Thiago Motta never wants to see his team get too comfortable. In an interview with Corriere dello Sport earlier this year, Lewis Ferguson explained how the Bologna manager only lets his players know the starting XI on the morning of each game, often subverting expectations they might have had from training. “It keeps you concentrated,” said Ferguson. “If you stop working hard, you won’t play.”

Every time the team sheet has gone up this season, the Scotland international’s name has been on it. Ferguson has played 987 minutes out of a possible 990 in Serie A, more than any other Bologna player besides the goalkeeper, Lukasz Skorupski. Signed from Aberdeen last year for a reported fee of €2m, Ferguson has become a consistently decisive performer in a side with European ambitions.

He scored his third goal of the season on Friday, helping his team to victory over Lazio. After a cagy first half, Bologna struck within 30 seconds of the restart, Joshua Zirkzee sending Ferguson through after an end-to-end team move. The finish was applied first-time into the bottom corner of the net.

It was the only goal of the game. Lazio had come closer to scoring in the first half, but Bologna took control after Ferguson’s strike, increasing their share of possession and looking more likely to build on their advantage than surrender it. Not even the introduction of Ciro Immobile from the bench could rescue the visitors.

Victory raised Bologna to sixth in the table. An encouraging start, for a side who finished ninth last season, even before you consider that they have crossed off fixtures against Lazio, Inter, Juventus, Napoli and Milan. Only the Rossoneri have beaten them.

Say it quietly, but Bologna are starting to look like a side with a very bright future ahead – a scenario that few could have imagined when Sinisa Mihajlovic was sacked as manager last September. That decision was an exceptionally difficult one. Bologna had taken three points from five games and performances were in decline for longer than that, but many people felt the club owed greater consideration to a man who had been afflicted by leukemia.

This was not a black-and-white story. Bologna had supported Mihajlovic through several rounds of treatment dating back to his first diagnosis in 2019. Yet it had an impact even on the hunt for Mihajlovic’s successor. Roberto De Zerbi was the club’s first choice replacement, before he was approached by Brighton, and said he would have happily walked all the way to Bologna to take the job if it arrived in different circumstances.

“At that moment it didn’t feel right for me,” De Zerbi later recounted. “I say that without moral judgements. Sinisa and I did not know each other, this was just a question of how I felt. When I decide on something, I want to feel calm about it.”

Motta’s appointment also received a mixed response. He had done solid work to keep Spezia in the division the season before, yet many in Italy still treated him as a figure for ridicule. His reputation was built on a brief but disastrous stint at Genoa and previous comments, made while in charge of Paris Saint-Germain’s under-19 team, in which he referred to his preferred formation as a 2-7-2.

Slowly, though, he has won fans around. Bologna went through different chapters under Mihajlovic but by the end they had fallen into low-block, safety-first tactics that rarely inspired. Motta has shaped this team into something more aggressive when pressing high. Over time, they became more comfortable on the ball, finishing last season with the sixth-highest possession percentage in Serie A.

Ferguson, very quickly, became a mainstay. He had endured a challenging start to life at Bologna, informed after signing that a two-game suspension he collected at the end of his time with Aberdeen would still need to be served in Serie A. He cleared that in time to make his debut off the bench in a defeat to Milan, then never played again until after Mihajlovic was sacked.

Motta saw a different potential in Ferguson, introducing him to the lineup as a midfielder but encouraging him to make runs with and without the ball to unbalance the opposition defence, as well as to back himself taking shots when chances opened up. Ferguson finished his first Serie A season with seven goals in 32 appearances – third-most on the team.

“He looks a lot at tactics,” said Ferguson of Motta, “but he gives us a lot of freedom as well – especially up front. He does not tie us down to specific movements, he leaves us free to move and find solutions for ourselves when we’re going forward.”

Motta can take his share of the credit, but a greater slice has to go to the player himself. Ferguson has embraced life in Italy fully, saying the opportunity to live and play abroad was something he always wanted. His father, Derek, had also been a professional footballer and always told him that the failure to have a true experience playing abroad – outside a brief, ill-fated stop in Adelaide – was a lifetime regret.

Ferguson said from the start that he wants to be in Bologna for “at least” two years and signed a contract extension this summer that runs through to 2027. His first daughter was born in Italy last November. “I’m happy here, and for daily life that’s important,” he told Corriere della Sera this August. “When you feel good somewhere, you like your work and you’re having fun, it’s easy to stay.”

Bologna 1-0 Lazio, Salernitana 0-2 Napoli, Atalanta 1-2 Inter, Milan 0-1 Udinese, Verona 1-3 Monza, Cagliari 2-1 Genoa, Roma 2-1 Lecce, Fiorentina 0-1 Juventus

Monday: Frosinone v Empoli, Torino v Sassuolo

Bologna are certainly enjoying this moment. The last year has been an exceptionally difficult one for many at the club with Mihajlovic’s death in December affecting everyone. As Motta acknowledged when his team returned to action after the midseason World Cup, “It’s not easy to get past pain like that, especially for the lads who spent years working with him.”

Some players who were pillars of the team under Mihajlovic have since moved on, most notably Marko Arnautović, who was sold to Inter in the summer. But the shrewd transfer dealings of the sporting director, Giovanni Sartori, allied to Motta’s management, have only made the team more competitive.

Stefan Posch, signed from Hoffenheim as a €5m central defender, has excelled instead as a right-back. Zirkzee, a former graduate of Bayern Munich’s academy, replaced Arnautović up front and has excelled in a different mode to his predecessor – offering a more selfless and mobile presence. Riccardo Orsolini has been at the club since 2018 but is playing the best football of his career, off the right of Ferguson’s No. 10 in what has become a 4-2-3-1.

It is early yet to be talking about final standings and European places, but Motta has no intention of talking down his team’s chances either. “I am not afraid of enthusiasm,” he said. “We are having a good moment, but we also know the reasons why we are having it.”