Our biggest worry currently should be February > middle of March fixture list. If we go there level on points with leaders we might be ok depending if we are taking scudetto seriously, match results vs top teams will show that. If we arrive to February say 7 to 10pt gap it will be very hard.
Everyobe will play everyone yes, but our fixture list says breathe or DIE.
This gap with Aralanta can't grow , bottom line
@Milan
Fiorentina
@Rube
Genoa
@Napoli
Monza
@Atalanta
The counterpoint to this is that our schedule from after the Lazio game until the derby is very soft. Lets compare current table positions of opponents to Atalanta and Napoli. (You guys know I love tables.)
| MD | Inter opp | Table | MD | Nap opp | Table | MD | Atalanta opp | Table |
| 16 | @ Lazio | 5th | 16 | @ Udinese | 9 | 16 | @ Cagliari | 15th |
| 17 | Como | 17th | 17 | @ Genoa | 14 | 17 | Empoli | 10th |
| 18 | @ Cagliari | 15th | 18 | Venezia | 20 | 18 | @ Lazio | 5th |
| 19 | @ Venezia | 20th | 19 | @ Fiorentina | 4 | 19 | Juventus | 6th |
| 20 | Bologna | 8th | 20 | Verona | 18 | 20 | @ Udinese | 9th |
| 21 | Empoli | 10th | 21 | @ Atalanta | 1 | 21 | Napoli | 2nd |
| 22 | @ Lecce | 16th | 22 | Juventus | 6 | 22 | @ Como | 17th |
| Average pos | 13th | | Average pos | 10.3 | | Average pos | 9.1 |
We come in -1 on Napoli and -3 on Atalanta but with a game in hand on both of course.
This is where we have a chance to make up some ground. Now, if Atalanta keeps ravaging teams, not much we can do about that, but that's five out of seven games against teams 10th and lower. If we go to the Olimpico and leave with three points, even better.
Given that schedule in February until the final int'l break, yeah this is the part of the schedule we need to get fat against, hopefully see some dropped points elsewhere and get some separation. Beginning with the derby, every single away game we're set to play until the int'l break is against a top-7 team in the league, in addition to potential away games to Lazio in the Coppa and an away R16 game against a strong opponent in all likelihood. February and March are gonna be bruising. Meanwhile, Atalanta's schedule lets up a lot from MD21 until MD28 when they play at Juventus.
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Here's the principal difference from last year. We're about 10 points off last year's pace (84.1 points right now is our pace), but when you win the league by 19 points that's not necessarily catastrophic. That 19-point Scudetto win was the largest win since our 2006-'07 Scudetto, even during the 9-year streak by Juventus their top wins were by 17 points on two different occasions. The real difference is that last year's 2nd place was a bit weak, only three times since 2010 has a 2nd place team finished at 75 points or fewer. Going back over the last 20 years, 2nd place usually finishes around 80 points. Right now, there's four teams on an 80+ point pace and Lazio's at 78.5, so that's four teams (besides the league leader) on pace to finish with more points than 2nd place last season. That's the main difference. All things considered, we're doing pretty damn well. We've played 20 games this season and have a 13-5-2 record in them. If we take care of business coming up soon, that pace will buff up higher. I'm not worried about our performances overall, repeating last year's season was always going to be very difficult. The difference is almost entirely that there are multiple other competitive teams this year whereas only Juventus was on our tails by this point a year ago and after the February derby they tailed off entirely.
I'm not gonna worry too much about this right now, whether we'll win it or not. For the time being, this team has more than earned my trust. Now that we're finally in a stretch where there's no international breaks coming up for a while, hopefully we'll be able to settle into form and really get rolling. During this window last year, we went 14-3-0 in the league, and that was with draws at the beginning and end so 14 wins out of 15 at one point. I think we're capable of more of that now.
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