73: The Eagle Has Landed

Hello and welcome back to say a spotlight season 2 episode 33 where you're hosting Jake and Mint. Mint is currently filling in for Matt who finds himself down under in Australia enjoying himself for a month. Bro, Mint, it's your third episode in a row. How do you feel? It is. To be honest, I'm just wondering when this is all going to end. But I'm here. This episode in general was tough to do. It's such a tight schedule. But here we are. I know it's been getting paid.

But you've given me some coffee and figola. Figola is a traditional Maltese sweet which we have during Easter and it's probably the best thing you'll ever eat in your lives. Don't at me. And yeah, so thanks for that. There we go. Okay. You were very excited at first to be filling in for Matt. I was and I realized how much work there is to do on the side. I enjoy this but it's a lot of work as well. Apart from actually working. Yeah. And you said this takes more work than your actual job.

It does. I just like slap my cock on the keyboard and somehow my job gets done. This is actually requiring me to put a lot of effort and watch the games and analyze and this and that. I mean it's fun. This is the fun part. The preparing part is not so fun. It's like I'm heading for an exam. Yeah, fair enough. You have to be prepared or you'll find me here with my notes. You have all these statistics and I'll be like, hmm, interesting. I haven't had these. Okay. Let's get to the rundown.

Then we'll go to the game by game. Of course analysis. So the first game we're going to be covering is Lazio to Juventus one followed by Electria one Napoli to Milan drew to Empoli nil nil Torino lost to Roma one nil classic more in your victory over there. Inter were stunned by Condeva who scored our goal of the week this time round. It was a fluke goal but still an amazing goal regardless. One over there. Yeah. And then a bit of Atlanta to nil then continued their red hot form.

Fiorentina slip up to Spetsia who played an impressive game of football one one over there. Verona to your babies swallow one. We'll get into that. Can't wait to discuss that one with you. I'm sure you will. Udinese to Monza to Sampdoria to Cremona is a three. That's the rundown. Now before we move on I feel the need to address our bet as I have I forgot to do it in the intro and we lost our bet this week. We lost 10 euros. No way. You've lost a bet.

We bet that there would be a draw or a Sampdoria victory against Cremona. I mean to be fair with you there. I mean if there was ever a bet to bet on Sampdoria it was this bet. And they've been. And they've still let you down. Bro. I've been fucking saying that Sampdoria are playing well the only thing that's missing is the result for the past four months. I mean they started doing well as well. And I mean they had come on as his number.

But then you know it's just crazy how I went for what in my eyes was such a safe bet and I got nothing right. You know both draw or wins were wrong. This is a swallow. This is a swallow bet was safe. Especially yes. Historically like Verona is an easy team for a swallow for example and well the swallow have have like four wins in six games. So I mean based off that alone as a safe bet. Yeah but when Conceal is in goal it's never quite safe is it. That's not that's not that's not shit on him too.

But in this game I wish it on him. However he is a good keeper. No no he's great. But I just want to know perhaps it was how many how many how many operatives he took before the game. Yeah because something was up there. Perhaps it's time to start using the past tense. He's that he's been good. That he was good. That's a prison perfect. OK teacher. I'm sorry about my my lack of grammar but you did me with hard. Don't worry we'll get into it.

So the first thing I used to keep up with our bets please follow us at a spotlight on Instagram tick tock Twitter wherever you get anything. It doesn't really make a difference. So let's get into it. Plus your two you went to Swan. This was the big match of the weekend on a Saturday night. Everything that happened led up to this moment and what a match it was. Beautiful scenes over there of course. You had the flags waving the lights up in the air.

You had the songs being sung the eagle doing its laps around the Olympics. It was crazy lovely scenes over there. I wish I wanted to just dies on the pitch. That would be very morbid. I'm sorry. Former Juventus manager Maurizio Sarri got his first ever victory over Juventus since leaving the club three and a half years ago after his Scudetto winning season. So yes that was actually Sarri's first victory. Coming into this game. Yeah he popped his damn cherry. Coming into this game.

Lots you had only earned two points in the previous six matches against Juventus with two draws and four losses and they conceded two goals in five of those meetings. So it's safe to say that Juventus had lots of his number up until this final round over here. Lots yours last victory against Juventus in these conditions was on December 7th 2019 was a 3-1 victory. Goal scorers were Louis Philippe Emelinkovic Savic and Kaysado for you. That was Ronaldo who scored.

And this is a fun fact I decided to prepare. I don't know why I have some menu of statistics over here. You do man I'm realizing how you have so many statistics compared to what I have. That's fine. I have the bare minimum here. Some people find them tedious so balance is key. Only Barcelona have kept more clean sheets than Lazio and Juventus in the big five leagues this season. Barcelona have 20 and Juventus and Lazio both have 17. Clean sheets. Clean sheets.

Yeah so it's a nice little statistic. When coming into this game Lazio had six in a row clean sheets and that's quite funny. Fun fact about this game. This game saw the player with the most say Africa goals in the last five seasons. Sergi Emelinkovic Savic with seven against the player who's in second place with Arkadius Millek with four. I always find his name so ridiculous. Arkadius eh? Yes. It's like the place in Goza where you buy alcohol.

I don't know I always think about arcade games personally. So Allegri was not present due to the flu of course. It was the interim manager. The what do you call them interim is it interim manager to go over? Assistant coach. Assistant coach yes that's the one. Interim manager is when he's been fired and they need someone quick fired to bring them in. You're absolutely right. That's 1-1 over there with the present perfect and the interim. Get shot on bitch.

This whole episode is going to be a contest. I'm keeping tabs. So Lazio set up their 4-3-3 formation with Providel in goal. Hisa on the left. Maricic on the right with Romagnoli and Ciasale as a centre back partnership. The midfield three consisted of Luis Alberto, Cataldi and Emelinkovic Savic. Zaccani was out on the left. Felipe Anderson on the right with Immobile up front. For Juventus it was Cesny in goal in their 3-5-1-1 formation with Sandro, Bremer and Gatti at the back.

Quadrada out on the right. Kostic on the left. Fabio, Locatelli and Fagioli were in the middle with Di Maria playing behind Vlaović. So Juve played an extreme low block and halfway through the first half Lazio recorded 70% of the ball possession while Vlaović was totally isolated up front. In the 38th minute the first goal came through Sergiy Emelinkovic Savic as Zaccani crossed the ball perfectly to the big Serbian man who was in a tussle with Alexandro just before the ball arrived to SMS.

Alexandro randomly dolphin dived out of the way allowing Sergiy Emelinkovic Savic to control the ball and finish. Very, very strange defending there by Alexandro. Before I interrupt you for the 12th time today, I'm just going to say that this game week in particular was filled with comical goals and this one starts with that.

If anyone's interested and I'll end with this, if you're bored at work or just waiting for something, please, I plead you to go check the highlights on YouTube of this game week and you'll see the most comical goals in a game week I've ever seen. It's true, bro. It's like that song. I just feel like it was a meme this week. It's a total meme. It was a joke weekend, wasn't it, that everything was so crammed as well. All the games came over two days.

So in the 42nd minute, there was a good reaction from Juventus as Di Maria swung in a corner and Bremer headed forcing a good reflex save by Providel, but Rabiot was there to guide the ball into the back of the net. I'm going to say guide because he used his toe, his knee and his head to get it in eventually. It was quite chaotic over there. Whatever it takes, man. Whatever it takes is get it over. Just put it in.

In the 53rd minute, there was a magnificent team goal by Lazio who worked their way forward. Eventually Philipp Anderson played the ball to Luis Alberto who flicked it behind him to Zakani who finished expertly a similar finish to Mel Sharawis last week. Yeah, I think they took a... What's the... What's the saying? You take something from the book? What the hell does it say? Like you... Our listeners right now are like, these guys are so sweet. English isn't their first language. It actually is.

They take a number out of your book. Yes, yes. I guess that's it. Let's go for that one. You know what? They took a chapter, a page out of the book. How eloquent I am, right? Eloquent, bro. Very well said. This is going to be unfiltered and raw, guys. This episode, we're not editing anything. You're going to get it the way it came. If I fart, I'm sorry. Yes, there we go. Wait, did you even order food, by the way? No, I haven't. He's going to leave me hungry. It's fine. That's it.

You have your fogolli. No. I had it already. In the 55th minute, just two minutes after Zakani's strike, Sergei Mlinkovic-Rusavsky squared it to Zakani again, who scored, but he was deemed to be in an offside position. That was very close, actually. Yeah, it was. That was a situation. That was inches away from the third three-one. It really was.

You've had opportunities to equalize, particularly through Vlaović and Fajoli, but they both skied their efforts, and to be honest with you, they really couldn't get into this game. They left it too late, in my opinion. Their goal in the 42nd minute was Juve's first shot on target this game. Jesus. Yeah, but an interesting stat. Ooh, Jake with the stats again. Let me try to find it. I mentioned that lots, you had 70% ball possession in the first 30 minutes of the game.

The match ended with equal possession, and Juventus out shooting Lazio 11-9, even though Lazio seemed to be in control for the vast majority of the game. So it's just a game of two halves by Juve, to be honest with you. I just feel like we spoke about last week, I just feel that the game plan for Juve really is contain, contain, contain, and then explode towards the end of the match, or at least in the second half, after the first 10-15 minutes of the second half, they really come to life.

That seems to be the plan, but of course when you concede two, within those 15 minutes, then you're playing catch up. It's almost like they try to give their opponents a false sense of security. To make you feel like you're in the game, and then they switch on and then they just... And then they fuck you. It's just costage on the break, Di Maria, Chiesa, and then they just punish you immediately.

And in fact, the statistical change was brought about when Di Maria and Chiesa played in a familiar wide role. They actually changed position as the game went on to try to adapt the slots, your side, who really played well. This win prevented Juve from moving a point within sixth place, Atalanta, and the European spot.

Only to add to that, Juve couldn't take advantage of three of their four direct opponents flopping in the standings basically, with Atalanta, Milan, and Inter all dropping points this weekend. Where do you think it went wrong for Juve, bro? I think this went wrong in the game plan, like we've been saying. I think that they maybe underestimated Lazio in a sense that they thought that... I really genuinely feel like they thought they had this game before it started almost. I don't even know why.

I feel like they really underestimated them. I'm repeating myself, but... Could it be a case of overestimating them, perhaps suspecting them too much to not even try to attack them? First shot on target in the 42nd minute? I really believe that they came into this probably wanting to get an early goal, but I feel like Lazio were so turned on from the start that they had no choice almost. Lazio were all over them. They were constantly battling them.

