Torino vs Juventus

Derby della Mole, a fixture that splits Turin in half, takes place on Saturday at the Stadio Olimpico di Torino as Torino and Juventus go head-to-head in a mammoth Serie A showdown.

Sasa Lukic’s last-gasp equaliser rescued a 1-1 draw for Torino against Empoli last weekend, halting their embarrassing three-game losing streak in Serie A. Despite picking up just one point from four league matches, Ivan Juric’s men head into proceedings only two points adrift of Juventus and could leapfrog them should they defy a woeful recent H2H record. Indeed, ‘I Granata’ have picked up just one victory in their last 38 meetings with Juventus, courtesy of a 2-1 home win in 2015. Worryingly for Juric, you’d have to go back to 2008 for Torino’s last Serie A clean sheet against this opposition, with the perennial mid-table strugglers going 22 top-flight H2Hs without a shutout since. That’s a monumental problem for Torino, given their uneventful frontline that’s failed to score in five of their last eight home league outings.

In the meantime, Massimiliano Allegri’s position in the Juventus dugout is hanging by a thread after a 2-0 defeat at Maccabi Haifa in midweek Champions League action left his men with minimal chances of making it out of the competition’s group stages. Juve’s dreadful showing in Isreal followed a morale-damaging 2-0 derby loss to AC Milan last weekend that wrapped up their worst nine-match Serie A start since 2015/16 (W3, D4, L2). Though Juventus turned their fortunes around that year against non-other than Torino before moving on to lift the Scudetto, their six-game winless Serie A run on the road (D2, L4) doesn’t look promising. If they’re to arrest their worst winless away streak since 2010, Juventus would be better off scoring fast. With 25% of their league goals this season coming inside the opening 15 minutes, that shouldn’t be a problem.