The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, Episode 134: Juve’s January goes from bad to worse

Juventus did it again.

Max Allegri did it again.

The combination of the two, in this case, is not a good thing.

Sunday afternoon saw a relatively full Allianz Stadium saw Allegri and Juventus revert back to their most frustrating of ways during the last year and a half in the 2-0 loss to Monza. It was the second time this season that Juventus has lost to Monza in a pretty bad kind of way. And let’s not forget that before August 2020, Monza had never played a game in Serie A, so that means that two of the seven wins the incredibly handsome Raffaele Palladino has recorded as manager since coming up from the primavera level have come against the team he used to play for over a decade ago.

It was bad. Just like the last time Juventus played Monza in Serie A was bad.

To make it worse, Juventus had just beaten Monza in the Coppa Italia a week and a half ago, albeit it’s not like that performance was anything special outside of Federico Chiesa’s go-ahead goal that all had us feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

But over the last couple of weeks ever since the eight-game winning streak ended, Juve has fallen hard both on the field and off of it. It’s been a three-game stretch against league opposition where Juve’s defense has allowed 10 goals. And it’s been a three-game stretch against league opposition where Juve has earned just one point out of a possible nine.

That’s not good no matter how you try and spin it.

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

• Takeaways from the week that was — including how Juventus is (quickly) regressing back down to the mean after the eight-game winning streak and how Juventus is very quickly becoming its own worst enemy on a regular basis once again.
• Juventus’ performance against Monza was ... not very good at all. And this is what happens when Max Allegri chooses to go old school and sit back and try to counter against a team that loves to possess the ball and has gotten better as the season has gone on.
• Allegri choosing to play like this is not sustainable for much of the season simply because Serie A is evolving and he continues to show that he wants no part in that evolution.
• In what looks like the lone “big” transfer of the January window, Weston McKennie is headed to Leeds United on loan with an option to buy.
• How would we sum up McKennie’s tenure at Juventus?
• Twitter questions — including there being any worries about a transfer ban coming down, what the new Juventus front office can do to get this thing turned around, if this is the worst Juventus team of the modern era and what’s a good drink to mix together to try and get through the current state of Juventus.

You can listen to Episode 134 of The Old Lady Speaks Podcast here:

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