Juventus vs Fiorentina 02/02/20

2 February 2020

Denied a sixth consecutive Serie A (SA) victory last time out, Juventus will be looking to return to winning ways when they take on Fiorentina at the Allianz Stadium this weekend.

Juventus lead the way in Serie A (SA), but they’ve seen their lead on second-placed Inter Milan reduced to three points following a 2-1 loss to Napoli last time out. Yet, the reigning champions boast an almost perfect league home record (W9, D1), although six of those successes have come via a single-goal margin (66%). Frustratingly for Maurizio Sarri, his players are particularly ponderous in the attack inside the opening 15 minutes of play. In fact, the Turin giants have found the net in that interval just once in ten SA home matches thus far. In spite of that, they’ve still opened the scoring in nine such outings, failing to retain the lead only once.

Having emphatically ended their four-game winless SA away streak (D1, L3) with a huge 2-0 triumph over Napoli at the San Paolo, the visitors can now post their second successive SA away triumph for the first time this season. However, doing that would require Fiorentina to break a disastrous eight-game losing run at the Allianz Stadium, which seems highly unlikely at this point. Indeed, they’ve failed to beat any of the top-five teams so far this season (D3, L2), scoring one goal or less in four of their previous five such fixtures. Also, Giuseppe Iachini need to shore up his defense that has struggle to keep a clean sheet in five of their last six SA road trips, allowing over 1.5 goals on two of those occasions though.