Roma 1 - Genoa 0: Two Is A Streak

Roma 1 - Genoa 0

Should Roma indeed buy out Marquinho's contract, I propose - nay, I demand - that the logo be changed to feature Marquinho's leg cocked for launch. (Splicing is fun.)

Largely, a performance which could be considered less than ideal, even subpar, but points all count the same at this stage. No one gets Euro tickets for style, if they should.

Brief points of discussion:

• Pjanic. I might assume a fair few noticed he wasn't on the pitch against Genoa, nor did he play against Palermo. In both games, Roma suffered a great deal less possession and were pegged back in their own end. Both teams tend to an attacking philosophy beyond the threshold of good sense, as is often the case with Roma, but the Pjanic factor and lack of possession isn't coincidence.
  
  A frightening proposition considering the requirements for "Enrique's system" while the nature of his purchase seemed to be a stroke of eleventh hour fortune. (Of course, then there's the year's original #7...)
  
• Someone invoke Kjaer's buyout clause before he sucks again.
  
  You know everyone wants to pull the trigger. You do too. You just know Saba sits up at night, finger tenderly dragging back and forth across the Wolsfburg speed dial button, wanting desperately to call and seal the deal. The kid is just too immensely talented. But he never had a reason.
  
  Now he does, as again: two games is a streak.
• Bojan looked absolutely excellent...
  
  ...against the worst defense in Serie A.
  
  Never forget. Never forget...
• Nobody kid themselves: Davide Biondini ran the midfield last evening. His odometer read like Perrotta's and made it a living hell to maintain any semblance of possession, though it was nice when he was attempting to Alberto Tomba his way through three-man defensive walls.
• DDR and Borini are lapping the field for the team's most important player thus far - I'll happily punt the first two months of a player's top flight career in the case of the latter - but Rodrigo Taddei is the still-mostly-sticky-tape-that-has-been-hanging-in-a-humid-environment holding the defense together. He was colossal yet again.
  
  There is a reason why every single coach finds a way to play him. Every single one.
• Did anyone notice if Osvlado was standing in with Oasis when strumming the corner flag after his goal?
• Leandro Greco wins the inaugural Bogdan Lobont Award, handed out weekly to the player who shouldn't have started, but performed exceedingly well nonetheless.
  
  Next week: Vito Scala