Serie A : Who’s Going Down?
The seven suffering Serie A clubs praying for an Easter miracle.
Ten. Three. Thirty.
These are the most important numbers for Italian football club managers in charge of the bottom four Serie A clubs.
There are ten rounds left of the 2020/21 Serie A season, thirty league points to fight for, and the bottom three clubs will be relegated this Spring.
It’s Easter, a juncture for reflection.
This is a timely opportunity for Serse Cosmi, Davide Nicola, Leonardo Semplici and Roberto D’Aversa to make sacrifices and ask forgiveness for their footballing sins.
Firstly, let’s assess Crotone, Parma and Cagliari.
All three teams are well behind the peloton : Benevento, Fiorentina and Spezia, who occupy 14th, 15th and 16th places in the Classifica*, each currently with twenty-nine points.
Then we will check out Torino. The Granata have a game in hand and are one point above the bottom three.
But how many points are needed for survival and what could be considered a safe threshold?
Last season it was Lecce who finished in third-last place (18th) with thirty-five points and was subsequently thrashed down to the second division.
Crotone survived the drop in 2017, finishing with thirty-four points. The next season, however, they were relegated with thirty-five.
For our analysis, let’s stick with a thirty-four point threshold.
Let’s dive in to the likelihood of an Easter resurrection for those clubs languishing in the bottom four by analysing recent form, upcoming matches, potential six-pointers AND a predicted points tally.
It takes bravery to back any of these clubs for an accumulator bet. And keeping with that theme I hereby fearlessly (naively/stupidly) guesstimate who is going to be relegated and who will be saved — perhaps ingloriously.
Now let’s set the tone. A suitable theme song for a relegation dogfight should come from the Canadian pop star, Drake.
Started from the bottom now we’re here.
Started from the bottom now my whole team f**king here.
Ora iniziamo : let’s begin with Crotone
If there is a side that has been blessed with a holy resurgence previously in Serie A history it is indeed Crotone.
But “The Sharks”, from the southern tip of Italy’s luscious beaches, will have a whole mountain range to climb if they are to survive the drop.
Rewind to four years ago.
After twenty-eight rounds of the 2016/17 season, Crotone had accrued only fourteen points (that’s one point less than they have now) and after thirty-eight rounds they ended that season with thirty-four points and achieved salvation.
In 2021, Crotone is once again in bottom place in April — four points below Parma, six behind Cagliari and seven from Torino.
Recently appointed manager, Serse Cosmi, oversaw the surprise 4–2 victory over Torino in early March, while his predecessor Giovanni Stroppa led Crotone to their three other victories — all against other teams grappling in the relegation skirmish in Spezia, Parma and Benevento.
Stroppa’s efforts also included three draws, the best of them against Juventus. But that didn’t stop the other thirteen Serie A clubs feasting on the Sharks like a pod of ravenous orcas.
Back in 2017, that courageous side led by captain Alex Cordaz accumulated 20 league points in their final ten Serie A games to overtake Empoli. A true miracle by then-coach Davide Nicola, with the Rossoblu defeating Lazio 3–1 on the final day.
Crotone is once again faced with that very same task — needing to win at least six of the remaining ten games.
At least twenty more points are required to have a sniffle of survival and Cordaz can’t expect to take points from Napoli this Saturday, nor Inter or Roma in early May.
Plain and simple, Serse Cosmi needs to manufacture a string of wins against the weaker sides.
After Napoli-Crotone there are four big chances for the Rossoblu with games against Spezia, Udinese, Sampdoria and Parma.
Crotone’s last two matches of the season could go either way with games against Benevento at the Vigorito and Fiorentina at the Ezio Scida on Match Day thirty-eight.
Dionysius the Areopagite, Crotone’s patron saint, was probably watching over the Stadio Ezio Scida as Andrea Nalini scored that blessed brace on the final match-day of 2016/17, the only two goals he’s ever scored in Italy’s first division.
And that very same venerated Athenian martyr, who was a kid when Jesus was crucified, will have to make a spirited return to the Crotone locker room if they’re to have a shot at salvation from here.
Verdict : In all the Abrahamic religions “Messias” translates to the “anointed one”. But not even Crotone’s best player this season, Junior Messias, can liberate this club which seems destined for a swift return to Serie B.
Chances
- From this stage in the past five seasons, no team in 20th position has survived the drop.
- Last season, SPAL finished last, only accumulating two points in the final ten rounds. Previous seasons saw Chievo with six, Benevento with eight, Pescara with six and Verona with ten. These teams all eventually finished in 20th place.
