Lecce 4 - Roma 2: Laying An Egg Of The Easter Variety

The headline would've gone much more smoothly had things settled out nicely at 4-0. But was it anything but a 4-0 loss? Lecce turned off the engine at the hour mark and reclined into a nice, easy thirty minute nap.

Roma and Luis Enrique got taken to school by a mediocre Italian coach. Again. Slinging the ball around the midd...oh, @#$5 it.

Look down, shake the head, sigh and walk away.

Things of note:

• The defense has always been atrocious. What we've shied away from saying is the tactics are appearing inherently atrocious as well.
  
  Let's be honest: they is, if only considering how well they need to be executed in order for the whole thing to not explode in their faces.
• The notion of buying out Simon Kjaer may prove to be pointless, as we're entering ever closer to the announcement Wolfsburg has paid Roma €7m to take his contract off their hands for good. In other news, we're close to holding a parade for no reason at all. None. Swear.
• Luis Enrique regurgitating the first chapter from the Luciano Spalletti Method of Crisis Management, consisting mostly of sitting down and shutting up, certainly hasn't sat well with anyone, press or fans included.
  
  More than not exactly winning friends, it doesn't exactly serve to win football matches, either. Neither does seeing your team tanking it and not making a substitution. At least twelve of those in the lineup could've been taken off just for spite.
• Did anyone think spending the week talking about the Champions League was going to result in anything else? Not to mention Those Who Shall Not Be Named won as well, pushing the difference to a point-per-game.
  
  Come on. The football gods are listening.
• No one gets to celebrate home wins against Novara ever again. Unless Roma is relegated in the near future, this should be safe.
• Expect to see nauseatingly heavy doses of Luis Muriel to Roma rumors in the upcoming weeks. It certainly helps they won't be the first. It also helps they're likely to be true. Incisive, direct pace is something Roma could use in bulk, as evidenced by Borini.
• What the hell happened to Simone Perrotta? When things are so dire, why not wind up and fire a superball into the equation just to see what happens? For a man so widely praised at the beginning of the year by Enrique, it's more than a touch surprising to see his career washing away on the bench.
• Excellent goals by Bojan and Erik, the latter in particular. That doesn't change the fact that Lecce was onto thoughts of the postgame spread by then. Which is also a bit of the problem: the duo can score, but as the last two weeks have indicated, not quite when needed. They're children, so it's understandable, but it further highlights how immense Borini's development has been over the past years. Scoring goals is difficult enough; scoring goals when they matter at 20 years of age is pretty special.
• Roma plays Udinese on Wednesday. The good news is it'll be taking place at home. The better news is the bar has set firmly at "Don't do that again."