And I feel like that maybe was something that Juve didn't prepare for too well, because they weren't containing with... If you play with the logic that, okay, you're going to contain the team and then you're going to explode, then you should be well suited, well adapted to handle that and to handle that intensity. And they definitely weren't, especially defensively. So I feel like that's where it went wrong, because then when they did change their game plan, it was a little too late.

Maybe Lazio decided to sit back, but you could see that they had the players to outperform them. And I feel like they weren't utilized. How many times are they not going to use Vlachovic in games, man? Like, what the fuck's the point in buying the striker then, if you're not going to use him? Listen to the statistic, man. Dusan Vlachovic touched the ball 14 times in 63 minutes. Vlachovic and Millec combined touched the ball a total of 22 times this game. Jesus. Yeah, bro. That's quite bad.

That's just not good for a top striker. Yeah, and Juve have scored only 13 away goals in Serie A. But like we're saying, Juve are back to winning those 1-0s and winning cheap. Winning pragmatically. But that's the thing. So typically when they get those wins, it's their defensive solidarity that stands out, like that 9-9 clean sheet period in a row. What was it? Now you look at the goals they conceded, they were two massive individual errors.

You look at the first one, you have Sandro diving out of the way like an amateur, I'm sorry, like comically, you know, like what the fuck is he doing? And then the second one, you have Quadrado rushing the Luis Alberto who's receiving the ball, Luis Alberto who's known to be a magician, a wizard on the ball, completely leaving Zucconi, one of the hottest players, free on the way. I don't know if that one's a real defensive howler. I'll give you the first one. That was just a joke.

I have no idea what the fuck Alexander was doing. The second one, I think, was just, I think, which was just a really well planned, well executed move. It was just you trying to play catch up when it was way too late. Yes. Zucconi said that they had tried it in training, but the defender intercepted the ball. They tried it the day before. So it's a little bit of a jab. Are you, as a person, Luke Mintoff, does it intrigue you at all that Vlaović has disabled his Instagram? Oh, really?

Yeah. Holy shit. With two or three million followers, something like that. I had no idea about that. And he's taken it down. He suffered an injury recently, no? Do you think these things could be looked into? Do you think it's all fun that people look into these things or do you think there's actually substance behind it sometimes? In what sense look into them? Because he sent off his profile.

People look at it and say, like I saw comments, you know, scrolling through the comments of the news article, saying this is a poor mentality. Can't handle the pressure because people are probably... I mean, it depends on the kind of person you are. If I was this kind of person and in the limited sports that I do, and it's a totally different sport I play handball, I mean, I can easily get influenced and it will easily get into my head.

I mean, just last week I had a bad performance and it didn't help me that I was, you know, in my own head. I can imagine I'm a professional sportsman and I have to deal with constant critique whenever I don't show up. I personally would probably do the same. I'd need a break from social media. I'd need a break from dealing with it and then when I'm ready to deal with it again, I would come back. But yeah.

Apparently reports say that he has done this already before in his days at Fiorentina when he was going through a bit of a drought. Apparently it's a mental clarity thing, exactly like you're saying. It's not really... Yeah, then I fully understand this. Especially getting a knock because he got injured this game. He must be very frustrated right now. He must be. We saw flashes this game of the Chiesa we had come to know, my brother. We did. We did. Direct attacking the byline, you know.

It's nice to see. It's nice to see. I hope we see more of it towards the last 10 games of the season, no, 8 games, sorry, 8 games this season. So we talked a bit about Juve over there. Lazio, of course, full of praise for Lazio. Are they really the best of the rest? I mean, like we spoke about this, I think it was on a WhatsApp group, no? I mean, we alluded to this point. Lazio definitely are based off the team they have.

Yeah. I mean, and again, I'm not saying that Juve aren't the second best team, but they should be with the team that they have. But Lazio, within my opinion, only having a starting 11. Okay, maybe there are three or four players who can come in and put in a shift. You know, you have Pedro, you have Vecino, you have... Honestly, you have Lazare and so on.

But I feel like with that team being second is a huge, huge achievement, and they should be happy, especially with their main striker being injured half the season as well. Having to play Philippe Anderson, who's not known for playing as a false 9, having to play there. I mean, there are a lot of things that shouldn't... That Luis Alberto at the beginning of the season was completely ostracized. So it just proves the point.

This team shouldn't be second, but they are because they're playing good football. And they are killing teams when they have a chance. Absolutely, bro, totally agreed. The lack of depth was a point I was going to address. It does favor them, Lotito and Lazio in general. The fact that Moussairi has never been a guy to really make many substitutions or really change personnel around, right? Yeah. I mean... Three substitutions, maximum, each game.

You must really feel that the team he has on the pitch is the team that will win the game. And they must be very well professionally fit. I mean, you know, they're doing 90 minutes per game almost. That's true. Before I get to the table, is there anything you'd like to say about Lazio and Juve particularly or this game, bro? Any observations? Overall, I think we've gone over them. I think I want to talk a bit about... But I think it's going to come up later on in the episode.

I just want to talk about the top four in general. So we'll get to that when it comes. But yeah, can you let us know what's happening in the table? Where are Lazio, dude? Yes, I would love to, but my computer has frozen. Shall I do it for you, my friend? Yes, please, my friend. So we have Lazio in second with 58 points and we have Juve sitting in seventh with 44. You're up, bro. Am I up? And we have Lecce hosting Napoli in a scoreline of one to two.

Some interesting stats before we kick off the lineups and into the game itself. We have got Lecce with, by the way, the worst form in the league in the last five game weeks with zero wins, zero draws and five losses. And then we have Napoli with four wins, zero draws and one loss. Napoli are historically favored in this encounter with six wins, two draws and two losses versus Lecce.

And one interesting thing to point out too is one thing I wanted to speak a little bit about before we get into the game. Based on how Lecce has progressively gotten worse over the season, have they been found out? That's my question to you. Maybe. They are a team that tend to shock their opponents by pressing very aggressively early on and they got quite a bit of success against the big teams, especially early on the season. So it could be the case.

It could also be the case that the season is long, games can be crammed. They don't have a particularly deep squad. It could be fatigue. It could be form as well. I feel like many of their players were actually overachieving, particularly in the forward line. Like, Cissé never really hit the ground running. Colombo is good and flashes. No, he's still a young youth product.

So at the end of the day, the creative spark is all in the hands of Streffetza and he isn't a player with great Serie A experience. He didn't even start this week. He didn't even start this week. There we go. Yeah, so that could be the case. I am slightly concerned about them. They're starting to look bad and it's starting to look a little bit scary because they're not too far away from the drop zone now. Yeah, they're on 27 points, right? Yes, which is five points away from Verona.

People have been relegated with 27 points. Of course, it has happened many a time. But anywho, a few other things to point out too is that Napoli have had the most 10 plus pass sequences in open play of any side in Serie A this season with 486, while Slecce has the fewest with 69. That is, first of all, a nice little dig at 69. Not apart from that, it's a very low number for a team in the top flight.

Furthermore, we have something which could have happened in this game week is with the fact that Napoli could have lost two consecutive games in a row since December 21. I see that there was a risk based on how abysmal they were in the previous game and how coming into this game, they could have definitely had morale issues and Lecce could have definitely exploited that. But it wasn't the case.

A few things to point out too in the starting line-ups were that Oseman was still injured for the incoming Raspadoori and Elmars came in for Zelensky who's probably being rested for the Champions League. Umtiti for Lecce came back in from injury, Mahle was back in starting 11 in exchange for Blin, Di Francesca and Oudan came in for Streffetza and Banda, a heavily altered Lecce side.

To go over the line-ups now, we have a 4-3-3 for Lecce with Falcone at the back-in goal, we have Gallo, Umtiti, Basquerota and Gendre in defence, we have Mahle, Hülmund and Gonzalez in the midfield, Di Francesco Sise and Oudan up front. On the other side, we have Napoli also in a 4-3-3 formation with Raspadoori, Gvaraskelja and Lozano up front, we have Elmas, Lobotka and Anguissa in the centre of the midfield and then we've got Rui, Kim, Rachmani and Di Lorenza as defenders with Mere in goal.

So a couple of more things to mention is, well actually my last point to mention before we go over the highlights is that with so many changes in Lecce's game, in Lecce's team, excuse me, against such a top team, well the top team, is or slash was Baroni running out of ideas. Why would you alter a team so heavily again, sometimes partially replacing some of your top players against the best team in the league? What's the mindset there?

I think maybe his idea was let's hold out and try to get them with an impact sub. Maybe try to press. I think that's very wishful thinking against a team which just got wrecked and needed an answer, a desperate answer. Or maybe it could be something as simple as they're probably preparing for Streffetza mainly, let's not start Streffetza to see if we can cause some confusion. Please, their main hope. I know, it makes sense. It's a weird one to me. But anyway, it wasn't bad. It wasn't bad.

It wasn't bad. Not pretty different. Didn't have their best game of the year, but still, I mean, I don't know. It's what it is. It's happened. It was just a point I wanted to mention. Why made that change? But there may be reasons and I mean, probably there is stuff which I can't see from face value. To start with the game now itself, Fletcher started the game actually pretty well, to be honest with you.

They contained Napoli for the first few minutes and they even came close to scoring pretty early on when the ball was floated into the box and Malen nearly dinked the ball over Mare, which was well saved to be fair with you. Mare had a good game this game week overall. But then 1-0 did occur in the 18th minute after a free kick set piece failed to materialize for Napoli, Kim received the ball on the edge of the right-hand side of the box.

He played the pass to Lozano, who then gives it to Anguissa. Kim then opens himself up on the right-hand flank for a return pass. He then unleashes a good cross into the box and a lovely header from De La Renta giving Falcone no chance. Very well executed goal. A great goal from the captain. It was a nice goal to see. Napoli could have then made it 2 or 3 goals in the first half but there were good saves from Falcone to keep it 1-0.

In the second half we have the second goal of the game, 1-1 in the 52nd minute, another set piece this game leading to a goal. A sweeping ball goes all the way from the far post, this was a free kick way out from about 40 yards out. Basquerotto receives the ball way out on the far post. He wins the ball of course with his strength. He then heads the ball back to his teammates in the center of the box. Cissé then headers the ball onto the crossbar.

It falls back into the middle of the 6 yard area where Di Francesco manages to gather the ball and slots it home. Very well executed finish, good reactions from Di Francesco. It's always nice when this guy scores. He's such a likeable character. It means a lot to him every goal. Every goal you just see it on his face. He just can't not like the guy. But it was actually a well executed goal from Lecce. They had a plan there and it definitely worked.

