Serie A Midfielder Club Review – Crotone

Crotone are celebrating their first ever season in the Italian top-flight, and they managed to finish the campaign outside of the relegation zone to ensure survival and continued participation in Serie A next time around.

Manager David Nicola deserves credit for avoiding the oft-inevitable first season relegation, and for the next of our club reviews we will be taking a look at Pitagorici’s midfielders.

Unfortunately for the club, the midfielders weren’t exactly spectacular. They did tend to maintain status quo however, with the best midfielder finishing third in the fantasy points charts for the club. That man was none other than Adrian Stoian, and the fact he finished third in the club’s charts with a 3.00m valuation may make him appear an attractive inclusion. Unfortunately, however, he did only manage to bag 17 points, with 17 starts and 10 sub appearances.

Those 17 points ensured his Price / Performance (P/P) score was 6.3, which really isn’t too bad all things considered. He contributed three goals and two assists over the course of the season, and while his three yellow cards did drag his score down a little he was far from the worst offender on the discipline front. More on that later though.

Lukewarm on his heels was Andrea Nalini. The 27-year-old arrived from Salernitana last year, and like Stoian he was valued at 3.00m in the EuroFantasyLeague game. He scored 16 points – giving him a P/P of 6.3 as well – but considerably more impressively he achieved these totals from just seven starts and 10 sub appearances. He scored two and assisted twice too, so it could be argued he was the best option for inclusion on every front other than final points tally (which is ultimately the important one).

Marcus Rohden finished third, with 16 points but a 5.00m valuation. That price tag dropped his P/P to just 3.6, and he started more games than any of his cohorts here – 30 starts and four sub cameos. He scored a single goal but provided the most assits among the midfielders with four.

Andrea Barberis finished in fourth, his nine points completely failing to justify his 5.00m valuation. 23 starts, complemented by only three sub appearances, yielded a disappointing 2.2 on the P/P front.

Aleksandar Tonev was next with four points, but with only a 2.50m value his P/P was marginally better than Barberis’ with 2.4. He did manage that with only 13 games under his belt (nine starts and four occasions of entering the fray), and his two bookings did little to significantly affect his score.

Leonardo Capezzi was disappointing, finishing the campaign on -1. Surprisingly, he wasn’t bottom of the pile either. 18 starts and seven sub games were confounded with five yellow cards and a single red card, which resulted in him ending on negative figures.

There was one worse still, however. Lorenzo Crisetig ended on -5 points, and with a 5.00m price tag his P/P was a disastrous -1.2. He did provide one assist unlike Tonev and Capezzi, but unfortunately he found himself in the referee’s book more than any of his midfield peers. 11 bookings and a sending off meant his discipline really let down the 1% of fantasy managers who selected him for their squad.

Despite the midfield perhaps underperforming – or at least not quite achieving their potential – Crotone’s season must go down as a landmark and a real achievement. Time will tell whether they can build on that but this was ultimately a campaign of survival and proving they can cut it in the top flight.

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