The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, Episode 144: Are Juve falling back into old habits?

Through the first three games of a big and crucial month of April, Juventus’ overall performance level has not exactly been something you’d want to boast about.

The first full week of April was proof of that.

Juventus saw a last-second mistake against Inter result in the Coppa Italia tie between the the two bitter rivals before a Saturday trip to the Stadio Olimpico resulted in a 2-1 loss to Lazio in which some very annoying tactics came into play for Max Allegri’s squad despite their manager being home sick back in Turin.

It was a week in which Juventus missed a couple of opportunities, with Inter coming in struggling mightily (at least in Serie A) and in the build-up to facing Lazio there being so many teams in front of them dropping points. The chance to get even close to the top six — and the top four! — was there and Juventus couldn’t get it done.

Ah, what could have been.

Instead, the reality ended up being two big games coming and going with no wins to discuss.

This week on The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, we discuss:

• Takeaways from the week that was — including how Juve are picking a poor time to have a run of poor performances coming out of the international break and how we hope that Juventus and Max Allegri come up with (or rediscover) a Plan B on how to try and beat teams.
• The racism problem in Italy is becoming such a problem that we’ve reached the point of it not being a surprise anymore when a player gets racially abused during a game.
• We start the on-field talk with what happened first this past week with Juventus’ 1-1 draw against Inter in the first leg of the Coppa Italia semifinals. Or, just two flawed teams crashing into each other.
• We shift the on-field talk to what happened against Lazio over the weekend and how, a lot like against Inter, it was a missed chance for Juventus to do something positive. Instead, for a large majority of Saturday night’s game, Juve’s play was anything but positive.
• Seriously, what the heck were those tactics?
• Some quick thoughts on the upcoming matchup on Thursday night against Sporting in the first leg of the Europa League quarterfinals.
• Twitter questions — including (sarcastically) asking if Adrien Rabiot should get a new kit number if he signs a new contract, (sarcastically) asking if Mattia De Sciglio would have made any sort of difference against Lazio, and why pondering why Max Allegri continues to a ultra-conservative style when his team playing more aggressively worked so well in the final 20 minutes against Lazio.

You can listen to Episode 144 of The Old Lady Speaks Podcast here:

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