Last season we were just two games away from promoting in the Serie B and therefore, this year’s goal for Chieti is to win promotion no questions asked. Therefore, I had to promise the same thing to the board which, due to the increased lack of funds, didn’t have much to put on the table:

The biggest surprise – a loss that actually turned into a good move financially, was the loss of our wonder keeper Luciani to Padova – there was a co-ownership deal in place and we got a total of 670,000 Euros for the lad which certainly is an amazing sum. We did lost a great player, but maybe it will be best for the long run plans. The rest of the players Chieti said goodbye to were mostly dead weights:

Nine new players followed in, but I am not really delighted with their quality. I hope that the new keeper can rise up to the previous standards, although I doubt that’s possible at the moment. I am pleased by the signing of our new left-back Mossa, as well as the promising prospect of Monachello:

I was pretty surprised to see that the fans didn’t start growing big in numbers compared to last season. For our performance and almost-won promotion, I thought that our fan base would grow a lot bigger:

The first games – the friendlies – went pretty well for Chieti and we got the wins that we wanted. We had a pretty solid display against Fiorentina, but were destroyed by Siena in the Italian Cup qualifications. Last year we performed pretty well in this cup, but not in the league so hopefully this loss will actually turn things around:

The new Chieti Players

Despite the new signings, we still lack the most at the center of the field: it’s impossible at the moment to find a good central midfielder and I keep bringing them in (and letting them go) hoping that a wonder will happen, but until now nothing did happen. Cardinali did grow a lot in the past two seasons, but he’s still not as good as I’d like him to be. I will keep searching, though – here is the estimated rating of our team this season:

Hopefully it will be enough to secure promotion!