ATALANTA

League position: 2nd
Head coach: Gian Piero Gasperini
Serie A top scorer: Teun Koopmeiners (four)

RECENT FORM

ROMA: W L L W W
ATALANTA: D W W W D

Midweek victory in the Europa League meant Roma overturned back-to-back defeats, with two victories in succession going into their meeting with Atalanta.

Jose Mourinho’s side were also given the welcome boost of seeing Nico Zaniolo last 76 minutes on his return from injury and Andrea Belotti score his first goal for the club.

While the Giallorossi were chalking up their first European win of the season on Thursday night, Atalanta are without continental football for the first time since Gasperini took them to a fourth-place finish in his first season back in 2016-17.

La Dea seem to be enjoying having no distractions outside of their domestic duties, however, and they sit second after an unbeaten start to the campaign.

Possible Atalanta line-up

(3-4-2-1)

Musso; Okoli, Toloi, Demiral; Hateboer, Koopmeiners, de Roon, Soppy; Malinovskyi, Pasalic; Muriel

LAST MEETING

DANGER MAN
Teun Koopmeiners

Gasperini has had some rotten luck in attack over the past few weeks, with Jeremie Boga the latest man ruled out through injury.

Duvan Zapata will also be absent until after the international break, while Luis Muriel has been touch-and-go in recent weeks.

Muriel is also yet to find the back of the net this season and, instead, Koopmeiners has been their biggest threat in attack.

The 24-year-old Netherlands international has four goals in six league games - as many as he scored across the entirety of his 30 Serie A appearances last term.

MATCH STATS

Roma won both meetings with Atalanta last season and Mourinho could become the first coach to claim three successive victories over La Dea. They since a combination of Claudio Ranieri and Luis Enrique did so more than a decade ago.

Similarly, Roma have won their last two league games without conceding and a third would be the first time they’d done so since May 2019.

Atalanta have picked up 14 points and conceded three goals so far in Serie A after six matches, to represent their best start to a top-flight campaign.

Atalanta have won their last three away games in the top-tier without conceding and they have only twice before kept a clean sheet in four successive league games on their travels; in 1997, and in 2016.

PLAYER STATS

• Tammy Abraham has scored twice in his first six Serie A games this season – the same number he managed in the first six such matches of last season - and 21 percent of his goals in the competition have been scored before November (four out of 19).
  
• Paulo Dybala has been involved in five of Roma’s eight Serie A goals scored this season (three goals, two assists).
  
• Just three players league-wide have had more shots than Dybala (20) so far this term, while the Argentine’s 17 key passes rank behind only Cristiano Biraghi (20) in the division.
  
• Luis Muriel has scored seven Serie A goals against Roma, but is yet to score in four league games this season and on the brink of matching his worst return to a campaign since going five games without a goal at the start of Serie A’ 2014-15 edition while at Udinese.

WHAT THEY SAID

“I must say that Mourinho is doing a fantastic job at Roma. Especially with the kind of enthusiasm he brought to the club. Roma have greatly improved with Mourinho’s leadership.”

- Gasperini on Mourinho’s Roma