Manu

We talk another borefest, the undefeated Juve and a keeper controversy that lives only in my head.

That feels like a lot of time for me to completely punt on the season because the first five matches haven’t been all that great. We are still going to tune in and watch this team, might as well hope for the best rather than the worst. Three draws and two wins out of the first five games is nobody’s idea of a successful start to the season. I know there hasn’t been that many reasons to be optimistic in the last few years for Juventus, but, hell is it that insane to suggest things could get better rather than worse? Again, this is not to say that you can’t or shouldn’t be pissed off, do it, go nuts, this is what the internet is for. Manuel Locatelli — in theory freed of the central midfielder responsibilities — was anonymous for the whole game and Weston McKennie had arguably one of his worst performances in black and white. When Miralem Pjanic was operating at the peak of his powers and Sami Khedira found the last legs of his prime form? You need a healthy mix of talent on the ball and positional smarts to do this which bad teams usually don’t have. When was that the last season that wasn’t true? It was a weird thing — we all knew it was happening, we all acknowledged it, we were seeing it right in front of us with our own eyes. I’ve mentioned it before but back in high school — this Grab Bag is just a compilation of stories vaguely attached to Juve analysis at this point, huh? To cap his performance off, Perin had a striking save late in the second half of a dangerous shot by Sofyan Amrabat.