Bologna – comings and goings

By Teddy Baldwin in Blog, Guest Writers on 11/08/202117/08/2021

The beginning of the Serie A season is a little under two weeks away and if only a small portion of the transfer rumors happen then we can except a busy couple of weeks.

As of August 10^th, Bologna have brought in six players reportedly costing them ~$28m. Two of the players brought to the Renato Dell’Ara were fixtures in the Rossoblu’s disappointing 12^th place finish last year. Musa Barrow and Adama Soumaoro are both expected to be starters when the season kicks off at the Dell’Ara against Salernitana. Musa Barrow has missed a majority of preseason due to testing positive for COVID-19, but the Gambian appears to be a strong piece of business for the Rossoblu. Barrow recently started training and is expected to be fit for the beginning of the season.

Bologna’s new faces are headlined by Marko Arnautovic and Kevin Bonifazi, both of whom are expected to fill the gaps created by the departures of Rodrigo Palacio and Danilo respectively. Hopefully, Arnautovic can provide Bologna with a double-digit goal scorer for the first time since the 2017-2018 season when Simone Verdi scored 10 goals. Bonifazi has looked solid in preseason albeit a tad bit slow against the stronger sides.

Bologna have so far rounded out its transfer window by acquiring Sydney van Hooijdonk on a free and Francesco Bardi on a loan swap with Federico Ravaglia going to Frosinone.

Earlier in the mercato, Bologna was linked to Gabriele Zappa of Cagliari, but those rumors have appeared to have died down. It looks like Bologna is going to rely on the 33-year-old Lorenzo De Silvestri, who was inconsistent last season, for the 2021/22 season.

According to recent reports, it looks like a deal has been made between Bologna and Belgian side KV Oostende for center-back Arthur Theate. The young Belgian’s transfer to Bologna appears to be on standby with Bologna waiting to first sell Takehiro Tomiyasu. Tomiyasu has repeatedly been linked to big clubs in the Premier League with Tottenham being the primary club linked to the Japanese center back. Even though Tottenham recently purchased Cristian Romero from Atalanta for a hefty fee, it appears that Tomiyasu is likely to follow the Argentine to North London.

Besides Tomiyasu, a laundry list of players has been identified as potentially leaving the Renato Dell’Ara in the summer window. Jerdy Schouten, Riccardo Orsolini, and Mattias Svanberg have all been liked to bigger clubs both domestically and elsewhere in Europe. Riccardo Orsolini has been linked with multiple sides in Serie A, with Fiorentina and Torino being the latest clubs to inquire about the winger. It appears that Bologna would be willing to sell Orsolini if the clubs’ valuation is met. Gary Medel, Federico Santander, Nehuen Paz, and Stefano Denswil are all appear to be on the way out of the Dell’Ara this summer.

PROJECTED LINE-UP

We are likely to get more insights surrounding Bologna’s first Serie A line-up this weekend when Bologna face Serie B side Ternana during the first round of the Coppa Italia. During Bologna’s latest preseason friendly against Pordenone, Bologna’s line-up consisted of:

	Arnautovic
Vignato	Soriano ©	Orsolini
	Dominguez	Schouten
Annan	Bonifazi	Soumaoro	De Silvestri
Skorupski

We project Bologna to continue to utilize a 4-2-3-1 formation but believe that Mihajlovic will make handful of changes before the season gets underway.