Florence And The Goal Machine : (3.2) Standing In The Shadows Of Love 20-21

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Welcome to my latest post tracking my managerial career in Italy with Fiorentina. We have come to the end of my third season in Florence and I have to say it’s been very enjoyable. I was determined to put last seasons disappointing end behind us and give the fans and the board something to cheer about. My last post took us up to the end of November with us sat nicely in 3rd place just 4 points behind Milan and Lazio after 15 games that consisted of 7 wins, 7 draws and just a single defeat on Matchday 15 away at Lazio.

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Florence And The Goal Machine : (3.1) An Argentinian Shining In Florence 20-21

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Happy New Year and welcome to the latest offerings of my time in Florence. After a dreadful end to our second season I decided that I would make a few changes in the summer and freshen up the squad giving it a more youthful feel by clearing out some of the older players in our ranks see my last post here. I also needed to show both the Fiorentina board and Tifosi that I am still the right man for the job after we chocked when we was on the brink of success last season.

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Florence And The Goal Machine : (3.0) A New Dawn In Florence 20-21

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Welcome to the latest instalment of Florence And The Goal Machine. We are about to embark on season three in Florence and I am very excited to what lies ahead of us. After finishing 3rd in Serie A in our first season we finished 5th last season and reached the the final of the Coppa Italia only to be denied of our first piece of silverware by Roma after a penalty shootout. Last season we started like a train and by the end of January I really thought we were title contenders however we finished the season in abysmal form.

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Florence And The Goal Machine : Catastrophic Failures (2.2) 19-20

IMG_20181217_073128Welcome back to the virtual World of Football Manager and my latest blog post about my save with ACF Fiorentina . My last post took us up to the end of January 2020 in my second season at the club with us sitting pretty at the top of the table after 22 games and most definitely looking like title contenders. Our system ‘The Iron Triangle’ was producing the goods then all of a sudden the wheels fell off.

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Florence And The Goal Machine : The Colour Purple (2.1) 19-20

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Welcome to the 2nd post from our 2019-2020 season. A quick recap for anyone visiting this blog for the first time, I took over at Fiorentina in the summer of 2018 on an initial 1 year contract with the boards expectations of finishing in the top half of the table and my own expectation of European qualification. The Media prediction was that we would finish 7th. My initial thoughts was that I would work with the players already at the club during the first season before making any big changes to both the playing staff and the backroom staff.

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Florence And The Goal Machine : Life Without Simeone (2.0) 19-20

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Welcome to the first post of Season Two 2019-2020 season. No sooner had the dust settled on the 2018-2019 season it was time to get to work on bringing in a replacement for Paris bound Giovanni Simeone and welcoming back a few players who we had out on loan last season non less so than the talent that is Sandro Tonali who I am really looking forward to working with.

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Florence And The Goal Machine : No Time For Goodbye (1.2) 18-19

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Welcome to the latest instalment from Florence, my last update took us up to the final 11 games of our first season with Fiorentina with us sat in 4th position in the table. Could we hang on to fourth position and get in to next seasons Champions League? We also welcome Federico Chiesa back from injury and we finish the season off with a transfer story that breaks the clubs record departure of Rui Costa. It’s all happening in Florence so let’s not waste anymore time and get started with this latest update.

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Florence And The Goal Machine : Visioneering (1.1) 18-19

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Welcome to the latest round up of Florence And The Goal Machine. In my last post we had reached the halfway point in our first season at the club and sat in 5th position in the table after a good start to the season. I had been reluctant to use any of the 4 loan signings the club had already made before my appointment because I didn’t want to pick them in front of any of the players that we owned, however once we reached December we had a few injuries so my hand was forced and to be totally honest Marko Pjaca came in and was nothing short of a revalation.

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Florence And The Goal Machine : Better To Be Second Than Thieves 18-19 (1.0)

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Welcome to Florence And The Goal Machine my FM19 save with ACF Fiorentina. I have been waiting in anticipation for the release of the game after the announcement of the new features and now it’s finally here I can get stuck in to the game and start to build what I hope will be the strongest club in Italy but first I have to analyse who we have at the club in terms of staff and players and lay the foundations that will give the club a chance to shine over the next few years. Toppling Juventus and maintaining the level to achieve this over time will be my focus. I played a few games with the Viola on the Beta and was going to continue the save on but then decided to start a fresh with the full release with the Serie C bug corrected.

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Florence And The Goal Machine : Introduction FM19

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Welcome  to Florence the Italian city that is the home to ACF Fiorentina S.p.A and the club who I will be starting my FM19 save with after the Fred Pentland Challenge is now going to start after Christmas due to the working commitments of two of the participants, so whilst I am waiting to start the challenge with Villarreal I thought that I would drop anchor in Tuscany and see what I can achieve with the Viola. The club were formed in 1926 and have won the Serie A title on two occasions 1956 and 1969 some 50 years ago this coming season. The club were the first Italian Club to play in the European Cup Final in 1957 losing 0-2 to Real Madrid. Fiorentina did have some European success though when they beat Glasgow Rangers over two legs to lift the European Cup Winners Cup in 1961. The club are commonly known as The Viola (Purple) after the colour of their home shirts. They play their home games in the Stadio Artemio Franchi with a capacity of 43,147. The club were deemed bankrupt back in 2001-2002 season before being reestablished in August of 2002. The club are now owned by Diego Della Valle and are looking to better times after the implementation of a sound financial strategy

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