Catania's late season surge proved to be too little, too late as the club were relegated to Serie B after a trying campaign. It was always going to be tough for Rolando Maran to replicate what was a record breaking season for the club in 2012/13. The summer saw the departure of some big players including Alejandro Gomez and Francesco Lodi. The club failed to really replace them sufficiently and that was reflected in the results. Catania won just once in their opening eight games but it still seemed a little hasty to let go off Maran which is what they did. Luigi De Canio was brought in as his successor but his appointment proved to be a complete failure as he lost eight of his twelve matches in charge at the club culminating in an embarrassing 4-1 home defeat in the Coppa Italia to Serie B side Siena. The board re-hired Maran and were also able to bring back Lodi from Genoa but, in truth, the damage looked to have already been done. Catania remained almost incapable of getting a result on the road. In previous seasons, it has been their home form which has bailed them out but even that deserted them. They conceded far too many goals and they scored far too few. It was difficult to point-point a standout performer for the club this season but Pablo Barrientos showed flashes of brilliance at times in attack whilst Gonzalo Bergessio bagged a respectable ten goal haul. Maran was unable to rekindle the magic he found last season and he was sacked for the second time just before the run-in with the team looking doomed. A youth team manager, Maurizio Pellegrino, was named as the new man at the helm in a move which smacked of a club that had accepted its fate. However, the rookie coach almost pulled off the great escape. Catania ended up winning four of their last five league matches but it wasn't enough as Sassuolo kept one step ahead of them. It was agonising for the Elefanti supporters who had finally started to see their team perform in the way in which they had last season but they were left wondering why they couldn't have done it earlier.
