The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, Episode 166: Juve can’t make it two wins in two games to open the season

Well, I think it’s safe to say Matchday 2 didn’t come close to matching Matchday 1. (Yes, maybe the pun was intended. You can be the one to ultimately decide.)

Juventus’ performance against Bologna was not anywhere close to what we saw in their season-opening victory over Udinese seven days earlier. It was a home opener that had the Allianz Stadium crowd grumpy and booing even before halftime arrived, and only a Dusan Vlahovic goal to level the terms preventing Juve from dropping all three points on their home field.

So, yeah. About that season-opening performance ... it seems so long ago now.

Through two games this season, we’ve gotten a very good first half and a very bad first half. One game was a win. The other was not a win. You can figure out which is which pretty easily.

So much for those good vibes coming out of the opening weekend. Now, we wait to see what Juve shows up in Empoli — a game that brings up some bad memories from a few months ago.

On Episode 166 of The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, we discuss:

• Takeaways from this weekend’s game — including why Juventus’ tying goal against Bologna was a good example of why it’s always handy to have a Plan B (in this case being Samuel Iling-Junior), and howe we got another example of why Alex Sandro is not good enough to get regular minutes at Juventus anymore (again).
• The performance in the first half by Juventus was basically the complete opposite of what we saw from Juve’s first-half performance against Udinese seven days earlier.
• The second half was better from Juventus ... but that’s only because you couldn’t have gotten much worse than what we saw in the second 45 minutes.
• Thoughts on Paul Pogba’s season debut knowing that these kinds of appearances can be relatively short-lived based on how much time he’s missed due to injury the past few years.
• Twitter questions — including what’s up with Adrien Rabiot’s passing, why the Chiesa/Cambiaso combo wasn’t clicking against Bologna and why Max Allegri keeps trotting Alex Sandro out there when he’s far past his prime as a player.

You can listen to Episode 166 of The Old Lady Speaks Podcast on your preferred podcasting platform or through the player embedded below:

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