The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, Episode 81: Riding the Juventus roller coaster in Rome

Well, 2022 has certainly been an interesting ride thus far, hasn’t it?

There has been some good, like with Juventus coming back from a 3-1 deficit to beat Roma this past weekend. There’s been some OK, with Juve’s 1-1 draw against Napoli that probably should have been a win when you throw in all of the outside circumstances. Then there’s been the bad, which involved Juve’s finishing in front of goal against Napoli and then the sight of Federico Chiesa in serious pain in the first half against Roma.

So, yeah. Nowhere close to perfect.

But as Juventus try to come to grips with Chiesa being out for an extended period of time, there’s also the case of this extremely important January now very much being off and running. And even with Chiesa leaving injured, Juve were able to stage a massive comeback to advert disaster against Roma and prevent a one-point-in-two-games situation to begin the 2022 calendar year.

You can probably guess where the discussion started.

And no, it wasn’t 2022’s first game. It was all about Sunday night in Rome — both the good and the extremely disappointing.

On this week’s episode of The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, we discuss:

• Takeaways from the week — which, sorry to Thursday’s 1-1 draw against Napoli, are focused on the insanity that was Sunday night’s win over Roma.
• More thoughts on the win over Roma.
• In an absolutely wild game where so many players contributed to Juventus comeback, a Twitter question asks: Who is the Man of the Match?
• The knee injury to Federico Chiesa. (Please note that we recorded this episode on Sunday night, with the Chiesa diagnosis not officially known just yet, only reports of what it could be the most advanced information that we knew of at the time.)
• Where Max Allegri might go tactically because of the injury to Chiesa, something that takes away one of his best offensive weapons just as he’s coming back into the fold.
• Twitter questions, including if a midfield of Manuel Locatelli and Arthur can work on a regular basis, what Juve’s project might be for the immediate future and if now is the time to bid farewell to one of the squad’s longest-tenured players in Alex Sandro.

You can listen to Episode 81 of The Old Lady Speaks here:

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