Fiorentina are top of the Serie A table for the first time since 1999 having walloped previous league leaders Inter Milan 4-1 last weekend. In a 2015/16 campaign that’s had more twists and turns than the Monaco GP, the Italian top tier has proven outstanding entertainment in the early days and you get the feeling there’s a long way to go yet.
There are probably eight realistic contenders for the Scudetto crown but Sampdoria are unlikely to be one of them. Having been dumped out of the Europa League at the qualifying stage in embarrassing fashion, the new head coach at the Blucerchiati, Walter Zenga, was immediately under pressure.
His W3-D1-L2 start to the new season in Serie A is also fairly underwhelming but Samp were good enough to beat Roma in their last Marassi outing and boast a strong record at their Genoa home. Since the start of last season, the hosts have W10-D10-L2 when entertaining league rivals and that includes a 100% record under Zenga’s watch.
The front three of Luis Muriel, Eder and Roberto Soriano have proven terrific and if the Blucerchiati could just sort out their troublesome road record, they might just be hovering around the top-three positions in arguably the most open ever Scudetto race.
Sampdoria +0.50 can be backed at 1.90 this weekend for a meeting with wounded Inter. Roberto Mancini’s men never really convinced when making their best start to a season since 1967 (W5-D0-L0) and were badly torn apart by La Viola.
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Stevan Jovetic remains a doubt whilst Mauro Icardi isn’t up to full fitness yet. They’re likely to adopt a defensive approach and Samp should have enough about them to avoid defeat on home soil. The hosts were 1-0 winners in this fixture last term and Mancini’s W1-D3-L3 away record to top-half finishers suggests he has work to do on the road to the league’s big guns.
Elsewhere, backing Over 2/2.5 Goals at 1.85 should offer punters plenty of value when Empoli take on surprise package Sassuolo this weekend. Three goals or more will deem our bet a winner with exactly two only seeing half our stake a loser.
Since the start of last season, Empoli have seen 16/22 (73%) home matches feature two goals or more with a further 12/22 (55%) breaking the Over 2.5 Goals barrier. During that time, exactly half of those games featured goals for both competing teams and their three Serie A outings in Tuscany this term have produced nine goals.
A superb W3-D3-L0 opening has put Sassuolo amongst the league’s front-runners and the Neroverdi have managed to net in every game. Looking at their records since the start of last season, 15/22 (68%) of games featured two goals or more and 13/22 (59%) produced three or more goals whilst 13 also saw Both Teams To Score backers collect.
I’ll count on Sunday’s early kick-off following the high-scoring trends and take the Over 2/2.5 Goals option at 1.85.
Serie A Betting with the below:
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