Basquerotto was once again fundamental in leading up to a goal. It was pretty huge. And then just 9 minutes later 2-1. I think this really helps to understand why Lecce are struggling so much. Gvará Skrera gets the ball and he manages to tee up a cross for Mario Rui on the edge of the area who then whips a strong cross towards goal. Gallo who is flat footed basically knees the ball towards his own goal and deflects it into goal.

But Falcone could have, well should have definitely caught the ball and it simply slips out of his hands. Maybe he wasn't expecting the goal, he wasn't expecting the ball to happen to land where it landed. It almost looked like in slow motion it just slips out of his fingertips and just goes in. That was a really comical goal. We should count them, that's the second one already. That's the second comical goal this week. And honestly it was hilarious.

Please go watch it and just shake your heads in disbelief. Falcone has been doing so well, he actually got a call up to the Italian national team. He had a howler, he had a howler. There were a few more chances in this game either to increase the scoreline or to come draw. But then in the end it remained the same. A few talking points. Napoli come back to winning ways which is very important for them. But I think which is important to note, they still struggle without Ossiman.

This wasn't their best performance by far and you can see that their talisman isn't there and they're struggling. I wanted to make a little point and I wanted to maybe suck up my pride and maybe agree with you that maybe Ossiman is their top of the season. Kvara hasn't been playing too well in the last two games. Arguably it's only two games so you can't be too sensationalist and say okay he's not the top anymore. But he isn't the same player without Ossiman up front.

So maybe Ossiman is in fact giving him that space and that opportunity to really excel. Ossiman has a totally new dynamic up front that allows them to attack in many different ways that they simply can't do with Raspadori or Simeone up front. Granted again deployable players, good players but there are no Victor Ossiman. Victor Ossiman right now I think is a top five striker in the world at the moment. I maybe even go top three but he's up there.

Let's not be too sensationalist but he's definitely up there 100%. And also now bad news for Napoli as a Raspadori is training individual. All their strikers are injured. All of them. And they play Milan on Wednesday. I think they're gonna have to result in maybe Elmas playing a false 9 or maybe Lozano. Something's gonna have to happen we'll see. It's looking dire for them now. But at this point with Lozano just trying to run in behind Tomori and Kier that might not be a bad shout out.

It might not be the worst thing in the world. And while the point is the league almost over now with Milan and Inter losing points or with Roma and Lazio kind of instead in rejuvenating form. Is it not over yet? This was my point. Roma and Lazio are looking better and better each game week. Napoli are arguably worse without Ossimen. Of course it's theirs to lose now. But with two big teams like Inter and Milan going out. They're basically out of the running in my opinion.

Do you feel like it's all truly over now? I feel like it's done and dusted. I don't think anyone really believes to be honest with you. It'll take pretty much Napoli need to lose every single game that's left now. Pretty much mathematically like they have to lose most of them. I can't see that happening. I can't see that happening. No, I think Napoli have won the league. They say it ain't over till the fat lady sings but trust me she's been singing bro. She has been singing yes.

But yeah it's an interesting point. One thing I should mention is that if Lazio and Roma keep this up and Juve get their points back, Inter and Milan won't have Champions League football. I will say that Milan, I still believe in them very much and I still think that they will remain in the top four. I feel like Roma will eventually creep out. It's my opinion. But it's a dangerous position for both of them right now.

The scary thing about looking at this top four right now is when you look at the managers. They're all winners there. They're all winners. Like you look at Napoli, Spalletti is known to be the top four specialist. No, he would get you top four back in the day. Now he's going to win you the league but he's a top four specialist. You look at Sarri again, a guy who's used to playing in European tournaments, a manager who's used to finishing top four in the league. Mourinho. Another huge player.

Another guy. You look at Allegri, another guy. It's scary. It's very scary. And yes, bro, I don't know if Milan even have an edge over Roma right now. Roma seem to have nailed this street smart approach in just kind of killing the games off expertly. Defensively, they look so good. They're good. They look so good defensively. Honestly, I mean, the defenders aren't even that great. Bar Smolling maybe, but I think they're coherent though. Yeah, that's the thing.

They don't have to be the best to be good. I mean, they don't have to be the best to be the best defensive team. You have to work well together. So yeah, that's mostly it from my side. We'll just go over the standings. We have now Polis dinner first with 74 points and now we have Lecce falling down to 16th with 27 points, just one point above Spezia in 17th. The next game we're going to be covering. Of course, I have to be the one to cover this one was Milan nil Empoli.

Milan had won their previous four matches against Empoli, but historically they have never won five in a row against them in Syria. The statistic is too powerful. If something has never happened, the chances are it won't happen. Now Milan failed to score against Empoli this time around. Polis last clean sheet against Milan was back in October 2007 when they won 1-0 at the Meazza thanks to a goal by Luca Saudati.

Since then Milan have scored 27 goals in 12 games against Empoli, 2.3 goals per game on average. Not today. AC Milan have had the most direct attacks of any side in say the season 74 while Empoli have had only 29, the second fewest ahead of Sampdoria. So this was literally the best offensive weapon against the second worst offensive weapon in the league. For Milan it was Stefano Pioli's 4-2-3-1 formation over here, or rather 4-3-3 depending on how you look at it.

Manon was in goal, Theo Hernandez on the left, Calabria on the right with Malik Dschau and Tomori as the center back duo. The midfield double pivot was Pobega and Tonali with Rebi Dschaut on the left, Salamakers on the right, Benassir as the check-wartista and Origi as the striker. Of course those three Pobega, Tonali and Benassir would shift for the entirety of the game, Pobega taking that advanced position quite often.

I see you giggling when I said the word Origi bro, trust me I feel like crying man. I feel like crying with this guy. For Empoli it was a 4-3-1-2 formation with Perri Zan in goal, Ebu Ehi on the right, Parisi on the left, Luperto and De Winter with the center back duo, Fazini continued his good form in the middle with Marin and Bandinelli, Baldanzi playing behind Caputo and Piccoli. They all put in a shift these left-chairs, these Empoli guys, they all ran and ran and worked.

They played as a team, they played as a unit, maybe were better than a team is the way to put it. Now Milan had 23 attempts to Empoli's two attempts, Empoli only had one shot on target, Milan had 70% ball possession, Milan had a penalty awarded that was, no sorry sorry, Milan had a penalty that is said to, should have, oh god I can't English. Milan were meant to have given a penalty. But not, it is said that Milan were meant to be given a penalty because it was controversial.

Controversial penalty decision. Yeah and that came out in the second half when Theo Hernandez was stripped on the edge of the area, or on the line rather, on the line of the box but to me you know looking at these incidents is, it's fucking, it's for the birds, it's useless. Origi missed a very good opportunity with a back heel spin, kind of a pirouette. Very good chance. Very good finish. Yes. Saturday night and you move like a piece of shit.

Giroud scored but it was with his elbow and it didn't count of course. Were you freaking out on his score? I was freaking out, I lost my voice a bit, I'm still a bit hoarse from that moment. Then it went to far, I saw it immediately and then as soon as the replay came on I'm like oh god that's a sad. But whatever, whatever, what did you, what do you think bro? Is depth a problem for Milan? Let me ask you a more leading question. Is depth a problem?

I don't think it, I don't think depth is a massive issue, I just feel like, I just feel like this is Milan's season, a really good performance and then they can't really, correct me if I'm wrong, you've obviously watched Milan much more than me but I haven't seen that continuity this season. They'll have a good game and then the next game they'll maybe still win but it won't be as convincing and it's a little bit, it's a little bit like you know. Sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe shit.

Basically yeah, I mean that's a good way to put it if you've got two though. I mean he is an ex-Milan so I think I'll take his word for it. Yeah bro, totally Milan have definitely been streaky and sometimes it looks like it could be a lack of motivation, sometimes it looks like fatigue, you can't, sometimes it's luck like this game, this Empoli game I don't know but statistically you know, not even statistically, you look at the performance on the pitch, Milan probably deserved to win this one.

But again you can't look at a men's side like Empoli who set up to do exactly this and they managed to do it to perfection and say that they deserve to lose because that wouldn't be fair either so credit to Paolo Zanetti as well, was very humble. And their defence was solid this game. It really was. They played as a unit, they had a goal, an objective and well they accomplished it. I think they definitely played for a draw today. Well in that day actually. For sure.

For Milan, purely perhaps rotated a bit too heavily though. I don't think, I think Jouro should have started. Yeah, why are you, okay so let's say… I don't think Rebe should have started. I don't think Rebe should have started. After not playing for so long to give him a call up against an Empoli side, I don't know man, I think there were a lot of gambles here, Pobega back, there's way too many. You can get away with one of those players starting but not three after just crushing Napoli.

You can't. He's obviously thinking about the champions league. Fair enough. But you're also risking, you know… But I do agree with you. I mean at this rate, no offence but I don't think you're going to win the Champions League. It would be a historic moment and I think it would be something for the actual insanity of football. I think the priority should be the league.

But you know bro, the weird thing is that when you look at the Champions Leagues that Milan have won and you look at their domestic form, it was always like this. Milan have hardly ever done the double. Fair, fair. You know it's really strange. So maybe it is something that's deeply rooted in the DNA, something that we can't really explain. I just feel it's a very risky game. It's a very risky game.

You're going to have a hard fixture against Napoli and the next fixture is not going to be easy either. Yeah. You know. Bologna. If you even beat Napoli, you're going to have either Inter or Benfica which are no jokes either. Yeah, no jokes. Could have been worse but no jokes. Inter, Milan this season, I mean that's going to get into your head then. They've bested you a number of times. For me bro, I totally agree with your point on perhaps not starting all these guys together.

If you have Brahim Diaz and Leao who have both suffered knocks so maybe it's best to rest them before the Champions League. Bring in Origi. Exactly, keep Giroud in, you know, keep your… someone who has actually scored more than two goals this season. That would have been splendid. Now yes, four million a season is what Divock Origi is earning. He has failed to establish himself. He always looks like he's one step behind in the link-up play, be it in the box, you know.

He actually has started to receive boos from the fans. I mean no shit man. He's been… he's been… from the season. When it comes to your point before by the way of Milan rotating and winning and then not exactly playing well and whatever after rotating, Milan have made five changes so they're starting 11 in nine games. Only four of them however ended in wins. So if you look at that statistic it's a win every other game. So that's basically proving the point here. True, true.

Nice to see however that Milan were quite defensively sound with their 4-2-3-1 formation although they were against an opponent who was in trouble. Don't you attack? No. You know, 70% possession and conceding only one shot on target, that's very nice. Zanetti as I mentioned before said that he isn't embarrassed to admit taking a conservative approach against Milan. He said that you can't give Milan space or they'll destroy you so he tried to keep everything tight with the sample he said.

