Four Things We Learned: Pastore grasps chance to impress

Top four chances well and truly alive

Roma extended their unbeaten run to five matches by demolishing Cagliari 3-0 at the Stadio Olimpico. In what was arguably their most accomplished performance of the season, the Giallorossi played with confidence and energy to continually make life uncomfortable for the away side.

Also obtaining their third clean sheet in their last four games, there was a lot to be encouraged about from this latest display.

Shooting out of the blocks to lead by two within the first 10 minutes, Claudio Ranieri expressed his delight at the performance and how the players collectively worked to achieve this stirring result.

"It's definitely the best performance since I joined," the coach said.

"We got two early goals and that helped settle any nerves. There aren't many teams with the quality we have here. I tell them to play as a team, play for each other, don't try to go it alone or be selfish. Today they did that for 90 minutes."

With AC Milan losing to Torino and Atalanta set to face Udinese on Monday night, Roma now currently sit fourth in the race for the Champions League spots.

Pastore emphatically repays Ranieri's faith

Making his first start in 2019, Javier Pastore wasted little time in reminding us what a special talent he can be, by scoring a beautifully taken goal in the eighth minute.

Putting his tough start to life at Roma behind him, that's been heavily derailed by injury, he produced a wonderful display full of creativity, imagination and clarity.

Moving effectively to provide his teammates with upfield passing options, he exploited openings within the Cagliari block in central and wide areas to create advantageous positional and numerical superiorities to help Roma progress through the thirds.

So composed on the ball and in his decision making, his ingenuitive passing and dribbling gave Roma another dimension going forward.

Slicing open the islanders' defence with some lovely through balls and passes that bypassed multiple players, this, in combination with his class to beat his man on the dribble, only amplified his threat.

While many questioned Ranieri's selection of the languid Argentine, his encouraging performance - alongside the fact he completed 33 of his 34 attempted passes, embarked on three successful dribbles, unleashed two shots and supplied one key pass - saw him repay his manager's faith admirably.

"I was unlucky and got injured almost as soon as the season started, and now I really want to do well," Pastore said.

"These have not been easy months for me but I have always trained as hard as I could to be available as soon as possible.

"I got a bit of a reward for that today – I need to continue in this vein, games like this make me happy.”

Kolarov key to attacking mechanics

Aleksandar Kolarov's work down the left was a key component of Roma's offensive mechanics. Always offering himself as an outlet and keen to get forward at every available opportunity, he gave Roma plenty of impetus while stretching Cagliari's backline.

Timing both his underlapping and overlapping runs beautifully and dovetailing effectively with Stephan El Shaarawy, the Serb provided great width, depth and variety to his team's attacks.

His runs were especially well-catered to when Roma applied the overload to isolate principle, where they'd initially build up down the right, which drew Cagliari's defensive shape towards this flank, before then rapidly switching to Kolarov on the left.

This subsequently ensured Kolarov had oceans of space to charge into to be a menace with his powerful forward bursts and capacity to pick out teammates with slick crosses and cutbacks.

Moreover, his tidy distribution also extended to when he was setting up counter attacks and launching searing crossfield diagonals, with the latter proving the catalyst for the move that culminated in Roma's second goal.

Capping off his terrific outing by blasting home Roma's third, his goal saw him draw level with Edin Dzeko as the Giallorossi's top goalscorer this term and amazingly meant he equals the record for most goals scored by a foreign defender in a Serie A season set by compatriot Sinisa Mihajlovic back in 1998-99.

Defensive gameplan again from Ranieri

Roma did a proficient job of restricting the visitors' offensive exertions by remaining disciplined, organised and doing a sound job of implementing Ranieri's defensive setup.

Facing Rolando Maran's 4-3-1-2 midfield diamond, that sees the midfielders regularly perform rotations and occupy smart positions, Ranieri deployed what was ostensibly 4-4-2/4-4-1-1 formation to combat this.

Usually content to let Cagliari's central defenders build out from the back, once they ventured 20 or so yards from the halfway line, Roma's strategy really came to life.

To start with, Dzeko would usually position himself to have access to either centre back and Pastore would mark Luca Cigarini to prevent him from being an option.

Seeing as Cagliari still had three centrally based midfielders in Nicolo Barella, Artur Ionita and Valter Birsa against Roma's central mids of Lorenzo Pellegrini and Steven Nzonzi, Roma's wingers would tuck infield to help close off passing routes and limit their adversaries' impact of their central overload.

Some other vital elements towards their rearguard action arose from the Roma wingers and full-backs cohesively managing the Rossoblu fullbacks and wide central midfielders when they pushed wide, plus through Kostas Manolas and Federico Fazio staunchly monitoring Cagliari's strike duo of Joao Pedro and Leonardo Pavoletti.

A testament to the efficiency of their stopping efforts came by way of their opponents only recording two shots on target and having an XG of just 0.34.

All statistics provided by InStat.