Negatives : So many, but for the sake of keeping this article below 5000 words we will go with :
- The worst defence in the League, conceding an average of 2.5 goals per game (gpg**).
Positives
- The discovery of Junior Messias and the re-emergence of Adam Ounas. The good goalscoring form of Simy which has seen the Nigerian overtake Andrea Deflorio’s previous club record of 54.
- Simy now has twenty-three career Serie A goals and 59 in total for the Calabrese club.
Recent Form — Awful. Lost twelve from their past fourteen, won the other two. I can see the poor form continuing, starting with Napoli this weekend.
Prediction : 20th with 23 points for Crotone
There is one thing that no other team can pip from Parma this season, a seventeen-game winless streak.
The Ducali finished in eleventh place in the 2019/20 season after solid contributions from Gervinho (7 goals) and Andreas Cornelius (12 goals).
But with only five goals between them this term, Roberto D’Aversa has had to count on his midfielders to add scoreboard pressure.
Thankfully for Gialloblu fans, Juraj Kucka and Hernani have scored six goals each. Unluckily for Gialloblu fans, Parma has conceded fifty-four goals — Crotone the only team doing worse (a whopping seventy).
Unsurprisingly, Parma has the worst attack in the league — just 26 goals -with an average of 0.94 gpg.
So which players could contribute to Parma’s revival?
Former Italian international striker Graziano Pellè has been added to the squad and already has a goal against Genoa, and won the penalty against Roma.
And there is some attacking spark with new youthful signings that include Valentin Mihaila, Dennis Man, Maxime Busi, Yordan Osorio, Juan Brunetta and Joshua Zirkzee.
But as Benevento has displayed, with Filippo Inzaghi’s preferred starting eleven’s average age of 28+, sometimes you simply need experienced heads on the park when you’re grinding out a life-or-death result, as the Witches did so wonderfully against Juventus before the international break.
For D’Aversa, too many youngsters on the park at once can lead to substandard outcomes — proof that you can’t have your panettone and eat it too.
But the main issue of late for Parma has been surrendering the half-time lead.
Twice Parma has led at the break (2 nil) against Spezia and Udinese in successive games. Those games ended 2–2 and Parma threw away four valuable league points in the process.
Then there was that last-minute own goal by Simone Iacoponi against Fiorentina — another two points squandered as that game ended 3–3.
In another realm Parma would be sitting pretty on twenty-five points with Spezia and Fiorentina both on twenty-eight.
Put simply, the Crociati now need fifteen points however Milan and Juventus, both chasing Inter Milan for the Scudetto, won’t be charitable to the Parmigiani when they meet this month.
But April WILL be decisive for Juraj Kucka’s young crusaders as Parma face Benevento, Cagliari and Crotone — the latter could be considered as an unofficial play-out.
Then there’s another all-important game away at Torino in early May before Kyle Krause’s club finishes the season off with four arduous arm-wrestles — Atalanta, Lazio, Sassuolo and Sampdoria.
Over the past five seasons, clubs in 19th position, after 28 rounds, have averaged 10.8 points in the final 10 rounds. That would only take Parma to thirty.
Positives
- Parma has the easiest run of the bottom eight sides.
- Solid seasons from midfielders Hernani, Brugman, Kurtic and Kucka.
- The discoveries of Osorio, Man and Mihaila.
Negatives
- The worst attack in the League (26 goals scored).
- The balance sheet is hurting with over €70m shelled out on player transfer fees in the past nine months.
- The only 19th placed team to achieve salvation from here in the past 5 seasons was Crotone — who amassed 20 points in the final 10 Rounds in 2016/17.
- Carpi came close, going from 22 to 38 points in 2015/16 but falling a point short of Udinese and Palermo (39 points each).
Must-Win Games : Benevento, Cagliari, Crotone, Torino, Sampdoria
Prediction : Parma boldly finishes with 34 points
Eusebio Di Francesco was relieved of his managerial duties in February after the club suffered a sixteen-game winless streak.
Leonardo Semplici then took the job as Cagliari hovered above Crotone by just three points.
Sacked by SPAL just two weeks before Tommaso Giulini employed him in Sardinia, Semplici’s first task for Cagliari was to take on a Crotone side that had just lost five on the trot, conceding fourteen goals and scoring only twice in that time.
Needless to say that Semplici’s first three games brought two wins and a draw as Cagliari overcame Crotone and beat Bologna while nicking a draw from Sampdoria thanks to a fairytale 96th-minute equaliser from Radja Nainggolan.