They practiced fighting for every ball and keeping the pace as low as possible. That was their game plan. That was their game plan coming into the game and he said it himself. Zanetti also praised Perri Zan, the goalkeeper who had a very good game this time round, saying that he is filling in for the best goalkeeper in Serie A at the moment, of course Guillermo Vicario. And he said that if Vicario does the part the replacement is already there. Wow that's cool. That's nice to see.

He also praised De Winter who had a great game. He plays better in one-offs than he does when given consistent game time. He was a player who was playing in Serie A last season, De Winter. So there's a massive step up for him and shout out he had a very good game as well. Personally, yes, not much left to add to this game. I don't know about you. No I mean, I agree with you. I was actually waiting for you to speak about the highlights but the highlights are still there. So I agree.

I mean there's no point to go over. I think we've mentioned on the points we've talked about what the issues are. So I think let's wrap it around there. Unless you have anything else to say. No let's just see what happens on Wednesday. I'm very excited to watch that game. It's going to be feisty. Yeah definitely. After that 4-0 just adds an extra layer of fucking juicy goodness dude. That's what it does. So Milan are currently fourth with 52 points while Empoli are 14th with 32 points.

So we're off to the next game. It is Torino nil Roma 1. We have kind of, well not kind of, we have some stats as per-huge for this game. We have Torino coming in with two wins, one draw and two losses. Where Roma come in with two wins, one draw and two losses. Here we go. So we have Roma very balanced form-wise, not so very balanced historically-wise. We have Roma with seven wins, two losses and one draw against Torino.

So we can see that historically here Roma are the favorites and always find a way to get the one up above Torino. We have a few changes as well for the starting line-ups in this match. We've got Giannettis, I'm not too sure how to say it. He's from Lithuania so probably it's pronounced totally different. Giannettis is replacing Iličić or Ileti in the middle of the pitch in midfield. Other than that they have a very standard formation for Torino. Whereas we have a couple of changes for Roma.

We now seem to have Lorente kind of benching Ibanez at the back. He's been partnering up with Smoling and Mancini and is putting in a shift there. We have El-Sharawi back in the starting line-up which was interesting as well. He's mostly come on as a super sub so he was given the nod for this game. And we also have Solbakken starting as a striker up front. One small point I want to mention was that Abraham is no longer the Popino of Mourinho.

Is this a clear example of your point or is this squad rotation? Because Torino has no team you want to squad rotate around. No definitely not. That's a very good point. I feel like maybe he wanted something different up front this game. So you don't think it's slowly more into giving up on Abraham's then? No I do think that he's slowly giving up on Abraham. Was Bellotti injured this game? I'm not too sure. I don't believe he was. Maybe he wanted to try something more fluid.

It's no myth that Abraham hasn't had the best season. Fair enough. One other thing to mention is that I wanted to speak about El Shirawi this season. Overall, he's been really good. For a guy who a couple of seasons ago he was playing in China, 22 games, 4 goals, 3 assists, not terrible for a guy who's 30 years old and hasn't been playing extremely competitive football. I feel like it's nice to see him back. It is. And it's nice to see him back playing good as well. At an important team.

So I think overall all things considered, they should be happy to have him. You remember him when we were younger. I sure do. I used to be so scared that the United would have to face him in the Champions League. I used to be like, I can't see Milan beat United again. I'd have to see this motherfucker with the stupidest mohawk to beat us. So I was always really terrified actually. He was so good back then. He was. He was sensational.

And if you had to watch what he's doing at Roma now, if you had to show a kid who's watching teenager Shirawi play in the afternoon, this is what he does now. What the fuck happened? When in reality we're just happy because he's actually playing at the highest level again after spending some time out in China. Agreed. So off we go into the game. Have I spoken about the lineups? No I have not. Lineups are as follows. We have a 3-4-2-1 for Torino with Milenkovic Savic as the goalkeeper.

We have Bonjana, Schurz and Gravillon in defense. We have Rodriguez, Genitiv, Ricci and Singo in midfield. We've got Radonjic, Mirancuk and Sanabria up front. We then have the same formation again in the second game because I'm choosing a row. First let's go with the 4-3-3 and then same thing for Napoli and here we go again. We have a 3-4-2-1 for Roma with Solbacin up front. We have Di Balla and El Sharraoui as the supporting strikers.

We've got Zalewski, Kristante, Wijnaldum and Spenadzola as the midfielders with Mancini, Smalling and Laurent in defense, Patricio in goal. So off we go to the game itself. Basically one thing to mention and I think it's going to be probably my main talking point is this thing this game couldn't have started off worse for Torino with pretty much Roma's first chance on goal. Zalewski was charging down the right flank. He moved into the 18 yard area. He cracked a shot towards goal.

Schurz tried to block it as best he could but unfortunately clearly handled the ball inside the box penalty clear. It was almost like a slide forward, right? I just want to give you guys a penalty. Comedy of the week again. And then the Milan game, the comical one would be the Origi spin by the way. I genuinely felt that he's practicing some kind of dance moves for the ladies in Milan or something. I don't know what's going on there.

But anyways in the eighth minute Mr. Clinical this season steps up and slots the goal, slots the ball in the middle of the goal. 1-0 Di Balla has been sensational. Basically the first half was pretty quiet. This definitely changed the game plan for both teams I believe. And apart from one long shot from Rodriguez there wasn't much to point out for this first half and Roma were just basically absorbing the Torino pressure. You know Rodriguez has never scored for Torino?

I know that man I wanted to mention it. Oh shit I stole your thought there. No it's fine, it's fine. He has never scored man. That's crazy. He's very creative. Never thinking about him on fantasy football ever again. He's always on my paper. There you go man. Pick him up here please. Yeah never. The second half was way more fiery. Torino came out with a lot more passion and enthusiasm. Mirantja coming close to a goal with a header towards goal which was well saved by Rui.

There were lots of battles in the midfield. It was you know back and forth but the main and last point to talk about was four minutes on the end of the game. Matej won the ball in the middle of the field. He then released a charging time. Abrams was going down the left flank. He chops the ball and then releases a curling shot and I believe that if he was playing American football he would have gone two balls. It wasn't that bad. Bro. It wasn't that bad. It was way off target. Oh come on.

It was way off target. It was high and it was wide but it wasn't that bad. No I mean he had just come on. He was on the pitch for seven minutes. I mean he didn't really have the opportunity to warm himself up. All I'm saying is he's just playing the wrong sport. If he was playing American football he would get three points for the team. So I mean I'm just telling you I might send a message.

But his technique not like over-praising but it always surprises me when you see a tree like figure like Tammy Abraham chopping and like doing these step overs and these tidy little tricks with their feet. It's nice to see. It is nice to see. But it's not nice to see how he finishes. So that's the end of the game 1-0 for Roma. Kind of you know dropped you know standard day in the office for Roma. They got this through to the end and then basically they did what had to be done.

Roma were relatively unchallenged in this game. There were a couple of chances for Torino but nothing where you say oh how unlucky Torino should have come close to you know should have got the equalizer. I think the best moment they had was the Miranchuk. That was the Miranchuk had a great I think that was it was a really good save like Rui had a brilliant save. It was it was it was goal it was goal bound and it was it was yeah it was really well saved. That was the only save in the game.

Yeah it was and it was a very important one as well. A hugely important defense looked really solid for Roma again. He really seems to have really strong a strong system now at the back. And what's interesting is you know that if any of these defenders start to look out of source he's got Ibanez hungry to come back and that's what it'd be like hey I want my spot back.

So I really like how he how he sticks to at least two defenders at the back and he's always playing with the last one you know like whoever's not playing too well you better watch out because your spot's going to be replaced. And I like it a lot and I think it really helps to bring them continuity at the back.

Roma aren't playing brilliant football but they're playing better than they were at the beginning of the season where basically you'd watch a game of Roma and they would not have one single attack being strong. More is happening. It's not enough. Definitely. It's not enough that you expect from a team like this. Having Wijnaldum and Spinazzola helps a lot. It is helping.

And you can see that it's helping but one point I wanted to mention was the fact that they don't have a proper number nine must also be a reason. I mean they have Di Balla and this is my last point to mention they have Di Balla playing as at false and it works but I don't think it works for a full game.

I think at the point Di Balla then tends to have a shift downwards in his game he gets tired he needs more support and I think as the game goes on and Roma don't get a goal I think they really begin to struggle then. Yeah totally. You look at the system it's like Di Balla and the Giants. The Balla and the Jumpers.

This team is it's crazy how you could highlight the importance of every player and it's so simple like it's like okay you've got Spinazzola, Zaleski, fast drive, Cristante, big strong and Maggini is smalling. Wijnaldum, like flex player in the middle. Yeah kind of the engine right. But they, Mourinho knows exactly what this team is good at and he prepares them for that and he's instilled this mentality in them that if you get an early goal you are not fucking conceding.

No. You are not conceding. No. That's the last thing that's going to happen. And they're really calm. I like how composed they are. It's nice to see a very composed team. Not Sassuolo basically. Have you heard by the way of the Cassano and Mourinho beef? I've been seeing all this beef going on. It looks like two girls and the boyfriend they can't, the guy that they can't clutch onto. They look like two whiny little bitches in my opinion. It's hilarious though. It's comical. It's petty.

It is Italian pettiness at its best. So you know what's going on. I've been following but to be honest these things tend to really uninteresting me very quickly so I kind of switched off from it. For the listeners quickly though. Basically Cassano compared, well rather contrasted Mourinho to Sarri saying that Sarri loves football and he's got this passion for the game where Mourinho doesn't give a fuck. And that's a quote he said. Mourinho doesn't give a fuck about playing beautiful football.

He doesn't give a fuck about football. Then Mourinho hit back and he entered his mental archives. You know he looked through them a bit and he found some shit on Cassano. Apparently Mourinho often hits out at these people with random obscure stats. He must have had that notebook. Yeah. He's like okay let's look for the Cassano. He's remembered in Madrid for his jacket because he wore a funny jacket when he went to sign. He said he never won anything with the teams he's been at.

Even though Cassano actually won the Scudetto with Milan in 2011. But yes now Cassano has hit back and said that Mourinho basically has proved him right in a way that he's always craving attention. Mourinho mentioned some fight that Cassano had with an obscure player back in his inter-days. And Cassano was like how the hell did you even know about that? Like apparently the whole team had split them up but they were friends three days later. Mourinho's bringing this up all these years later.

