Roberto Mancini has tried to pacify supporters by claiming that he has seen enough progress from the club despite failing to qualify for the Champions League once again.
Inter Milan spent big in the summer since the return of Mancini in the hope of reaching the European football pinnacle stages once again. The club has been a rank outsider in European football over the last five years, which is a tremendous surprise considering that they managed to win the competition only in 2010. Mancini has revamped the entire squad to suit to his style, but they have been able to secure only a fourth place finish.
More importantly, they finished a whopping 13 points behind third placed Roma. Only the top three places in the Italian Serie A will be able to dream about Champions League football for next season. Even third placed Roma will have to go through play-offs in order to get through to the group stages. On paper, the fourth place finish is better for Inter Milan since it gives them Europa League football at the least. Further, they have made progress after managing only an eighth place finish in the previous season. In terms of points, however, it represents an improvement of just 12 over the previous campaign.
“We got off to a good start and that was very important for us. It was difficult to get the team running like clockwork because we’d brought in lots of new faces and they needed to get to know each other. We even managed to end the transfer market in the black and despite being top of the league some people still criticised us. Regardless of our position in the table and the fact we weren’t scoring many, I think the season started really well,” said the Inter manager.