Milan vs Lazio

Tonight sees 1^st take on 4^th in the only Serie A game of the night. Milan are currently sitting top of the table, 4 points clear of Napoli after their victory over Catania at weekend. Lazio maintained the 7 point gap between themselves and Milan with a routine 2-0 victory over Fiorentina.

Milan is entering this game on the back of winning their last two league games fairly comfortably, both by the score of 2-0 against Cesena and Catania. However, their injury list is not really showing any marked improvement. There are a reported 12 players missing from tonight’s clash vs. Lazio, 7 of them being midfielders! One of their January recruits, Mark van Bommel is suspended, due to picking up a red card in the match against Catania.

Some of the reported missing players are as follows;

Van Bommel; Abate, Ambrosini, Flamini, Strasser, Nesta, Gattuso, Seedorf, Amelia, Prince Boateng, and Zambrotta & Inzaghi.

Milan’s home form this season has been fairly consistent. They have the joint 4^th best home points total in Serie A with 23 points from 11 games played. The teams they have played are as follows;

Played: 11

Won: 7 (Lecce, Genoa, Chievo, Palermo, Fiorentina, Brescia, Cesena).

Drawn: 2 (Catania, Udinese).

Lost: 2 (Juventus, Roma).

Interestingly, we can see that they have lost to arguably their two most difficult opponents in terms of league standings. They have only won one of the last 3 games at home in the league.

In terms of goals, Milan scores freely at home, having the joint highest number of goals scored. They have only failed to score in one Serie A game at home this season, which was in the 1-0 defeat at home to Roma. They’ve conceded 10 goals at home, which is just less than a goal per game. This can be mainly attributed to the 4-4 draw at home to Udinese. They have kept clean sheets in 5 of their 11 home games.

Lazio is having an indifferent spell after a great start to the season. They have won 3 of their last 6 Serie A games, losing two and drawing one.

They currently have the joint 4^th best away record in Serie A with 14 points from 10 games. The teams they have played are as follows;

Played: 10

Won: 4 (Fiorentina, Chievo, Bari, Palermo)

Drawn: 2 (Parma, Genoa)

Lost: 4 (Sampdoria, Cesena, Juventus, Bologna).

Perhaps most interestingly, Lazio’s 4 away wins were all consecutive. Their last away win in Serie A was on October 31^st. Since then, they have played 5 away games in Serie A. Drawing 2 and losing 3. During those 5 games, they have failed to score more than 1 goal in a match. They have failed to score in 2 of those games and have only kept a clean sheet in one. During their 4 game winning streak away from home, they only conceded 1 goal in the 4 matches. In total they have scored 9 goals away from home and conceded 10 in their 10 matches.

Lazio also have their own problems with Rocchi, Garrido, Del Nero and the suspended Zarate all set to miss tonight’s match.

Prediction - Milan Win - 1.64
Score - 2-0 - 8.8

I think this may be the end of Lazio’s hopes of mounting a serious challenge for the title. Despite Milan’s injury problems, I believe their attacking talent will ultimately make Lazio pay.