17. Udinese
Udinese managed to finish 12th last season in spite of the fact that they were absolutely awful in front of goal. Their 39 goals was tied for 4th worst in the league last year and they seemingly haven’t done anything to fix that issue this summer. They are really wasting the limited time they before they inevitably lose Rodrigo De Paul to a club that can actually surround him with attacking talent. I think they’ll end up with a little bit of space between them and 18th place, but I their scoring issues making it tougher for them to pick up points then the rest of the teams in this group.
16. Brescia
Every season this decade, at least one promoted team managed to survive their first season in Serie A without being sent back down to Serie B. This year Brescia will be the team that sticks around. Last season they dominated Serie B, holding the top spot in the league for the last 17 weeks of the season. This summer they didn’t take any real hits to their squad and brought in replacements for anybody important they lost. More importantly though, they added Mario Balotelli to a squad that already featured last season’s leading scorer in Serie B. This situation is perfect for Balotelli (and is something I’ll cover if I can fit it into the preseason coverage). Bresica is going to score a lot more than recently promoted teams usually do in this league and it’s why they should comfortably avoid relegation.
15. Parma
Parma had a pretty quiet summer. They didn’t really have much to lose because of the way their team was built last year. The loans of a few contributors came to an end this summer and they let a couple of other players leave who made an impact last year. However, they made quite a few intriguing signings. The tough thing with finding a place for Parma on this list was that those signings featured a few really young players. We don’t really know what they’re going to be for Parma yet, so this team could move quite a bit based on the performances of Andrea Adorante and Yann Karamoh. For now, the fact that they still have Luigi Sepe is good enough to keep them out of the drop zone for now though because his goalkeeping kept them out of the drop zone last year.