Manu’s Grab Bag: Wasteful

We talk the flip of Dusan Vlahovic, when relying on youth goes wrong and a great Federico Chiesa game.

Considering the huge absences in midfield and the current form Juventus are currently on, you wouldn’t be shocked to know in hindsight that they would drop a 2-1 game against Napoli at the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium.

That’s a tough place to play in the best of circumstances, and Juventus was down to one regular starting midfielder and despite Napoli’s disappointing showing this season, they are still a very talented team.

Yet, despite the result maybe not being super shocking, the way the Bianconeri managed to get there certainly was. Despite the shorthanded squad at Max Allegri’s disposal, Juventus set up smartly, generated a ton of good chances to score and played their best game in over a month — with the glaring exception of actually scoring the football most of the night.

Turns out, it doesn’t matter how good or bad that you play, if you can’t finish the myriad of chances you generate it’s going to be hard to get a decent result.

Let’s cook.

LVP: Dusan Vlahovic

The man who won the MVP honors last weekend against Frosinone finds himself in the opposite side of the coin because he was the pole sitter in the wastefulness that haunted Juventus in Naples.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again until I’m red in the face: Dusan Vlahovic is not a great striker. He is a very good player, and he shows flashes of being a great player. He has grown leaps and bounds from where he was when the season started. He gets involved a whole more, he doesn’t get as easily man marked as last season, his hold-up game is a lot better and he finds way to impact the game even if he’s not getting a ton of service.

Still, it’s all for naught if you continue to be as wasteful as he has been and was against Napoli. Elite strikers don’t miss one chance like the ones he had, let alone three. We’ve seen him be a lot more clinical than he was on Sunday, and to his credit he took full responsibility of his blunders in front of goal, but the growth he’s shown in in other areas has to translate to consistent finishing.

That’s the difference between really good players — which Vlahovic is right now — and elite players like the ones he aspires to be.

Return of Fede

Count me in as one of the many who halfway wondered if Federico Chiesa just didn’t have it this season. Between the system, his nagging injuries and the come up of Kenan Yildiz for a second, there it looked like Chiesa’s fit was better as a change of pace guy rather than the immovable pillar of the team we thought he’d be.

He still has to sort out the injury thing, but at least for this game he was back to the guy that you can build around. He was incisive with his runs, beat guys off the dribble like the old days, got himself back on the scoresheet and should have had at least an assist, too.

Similarly to Vlahovic, he needs to start putting performances like this one more consistently together before we can fully get on to our ceilings and scream to the skies that Chiesa is back but this was a step in a positive direction.

Paper Thin

It was legitimately shocking to see Juve’s options from the bench on this game. With Carlos Alcaraz and Fabio Miretti being thrown into starting positions, the options available for Allegri two try to make a difference offensively was a severely out-of-form Tim Weah and teenagers Kenan Yildiz and Joseph Nonge.

Building with youth sounds all well and good until you’re chasing a goal in Naples and your offensive options are dudes who were not alive when the new millennium started.

Yildiz had a decent showing, but Nonge had the worst-case scenario for youngsters being thrown into these situations. He was overeager, shook and committed a reckless tackle on Victor Oshimen that ended up costing them the game.

(Allegri pulled him immediately afterward in what certainly felt like a retaliatory move. It’s going to be up to him to see if he takes this as a lesson to bounce back and contribute moving forward or if it’s bad for his confidence. Only time will tell.)

We can have all the conversations in the world about coaching or the direction of the team but as long as this current squad reality continues it really doesn’t matter who is on the bench if when he looks at his options they look like they looked on Sunday.

Parting Shot of the Week

The slide continued for Juventus unfortunately, as there is now a 15-point gap (!!!) to the league leaders (and virtual champions at this point) Inter Milan. We were pretty sure a few weeks ago that even in the worst case blowing a top-four spot was pretty far fetched, but with a number of games coming up against other teams competing directly against the Bianconeri for those coveted spots the proposition doesn’t look as sure as before.

They’d have to fall pretty hard to blow a 10-point advantage over fifth place, but nothing is out of the question considering how catastrophically wrong the last few weeks have gone for Juventus.

When is the Coppa Italia back?