Following their stunning 7-1 victory in Bologna last weekend, every fan of an Italian football club would have been checking their fixture list, to see who would have to make the trip to Naples in the following match. The honour has fallen to Genoa and their fans will be hoping Napoli have one eye on their upcoming Champions League encounter with Real Madrid.
There is little doubt, the current Napoli squad are capable of challenging for the Serie A title. Some of their football this season has been electric, including the win over Bologna plus the 5-3 victory against Torino, the 3-0 win against Inter, the 5-0 win at Cagliari and the 4-2 defeat of Milan. Scoring goals has not usually been a problem for Maurizio Sarri’s team and they are comfortably the top goal scorers in Serie A this season with 55 goals in 23 games, 10 better than the next best team, which is Juventus.
The problem for Napoli has been the way they have dropped points this season, against teams they were expected to beat. Draws with Palermo and Sassuolo at home have proven to be very costly, as has the draw in the reverse fixture with Genoa. The fact Napoli have struggled against teams from the bottom half of the table at the Stadio San Paolo, will give hope to the travelling Genoa faithful.
Genoa have laboured since December, winning only two of their twelve games, one of which was in the Coppa Italia and the other in Sere A. Their last win in Serie A was back on the 15th December, a 1-0 home win against Fiorentina, which was a good result but Ivan Juric’s team failed to push on from there and it’s now seven games in the league without a win and eight overall. Genoa have picked up 2 points from the last 21 available, which underlines their dreadful form and they have sunk down the Serie A table, into 16th place. If it wasn’t for the fact the bottom three teams have been so poor, they could easily have been sucked into a relegation battle.
A look at Genoa’s away league form, shows just one win in their last ten and they have kept just two clean sheets during that time. This is not the sort of form you want to be in when travelling to Naples. Having said that, Napoli have only kept one clean sheet in their last six home Serie A games, so there is hope for Genoa in terms of scoring a goal themselves. The problem is, Genoa have conceded 18 goals in their last eight away games, at an average of 2.25 per game and over the same period, Napoli have netted 19 goals at home, which suggests Napoli will score at least two goals in this game. If that’s the case, Genoa are going to struggle to come away from this match with anything to show for their efforts.
There have been under 2.5 goals in Napoli’s last two home matches but expect it to be over that number in this game and Napoli to win, with both teams scoring.