What is Lazio doing right this season? I know consistency helps, but they've hardly spent any money last mercato.
Compared to last season where they finished 8th and massively underperformed in the league, they squad has been a very united group this season. Simone Inzaghi has been managing them for 4 years now, so you'd probably assume their continuity would prevail sooner than later.
Two of their key players in Luis Alberto and Milinkovic-Savic, who both, for their relative standards, had below average seasons last term are repaying the fans by proving their true worth this season. Luis Alberto's position has been adjusted and he now drops deeper in midfield to be more involved in the build-up play. With this adjustment, their midfield of SMS, Leiva and L.Alberto runs like the finest of Swiss watches. While up top, Immobile is in the form of his life and is well on course to break Higuain's scoring record.
A lot of people (incl. me) have said they've been very lucky with penalties (by far most in Serie A with 13) but the underlying stats show they've been the team appearing most times in the opposition's box. They also whip a dozens of crosses into the box each game, so it's not a coincidence that they earn penalties in abundance like we won them with Balotelli's constant diving bombardment between 2013 and 2014.
Another factor is their myriad of injury-time winners, however at this point I don't want to label them lucky because you just don't score that amount of injury-time winners by chance. They play and have this fighting spirit until every & last second of the game.
In the transfer market, they've had a few under the radar moves, as they did when they brought in Manuel Lazzarri, an excellent wing-back for their system or Denis Vavro to fill the back-up role.
Although the league table from the last and the current season may indicate so, they haven't done *that much* different from last season - they stuck with their coach after a poor season, brought in only one starter & some few back-ups and have had a fair share of luck with penalties and late-winners, that again, I don't really want to consider lucky or touch upon the notion of 'lucky Lazio'.