Look how petty he is in a fucking interview. But yeah that's it. Cassano's quite the character. And he also said Mourinho that some people are serious in this industry. Cassano's just having fun right in this industry. And then it got me thinking in this industry what are we doing? Me and you? Yeah and Matt of course. I suppose because we are having fun. You're having fun but you're also giving a well professionally organized podcast game in game. It's not fun. It has a fun twist to it.

But it's very serious in its intent. Of course you don't try to be serious people. You love your jokes. You have to keep it a bit fresh and a bit soft and a bit loose. So it's a serious podcast in a loose way. Okay loosely serious. I like that. That's our new motto. So I like my women. Or seriously loose. That could also be a thing. Okay so for the standings and to end this game here we have Roma sitting in third with 53 points and Torino in 11th with 38 points.

The next match we're going to be covering is Salernitana 1-1 Inter. The Milan clubs cannot catch a break. Inter and Salernitana had actually never drawn in Seia before last weekend. Inter had won five of those meetings including the two in the 21st century compared to two for Salernitana in 1948 and 1999. Salernitana have drawn their last five league matches for the first time in their Seia history. That's a fun little stat for Salernitana over there.

And Salernitana became Romelu Lukaku's 60th different opponent in the big five European league. He has found the net against 48 of those sides. However excluding penalties Lukaku's last league goal was back in August at the Via del Mar against Lecce. Aye aye aye. Indeed. Inter, Lowknee, Lorenzo, Pirola was at the back for Salernitana and their ex midfielder winger Kandrevo of course featured on that Salernitana side too. Let's get into it in detail.

3-4-2-1 formation for Salernitana with Guillermo Ochoa larger than God himself in gold. Pirola, Gionbe and Danilulic were at the back with Brotherich on the left and Braun on the right. Salernitana and Cullibaly formed the midfield double pivot. Kandrevo was out wide on the left with Kastanos out on the right with Piontek as the spearhead over there. For Inzaghi's Inter it was a 3-5-2 formation with Onana in gold, Darmian, De Vrij and Alsharabi at the back with Dumfries on the right wing.

Gossens was on the left wing with Mkhitaryan, Aslani and Barela in the middle. Correa and Lukaku formed the striking partnership up front. Now in the 6th minute Lukaku headed down a long ball and found Robin Gossens running forward inside the box. The German sent a first time effort curling into the top corner, Inter's first goal from open play in over 400 minutes of football.

Inter controlled the remainder of the first half with 60% ball possession and 11 shots 5 of them on target including a big miss by Bigrum who headed directly at Ochoa after Dumfries' cross and Salernitana only had one shot in the first half. The second half started in the same way for Inter with Barela striking the post in the 49th minute. In the 64th minute was Lukaku's diving header that hit the crossbar after an Aslani corner.

Dia came on and changed the game for Salernitana shortly after he even hit the post through a very close range volley. But the magic happened in the 90th minute as it seems to be all done and Dia couldn't really make the difference for Salernitana despite his efforts and everyone thought that Inter were going to get a standard 1-0 victory and return to winning ways. Oh were they wrong.

Antonio Candreva pulled the host's level with a looping miss hit cross from the touchline that somehow beat Andre and Ana and tucked into the top corner. All the way from downtown on the right, Antonio Candreva, the man whose crosses are so wildly inaccurate they sometimes end up in the back of the net. You ever wish those cartoons where they're playing football and the ball just does zig zags and loop the loops and goes up and down and stuff. That's exactly how Candreva crosses the ball.

It ends up going in. Exactly. It's just random right. No one knows what's going on. You're just watching and saying we'll see. Please nothing mind. It's the same story every week for Inter who dominate but can't seem to win a match. It seems harsh to criticize them for this one. I like how you've added an emote. You haven't added an emote in any of your notes for the last three game weeks but you feel the pleasure to mention that they haven't lost a game. But you've also not won against Empoli.

Yeah, for sure. And in fact I criticize both teams equally. In fact I think that it's harsh. The criticism that both teams are facing for this performance this weekend is harsh because they totally outplayed the opponent. You look at Milan for example. There was a ribbage chance at the beginning of the game that they missed one on one. You know like what more they can't purely do. You're putting these players in positions to succeed and they're not doing it. And it's the same thing with Nzaghi.

I don't know how he looks Lukaku in the eyes nowadays. He's missing so many chances. I don't know how he can look him in the eye at the moment. Now listen to this. Inter took 25 shots. 11 of which were on target and limited Salah in it to just 3 on target. Ochoa had 10 saves, 9 of which came from inside the area. He's insane. Conceding only one when the ex-UG was 2.57. Holy moly man. Yeah what a performance. This guy is a beast. He's a beast. Like what a signing they've made.

In a way thank god they fucking, I like Seppi but thank god Seppi got injured. Yeah honestly because it's unfair to bench Seppi. It is. But you know when you have a guy like Ochoa, he's cat like. Honestly cat like. He is. I don't know what kind of a spell he takes or what he does but holy cow man. This was I think Gossens' best performance this season. Of course not only because of the goal. I don't like to be that guy. No. He scored so it was his best. But he actually looked sharp.

He looked menacing down the left. And we haven't said that often. I don't think I've ever said that for Gossens in an inter shirt. So it was good. Great game by Aslani who barely gets any minutes from Nizaghi. He had 6 key passes, 5 accurate crosses, good game for the little midfielder over there. He's got big boots to fill. He does. And bro Correa the invisible man. I just feel he's very, he just doesn't belong in that squad at all.

And it's a pity because I think in a different team as a Torino or as a, I don't know like a middle, even a Bologna I think he could really excel. He's not a bad player. But isn't he the type of striker who works best as a second striker because he's not quite a winger, he's not quite a nine. Sure. But I see the two striker formation. Yeah, fair, fair. I didn't mean those teams in particular. I just meant as a smaller team. I think he could definitely be a key player.

A key starting and now as he's done a starter. He's never impressed me since he's joined the interview. He's never impressed me. He had a few nice moments, a few streaky nice moments where he was scoring a couple of goals. For example. But apart from that, it's not been, it's not, it's just not been good enough. Yeah, no, not at all.

And it feels like he's one of those players that are bringing in all like these, these say experienced players who are kind of on the, on the decline almost like, or they're just cheap alternatives rather than. I'd say that's more of an option. That's more than the thing than on the decline. I wouldn't have called Korea under the when he was signed. Right.

Yeah. But you look at, for example, you know, Korea, cheap alternatives, they're called cheap alternatives fucking even go since it's like cheap alternative at the end of the day. The guitar is a cheap alternative. Yeah. The player is going out. That's for sure. That's for sure. You know? Yeah. But anyway, bro, anything you want to say about inter you empathize with them a lot. You're an inter empathizer. I am. I am. I feel like, I feel like they don't do that much wrong.

So it's hard to blame the coach, just like you find it hard to blame purely. And I don't particularly like me and I'm, but I barely ever criticized them actually quite the opposite to be honest with you. And you, you know, I'm not your biggest, their biggest fan, but I often praise pure and often say why would you sack the manager who has brought you consistency in the last few years? It's pathetic if you ask me now that happens for two seasons.

I'll be like, okay, you've got, you've got the rights to, to show him the door, but you know, it was a very short period and people were already getting impatient. And I felt that it wasn't very fair. Inzaghi is running out of time a little bit. I feel like the base of how the season's going, Inter kind of already knew they weren't going to win the league. So for them, it's not that important almost, but they now run the risk of not qualifying for the Champions League.

And that, that could be an issue. Of course. That could be a huge issue for them. Yes. Financially very unstable right now. Talks of a new owner happening nonstop now. Invest Corp have just been mentioned. The guys who were going to buy Milan back in the day. Financially it would destroy them, not qualifying for the, for the Champions League. It would be, they already publicly say that everyone's for sale for the right price. So, yeah, we'll see. Anyway, um, league standings.

So Salernitana currently sit in 15th with 29 points while Inter sit in fifth with 51 points. We just one point out of the top four subject to U versus points deduction. Exactimento. Um, you are up. So we're up to mention the next game, which is Atalanta nil Bologna two. As always, we'll go over their form. We have Atalanta with two wins, one draw, two losses. Bologna with two wins, two draws, one loss, relatively similar form for both sides.

Um, however, as I like to mention, it may be similar form, but historically it is far from similar. We have Atalanta with seven wins, two draws and one loss versus Bologna. Arguably one of their favorite matchups in Syria. Uh, Atalanta have failed to score against Bologna only twice in the last eight years in 2015 in a three zero loss and in 2021 in a nil nil draw.

Um, it could have been another historic moment for Atalanta, but in a different way, it could have been their 2500th goal in the Syria, uh, becoming the only the 11th team to achieve this milestone in the top flight. However, as this corner alluded to, it is not, it was not going to be for this week. So we can see Luckmann celebrate the 2500th goal next weekend. Um, Hoyland at this rate? Depends, depends. Um, Atalanta had a few changes to the X 11 again.

We saw the return of Hoyland and Luckmann back together upfront. And, um, on Bologna side, we saw simply one change with Soriano coming back into the squad in exchange for Arbisher. Um, other than that, we've had standard for me as standard teams. I mean, the standard starting 11, excuse me. Um, and we'll mention that right now we have a three, four, one, two, four Atalanta with Musso in goal, Jim City, Palomino and Scalvini at the back.

We have Zappa, Costa de Rune, Ederson and Malle in the middle. Pasalic as the attacking midfielder with Luckmann and Hoyland upfront. On the opposing side for Bologna in a four, two, three, one, we have Sansone upfront with Barrow, Ferguson and Soriano as the supporting attackers or midfielders as you wish with Moro and Shorten in defensive midfield. And then we've got Kiriakopoulos, Lusumi, Sao Maoro and Posch in defense with Skoropski, the best goaler in the league at the back.

We've had a massive game. He certainly had a massive game and Matt was here, he'd be telling me to go shove it. Yeah. But I'll stick by my choice and he isn't the second best, but he's definitely a good keeper. No doubt about that. Absolutely not. Once ever, absolutely none whatsoever. I think I've been making so many horrible English mistakes in this podcast that I'm not going to be an English teacher. Anyways, Atalanta started this game very well, actually.

They had several chances to score within the first 15 minutes, the best of those coming from a Hoyland chance. He received the ball wide, way up the pitch. He then found Luckmann in space down the middle who then plays the ball back into the dashing Hoyland, who manages to find his enough space to be 1v1 vs Skoropski, but with a poor finish, Skoropski managed to get a hand onto the ball. However, the play wasn't over then, just yet.

