Topic: Italian League Prediction Thread (Serie A) - page 1439. (Read 858733 times)

Napoli not climbing to any relevant position this weekend, they're 7th on the league table and their hope for scudetto is alive. Bologna succeeded to keep the game scoreless. Napoli failed to win points against a mediocre opponent despite a superb performance. Rudi Garcia will make changes at the club, but I don't see why Victor Osimhen would missed a golden chance, a penalty kick that would have broken the deadlock and given Napoli the lead in the 72nd minute. Even if Victor Osimhen is an attacker and an ordinary player, huge stars miss penalties on a frequent basis.

Napoli were overperforming at the start of the season.
This has always been a Spalletti quality, to give the players good strength at the start of the season.

Napoli won because we got 1 month of break for the World Cup otherwise they would have lost their shape in December.

I don't know what is really going on with Napoli currently. They made another point loss this time against Bologna away. Osimhen's missing that penalty was devastating for him and the team both. There is a significant drop in his performance level at the same time. It is really interesting to see this change in the team suddenly.

I mean they started the season really good but here we are. They can't win a game in the Serie A for three weeks. They struggled against Braga in the Champions League as well. Rudi Garcia must be under pressure even more now.

Now you understand that last year, the league title came due to a series of almost unrepeatable coincidences. Almost zero injuries, the luck of finding Kim and an unknown number 77, Oshimen, who didn't miss anything, the main rivals slowing down, and the nonsense of Juventus' point deduction. Add to this 6 months of celebrations, and that's it. This is Napoli's dimension, a team that can range between 2nd and 5th place.

I think the same about Rudi Garcia and his team.
Like I said weeks ago Napoli had great days with Spalletti in the last season and ow their fans expect to see their teams on top of the table and get the good results like last season, this can put Rudi Garsia under pressure and it seems he is even near to get fired.

Napoli performance this season is not very good, even though their squad is still the same, but Rudi Garcia failed to implement the tactics to build player enthusiasm so we are not sure they will be able to compete at the top. Osimhen was unable to withstand the pressure of being the defending champion team this season because he seemed to be having difficulty finding his identity. Failure to execute the penalty kick makes us believe that he has really lost his form of sharpness in front of goal.

Bologna was able to break Napoli dominance in this match because Bologna was under pressure from Napoli for almost the entire match. Skorupski neat performance was able to keep them from conceding in this match. I think with this result, Napoli is falling further behind the team at the top of the standings.

Napoli's failure to get 3 points here is quite surprising. Bologna is actually not as troublesome an opponent as it should be for Napoli. However, throughout the match, it turned out that Bologna seemed to be able to keep up with Napoli quite well. This time, Napoli not only failed to get full points but were also unable to compete at the top of Serie A. If this continues, it will be very difficult for Napoli to defend the title. It turns out that SPaletti's move really had a big influence on Napoli. Even though Osimhen was still there, the tactics provided were not enough to make Napoli's attack run smoothly. There's a lot of homework the coaches have to do now if they want to get back to the top again. Although this might be a little difficult.

Today's games had some results that left me very surprised.

Bologna 0 - 0 Napoli

This was a game in which I had bet on Napoli to win the game, on paper I saw Napoli as the favorites to win this game, but on the field I started to realize that Napoli are no longer anything, that Napoli from last season If it was, I had already said that months ago that Napoli should have sold Victor Osimhen while there was still time, but Napoli's management thought that this season things would be the same and that they would be the team that would dominate Serie A and that Victor Osimhen would be the best scorer and his market value would be much higher. But as I said months ago, that thought became wrong the moment the coach decided to leave and I said that the coach was leaving because he knew very well that that moment was the best because the following season wouldn't be the same.

