Four Things We Learned: Set-piece strategy pays off

Streak continues

Keeping up their excellent recent form with another win, Roma's 3-2 triumph over Torino saw them extend their unbeaten run to seven matches.

Indeed, the victory also ensured they'll finish in fifth place, thus guaranteeing them automatic qualification to the Europa League group stages next season.

On a night where Edin Dzeko moved into fourth on Roma's all time goalscoring charts alongside Rodolfo Volk on 106 behind Amedeo Amadei, Roberto Pruzzo and Francesco Totti, and Amadou Diawara notched his first goal for the club, it was certainly a positive evening of action.

Although letting in two avoidable goals will have annoyed Paulo Fonseca, he cut a content figure afterwards, heaping praise on his troops.

"Over the last few weeks the team has showed a spirit and hunger that I’ve really liked," he said.

"We have changed the system and we are playing well, we are more aggressive and dominant and we deserved to win again today.”

Perez and Cristante interactions instrumental

Unquestionably one of the keys to Roma unlocking the Torino block was the brilliant, cohesive movement of Carles Perez and Bryan Cristante. With Cristante playing in central midfield and Perez operating in one of the offensive midfield berths, their rotations were key in unbalancing the home side.

Whenever Cristante would notice Perez dropping deeper centrally or into the right half space, this served as the trigger for Cristante to push forward and occupy Perez's previous position or maraud upfield. Seeing as Cristante is excellent at making penetrative forward runs from deep and Perez relishes receiving the ball with time and space to dribble, the tactic played to their strengths beautifully.

Giving Roma another dimension going forward and causing issues for Torino on who should mark who, the duo's slick interactions and understanding frequently generated promising scenarios for the Giallorossi.

Crafty build up mechanics

Having clearly done his homework on his opponents as always, Fonseca's plan to beat Torino's press gave Roma a super foundation to construct moves from.

With Torino pressing Roma's three central defenders with their three attackers in Simone Zaza, Alex Berenguer and Simone Verdi, Fonseca instructed Diawara to drop deeper behind Torino's first line to form a 4v3 overload.

Due to Torino playing two in central midfield like Roma, the usual response would be for La Granata's centre mids to man mark Roma's duo. But Roma overcame this with the intelligent dropping movement of Henrikh Mkhitaryan from his attacking midfield post.

So, with Sasa Lukic usually on Cristante, Soualiho Meite was faced with the dilemma whether to mark Mkhitaryan or Diawara. He often chose the former, which afforded Diawara the space he needed to take advantage to receive cleanly and dictate the tempo.

Working so effectively to give Roma a firm foundation to build out from, Fonseca yet again deserved credit for his tactical acuity in this fixture.

Set piece strategy pays off

Roma's set piece strategy worked tremendously in this one, with them proving hugely challenging to combat for Torino. Scoring their second goal courtesy of a crisply executed set piece, it was interesting to note just prior to this goal how they almost scored using the same game plan, with Torino unable to adapt to the initial warning shot.

Upon analysing Chris Smalling's goal, and it was intriguing to note how Roma set up with four men at the back post, as Smalling, Dzeko and Gianluca Mancini notably had separation from their markers.

This placed them in an ideal 4v4 (with Leonardo Spinazzola the other target, acting as a decoy) to enjoy a clear run run up and dynamic advantage over their more awkwardly oriented, stationary markers.

And this is precisely what Smalling did, as he neatly timed his run before using his amazing leap to meet Perez's perfectly struck corner to power his header into the back of the net.

Although it seemed like a standard routine, the workings behind it were clearly smartly devised and, most importantly, executed flawlessly.