Now Cagliari is seven points in front of Crotone. Half of the Islander’s points tally has been obtained from other teams in the relegation battle, aiding them to stay above Crotone and Parma while simultaneously keeping Torino within reach.
However, Semplici faces the toughest run of all the managers that are in the bottom four. The ex-Spal coach will have to confront a tricky Verona side, coached brilliantly by Ivan Juric, directly after the March World Cup Qualifiers.
Cagliari’s only real relegation six-pointer will come in mid-April against Parma and then Semplici will hope and pray that Fiorentina, Benevento and Genoa will have nothing to play for late on in the season and lay down.
Joao Pedro, currently with thirteen goals this season, may well have to surpass his career-best tally of eighteen — set last season — to lead this Cagliari side to safety. And a little bit more help from Geovanni Simeone (6 goals) and Leonardo Pavoletti (2 goals) would be welcomed for the upcoming matches against Inter, Napoli, Roma and Milan.
The five-year average for points accrued in the final ten matches by teams in eighteenth place is 11.2, and Bologna, who racked up 20 points in this period in 2019, was the only club to administer self-deliverance, finishing well up the ladder in outright tenth with forty-four points!
So how does Cagliari stack up against Torino who occupies seventeenth place?
After twenty-eight rounds this campaign, Cagliari has only kept opponents goalless four times. Torino has a much leakier defence but the Granata has scored eight more goals so far this season and has a game in hand.
Negatives
- Cagliari has the toughest run of all the bottom four clubs
- Even Crotone has scored more goals than Cagliari
Positives
- Solid seasons from Cragno, Nandez and Joao Pedro.
- Sottil and Zappa have been given opportunities and have progressed.
- Only four Cagliari players were called up for International games — Cragno (Italy), Zappa (Italy u21), Walukiewicz (Poland) and Marin (Romania)
Must Win Games : Parma, Torino, Fiorentina, Benevento, Genoa.
Prediction : Cagliari with 32 points overall.
Davide Nicola took over a Granata congregation that had lost all faith.
Marco Giampaolo was sacrificed as head coach just after the new year due to a horrible goalless home-draw against a Spezia side that had Luca Vignali sent off after just eight minutes.
By February, Torino defeated Cagliari to extend their undefeated streak to six and was then denied the chance to face Sassuolo and Lazio after some players tested positive for the virus.
The Granata’s return to the field saw them lose two straight games — one to leader’s Inter Milan (1–2 at home) and the other to last-placed Crotone (4–2 away).
Then possibly the watershed moment of Torino’s campaign. In the catch-up game with Sassuolo, the visitors led 2–0 in Turin with less than 15 minutes remaining.
Enter Simone Zaza off the bench, who pulled a goal back in the 77th minute followed by the equaliser from Rolando Mandragora in the 86th. Then a dramatic stoppage-time winner by Zaza elevated Torino above Cagliari and out of the bottom three.
Job done, season saved?
Not quite. Torino then lost to Sampdoria before the break and now has the daunting task of facing Juventus in the Derby della Mole right after the break. Seven of Davide Nicola’s remaining eleven games are against sides in the top twelve.
Only Empoli, in seventeenth position after twenty-eight rounds in 2017, has been mowed down by a club below them and subsequently relegated, in the past five campaigns. And it was a shiver of Calabrese sharks from Crotone who unleashed the mowing.
The average points tally for the other four clubs in seventeenth was 15 — Sampdoria (+16), Udinese (+18), SPAL (+14) and Palermo (+12). Empoli accumulated ten, bringing down the five-year average to fourteen.
Torino will finish with thirty-five points, easily avoiding demotion, should Davide Nicola acquire that fourteen point average.
One thing is for sure, Andrea Belotti is not happy with the way things are going at the Grande Torino, with the club’s captain refusing to sign a contract extension which may force Urbano Cairo into selling his best player in the summer for much less than the €100m release clause stipulated (to foreign clubs) in his current deal.
Torino’s toughest matches — the Derby against Juventus, Roma, Napoli, Verona and Milan.
Relegation Six Pointers : Torino will host Parma in early May, and their two last games of the season pits them against Spezia (away) and Benevento.
Negatives
- Dropped too many points from winning positions in the first half of the season.
- Salvatore Sirigu has just five clean sheets. The only positive from this is that Cagliari’s Alessio Cragno has only kept four.
