I guess I'm one of those rare people that still kinda like Spalletti. Yeah, I would start Keita over Candreva on any position and I also would start Asamoah in our midfield...
..but I cannot hate the dude. It is hard for me to critic him all the time since he has a very limited squad in CL. A lot of things are going wrong right now for us and I want him to stay at Inter until the end of the season at least.
I think Spallo gets to the end of the season unless things utterly spiral out of control (gee, that would be a shocker) but you have to wonder if you're bumping into his glass ceiling with how far he's capable of taking this club. He doesn't have a sparking European track record; no, he hasn't usually had great sides with Roma as it is as compared to proper European giants, but what's the first thing you think of with Spallo in Europe, the 7-1 defeat in Manchester? The 0-0-8 record in England overall? Bear in mind that, a couple seasons back when Roma finished with 87 points and only a few points off Juve, that came in a season where they got knocked out in the qualifying round for the Champions League, relegating them to a group of farmers in the Europa League, and eventually getting knocked off by Lyon in the knockouts. Point being, he may well have been about the perfect hire as far as getting us back to the Champions League itself is concerned (yay UEFA for the 4th place spot, and automatic qualification from 4th place as well; Mancini rues his unfortunate timing), but how much further can he take us from there?
Mind you, the squad restrictions didn't help. Neither did the group draw, but I'll continue to insist that the difficulty of the group stopped being an excuse once we were five points clear of Tottenham with three games remaining, two of them at home and our single-toughest game in the group stage (away to Barça) cleared from the schedule. Spallo has...some excuses, maybe. I understand. But expectations change when things go better than originally anticipated, and so to end up not qualifying for the knockouts from the perch we were at, is a total failure. On the players, on the coaches. Nobody is clean in this mess. And that Spalletti downshifted out of fifth gear when things were still volatile at the Camp Nou, I can't understand. As I said in the game thread - Vrsaljko was an obvious sub if we went up 2-1, or if Spurs fell down 2-0 over there. Everyone at San Siro would immediately be aware if that had happened. Until then, either you hold off on that sub in vain, or you make another attacking sub because relying on Barcelona to hold, what, the 3rd or 4th place team in England to a clean sheet when they have everything on the line to a 1-0 scoreline, is a losing strategy. Spalletti got conservative and almost immediately Spurs scored in Catalonia, and once that happened, we didn't have the ability to make any more changes, obviously. You 100% have to go for the win and, shit, if Spurs come back and win, it's not your day and you move on. He was content to sit back for the draw. We saw that happen two weeks ago. We saw that happen this past Friday. We saw what happened when he had the bright idea to bring Santon on against Juve when they were desperate to fend off Napoli for the Scudetto back in late April.
I think Spalletti has a really nice tactical construct for how he wants us to play. I think it's something that stands to benefit us moving forward, and perhaps make our club look more attractive to potential transfer targets as well. In that respect, I think he has been doing us a real solid. A really good hire in those respects. But his in-game mentality, and his generally conservative streak that, clearly, runs through him in high-stakes situations like this, is a problem. And, well, how old is the man? 59 years or so? We're not talking someone who seems terribly likely to change his ways. He already hasn't been, because we wouldn't keep finding other things to compare the Santon sub to if the Santon sub was a one-time blunder.
Again, unless things disintegrate Pioli-style, keep him. The CL damage is already done. The #1 initiative this season all along was finishing top-3 in Italy, anyway, though a run at the Coppa Italia sure would be nice as well since it's our only path now to silverware. But these past two weeks, considering the stakes, opposition, and way the games have unfolded, have really not left me too thrilled about him. A large part of our recent failures lies on his shoulders. Redeem yourself, Luciano.
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