There was Hoyland then receiving the ball again from the parried shot, who he had an empty chance at goal, he took his time and then only shot the ball into a bunch of Bologna defenders. There were better choices available for him that could easily be said. The first half was then continuously bossed by Atalanta, they still didn't manage to find a chance to score or to break the deadlock rather than chance to score, and that's how the first half ended.

The second half started probably as best Mr. Thiago Mota could have wished for. In the 48th minute, just two games after the restart, Bologna looked full of spirit and full of passion, Sansona dribbled past two players on the right hand side, he then passed the ball to Barrow, asking for the return ball. Barrow, with some luck, managed to sneak the ball into Sansona's path, 1v1, lovely finish, 1-0.

There were a couple of other chances during the second half, Hewland had another chance at goal, he had a strong header which was again saved by Skorupski, there were a number of other chances for both sides, Xerxsi came close, and then in the 80th minute, 2-0, Xerxsi managed to get the ball in the middle of the park, he charged forward, and then played a lovely pass to Orsolini.

He was pushing towards goal, he then slid his way past Palomino and thundered a shot towards goal, Moussa didn't really have a chance there. Overall those were the main highlights of the game, Skorupski in my opinion was the MVP with several saves to keep the score in Bologna's favor, and overall a very commanding display, it must have been very demoralizing for Atalanta to not be able to get a goal for the team and hopefully scrape the game back to a draw.

So I feel like Skorupski was fundamental in this win, especially when you see in the first half that Atalanta had so many opportunities to go upfront, and I feel like he was huge. My favorite moment of this game was when Orsolini scored the tap-in after Xerxsi's shot was saved, he ripped his shirt off, threw it up in the air and went celebrating, and the referee instantly was like, what the fuck, how you doing? He threw a yellow card like Lionsman and had his flag up the entire time.

What a meme. And then he scored right after he couldn't take his shirt off, I bet he was dying to do it. I bet he was. So funny, but another point while we're on Bologna, Xerxsi is one of the most aesthetically pleasing players in the league, I think. His playstyle, he's a strong, fast player with a lot of skill to him, and very good technique, that's the right word, exactly. I just don't feel like he has the finishing product upfront yet. Maybe at another season with Mota, that could change.

We'll see. So yeah, 2-0 to Bologna, another great win for them, they must be ecstatic with the way they've been playing. A couple of points to mention, just two in fact. In my opinion, Atalanta's dream of top four is well and truly dead, it can only take a miracle now for them to come and claw themselves back up into the top four. Of course it's not impossible, but it would require a lot of misfiring for the teams in front of them, which are Milan, Inter and Roma.

Yeah, I mean, a loss on the draw is all it takes. Sure, dude, it's a loss on a draw, and you've got to win both, and then you've got to keep winning as well, because it can happen that the next two games there are losses on draws for both of those teams up front, and then Atalanta win two games, but you have to keep in mind Atalanta have to play Juventus, they have to play Fiorentina, they've got to play Napoli I believe, so there are still a number of games left which are very important for

them, and that's why I mean, they had to win this game I believe. So most like the more time passes, the more disjointed they become as a squad. I think the main point for me is that, and we spoke about this at the beginning of the pod, I feel, I don't know, we actually spoke about this before, we spoke about the fact that I feel like this constant change of the starting line-up is actually detrimental to the squad now. You can't have such a small squad and constantly keep rotating it.

I feel like Gasparini is a bit stuck in his own way now, and it's not working, and he has to adapt. Yes, perhaps it's time to give Muriel and Zapata more time on the bench. You want a different opinion? Yeah. I think it's time for a new coach as well. Time for, honestly, honestly, honestly, sometimes… I want Gasparini not to stop playing football, I want him to go to a bigger team. Yeah, apparently he's rumored to be, he's already been at Inter. That's even so, doesn't mean he can't go back.

Yeah, but he's a very, very petty, spiteful man, and I don't think that he'll ever go back to a team that… You never know. That sacked him previously, and they sacked him very quickly. Atletico Madrid apparently appreciate his… and I do imagine what he can do with them. I can imagine that, yeah, it could be interesting, but I think it's slowly becoming time for that. But we'll see what happens. You can't really blame Gasparini all too much.

Atalanta decided to offload half their team this season without many reinforcements, so he's also not doing too bad with the squad he's got either. No, not bad at all. I mean, he's got them up there, not fighting for Champions League. So yeah, I mean, critique where it's due, but let's hope it won't be too hard as well. One other point, and something very interesting to note, Bologna is in insane form at the moment. Now, there's a small dream, and that dream is European football.

And do you want to know the last time Bologna have smelt and played European football? It was back in 2000 in the UEFA Cup. Oh my god. So imagine Bologna, this team from Emilia Romana back in the European top flight. I wonder who was in their squad back then. I mean, absolutely. Castellini, Brioche, Giovanni Bia. No clue, dude. Clayton. Clayton, sounds like the very modest name. Was there anyone notable? Signori, Giuseppe Signori, was there prolific goalscorer? Well, that's about it.

Apart from people that I have no idea about, it could be the rise of Bologna again. But I'm being a bit sensational, as I like to say, and I feel like it's fun to be for a team like Bologna. It could be really cool to see them back in the Europa League, for example, or the Conference League for that matter. They were in limbo for a while with the whole Mahalovic situation. They were.

It feels like now they've gone past that and they have a squad where with a couple of tweaks and changes and maybe a proper striker, they could be a formidable force next season. For sure, for sure. Well, I'd like to see that at least. So to mention the standings, we have Atalanta in sixth with 48 points, Bologna creeping up Atalanta's bottom in eighth with 43. Fantastic. So Fiorentina. What's fantastic? Someone creeping up your bottom? Someone creeping up your bottom sounds refreshing.

It depends. So you're insinuating that someone's using their tongue or it's more of a... There are children listening. Children who just want to... Imagine right now, like a kid listening to this podcast. Dude, this podcast 18 and 15 plus. Out loud. It was explicit actually when we first released, but we stopped doing it. Oh, you... Imagine that though. What are you listening to, son? No, just these guys, they talk about football. You know, we're talking about licking the ass or fingering it.

I mean, man, what can I say? I'm a man of exquisite tastes. Fair enough. Fiorentina 1, Spezia 1. Now this was a game that couldn't have been... That couldn't have contrasted more stylistically. Now you look at Fiorentina who literally burst a vein trying these complicated moves, these passing goals, triangles everywhere all over the pitch, trying to work the ball into the box. And then you literally have Spezia, who by the way, got their goal by hoofing the ball upfield.

Dragovski just counted the ball up to Wenzola, who just outmuscled and scored, by the way. So it's just two completely different styles and watching them face off is actually quite fun. It's like something like... Is Goti still the Spezia manager? No, he got sacked, right? No, he's been sacked since, I believe it's Semplici. Yes, you're correct. So yes, Fiorentina are actually unbeaten against Spezia in Serie A with four wins and two draws.

Fiorentina had always scored at least two goals in every game they played against Spezia in the competition, bar this one of course. After failing to score in his first three matches against Fiorentina in Serie A, Mbala and Zola scored in the reverse fixture in October, the striker has scored six of Spezia's nine away goals in Serie A this season.

Vincenzo Italiano opted for Ricardo Sotil and Gaetano Castrovilli, while Semplici, returning to his hometown, brought in a guy whose name I cannot pronounce. Can you please try? Wisniewski. Can you try really quickly? No, you can't. Przmyzla Wisniewski. Look away. Look away. Look away. Okay. And now in three, when I count down, you have to look at the name and just say three, two, one. Przmyzla Wisniewski. There we go. It gets easier.

Sisman Zyrkowski and Daniel Maldini came into the line up this time round. For Italiano's 4-2-3-1, Terracchiano was in goal, Biragi on the left and Dodo on the right with Igor and Martinez Quarta forming the center back duo. Am I a child because I love these names? No, it's fine. Dodo. Usually the first time we saw Kremona is starting 11. My brother and we're going to die. Lakshovsvili and fucking Pickle. Oh, Pickle. Oh, dude, goodness me.

Andragora, Castrovilli were in the middle with Sotil out on the left and Nikolani out on the right. Bonaventura was playing behind Arthur Cabral. For Spezia, it was Dragovski in goal with Amjana's right back and Nikolao as the left back. Ampadu and Wisniewski were the center back partners there. Borabia, Ekdal and Zyrkowski were in the middle with Jazzy playing on the right. Maldini on the left and Inzola up front.

Now Fiorentina actually struggled with Spezia's early pressure but took control after the first 10 minutes playing some neat football and creating decent crossing situations, particularly from the left hand side. It was in the 25th minute that Boraghi actually managed to break the deadlock as he drove into the area after intercepting a ball. His cross was deflected into the back of the net by Wisniewski. So difficult name and difficult game for you, Wisniewski.

In the 32nd minute Spezia used their cheat code as Dragovski decided, you know what, I've had enough, we're losing, it's been almost 10 minutes of us losing, let's give him the ball. So he hoofed the ball up to Inzola who outmuscled one of the strongest center backs in the league in Igor, made him look like he was like an under 12 and he was a fully grown man. He finished all on his own. Inzola took it down, he turned, he shot and he was the only guy who looked good in this situation.

Igor and Terracchano were very suspect. Igor of course, just allowing him to literally outmuscle him or sticking to the theme that we were on before, slip one up his bum. When it comes to Terracchano, he kind of hesitated. Now he came out but didn't commit. Maybe he expected Igor to do better there and he was kind of taken aback. Probably. Yeah. Arthur Cabral nearly retook the lead moments later with his 100th overhead kick of the season, it cashed off the crossbar.

He's getting pretty good at them. I think he really likes Wainui's goal. Yeah, he's city, right? I can just imagine him at home like on his bed just practicing every day. His bites and kicks. His girl is like, Arthur, Arthur, come to bed. Arthur, can we just spend some time together? No, I've got to practice my overhead kicks. Yossip Brekalo nearly made an instant impact, dribbling his manner in shooting but his shot pinged off the crossbar.

Baraghi struck the bar with a free kick 10 minutes later but Dragovski made an unbelievable save to keep the deadlock. Lukajovic, who was through one on one after a lovely turn, dinked the ball just wide, bouncing just wide, tried to kind of chip it over there. And then at the very end of the game, at the death, Spezia found themselves in a 2 v 1 situation against the goalkeeper. Eldor Shomorodov decided to attempt to chip the goalkeeper. Again, you know, wanted to have two chips and two games.

Very smart. Really, really clever play over there by Shomorodov who, while Spezia are fighting for their life, the guy they've brought in on loan is just trying to score cool goals and complete personal objectives instead of actually… Does he get a better finishing if he chips? I think if you score a chip, you go into the next game with a goal, one goal lead like that. That must be a thing.

