Atalanta 2028/29 Midseason Update

Having fallen into the perfect job following my departure from Groningen, I had a few weeks to overhaul a decent looking but not inspiring squad & see whether we would be the team pushing for Europe suggested by their Europa League qualification last season or the mid-table nobodies suggested by the board expectations.

TRANSFERS

We only had a transfer budget of about £12m to work with, but there were plenty of players who could be moved on to help create more funds, and through a combination of identifying the bargains already on my shortlist, sniffing out some release clause/transfer list steals & calling up some of my Groningen boys, we actually ended up able to make some significant upgrades. The question was, how well would they work?

LEAGUE FIXTURES | LEAGUE TABLE | EUROPA LEAGUE FIXTURES | EUROPA LEAGUE TABLE

Turns out the answer was immediately, as we went all the way to the end of October without dropping a point in either competition, beating current Champions League holders & winners of the last 5 Serie A titles Milan 3-0 at their place in the process. We've come back to the real world a bit since then, but we're still massively outperforming my expectations & in a great position to have a very successful season.

I do still need to put some work in to the squad depth, moving some players out to get game time & finding some others to bring in/recall from loans, but we have more than twice our initial transfer budget available to spend now, so there's definitely room for us to make some more upgrades if we can find the right players. We're also struggling for home grown at club players, but that should be solved in a season or two as there are some decent looking youngsters who aren't far away from the first team squad.