The guy was very smart to leave with a good reputation because that way he would get other good jobs. but Napoli's management still remained in the world of illusion and as a result they are seeing Napoli in decline. Napoli is in position 7 and with just 8 points from 5 games. This is clear: this is not a performance from a team fighting to be champions. in 5 games, they only had 2 victories, it is clear that at best they will fight for 4th place which will also be difficult to achieve

Empoli 0 - 1 Inter

I watched this game. I must say that I expected Inter to be able to score a lot of goals, but it seems that Inter is entering that phase of not scoring many goals like last season. We'll see in the next game if this will continue or if things will get worse. but the fact is that with this victory Inter is at the top, Inter's good defense is making them stay at the top, in 5 games they only conceded 1 goal, and an excellent defensive performance

Torino 1 - 1 Roma

roma was very close to winning this game, once again lukako scored a goal and this is one of roma's best signings this season, with this result roma improved their position in the table and in their next game will be against Genoa and I see Roma getting 3 points and with that it would further improve Roma's position in the table. I hope Roma manages to stay in the top 4 and go to the European Champions League next season. In the rest of the games, I didn't see any surprises in the results, I was only surprised by Juventus' defeat

I doubt if Rudi Garcia could retain the league trophy for Napoli this season, he's not the right manager for the club and they shouldn't had allowed Spalletti leave the club, because he would had done better than what Rudi Garcia is doing currently, they  would had probably been at the top or in the top 4 currently, they need to start winning matches because the more points they drop makes them far from winning the trophy and they might even fail to qualify for the top 4 if they don't recover their form.
 
 If think you're right about this curse you mentioned because Napoli doesn't seem ready to defend the Scudetto but hopefully if Intermilan wins the league this season, they could be the team that would break that curse because they've been consistent  with their good performance since last season.

Dimarco scored Inter's only goal. He scored the goal right at the beginning of the second half. It was a very classy goal, a very technical shot, and this goal won the match for Inter. In fact, they could have scored many more goals, Hakan Çalhanoğlu could have at least made 1-2 assists, he made such beautiful passes, Hakan Çalhanoğlu is doing excellent work in the central midfield. Inter seems to be the best this season. For now, let's see if they can maintain this self-confidence in the matches in the coming weeks.

The match ended in a draw (again) for Napoli.
This is the third consecutive result that I did not expect for Napoli because in the last 3 matches their results can only be 2 draws and 1 loss and this is definitely the worst performance for them at the beginning of the season when compared to the previous 2 seasons.
Even though they still get points but honestly I am quite disappointed with their performance at the beginning of this season because in the end even though Serie A is still quite long but with their conditions like this at the beginning of the season it could also be a problem for them to be able to defend the Scudetto they achieved before and the possibility of a curse about Serie A clubs who still cannot defend the Scudetto in 2 consecutive seasons will still be repeated this season.

               Torino vs Roma

After a very long and hard struggle in the match, Roma finally broke the deadlock on the 65th minutes of the game. Lukaku was the man  that scored for his team to put them in a winning position in the game. I knew it that Roma will score after much pressure that they were mounting on Torino.

Lukaku has been very consistent with his performance for his new club, and he has shown that he deserves to stay in one club as their player instead from going from one place to another with his talent. Mourinho will be happy if this match ends in their favour, and this means that Roma have started winning matches. Torino is trying their best to equalise the goal but it isn't that easy.

What a wonderful header by Zapata to equalise the goal for Torino. What a night for the host on the 85th minutes as they put themselves back into the game and points will be shared, if it ends up this way.
TOR 1-1 ROM

Now they are really very good and it's just a matter of seeing if there will be interference from the tight schedule or some unfit players that will be a problem later because for now it seems that with the players in good condition they seem to be unstoppable in every match they run.
The next 2 matches before they refocus on the Champions League will only play with Sassuolo and Salernitana. Sassuolo have good ambitions especially after beating Juventus this week but when the opponent is Inter I still have no doubt about 3 points for Inter.


Nobody thinks Inter's game was bad and I can vouch for that it's just that my context is that in this case I expected something more from them especially after the massacre against Milan before especially with the number of chances they had and only creating 1 goal it feels less to me.
But in the end regardless of the scoreline they got the 3 points and that's the point.

