The Serie A is one of the easier leagues to pick an outright winner for. Juventus may not have won the European Champions League last season but they did enough in their run to the match in Cardiff to show that they have some fantastic players and a manager that knows how to lead them to titles, just not THAT title.
Serie A next season is highly likely to be won by the boys from Turin (and I don’t mean Torino) and at odds of around 1.57 the green listed bookmakers clearly think so too.
For that reason I don’t think there is any value in backing Juve to win the league, it ties my money up for too long even if it is pretty damn close to a “sure thing”.
Instead, I’m looking at the “Without Juventus” market where there are a few more palatable options.
With the money being spent on players this summer AC Milan are a side we have to take a look at. So far AC Milan have agreed to buy 3 high-ticket players, André Silva, Mateo Musacchio and Ricardo Rodriguez, and also loaned Franck Kessié who is an extremely highly rated player.
There is a bit of a question mark over their choice of manager though as Vincenzo Montella didn’t do particularly well at Sampdoria last season. To be fair there are plenty of other factors that made that a very difficult job and his record at Fiorentina and Catania was pretty strong.
I’m a fan of evolution, not revolution and for that reason, I’m ruling AC Milan out of the title race this season though I do expect them to be in the mix for the Champions League slots.
For the same reason, I’m not keen on backing Inter Milan under new manager Luciano Spalletti. Spalletti is a fine coach and I think he can do a really good job at Inter but he needs some financial backing and the Inter owners are yet to dip their toe into the transfer market. Things can change but I don’t see them being a team to back.
Another side under new management is AC Roma. Eusebio di Francesco is the new man in charge and with odds at around 3.25 in Ladbrokes, this could be a side worth backing. They’ve signed up loan player Federico Fazio from Spurs after his excellent season last time out and also brought in two other centre backs, Juan Jesus from Inter Milan and Hector Moreno from PSV.
Personally, I’d be a bit worried about backing them right now because it looks like they could lose Mohamed Salah who was such a big player for them last season.
It’s the easy option but at the same time, I think it’s the right one. I’m going for Napoli to win the “without Juventus” market in 2017/18. Right now I think they have the second best squad in Serie A and a manager that’s been in place since 2015. They’ve got a solid defence, versatile midfield and an attacking presence up front.
At odds of around 2.88 this is a selection I like very much and I’d even be prepared to go down to 2.5 if the circumstances demanded it.
So, Serie A has a clear and deserved favourite but there’s plenty to keep us interested behind that.
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