Four Things We Learned: Ideal Liverpool preparation in SPAL demolition

Ideal preparation

On a day where Patrik Schick grabbed his long-awaited first Serie A goal, Jonathan Silva made his debut and the club secured a crucial 3-0 away win over SPAL, Roma couldn't have hoped for a more positive precursor for their hotly anticipated Champions League semi-final clash with Liverpool.

Now having scored eight goals in their last four games in all competitions, Roma will be hoping to keep up their solid form in front of goal too, as a combination of poor finishing and, at times, bad luck (they've hit the post 20 times this term) has seen them spurn many golden opportunities throughout the campaign.

A delighted Eusebio Di Francesco was unsurprisingly full of praise for his troops after the deserved triumph.

“It was a great performance against a side who had been impressive at home recently and given very little away," Di Francesco insisted.

"We started off on the right foot by getting down their throats right from kick-off. I'm really happy with our overall performance today – at the back, up front and in midfield. I'm very pleased with the lads.”

Dogged pressing leads to opener

One of the vital tenets of Di Francesco's tactics is how well implemented his pressing schemes are, which has been especially highlighted in recent weeks. And this was no different against SPAL, where his team's pressing caused many headaches for the home side. Given minimal time on the ball through Roma's aggression and man orientations, Leonardo Semplici's back three, wing-backs and midfielders struggled immensely to build out from the back, with Roma forcing them into many errors due to their application here.

Indeed, Roma's opener served as a fine testament to Roma's work in this regard, where Stephan El Shaarawy's harassment of Thiago Cionek ensured Schick could intercept a subsequently unbalanced Cionek's intended pass to Everton Luiz.

Kevin Strootman then rapidly picked up the loose ball, leaving the Wolves to attack the unhinged SPAL defence in an ideal 4v3 situation, with the move culminating in the backtracking Francesco Vicari miscuing his clearance into his own net.

Roma intelligently make room for depth runs

Facing a defiant and defensively geared side like SPAL can always prove a challenge to break down. But Di Francesco did an exceptional job of generating the conditions to ensure his team could unlock their opposition.

One particularly effective method came through their ability to provoke the Biancazzurri defensive structure upfield before then finding Schick with a ball in behind.

As you can see in the graphic below, Roma have directed their build up down the right, which has seen SPAL midfielder Jasmin Kurtic and left wing-back Federico Mattiello push up onto Bruno Peres and Lorenzo Pellegrini respectively in an attempt to limit and condense Roma's options nearby.

Importantly, Radja Nainggolan has dropped into midfield too and attracted his man, Felipe, with him, plus holder Pasquale Schiattarella, something that further contributed to giving Schick oceans of space to run into down the right.

This tactic was notably replicated on the opposite flank too, as this shrewd manipulation of their adversaries' setup provided a handy way to progress upfield.

Slick set piece delivers Schick's first

Roma's ingenuitive set piece was the catalyst for Schick to score his debut league goal. It all began with Pellegrini and Nainggolan creating a 2v1 from the corner flag, which put Manuel Lazzari at a huge disadvantage to defend the Roma duo.

Pellegrini's sharp one-two with Nainggolan put the Italian in a brilliant position to whip in a cross. With the origin of Pellegrini's cross now being from a much improved location, Schick and his colleagues can attack the diagonally whipped in delivery with far greater momentum, and with a better body posture, than their more stationary markers.

And having timed his run to perfection, the Czech striker duly latched onto Pellegrini's cross to head home and break his duck.