I'm not sure Napoli will finish in the top four if they can't consistently get points, Osimhen fails to score a penalty. Now Napoli position is stuck at 7th in the standings, Lecce looks stronger this season than Rudi Garcia squad. Now the gap with Inter at the top is getting wider, with AC Milan, Lecce and Juventus in the UCL zone. Rudi Garcia seems to be having difficulty bringing the Napoli squad to defend the Scudetto title. His tactical adaptation has not worked completely for Osimhen and his friends.

On the other hand, Bologna efforts to contain Napoli attacks were quite successful, playing defensively and relying on counter attacks was enough for Napoli to lose creativity. I don't think Kvaratskhelia and Osimhen performed optimally, their substitution at the end of the match had no impact.

The problem is that when a big club focuses on just one competition it can backfire on them and that's a disadvantage.
Moreover, the Champions League is clearly a gamble because the clubs that are here are all top clubs in every major league. As for domestic competition, even though it is a very long match because there are 38 weeks to go through but on the other hand we must also be aware that if at the beginning they are not too serious, this will make them a little inconvenient especially there could be surprises from other clubs just like Napoli did last season where they could not be overtaken and seemed to be without a fight in Serie A.

Sassuolo performed very well at home and was able to dominate the match from the start of the match even though Juventus was able to control the ball superiorly but the defense was very poor because Sassuolo did not always put pressure on Juventus defense, only occasionally giving surprising attacks to the goalkeeper with very strong attacks fast from Sassuolo and resulting in first goal from Lauriente which gave the first scoring position, making the Sassuolo players more confident that it was very easy to break through Juventus defense.
Knowing this weakness, Sassuolo attacking players will continue to take advantage it to continue to break through and score goals against Juventus and I think Allegri was careless in not knowing that this weak defensive line should be given effort by focusing on not losing the match and choosing to draw but it seems Allegri's ambition was to calm the game down so that mistakes were not seen in the direction of very poor defending.

I am not sure Rudy Garcia can keep the job by xmas; his tactic is not reflecting well on the team and the performances are awful and bad too; the team is not creating chances, scoring goals or dominating games unlike last season when they won the league. Poor Napoli defending their league title in bad fashion !

Do you think Napoli can challenge even for top 4 if such performances continues?

I think the defeat experienced by Juventus at this moment I think remains a bad result, and certainly does not have to be experienced by Juventus at this moment. Because anyway, at least this is also still the early part of the season, and this moment Juventus are also only focused on Serie A and thus, it should be for Juventus to get consecutive good results. Maybe, if Juventus can't get a winning streak, but it should be Juventus not to get a losing result at this moment because of course, they can anticipate it with a draw result as well. So yes, this result remains a bad result for Juventus, and I think a 4-2 defeat like this is clearly unacceptable because it shouldn't happen.

The third time they had to end the match without getting full points, and it must be recognized that Napoli's performance has decreased. I can even say that this result is a fair result, because even Bologna can match the game from Napoli.
Rudy Garcia's name will be a hot topic of conversation after they experience this, because this is a different Napoli from the Napoli we saw last season. I will not be surprised when Napoli officially announce they will end cooperation with this coach.

After losing to Inter in the derby match, I am happy that Milan came back and won their last match against Verona. Even though Milan only scored 1 goal in the first 10 minutes of the match, it was enough to win 3 points. On the other hand, Inter is also still maintaining its winning streak in the last 5 matches. Their defense is very strong, conceding only 1 goal in 5 matches, so I wouldn't be surprised why they can win matches and lead the standings so far.

Napoli seem very different this season. They don't look very strong after winning the Scudetto last season, I mean being ranked 7th with 2 wins from 5 matches is not Napoli last season. I'm sure Napoli will have a really hard time winning the title this season and the Scudetto looks very close to Inter or Milan if both are able to maintain their best performance.

I have to agree with that because since his appointment as the new coach for Napoli, I have had serious doubts about his tactical abilities. Rudi Garcia will be fired, of course, that is very possible if he is unable to get Napoli back to its peak performance this season.