So the Siena, Cagliari and Roma results were pretty bad, all things considered. Even draws against such teams are barely tolerable. With all nine points, guess which team is in second place?

If I was to criticise Prandelli, it would be about those. He’s got to win tomorrow and at least get the draw against Sampdoria on the 21st, and reverse this run of bad results away to teams we ought to beat, or else I won’t blame anyone for suggesting in the Christmas break he might be part of the problem.

We also had lampredotto before the game… it was a cold winter night… anyway I miss bella Firenze terribly all the time and I look forward to following Fiorentina here. Alè Alè Alè!

They make the most out of every transfer dollar. They make the most out of the relatively young players on the squad… All they lack is a little experience.

It is true, they may not, right now, have the mentality to compete in both Serie A and the Champions League (even so called “great teams” have that problem), but hey, at least you got to try. That is more than Napoli or AC Milan can say. Next year, the squad will be more prepared.

Getting rid of strikers always scares me a bit. They are a fragile lot. You just never know when you are going to need an extra.

The season before Prandelli took over, Fiorentina only escaped relegation due to better their head-to-head record with Bologna and Parma. Since Prandelli has been in charge, Fiorentina has finished 4th in 2005-06, 5th (despite having a 19 point penalty, without it they would have finished 3rd) in 2006-07, and 4th in 2007-08. How a fan of Fiorentina could scoff at such consistency is beyond me. You cannot base the result of an entire season on the results against a few teams. Consistency is what counts. A team can win a league title without beating the big teams. The reason that Fiorentina has not yet gone from a club on the fringes of the “big 3″ to making it (at least) a “big 4″ is more due to the modest financial resources at their disposal than to any supposed lack of tactical nous by Prandelli. Had Fiorentina had the spending power of Inter, Milan or Juve and had been finishing 4th/5th then you could probably blame Prandelli.

But you are right in saying that Prandelli has taken Fiorentina as far as he can. He could only take them further with funds akin to that available to Mourinho, Ranieri etc.

Prandelli does not equal Fiorentina. I will be a Fiorentina fan long after Prandelli has re-found his Gobbi roots.

I have told people on another forum that most Fiorentina fans are drinking the Prandelli Kool-Aid (oops… Another douchy comment?) but they have scoffed at my claim. Turns out that, again, I am right.

“If thinking that my favorite team’s coach is sub-standard just because he seems like a pretty good guy or because his wife died makes me ungrateful then, whatever.”

That was the most douchy sentence I have ever read on these boards. Congratulations.

Personally, I would keep both. To bench both of them and then to ship them out just seems a bit ungrateful to me, given the important roles they both had last season. Gila, Mutu, Pazzini and Osvaldo could all be rotated to keep them all happy and on form. I’m actually surprised that Prandelli has been so reluctant to give the latter 2 playing time.

I think Fiorentina’s struggles, especially in the UCL, has been due to some of their poor acquisitions. Surely they could have done better than Commotto, Zauri and Vargas for their back-line?

And if anybody doesn’t want Prandelli at Fiorentina, I’m sure we’ll be glad to have him over at Vinovo – just make sure Corvino, Montolivo and Kuzmanovic comes with him.

Napoli does not have anywhere close to the talent and depth that we have, for example, so is Reja some tactical genius? I don’t think of Reja as a tactical genius but he’s a better tactician than Prandelli. There is no doubt in my mind.

If thinking that my favorite team’s coach is sub-standard just because he seems like a pretty good guy or because his wife died makes me ungrateful then, whatever. I guess that thinking that Vryzas was sub-standard makes me ungrateful, too, because he never complained about warming the bench. I was as happy as anyone when we got Prandelli but he’s taken us as far as he can.