The club's chairman offered only the demand that they avoid relegation, inferring that a top 10 finish was not expected.
Top100's resident Stats and Facts Analyst predicted Internacional to be relegated and finish 18th. While myself as manager taking all things into account predicted a 13th place finish, anticipating a 2nd season struggle but to still comfortably avoid the drop. So let's see how it went...
The Season
The team got off to a very respectable start to the campaign with 4 wins, 3 draws and 1 defeat from our first 8 games that saw us flying high near the top of the table. Notable 3-2 and 4-3 victories over Southampton and Benfica respectively showed we could compete with the heavyweights of the league and it showed we could score. Alassane Pléa and Edin Višća scored some important goals and proved to be a potent attacking duo, contributing to some promising early season form.
As most managers have at some time experienced, you should never rely on good form, and for no reason at all results will swing in the opposite direction. Sure enough came a winless streak of 9 games, including 2 lots of 2 consecutive defeats to Leverkusen and Genoa, and then Fenerbahçe and Sporting CP. This sent us plummeting down to the bottom half amongst a tight battle with play-off hopefuls and survival clubs.
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| Pléa: Man on fire |
Despite a couple of changes mid-season with the captures of Luisão, Cheikhou Kouyaté and Ryad Boudebouz we still couldn't find the form or consistency that guided Internacional to 10th place last season.
If nothing better, a temporary upturn in fortunes followed with a 5-0 thumping over struggling Southampton to complete the double, with Pléa bagging 4 goals - this was the highlight of our season.
More stuttering form pursued throughout June with 3 wins, 2 draws and 3 defeats, still better than no wins at all. A notable 2-1 over title hopefuls Internazionale and a 2-0 win over an in-form Sunderland were the big positives from the month.
July started off quite well with a hard fought win over a strong Leverkusen, a thrilling 3-3 drawwdraw with Genoa and 3 points against Lyon, culminating in a 5 game unbeaten run - a season best. July continued with inter-changeable results of wins and losses, including a 2nd double loss of the season against Fenerbahçe and Sporting CP (who seem to be our bogey teams), between 2 important wins over Wolfsburg and Fiorentina which guaranteed our survival in a close bottom half.
Our end of season run-in finished in style with a vengeful 3-1 victory over relegated Spatak Moscow to hoist SC Internacional up to a Top100 best finish of 9th in Division 2.
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| Final Division 2 standings |
The assist tally for the team is shown here. Pléa was nearly as good at setting up goals as he was scoring them. His average match rating was 7.39, higher than any other player. He's definitely earned his Player of the Season award.
Season Facts
- Games lost by a single goal - 11
- Games won at home - 3....(the word "fortress" not to be used here!)
- Games won away -- 11...Wow!
- Winless streak - 9 games... it was a bad run
- Biggest win 5-0 Southampton
- Biggest loss 3-0 Spartak
- Never won consecutive games!
- Worst losing streak - 2 games (3 occasions)
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| Not much to cheer about at the Beira Rio |
Mid season risers
In my last post on the blog I predicted the rises of the Bundesliga contingent of Willi Orban, Marcel Sabitzer, Alessandro Schöpf and Yussuf Poulsen all from 87 to 88. Gladly all of them came in for Internacional! This immediately strengthened the team all round and statistically changed them from relegation candidates to mid-tablers. It took a while to find the right line-up but form started to improve.
Internacional's star player Alassane Pléa rose from 88 to 89 to give us a stronger centre forward and a player rated worthy of topping the scoring charts.
Mikel San José got a surprise rise from 89 to 90 to further strengthen our central midfield.
Our born and raised goalkeeper Becker Alisson also got a shock rise from 88 to 89 to give our team a great advantage over many of the division's others.
Finally, Japanese forward Yuya Kubo got a deserved, albeit unexpected rise from 85 to 87. This gave the team a good fall back option in attacking positions and a great young asset in their ranks.
Mid-season arrivals
Cheikhou Kouyaté - 89 - D,DM,M(C)
Anderson Luisão - 89 - D(C)
Ryad Boudebouz - 89 - AM,F(RLC)
New season arrivals
Diego Laxalt - 88 - D,DM,M(L),AM(RLC)
Emerson Palmieri - 88 - D,DM,M(L)
Players to Watch
Who stands the best chance of rising before the end of Season 6 ? Here's my predictions:
Willi Orban - D(RC) - 88>89
The centre back and club captain of Leipzig was a starter for their entire 2nd place maiden Bundesliga campaign, and will be playing Champions League football this season. Assuming Leipzig do 80% as well as last season he's looking at a rise. I'm fending off bids for him left right and centre.
Marcel Sabitzer - AM,F(RLC) - 88>89
Same as Orban above, Sabitzer was a regular for the Bundesliga runners-up in the 2nd striker role. With the UCL and another league season to build on his abilities, as well as being a fully fledged Austria international, he should get a +1.
Emerson Palmieri - D,DM,M(L) - 88>89 - As stated before, he's a starter for Roma and he rose from 82 to 88 in his first season as he helped them finish 2nd in Serie A. If he carries on performing he's bound to rise further and should cement his position as first choice left back both from Roma and for us for many seasons to come, (unless Frank Hirst tries to recruit him to his Italian army at Genoa!)
Ibrahim Amadou - D,DM,M(C)
- 85>87
Joris Gnagnon - D(C) - 83>86
Benjamin Bourigeaurd - DM,M(C) - 83>86
Adrien Hunou - M(C),AM(RLC) - 85>86
Other players who I think have a SMALLER chance of a +1 rise in the ratings IF they perform well are: Becker Alisson, Diego Laxalt, Marcel Risse, Alessandro Schöpf and Nemanja Radoja. As ever I will be looking forward to the next review of the big 5 leagues!
Next Season?
Despite a tiring season of ups and downs with no continuity whatsoever, we have managed to exceed my own expectations and certainly our less ambitious chairman's too. My predicted 13th place finish in season 5 turned out to be an actual 9th place.
We have a good group of young players with good potential, with many other managers eyeing up targets. A lot of our players have risen this season and should show similar form in real life to last season, potentially earning further rises as previously mentioned.
With those factors in mind, plus the increasing difficulty of Division 2 and the improvement of other teams in the Division, I can see it being another difficult season.
However in some aspects I expect us to do better, for example, we need to win more games at home and we must put some kind of streak together at some point.
My personal aim would be to make the playoffs as a best case scenario, but I would hope to not have relegation worries and finish no lower than 11th realistically. I hope we can find a formation and tactical approach that generally works, as I feel experimentation during the season always causes a dip in form.
If i can find that then i feel we have a great group of young players to go far and with a bit of luck we can establish ourselves as promotion hopefuls rather than relegation candidates.
Thank you for taking the time to read about SC Internacional. I have enjoyed reading all the recent blog entries from other managers, so i hope you have liked this Good luck to all for the new season, and long live Top100!
Cheers, Robérto Downinho
(Aka Robert Downing)
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