat and not get into trouble with the bank. This will be a difficult challenge to navigate and finding a balance between trying to avoid relegation and also pushing the club too far into the red zone with any potential transfers coming to nothing.

But all that, and our first game in Serie A will have to wait until next time. Will Yeboah succeed in achieving success? Will Henrique Pereira continue to provide assists, or will that fall to another unknown signing? And who will Genoa CFC bring in to replace previously on-loan RB Leipzig goalkeeper Josep Martínez?

For that, and more, tune in next time, but until then – Until we meet again!