Pescara's dream return to Serie A after a twenty year absence turned into nothing short of an absolute nightmare. They arrived in the top flight as Serie B champions having played a swashbuckling brand of attacking football under buccaneer coach Zdenek Zeman. However, they lost their manager to Roma in the summer along with their exciting young strike-force of Lorenzo Insigne and Ciro Immobile. Playmaker Marco Verratti also departed and much of the exuberance in their style of play went with it. The club tried to replace like-for-like in the transfer market by bringing in other young players such as Mattia Perin, Juan Quintero and Vladimir Weiss but what they really needed was far more nous and experience if they wanted to survive in the top flight. Giovanni Stroppa was the new man at the helm and initially he tried to replicate Zemanlandia by sticking with the offensive 4-3-3 formation that the former coach used. It proved futile as he didn't have the quality at his disposal to make the system work and he resigned in November. However, Pescara's first half of the season wasn't too bad in terms of results overall. They took some frightful beatings from the bigger clubs but were able to pick up some decent wins along the way under new boss Cristiano Bergodi. Weiss was their star man early on with some scintillating displays, usually off the bench. Meanwhile, Perin made up for the lack of defensive cohesion with some fine performances between the sticks. Back-to-back wins either side of the new year including becoming the first team to beat Fiorentina at Stadio Artemio Franchi gave the Pescara faithful great hope that they'd survive. However, they weren't able to record a single win from that point until the end of the season in a dramatic and horrendous slide. Their top players stopped performing as Weiss was becoming more famous for his disciplinary problems than his goals. Perin too lost his early season lustre and was unceremoniously dropped for Ivan Pelizzoli. The veteran goalkeeper proved the one bright spark in a terrible team that otherwise looked completely out of their depth at this level. Mix the worst defence in the league with the least potent attack and you have a recipe for disaster. That's exactly what the Delfini's season turned into as they sank to the bottom of the Serie A ocean. Bergodi was shown the door after a run of seven defeats and one draw from eight games. Youth coach Cristian Bucchi didn't even have the necessary badges to manage in the top flight which showed just what the Pescara board thought about their situation. They were already doomed and just needed someone to wave the white flag. A 5-1 thrashing at home to Fiorentina ended and summed up a dreadful season. It now remains to be seen if the club has learned any valuable lessons from their Serie A experience as they will hope to return more prepared.
