It always looks easier from the sidelines. Back in August, when Roberto Mancini was just another unemployed manager enjoying a restful summer, he got chatting to a reporter from the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Asked which teams could contend for the Serie A title, he named the most obvious ones – Juventus, Roma and Napoli – before throwing a few dark horses into the mix. Among them were his former team, Inter.

“If they start well, they could surprise just like Roma did last year,” said Mancini. “Fighting for the title is in the Nerazzurri’s DNA.”

With hindsight, the notion that Inter could challenge for the Scudetto seems ridiculous, but he was not the only one harbouring great expectations for the club. At the time when Mancini spoke, Inter were in the midst of a transfer campaign that would win praise across the peninsula.

Spending just €12.1m up front, they brought in a host of well-regarded players, from Nemanja Vidic and Dodo in defence to Gary Medel and Rene Krhin in midfield. Yann M’Vila and Dani Osvaldo were perceived as low-risk, high-upside gambles – players with undoubted talent who had each reached a stage of their careers where they might feel they had something to prove.

Gazzetta dello Sport awarded the club a grade of 7/10 for their summer dealings – a more impressive figure than it might sound, since the Italian press are notoriously stingy with their ratings. Only three clubs (Roma, Juventus and Milan) scored higher.

For a few short weeks, Inter appeared to have found a winning formula. They sailed through their Europa League playoff against Stjarnan, and won their first two home games in Serie A by an aggregate scoreline of 9-0. Yes, they had also drawn away to Torino and Palermo, but that was acceptable against teams who were each still riding the momentum from successful 2013-14 campaigns.

After that, though, things began to unravel. Inter were humiliated 4-1 at home by Cagliari and thrashed 3-0 away to Fiorentina. Consecutive 1-0 wins over Cesena and Sampdoria brought momentary relief, but the fact that each had been secured from the penalty spot kept things in perspective. A 2-0 loss away to last-placed Parma looked like it might be the final nail in the coffin of manager Walter Mazzarri.

And yet, it was not. Inter’s owner, Erick Thohir had granted Mazzarri a new two-year contract in the summer, and was reluctant to part ways in the middle of a season. Even after the team was booed by its own fans during a 2-2 draw at home to Verona – a result which the manager blamed, somewhat absurdly, on the rain – there were no indications that a change would be imminent.

The truth was that Thohir saw no sense in firing Mazzarri until he had a better alternative in mind. It was not until Mancini’s name was raised in a conversation with club directors Michael Bolingbroke, Marco Fassone and Piero Ausilio, that the picture began to change.

At first, they assumed Mancini simply would not be interested. For one thing, he had already been linked with replacing Laurent Blanc at Paris Saint-Germain next summer. And the Inter job had lost some significant sheen since Mancini’s previous stint with the club came to an end in 2008. Under his charge, they had won the Scudetto three years running. Conversely, over the last three years, Inter had finished sixth, ninth and fifth.

But rather than put Mancini off, that slide was precisely what motivated him to return. The team he inherits now is unrecognisable from the one he had last time around, having cleared the likes of Javier Zanetti, Walter Samuel and Esteban Cambiasso from their playing staff just this summer.

In reporting the news of his appointment, Gazzetta dello Sport claimed that Mancini’s biggest concern was that he did not want to put himself in a position of serving up “minestra riscaldata” – literally, “reheated soup” – to the fans, a dish that could never be as good as the original. He wanted a fresh set of ingredients to work with, and that is what he has. The only question is whether they are of a high enough quality to bring to Europe’s top table.

Because while nobody at Inter expects Mancini to fulfil his own preseason prophecy and make Inter into a instant title contender, Thohir has been crystal clear that the club needs to return to the Champions League at the earliest possible opportunity. A club that reported losses of €87m on its most recent accounts can ill-afford to continue missing out on the funds that the competition provides.

Just last week, the owner was in Nyon to discuss his club’s finances with Uefa, after Inter failed to meet Financial Fair Play requirements. Thohir could point to a number of ways in which the club are working to reduce their deficit, from bringing down the wage bill – Zanetti, Samuel, Cambiasso and Diego Milito earned a combined €12.5m last season – to improving their commercial presence in new Asian markets. But Champions League TV revenues represent easily the quickest path to an improved balance sheet.

Mancini stopped short of making any promises at his opening press conference, reminding reporters that “I don’t have a magic wand”, but did acknowledge that it was imperative for his team to start winning right away. Given that his first two games in charge are against Milan and Roma, it might be easier said than done.

He will aim to reinvigorate Inter with a change of formation – abandoning Mazzarri’s three-man defence in favour of what is expected to be a 4-3-1-2 against Milan on Sunday. More than that, he hopes that simply starting afresh with a new mentality can improve his team’s results.

“The first thing I will say to the players is that enthusiasm needs to be at the foundation of everything we do,” said Mancini during his introductory press conference. “If you don’t work with a smile on your face, everything becomes more difficult.”

It is a similar line to the one that he struck when he took the Inter job for the first time 10 years ago, telling reporters back then that, “only by entertaining people can you win games”.

Mancini has come a long way since then, enjoying the greatest successes of his career at Inter – where he won two Coppa Italias to go with his three Scudetti – and Manchester City – where he won both an FA Cup and a Premier League title.

His critics will reflect on such successes, as well as his second-place finish in Turkey with Galatasaray, and point out that they were all achieved with teams whose enormous spending power allowed them to blow opponents out of the water. He will not enjoy such resources at Inter this time around.

And yet, it is also true that Mancini only earned the Inter job in the first place back in 2004 after achieving impressive results at Fiorentina and Lazio, winning the Coppa Italia with each and guiding the Roman club into the Champions League during his first year there.

Only time will tell if he still has the wits to make the most of lesser resources, “taking lemonades and making lemons”, as Gabriele Marcotti put it in a recent column for ESPN. The news that Inter sold an extra 300 season tickets within 48 hours of Mancini’s appointment suggests that there are at least some fans out there who believe that he can.