Udinese vs Roma 04/10/20

4 October 2020

Roma head to the Dacia Arena to take on out-of-sorts Udinese, looking to kick-start their 2020/21 Serie A campaign.

It’s been an utterly underwhelming start to the season for Udinese, as they’ve lost both of their opening Serie A fixtures without scoring a single goal. Bringing their form from the final stage of the last season into the equation, the hosts have scored under 1.5 goals in eight of their previous nine league outings. In fact, the ‘Friulians’ were one of just three teams to fail to smash a 40-goal barrier back in 2019/20, where they could only manage to score a miserable average of 0.97 goals per Serie A match. Finding the back of the net against Roma could be equally daunting for Luca Gotti’s side, as they’ve drawn a blank in five of their last eight top-flight H2Hs held at this stadium, scoring precisely once per game in the other three.

As for the visitors, they go into this encounter on the back of a 2-2 home draw with a 10-men Juventus team after losing 3-0 to Verona on Matchday 1 due to a clerical error. Interestingly, before their trip to Verona on the opening matchday of the season, none of Roma’s previous ten Serie A trips in 2020 had ended in a draw (W6, L4). Notably, all of those ten results (wins/losses) have seen the winner on the day score 2+ goals, with six yielding a full-time margin of over 1.5 goals. Additionally, a clear majority (81.82%) of Roma’s away league games since the calendar flipped has produced over 2.5 goals (9/11), which has been the case in only one of their last four trips to Udine.