Viola's eight points sit lighter than they look
Fiorentina are third in Serie A on 28 points, yet their chances say fifth: the season so far has been built on a defence that concedes less than it should and finishing that does just enough.
What does a league table owe a team that has spent the autumn winning games it did not create? Fiorentina's answer, twelve matches into Serie A, is eight points. Twenty-eight taken against twenty expected. Third place in the table, fifth in the chances. Vincenzo Carollo's side has not stumbled into this; it has been assembled to make the arithmetic bend.
At one end, the numbers are modest. Nineteen goals from chances worth 17.8 — a small surplus, the kind a good finisher supplies over a season rather than a miracle. At the other, they are louder. Eight conceded from chances that should have produced 9.5. That is the eight points, more or less: a goalkeeper in form, defenders who block what they must, and a habit of making the opposition's best moments arrive too late.
The Italian Daily has already called this a title race being stolen, and the old boy who decided the Juventus match in October would not disagree. But 'clinical' is not quite the word. Juventus sit top on expected points with 27.3; Inter, second in the table on 29, have 25.5; Napoli and Lazio lie fourth and fifth in the table on 24 and 22. Fiorentina's 20.0 places them fifth there too, with Torino far below on 19.7. Carollo, in charge since the summer of 2062, has built a side whose results run ahead of its play by a margin that cannot be banked.
Asked about the gap after the Juventus win, the mood in the Viola dressing room was plain: 'We defended like a team that wanted it.' That sentence is the season. The question is not whether the chances will catch up — they will — but whether the defence can stay this mean until they do.