I'm already stressed the fuck out over the Verona game.
Don't. I think we'll win. It's Atalanta at home, under the pressure of the San Siro that i'm worried about.
We have two games away from home and we tend to play better away. We have more points away, I think.
We tend to play better against teams that open up and all three of the teams all try to play, some to an extreme degree.
I think on paper it looks tough, but all three games favor us in some way. The fact that we can draw one and still win even if Inter win every game, that makes it a lot easier and makes sure we have some cushion in case fate doesn't smile on us.
It's going to be a very aggressive game and that's why we need Kessie with Tonali-Bennacer. We'll be doing the usual positional rotation against a back three, with Theo coming inside to help isolate Leao against the RCB. As long as Montipo doesn't turn into prime Yashin I think we'll win this one. Their crazy pressing won't work on us with Maignan, and if they try it regardless we can punish them with Leao.
Verona press really well and score a lot of goals from high turnovers. Some teams really suffer from that sort of pressure, but we're sort of immune to it because of Maignan. We can also force a high line without worry because of the speed of Kalulu and Tomori, so we don't have to worry too much about being pinned back. I'd imagine we're going to see a lot of the buildup pattern where Tomori and Kalulu go ridiculously wide and Tonali drops into the middle, to confuse their marking. I'll try to keep a count of how many times we do that.
They're also not that threatening on set pieces, they've scored fewer goals from them relative to how many they've scored overall compared with other teams. Overall, on paper, it seems we have the tools to in this one. Anything can happen on the day of course, but it's not as bad on paper as a similar level team playing a low block that won't let us run.