So the win streak is over after a hard fought and unlucky outing for Fiorentina, but the undefeated streak still stands, bro. Thoughts? I mean, I feel like Fiorentina were never going to come into this game. I don't think it'd go to Spezia and feel like it's going to be an easy game. Definitely not. Arguably, they aren't. They're far from good this season. Spezia, that is. And Fiorentina are definitely looking much better.

However, I feel as though… I mean, I will say that Fiorentina should have won this game. They had better chances and they had more of them. And they hit the bar so many times that you have to say that they did get unlucky. They did get unlucky. I hate saying that in football, but sometimes it is the case. And I feel like here it was a little bit the case. I mean, it was just like… They hit the bar three times. And they played well overall. They dominated in every single aspect.

But I think that maybe they should have just played for the easier goal. Honestly, I feel that so much with Fiorentina, man. Sometimes they overcomplicate everything. I know you don't like scoring tap-ins, but they're a thing. And honestly, you've got the massive brain of Ricardo Sapenar on the bench. You don't throw him on for 10 minutes over here. He might have been able to unlock something. I don't think that Atalian particularly likes the guy. He loves him, bro. He loves him.

Bro, he loves him. He brought him with him from Spezia. He loves to actually… I think of it where many other coaches, like these modern coaches with their gig and press and all that, Sapenar wouldn't even get a sniff at Fiorentina. But the fact that he plays as much as he does shows that Atalian really values the great mind of Ricardo Sapenar. Fair enough. I'll take an L there. 2-1. Fiorentina have a trip to Poznan in Poland, where Lech… Wait. Lech? No, it's Lech Poznan. Lech Poznan.

That's going to be a tough one. Are they going to win the Conference League, my brother? I believe they are. I believe they are the… What fun. I believe it's for them to lose now. I believe it's for them to lose now. I think they've got a brilliant chance at doing so. And they've also got a brilliant chance of potentially getting Europa League as well. If they slip up in the conference, they have a chance to simply get there from league position on its own. Or Coppa Italia victory.

Or Coppa Italia victory. They're looking good. I'm happy to see them up there again, they're looking like a good team. And they're doing well with the team they've got. I think they've got good chances now. Yeah, totally. They're making very well. They're making very well. Fiorentina currently sit in 9th with 41 points, while Spezia sit in 17th with 26 points, brother. Yes, it is getting pretty hot down under, as they say. But something else which was pretty hot, the next game was pretty hot.

And not for Sassuolo. Verona to Sassuolo 1 will go and crack on onto the form. We have Verona with 1 win, 2 draws, 2 losses, as opposed to Sassuolo with 3 wins, 1 draw, and 1 loss. And it seems to be a common occurrence in the matches I've picked this week. Totally one sided historically. We've got Sassuolo with 7 wins, 1 draw, and 2 losses against Verona in the last 10 games. Very very one sided.

Sassuolo had come into this game with strong form, and they've been managing to claw their way to wins, which is something very uncharacteristic of this team, as they usually throw them away at the end of games rather than claw through them. Sassuolo have also won their last 4 Serie A away games against Hellas Verona in the top flight. Their current longest open streak of away wins for the Nero Verdi.

Seems like Hellas Verona was a nice team to play for this team, and unfortunately wasn't the case for this game week. But anywho, some other points to note, and one very interesting stat which I think you will very much appreciate in particular. Hellas Verona have fielded 11 players in Serie A this season born from 2001 onwards. A record in this campaign, only Ren with 13 have done better in the big 5 European leagues in 2022-23 season.

There we go, and these guys are going to continue to grow in Serie A. Yes, and then they're going to continue to grow in Serie A too. And then when the team has declared for bankruptcy, the team will declare that the young kids are going to go back to being accountants. So another point to mention is that only Lazio have registered higher shooting accuracy than Sassuolo with 49.6% in the current campaign. Only Lecce have a lower shooting accuracy than Hellas Verona.

So we're seeing the second best shooting accurate team against the second worst shooting accurate team in the league. And I think this game, also, if you didn't have that stat in your mind, you could see that clearly from the game itself based on how many chances Sassuolo had compared with Verona.

To mention and to go over the starting lineups and some notable changes, we have Verona with their main man Montipo returning in goal, and Terracciano this time starting in midfield which is nice to see. Also two changes to their team, Erlich coming in for defensive duties in exchange for Ferrari which is something which doesn't often happen, but it was an interesting decision for Dionisi. And then we have Harawy coming in for Luis Henrique.

As for the starting lineups, we see Verona with a 3-4-2-1 with Montipo in goal, Mannyani, Hain and Tamez at the back, Farawani, Terracciano, Veloso and Doig in the midfield, Duda and Verdi as supporting midfielders and Lasagna up front. We then have Sassuolo in a 4-3-3 formation, their classic this season, with Consigli in goal, Rogério, Tresoldi, Erlich and Toleon at the back, Harawy, Lopez and Frattesi in the midfield, and Loriente, Piramonte and Berardi to wrap up the strike force.

To start off with this game and its chances and things of note, can't really speak English anymore, in the 34th minute 1-0 with Berardi doing Berardi things as I like to say, he gets the ball on the edge of the box, he begins dancing towards goal, almost charging as if he was heading towards the near post, he likes to get the ball, he likes to go almost towards like the edge of the byline, and then either take a wicked shot or crosses, he likes to

do as well, and that's what he did, he plays a beautiful cross and Harawy smashes his header towards goal and it goes in, no chance for Montipo on that one. Even the way Berardi assisted him there, it's almost like he hit it so hard that it just had to bounce off his head, like he just used him to score the goal. It was just so nice to see Berardi doing that, it's just lovely to see him contributing this way and he contributed excellently here.

That was mostly it for the first half, in the second half Soswala had an array of different chances to score, chances for Piramonte, he had his shot saved by Montipo, Berardi came close from a finish on the right hand flank, Rogieria had a thunderous shot which went straight into Montipo, there were a number of chances basically that Soswala had, all on target apart from Berardi's, however they all didn't result in a goal unfortunately and that's something to be said for talking points.

1-1 in the 84th minute, a good corner routine, a cross into the near post, found his way to Cecharini who heads the ball towards the near post, Concelli could have done better for this one, it wasn't the best header I've seen but headers are headers, they're never easy to save in general so I'll give it to him, I'll give Concelli the benefit of the doubt there, good goal for Cecharini, the score of the reverse fixture and the score in this fixture as well.

Cecharini, yes, massive impact of the bencher.

However probably the joke of the week, 2-1, 94th minute, Ehrlich gets the ball after Soswala failed to score from another chance, he then looks towards his goalkeeper, he decides to play the ball back to Concelli who's about 35 yards out, Concelli has no pressure, so a situation where he's not under pressure, he has two Verona attackers charging towards him and it's one minute before the game's meant to end, probably less than one, 40 seconds left, what does one do in a scenario like that?

You can shoot the ball to Christ, you can pass the ball for a throw in, you can turn around and start running towards your own goal, you can do literally anything you want and the man decides to pass the ball back to the defender he just got the ball from, a defender who's not renowned for being very fast might I add, and instead passes to the attacking player, Geitsch, who has an empty net to shoot from, arguably a very hard chance

nonetheless, decides to shoot from all the way out there and he manages to score. And the thing is, Concelli didn't even run back.

To be honest I think Concelli just realised he massively fucked up, but I've never seen him that laissez faire, I've never seen him so nonchalant, that was a shocker for me, I had my mouth open and I said you know what this is classic Sassuolo, but to do it in this way, to concede a goal in that manner is absolutely diabolical, apparently, I have a theory that apparently Sassuolo just don't want to see Verona relegated, I mean I have

no other explanation, I can't see any logic in that decision, it wasn't like a mis-hit pass, it was just like here's the ball, here you go, anywho I'm gonna stop ranting, that's how the game ended 2-1 and yeah Sassuolo will definitely feel beaten up, or they feel like beating themselves up rather, for how they've lost that game as such, they've lost that game in 10 minutes when they've bossed the game for over 75 of it, so hard pill to swallow,

that's what I've often done, hard pills down at the club, so you never know how it feels when you've taken too many, you look at the likes of Barardi, Harui, Frattesi and Laurenti who worked so hard to try to get the lead this game, I wanted it as well but often had the wrong decision as well, but then these guys were all subbed off right, and they were subbed off and then boom suddenly two goals, how much they feel man, they must feel hard

done by for sure, I wouldn't blame them, I'd be fucking pissed, I'd be pissed as fuck, but hey, sometimes you're the better side but you still lose and that was a classic example of that.

One thing I'd like to mention, a couple of points rather, at the beginning of the season I know that you and Matt were criticizing Sassuolo very much for their attacking display, you felt they were out of ideas, you felt that they looked absolutely invisible, there were reasons behind that, they didn't have Traiora, they had to have Barardi, so what I would like to say is I'm happy to see Sassuolo taking chances, shooting and having a crack

at goal, however there were a couple of attempts in this game where they could have easily played the pass to have a better chance, to have the easier chance, now of course one can't criticize that but I rather see more chances being taken, more selfishness than trying to play the perfect pass, because the perfect pass results in nothing, if you take a shot towards goal you never know what's going to happen, of course you're banking

on luck but if you're simply waiting for the perfect pass you're not going to even get luck into the equation. The Fiorentina syndrome. It can be frustrating but I'd rather see that than not see any passes, that's the logic I took for this point, I don't know how you feel about that. No, I mean fair enough. It's been working. It has been working, yes.

Okay, not in this game but… Sassuolo certainly improved and I feel like they are having a few more attempts, going on a few more solo endeavors like Lorient and Barardi particularly. And we were able to criticize them slightly but Concelli was, I mean I don't want to be too harsh but it was an absolute joke of a second goal. I'm a bit speechless, I still am a bit speechless.

He's been starting to look like he's passed his best but then the problem then lies, they don't really have a second keeper, Pagolo is 42 years old. They've got a good one out on loan.

It could be, I'm not up to scratch with who's out on loan keeper-wise for Sassuolo but it's something they should have to be… I think they're going to have to revisit it soon because I don't know, I think that maybe it's something for you and Matt to evaluate at the end of the season for Sassuolo since I can't believe, I don't believe they're going to have many, you're not going to have many talking points for a team which is most likely going to end up mid-table.

But yeah, Sassuolo ended the game weak with 37 points in 12th place where Verona managing to edge themselves out of the relegation zone, still in 18th, 22 points, 5 shy or 4 shy of 17th spot of Spezia. And to move on to the next game, unfortunately you're going to hear my voice for the next 20 minutes or so since if you're in this podcast I'm going to have to dip out for the last match review since I've got to do some father duties.

