Preview: Palermo – Siena. Precariously Balanced

By: Matthew | December 13th, 2008

This weekend’s trip to Palermo comes at an important time. As commented below, Siena are now into the thick of the Italian winter calendar and, with another away loss last week against Napoli, the pressure is on to come away from Sicily with some reward, for the impending matches of Inter and Juve will be like fruit picking in the desert.

All season I have been heaping praise on what has been a solid start to the campaign, and it is not hard to see from their league position that the Robur are well positioned to survive and live to fight another year in Serie A. BUT what has been very clear in their eight away trips this season and was abundantly apparent at Napoli is that Giampaolo’s Siena are an attractive team to watch. ‘Surely, that’s a good thing’ I can hear you saying, but as most fans of the Italian game will tell you, playing well means nothing if you walk away with nothing, and that is exactly the way i bianconeri’s fortunes have fared on the road this season.

At first I was impressed with Giampaolo, he came in and with a decent, but by no means great, squad of defenders and has forged an excellent defensive base for the team, who sit proudly with the fourth best defensive record in the league. Up front Siena have played excellent free flowing attacking football, cemented by a workhorse midfield who create plenty of width and space for the gifted set of strikers, so how is it that week-in-week-out the end product is so toothless in front of goal. At first I was willing to overlook the lack of goals and revel in the joy of a young hungry team that play with no fear and ooze confidence at home. The goals will come when once one of the strikers gets the rub of the green and then it will snowball.. That’s what i kept telling myself. The Rosaneri game represents the 16th round of the championship and Siena, despite sitting comfortably mid-table, have only scored more goals that table-propping Chievo.

I may be a bit premature in my panic but I am currently of the mindset that we need to starting digging our nails in over this period and start grinding out points; sacrifice playing pretty; stop letting the opposition have time on the ball; what really matters is that with such a tough winter schedual, we are at risk of undoing all the hard work put in so far.

Palermo have been famously inconsistent in recent years, and this year is certainly no different. A big club with excellent support, the Renzo Barbera is never an easy place to go to, with i rosaneri being so unpredictable an important away result here is not impossible for the Tuscans.

Palermo (probable): Amelia; Cassani, Carrozzieri, Bovo, Balzaretti; Nocerino, Liverani, Bresciano; Simplicio; Cavani, Succi. Form: L L D W L

Siena (probable): Curci; Zuniga, Rossettini, Portanova, Del Grosso; Vergassola, Coppola, Galloppa; Kharja; Ghezzal, Maccarone Form: L D W W L

Prediction: 1-1