What to Expect from AS Roma After a Hot Start Under Gian Piero Gasperini | OneFootball

Coming into the new season, it’d be fair to say that AS Roma fans were carefully optimistic about the new era under Gian Piero Gasperini. With legend Claudio Ranieri moving up to an advisory role and Gasperini having impressed mightily with Atalanta, and Genoa before that, fans were right to have some ambitions for 2025/26.

Through the first stanza of the season, AS Roma have become increasingly reliable Serie A picks. They opened with seven wins and three losses, pulling them up to 12/1 in the league’s outright market. It’s a hot start and has certainly been an entertaining one, but what should we expect from I Giallorossi going forward?

Winning and Losing by the Narrowest of Margins

After ten games, if there’s one thing that the football tips for Serie A would recommend for an AS Roma game, it’s for the score to have nothing more than a one-goal difference. AS Roma’s 2-0 win at home to Hellas Verona stood as their biggest victory through ten games, with the 2-1 wins against Fiorentina and Parma seeing the most goals.

Followers of football bets would agree that it’s certainly a novelty for a team to climb to fourth in Serie A – which is where Roma were after ten games – and just one point from the top spot, riding six one-goal victories. Each of the three losses to that time were also only by a single goal, including the rather frustrating defeat to AC Milan.

A big element of this quirky statistical run has been the missed penalties. Including the attempt that the superb Mike Maignan stopped, Roma have now missed four of five penalties this season. Scoring has been tough despite the team doing very well in most other aspects of the game – especially when it comes to defending.

Building on Solid Fundamental Statistics

Gasperini is a very attack-minded manager and has long created incredibly entertaining teams as a result. However, it’s often the case that you need a top-tier defence to enjoy true success in Italy and beyond. So far, it looks like AS Roma boasts one of the league’s best defensive set-ups.

Keeping 59.6 per cent possession with an 84.0 pass completion percentage, winning some 17.2 aerial duels per game, and collecting 8.0 interceptions per game all ranked Roma among the best of Serie A after ten games. In fact, with 14.5 shots per game and an xG of 14.55 at the time of writing, the team also ranked highly offensively.

Putting away their opportunities has been the main crux of this new-look AS Roma side. The physicality is there, as is the drive and ability to up the ante, but the forwards haven’t hit their stride yet. The injury troubles of creative attacking force Paulo Dybala certainly won’t help to up those numbers.

Even so, having a sturdy backline and defensive ethos that can stop the other team from scoring will continue to lead to good results. Roma are struggling to score as many goals as they could, but even one has been enough to secure victory on four occasions already. The experience and talent is there, but it hasn’t quite clicked yet.

It’s been a strong start to the season under new management, and the signs would suggest that the best is yet to come.