He's a tango dancer and taxi driver duties are being summoned so I must… Well, you know, if a taxi driver is being asked to come, the taxi driver doesn't decide to do what he wants. He has to go and that is my job. I apologize in general for the fact that I can't speak English today. I'm stammering and I feel like I've smoked 20 blunts and I haven't smoked weed in a long time. But anyway, it's been a long day of me doing nothing. So I guess when I do nothing it just ends up me being a lazy git.

Veg with you out dude. I am a vegetable. There we go. I am a vegetable. Be right back. Yes. Be right back. Jake's off. I'm going to do it all on my own apparently. Okie doke. So we have Sampdoria with 1 win, 1 draw and 3 losses as opposed to Cremonaise with 0 wins, 2 draws and 3 losses. Both teams arguably not on hot form.

At least you could say that Sampdoria felt a little bit more confident at least registering 1 win in the last 5 games so perhaps they could feel like they have a slight edge over Cremonaise. They would have a better feeling if they look into the historic head to head for this game week against Cremonaise with Sampdoria with 6 wins, 3 draws and 1 loss against this team from Lombardia. A couple of points to mention.

Apparently Hellas Verona have picked up fewer points 5 on the road rather than Cremonaise with 7 in 7 draws. The Lombardy side have registered the most draws away from home in the top flight in 2022-23 and are one of the 4 sides alongside along with Stuttgart, Hellas Verona and Almeria in Spain to remain winless on the road in the big 5 European league this season. I mention this point because of the fact that they actually managed to get their first win on the road this season.

With that being said we can then move on to the starting lineups. We have Sampdoria with their 3-4-2-1 with Ravaglia in goal for the injured Audero. We have Zanoli coming in in defence, Nuitinck, Amiglione at the back, Lerri, Srincon, Winx and Aggello in midfield, Quissons, Düricic and Gabbiadini up front.

On the opposing side we have a 3-4-1-2, Dessers and Saidou up front, we have Bojanuto as the attacking midfielder, Qualiata, Castagnati, Meita and Giglione in midfield, Lo Shoshvili, Bianchetti, Ferrari in defence, Karnisheki in goal. Other than that we can now spring on to the highlights, quite a few actually. This was the game of the week. This was the game of the week absolutely.

If you're bored, if you're having a smoke, if your day is about to end and you just want to watch some great football, some great, just a great game, a show of shows, please go and watch the highlights. It was thoroughly enjoyable and of course it wouldn't be thoroughly enjoyable if there wasn't a comedy as well in this game. And there were a couple.

So we'll crack on to the first go of the game in the 15th minute, 1-0, Düricic unleashes Aggello down the left flank, he whips in a beauty of a cross, Lerri's on the end of it to smash his header home, the crowd go wild. He hadn't scored in ages indeed. That lead didn't last all too long, 20 minutes later, 1-1, 35th minute, Tsaidou turns and passes by Amione, you'll be hearing this phrase quite often in this game. He then opens up space for Qualiata to cross towards goal.

The cross then lands all the way towards Giulione on the other side of the box, with his first touch he tries to play the ball back towards goal, somehow his cross ends up goal-wards, it loops over Ravalje, it loops over Noitink and it somehow ends up in the bottom corner. It felt like this ball had a bit of Kandreva inspiration and it was just, it was just actually this really weird goal if you ask me.

Giulione did expect to score, he had no plans to score, his idea was to cross the ball back into the box and instead he planned to score. So I think for my next handball game I'm going to pretend to miss and hopefully I'll score all my goals this time because when I pretended to want to shoot and score I missed them all, so maybe I just have to change my mindset.

Anywho, the first half ended in that fashion, 2-1 ends up being in the 66th minute for Sampdoria, another beautiful cross by Adrello, this time it finds its way to Lammers, his first go for Sampdoria he heathers a beautiful cross towards goal and it goes in 2-1. Sampdoria's first go for some colors, like I just said, huge goal, it felt like they were on to win this game as such.

Unfortunately it would not be the case in the 85th minute 2-2 Cremona is a score with Dessers finding his way into the box, he also manages to pass by Ammione, he beats his man, Dessers then plays the ball into the middle of the box with Los Rochvili managing to tap in from close range and then when you thought it was all over, when you thought that Cremona is they were going to get 8 points in 8 draws away from home, apparently not.

95th minute, last action of the game, 2-3, Afena Gian, sorry Afena Gian, don't murder me, what?

Afena Gian. He was extremely selfish, however again he passed and managed to beat his man against none other than Ammione who had an absolute howler of a game, he opened himself up on the right hand flank, he thundered a shot towards goal, he could have already passed but anyways hits the post, the ball then finds itself handsomely to Sir Nicola outside of the box, the man has a lot to do, he passes his man, he then opens himself up and he curls

an absolute beauty of a goal into the top corner, his kit flies as high as the stadium itself, everyone surrounding him, they're jumping with joy, Cremona wins 2-3, what a bloody game, what a bloody way to score and what a bloody way to give your team the lifeline they may need to survive in this league. And it's good to see these side scoring goals and getting a few personal stats as well for these guys, so many one-off goals for players because these guys don't score.

They don't really get opportunities, it seemed like Ballardini just said you know what guys, fuck it, we're pushing all up front for this game and we're going to try and get those goals and it worked, they pushed and they pushed and they managed. They did, they actually, their late press at the end of the game proved to be deadly.

It was as if when you feel it's all done, you gather that last bit of energy, you go for that last 100m sprint and you really try your best and it managed to get them to win, so they have to be proud of that performance. Two points, Samp, are they finished now after losing against the worst team in the league?

I thought that now with the run of games they might actually start fighting out of the relegation pool but this was the game to win and they didn't even draw, they lost it, so it's looking dire for them. It is looking dire, I think one, two more losses and it's curtains if you ask me. I already think it is curtains if you ask me but yeah.

One other point, now, Kermaneze, was this a consolation win in an albeit terrible season or could this be the resurgence of a team that makes it out of the relegation battle? Now, they're on 16 points, 10 points off of the 17th spot, so it's still a stretch, right? There is a big stretch. Big stretch. However, keep in mind that Spezia and Lecce both aren't hot on form, particularly Lecce, mind you. But Kermaneze would need to win a couple more games and I can't see them doing it.

I'd love to see them actually turn it around and survive. I love a good Miracle, I love Ballardini. I love him, what a great manager. But yeah, unfortunately I think that... It's a little too late. I see. I mean, fair enough, I tend to agree with that as well. I do feel this is a consolation win as well but you never know. Yeah, it was almost like pride, who's going to finish last? Yeah, it could have been. It could have been a fact. It could have been that was the key reason.

Yeah, other than that, I mean, those were my two main points for this one. Didn't really feel there were many talking points for the teams in 20th and 19th. To wrap it up, Sampdoria end this game making 20th with 15 points, Kermaneze climb up to 19th with 16. So Mintov has had to leave us, thank you very much to him as always for stepping in for Matt while he's away. Not an easy task at all and he's doing very well in it so shout out to Mintov, thank you very much to you brother.

The last game I'm going to be covering all on my own is Udinese 2 Monza 2. Amongst Seiya Aseeb and the Coppa Italia encounters that these two teams have had, they have faced each other 13 times with four victories and five draws, four victories each. Monza wanted to win this one after their president Silvio Berlusconi was diagnosed with leukemia which is the best terrible news. Of course, big figure over there, important figure for Italian football.

This was the third meeting this season between Monza and Udinese. Udinese won in Serie A on August 26th while Monza won in the Coppa Italia on October 19th and both these matches each side has scored a trend which continued last weekend as they drew 2-2. Matteo Pessina and Destini Udodji are two of the five Serie A players who have covered the most distance with carries this season, 4,369 meters for Pessina, 4,295 meters for Destini Udodji.

Beto has played the same number of games he had in Serie A last term, 28, scoring two fewer goals. Last term, his minutes to goal ratio was 198 compared to this term's 200. Stefano Sensi has scored more Serie A goals against Udinese than any other side with three.

Udinese lined up with a 3-5-2 formation with Silvestri in goal, new in Paris, Bijole and Becquois were at the back, Destini Udodji was left wing back while Ezebra was right wing back with Samardzic, Wallace and Lovric as the midfield three. Beto and success were the striking partnership for this game.

Monza was a 3-4-2 formation with Di Gregorio in goal, Antov, Mardi and Itso were at the back with Churia on the right and Carlos Augusto on the left, Rovella and Pessina were in the middle, Colpani and Sensi were the offensive duo behind Valotti this time round. Now in the 18th minute Wallace played Lovric through beautifully, Lovric only had the goalkeeper to beat and had enough time to overthink it, but he slipped it past the goalkeeper very coolly and composedly, that's 1-0 for Udinese.

In the 48th minute there was a great cross into the area by Carlos Augusto, Colpani a good little play over there converted violently on a fall volley, that's 1-1.

In the 56th minute Sensi played a perfectly weighted ball to Rovella who smashed it into the roof of the net first time, Rovella's first goal in Serie A and you can see what it meant to him, that was 2-1 over there for Monza and in the 91st minute perhaps Monza were hard done by Espetania gave away a penalty, he simply walked into Nesterovski in the area and Nesterovski essentially just smacked into a brick shithouse and hit the ground.

Penalty awarded, Beto sent, Di Gregorio the wrong way and it ended 2-2, perhaps harshly to Monza, I'm going to stress this it was harsh for Monza over there. Really unlucky they played very good football over here, they played up to Udinese's level if not better. I look forward to see what they can do in the next Mercato, Monza is the only way for them is up at the moment.

Carlos Augusto must be on the radar for big teams at the moment, I wish I could ask this question and have a discussion with one of my dear friends Minto Format but it's a shame we'll save it for next episode.

For me Carlos Augusto must go to a top team next season even if it's as an understudy to an already established fullback like Theo Hernandez or something for example, I think it would be a good move for him even Inter could use the services of Carlos Augusto or an understudy for a costage at Juve with Quadrado agent, he's hot property right now Carlos Augusto.

This was a game in which Lovridge and Wallace really stepped up in the middle for Udinese, they played very well there but yeah that pretty much wraps it up guys. Udinese currently sit in 10th with 39 points while Monza are in 13th with 35 points, this was a mid table battle over here of the highest order. So thank you very much if you've made it this far guys, remember to follow us at our spotlight on our socials, do send us a message, give us your feedback, tell us what you think.

We look forward to seeing you next week for more action and we'll be discussing the Champions League games as well briefly in the next episode too. Thank you very much, we love you.