SOS: Save Our Season

By: cathal | September 29th, 2009

The title of this post may be slightly extreme but with our problems mounting, it can’t be too long before we are making an SOS call. Unfortunately, the title is also intended as a pun as what truly made the difference against Palermo was our respective goalkeepers. Muslera had what has recently become a rare off-day whereas Sirigu stopped pretty much everything that crossed his path. It was a game we could and probably should have won but a draw against the resilient Sicilians is far from disastrous.

I don’t want to be too critical on the team because it was a decent result, however, despite playing better than we have in recent weeks, there is still much to be done. When you are hosting a side who are similar in terms of quality, you hope to win, you take a draw and whatever happens, you do everything in your power not to lose. The problem for us is that we dominated the game and yet, had Zarate not been in the right place at the right time, we could be jetting off to Bulgaria having just suffered a loss and herein lies the problem. We are creating half-chances and plenty of them but we are not getting too many clear-cut scoring opportunities and when we do, the net appears to be elusive. If we start bagging a few of these, individual errors from our defence and goalkeeper will become less important. This pattern started with Salzburg; we had many half-chances and a few clear-cut opportunities but we didn’t take them and when the fatigue set in and mistakes were made, we suffered. For sure, there are numerous factors behind this which we have all discussed in the comments section in recent times but a new theory came to mind at the weekend.

To put it simply, I think Ballardini is struggling to formulate a team without Ledesma and needs more time than we all hoped. You won’t hear me criticising Baronio for two reasons; he has been solid thus far and despite his limitations, he has served this club well and for that, he has to be admired. However, if he is to be our temporary solution then we need to fit this team around him. Injuries may be preventing us from fulfilling that task adequately but nevertheless, we have to at least demonstrate that there is a plan in place. Frankly, I don’t see it and when your defence is leaky and your attack is misfiring, you have a severe problem. As a result of this, I am over the moon to see Rocchi back and looking sharp. This is a huge plus going into Bulgaria and let’s hope we can stop the rot in a competition which should be vital for our future development. Poll on the way. Forza Lazio!

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Reaction:

“We played very well today with the way that we controlled possession.”

“Palermo caused us some problems but we definitely deserved the win. Unfortunately, when you can’t find the net, you are open to conceding a goal. Given our unity and work ethic, I am very happy with the display of my men this afternoon.” – Davide Ballardini

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“It is a good point but it is still disappointing.”

“We were all idiots, we should have killed off the game earlier. We did much better in the second half, but it wasn’t all bad in the first period.

“We should have scored one goal at the beginning and then put things to bed after the break.” – Roberto Baronio

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Highlights:

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Pictures: http://www.lazialita.com/VisualizzaSezione.asp?IdArticolo=5584

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Player Ratings: Not exactly ratings but I think Radu in the centre and Foggia deserve praise for the efforts while Del Nero was impressive at left-back and also Baronio in the middle. The rest of the squad were adequate at best. As I mentioned earlier, Rocchi’s brief appearance also brought much needed optimism. For more ratings, click here.