BOLOGNA

League position: 10th
Form: W L W W L
Serie A top-scorer: Roberto Soriano (5)
Last time out in Serie A: Inter Milan 3-1 Bologna

Their season so far: It’s been an all-or-nothing campaign from Bologna to date in Serie A, winning four and losing six of their first 10 games, without a draw in sight.

Three of those victories have come at home, for a team who have kept just one clean sheet all season - the 1-0 win over lowly Crotone that ended a 41-match streak without preventing their opposition from scoring in the league.

Their mid-table position going into Matchday 11 is a fair reflection of their campaign so far, which is Sinisa Mihajlovic’s second full season back at the helm.

Now 51, Mihajlovic got his first managerial break of his career with Bologna in November 2008 and his first match in charge happened to end in a 1-1 draw at home to Roma.

He’s since coached Catania, Fiorentina, Serbia, Sampdoria, Milan, Torino and Sporting Lisbon and beaten leukemia in the intervening years as his journey has come full circle.

Injuries haven’t helped his cause in 2020-21, with key man Riccardo Orsolini’s shoes particularly problematic to fill and this week Mihajlovic lost first choice goalkeeper, and ex-Roma man, Lukasz Skorupski after the Poland stopper fractured a finger in training.

Mihajlovic - who has been on the lookout for a dressing room mole after recent leaks from within the Bologna camp - slightly changed tact for the trip to Inter as he switched to a 3-4-2-1 rather than his preferred 4-3-2-1 and he may well revert to type after being dispatched by the Nerazzurri last weekend.

One man that will remain right where he is, however, is Soriano - who has scored five times in the league from attacking midfield this season, which dwarfs the output of strikers Musa Barrow (two) and Rodrigo Palacio (one).

What they've said:

“I changed the system, but it’s because I didn’t have many attacking options and I didn’t want to move too many out of position. I therefore added an extra defender, but maybe they didn’t understand the move was not to be more defensive.

"If I had found him, you’d have noticed someone was missing. We are still in the process of investigating…” - Bologna coach Sinisa Mihajlovic on the Inter loss and Bologna’s ‘mole'