Fiorentina file
Fiorentina have now lost 3 successive games in a row, two against top serie a sides, Napoli and Roma, one against the weakest side in their Europa League group, Lech Posnan. Whilst this is cause for concern, it’s hardly a crisis as we stand third in the league. It is difficult to see why we have experienced this bad run of results. Maybe we are not as good as we thought and once we came up against the “big boys” we do not have the class. Yet we won at Inter who are reviving under Roberto Mancini.
Roma scored early and the scorer was Mohammed Salah whom we had a loan from Chelsea last season and left us for Roma under a cloud. We were delighted when he was red carded from the pitch. Gervinho whom Arsenal fans would not recognise for his dynamism scored a second on the break. In the second half it took too long to introduce Pepito Rossi ,the striker who has had such bad luck with career injuries. Babacar a big strong boy pulled one back but it was too little, too late.
Another old boy who has turned up at Juventus is Juan Caudrado. For a whole season Mourinho tracked him, we got €30m for him only for Mourinho to say after 10 minutes he can recognise a player that won’t make it on his team. He may well have meant Caudrado. Chelsea have 42 players on loan. We find this all rather confusing as if players are bought to stop others from engaging them. Alan Tanner was saying to me that he doubted whether £8m Patrick Roberts will ever get a run at Manchester City. At Fiorentina we have a great young talent Federcio Bernardeschi. Maybe he needs to be stronger for the physical demands of serie a but at least he is a young Italian given the chance to showcase his ability. It’s also odd given the spending power of both Chelsea and Manchester City (and PSG) they have yet to compete in a Champions League Final and lag behind Bayern, Real Madrid and Barcelona.
