Great Win, but keep an eye on the Schedule

By: Jeremy | November 17th, 2008

After last weekends tough loss to Catania, Cagliari made up for it with a win at home against inconsistent Fiorentina this weekend. Home teams for the most part seem to have some luck when it comes to getting results. We played better on the road against Catania then we did at home against Fiorentina yet we got the win at home.

This was not an overly exciting game. Fiorentina probably had more of the overall chances, but Marchetti again showed why he is emerging as a new fan favorite. He is making all the saves he is supposed to make and grows with confidence every week. Even the biggest Storari fan has to be impressed with his efforts in goal.

Fiorentina had some chances but without Mutu, this is a different club. Their offense without him is even more inconsistent. Their complaints cannot be about missed chances this weekend, just a failure to create them. Cagliaris defense was certainly not a dominating bunch so Fiorentina must return home and figure out how they can be more consistent offensively if they want to be more then top half of the table club.

Cagliari did what I thought they would do this weekend. They are a little faster at home, but against Fiorentina, I didnt see more then one goal and that goal came in the 30th minute after an iffy call in the box after Acquafresca was held. He converted the penalty kick and that one goal surprisingly held up. They didnt show the offensive imagination that they did against Bologna, but it just shows that getting points against top teams is not easy and we really lucked out on Sunday.

Now we sit five points above the relegation zone and have really made a nice comeback after such a dreadful start. However, Regginas win on the road to Udinese only tightened up the bottom even more. Five points clear is great, but we must temper expectations as we are hitting the real tough part of our schedule. While it seems like no games in Serie A are easy, here is what we have left the rest of the first half:
Napoli
Sampdoria
Palermo
Roma
Reggina
Inter
Udinese

Where do we get points in these matches? Reggina seemed obvious, but they thrashed us in the Copa earlier this year and they just beat Udinese on the road. Of course if we can beat Fiorentina, other then Inter, the rest of these teams can be beaten. My point is that while we should be happy with our position after such a dreadful start, we dont have the likes of Lecce, Torino, Siena et al on our remaining first half schedule. Logic says that we will be very much in the relegation spots come the end of the first half which has to be expected after losing the first five games. With closing games against Inter and Udinese, we have to get points early and often in the second half or we may be where we are now facing the same tough second half part of the schedule. What really looks good on the surface today may be exactly what we are facing come this time in the Spring. The first half finish will tell us a lot.

All that being said, the win over Fiorentina makes up for the frustrating loss to Catania. We should be thankful where we are, but look at the big picture and there is still a lot of things that need to happen before we can feel good about being safe. We clearly have a team that is better then expected, but this is such a tough league that any team which loses five games in a row is in big trouble. We are doing our best to overcome the bad start and it may be we are better then many fans, including myself, think we are. We still need more consistent results before I think of anything other then what it takes to stay safe.