In a vacuum, I would have given this mercato a 5 or 6. However, given the circumstances (which are mostly outside of the new management's control), I give it a solid 7.
First in terms of the squad itself vs last year:
Goalkeepers: A net upgrade (although not huge)
IN: Vicario, Grabara.
OUT: Di Gregorio, Perin
Defence: A good upgrade
IN: Celik, Lucumi.
OUT: Holm, kostic
Overall the defensive side looks more assured compared to last year. Lucumi to me is the biggest upgrade to this team this year.
Midfield: A questionable upgrade. Perhaps more was needed to fix a key weakness.
IN: Luiz, Sarr.
OUT: Miretti, Adzic
Sarr is more of a prospect and doesn't offer guarantees (although he is the hard working midfielder we needed in terms of profile at least). Luiz, although having a good start is still a bit of an unknown week in week out.
Forwards: Not sure on quality, but lots of options that fit better with Spaletti's philosophy of play.
IN: Nico Gonzales, Alajbegovic, Muani, Woltemade, Ekhator.
OUT: Vlahovic, Openda, David
Vlahovic, David and Openda - the latter 2 didn't do well but they were all strikers that had scored lots of goals in the past. I am not sure if we have 1 striker that is capable of scoring ~15-20 goals in a season. Woltemade is a good acquisition but I am also not sure how many he can score either (a reasonable chunk of his goals were from the penalty spot). Ironically, I think Nico Gonzales and Woltemade are the big ones here - more direct kind of players that I think the squad needed.
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Overall, you can argue that the team is overall stronger than last year. However, It is still 50/50 for us to finish in the top 4. We should have ended up in the top 4 last year but I think this year Como and Roma look way stronger and even Atalanta might have a stronger midfield than ours. Milan might also be stronger and Inter is still Inter. Napoli are still Napoli.
This team requires a LOT Of players to improve to better levels for us to get into the top 4. Vicario to have a better season than last year - the same applies to Cambiaso, Luiz, Thuram, Sarr, Koopmeiners, Conceicao (for his end product), Yildiz (should have scored more last year by his standards), Muani, Woltemade (was better in Germany than in Newcastle).
So the positives to me are, that despite not getting a LB and bolstering the midfield more, overall the team is stronger than last year - particularly in Defence. Di Gregorio probably on his own lost us enough points to fall out of the top 4. Spaletti has more of a Spaletti team to work with now.
Negatives. Midfield is still fairly weak in my opinion compared to many of our rivals. Despite that, last year Juventus had more touches in the box than any other team in Serie A except Inter. We lacked the cutting edge to convert. We have a number of exciting young "flair" players with potential but I still feel we lack that cutting edge to convert these chances.
From a purely mercato perspective, the fact that we didn't sell 1 single player must be a record and one that is unfortunate. I don't understand the logic in buying Ekhator when we are so tight for funds either. We left it late in the mercato to bolster the defence and midfield which should have been done earlier. I still think we lack leadership on the pitch too.
But finances are tight especially without having access to the Champions League money. So this is why I round up the score to 7.
The management and the team changes too much from year to year (yes it is kind of necessary), but we have 44% of the squad now that wasn't in the squad last year and we have 28 players with 10 forwards. So that is a bit of a mess. Alajbegovic was an opportunistic acquisition but the team would have been better (at least in the short term), if they invested that money on a quality world class midfielder.
Its all up to Spaletti now - he has a squad more tailored to his preferences. But I fear its gong to be a tough campaign.
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