- Seven Torino players were called up for World Cup Qualifiers — Belloti, Sirigu and Mandragora (Italy), Gojak (Bosnia), Lukic (Serbia), Ujkani and Vojvoda (Bosnia).
Positives
- The good form of Sanabria and Mandragora has been a massive boost since both signed in the January window.
- Torino has a game in hand.
Prediction : 35 points for Torino
Spezia and Benevento, along with Fiorentina need another three wins each to all but guarantee their places in the 2021/22 Serie A season.
These three clubs have recently scored huge victories with the Viola trouncing the Witches 4–1 thanks to a first-half Dusan Vlahovic hat-trick, while Spezia won their six-pointer against Cagliari.
But the most astounding result was Benevento’s away triumph over the Old Lady in Turin 0–1 just before the break which ended an eleven-game winless streak. Filippo Inzaghi has pinched four league points from Juventus this season — something that no other club has managed so far.
While Benevento has difficult games coming up against Sassuolo, Lazio, Milan and Atalanta, holding out to the likes of Parma, Crotone, Cagliari and Torino should suffice. Grazie Dio for the arrival of Adolfo Gaich.
Spezia encounters Lazio, Inter, Napoli, Verona and Roma however a couple of good results against Torino and Crotone should stave off any late-season capitulation. Remember, it’s the six-pointers that count the most and 34+ points is the threshold we are working with.
Interestingly enough, Fiorentina (29) confronts Genoa (31) on Easter Saturday and a loss for either side could initiate a snowball effect.
Fiorentina must then take on Atalanta, Sassuolo, Verona, Juventus, Bologna, Lazio and Napoli, as well as two precarious six-pointers against Cagliari and Crotone at season’s end.
Genoa has 31 points : Dark Horse for Relegation
Genoa and Fiorentina have the most difficult runs of all clubs in the bottom eight. After taking on the Viola this weekend, Genoa has to resist Juventus, Milan, Lazio, Sassuolo, Bologna and Atalanta, as well as three potentially perilous six-pointers against Benevento, Spezia and Cagliari.
Yes, I originally said that there are seven clubs in the mix, but I can not discount a Genoa side that went twelve games winless and now has the worst run home of the lot.
Although the chances of relegation are much smaller for Spezia, Benevento, Fiorentina and Genoa — we can not forget that every single bottom eight club has slipped into catatonia at some stage of this campaign.
Worryingly, Genoa and Benevento have been struggling to score goals with the Grifone averaging 1.07 gpg and the Witches 1.0 gpg. Both performances are worse than Crotone and Cagliari.
In 2017, Crotone scored thirteen goals in their final nine matches (1.44 goals per game) which enabled them to survive, conceding only nine with two clean sheets. The Sharks went on to beat Inter and Lazio and drew with Milan.
To get a clearer idea — prior to that run of form, Crotone had only netted twenty-one goals in twenty-eight matches (0.75 gpg). This season the Sharks are already scoring at 1.14 gpg which is encouraging, however Serse Cosmi has inherited a team that concedes 2.5 gpg on average.
Crotone has copped seventy goals so far and horrifically, should this form continue, could end up with the worst record in Italian First Division footballing history, pipping Casale’s 1933/34 record of 91 goals conceded.
Parma has the easiest run of the bottom eight clubs and the Gialloblu has nothing to lose.
They’re my Wildcard — if there’s a miracle then it’s going to be executed by Roberto D’Aversa. Music to the ears (eyes in this case) for Kyle Krause (send me a bottle of vino from one of your wineries to celebrate?).
Cagliari fans, I’m picking your team to miss out and submit to Serie B football for the first time in five years, unless Joao Pedro and Alessio Cragno save the day.
Torino should survive the drop and it will be Andrea Belotti — fresh from scoring for Italy and hitting the base of the post against Bulgaria — to lead his lambs away from the slaughter to Paradiso Vegan-o.
Benevento, Fiorentina and Spezia should all remain. If there’s a shock fall from grace it will be Genoa — due for another winless streak and has a bunch of incoming David and Goliath tussles against the heavyweights.
No matter what ensues on the field, the neutral observer is in for a treat. Serie A has the highest goal-per-game average (3+) of the top five European leagues (along with the Bundesliga), and the Italian top flight was named as the Best Domestic Footballing League in the world for 2020 by the International Federation of Football History and Statistics.
There is so much talent on display and, heading into Spring, so many stories are about to unfold.
As the great Robin Williams said,
Spring is nature’s way of saying ‘Let’s Party’
*Italian for “League Table”, **Goals Per Game (gpg).
