Team Focus: Purple Patch - Fiorentina's Surprising Defence

When looking at Fiorentina from afar, good news is seemingly hard to find. For a club with a history as storied as theirs, Viola heroes such as Giancarlo Antognoni, Gabriel Batistuta and Manuel Rui Costa have never felt so far away. The club appear to be the living embodiment of Murphy's Law; the owners are disillusioned with the city council over their bid to build a new stadium, their leading scorer of the last few seasons Alberto Gilardino hit an awful rut and has now moved on, and Riccardo Montolivo is winding down the last five months of his contract before he too heads for the exit.

Currently in eleventh place and on their second coach of the season, Delio Rossi's men seem merely to be treading water and the team has numerous flaws, not least of which has been an inability to keep their key players fit. Yet, amid all this turmoil and upheaval, la Viola currently boast the second best defensive record in Serie A, their seventeen goals conceded only bettered by league leaders Juventus. In recent matches they have joined the current trend and shifted to a three man defence - their sixth different formation of the campaign - but even such a sizable switch hasn't impacted upon their solidity. Indeed in the four games in which this system has been utilised, only twice has the opposition found the back of the net.

Obviously their problem has been in attack - only four teams have scored less goals - which is why they sit so low in the table but their defensive record is remarkable. Goalkeeper Artur Boruc, one of only two players to feature in every league match of the season so far, has kept ten clean sheets, the same total as Juve's Gigi Buffon and Samir Handanovič of Udinese. Yet in twenty appearances the former Celtic shot stopper has only had to make 56 saves (2.8 per game), so what are the other reasons behind their success?

Firstly, and here's where stats do not tell the whole story, it must be noted that la Viola have allowed opponents 11.5 shots per match, which means around nine shots remain unaccounted for. But while some of this is down to the profligacy of their opponents, the hardworking Fiorentina defence must receive credit for forcing teams into simply taking bad shots.

One thing they do very well is immediately clear danger and, of the nineteen Serie A players to average more than eight clearances per game, three wear the red fleur-de-lis of Florence; Cesare Natali, Matija Nastasic and captain Alessandro Gamberini. Aerial superiority is another major factor for the team who, in Natali and Gamberini, boast two dominant central defenders and indeed it is no surprise to see both rank in the leagues top ten in terms of aerial duels won, with 2.8 and 2.3 respectively.

The ability of their defenders in one-on-one situations has been highly important and looking at the number of times each has been dribbled past highlights this fact. Of their most used defenders, only Manuel Pasqual really struggles in this area, beaten thirteen times in his seventeen appearances. Of the rest, Mattai Cassani has been passed five times in ten matches but Gamberini (2 in 20), Natali (3 in 17) and Lorenzo De Silvestri (2 in 13) all excel in what is a most difficult skill.

Valeron Behrami has surprisingly played a key role in protecting the back-line throughout the season and has vastly altered his playing style over the past year. Despite in no way representing the proto-typical defensive midfielder, the Swiss international currently leads Serie A in tackles per game, his 5.2 comfortably the highest at the club. He is also one of six players - the others being Cassani, Natali, De Silvestri, Montolivo and Nastasic - to average more than two interceptions per game, a total captain Gamberini (on 1.9) only narrowly misses out on adding to.

With the wonderful Stevan Jovetić seemingly becoming an idol of the fans in the way Antognoni, Rui Costa and Roberto Baggio did before him, perhaps the Tuscan city is set to give birth to yet another renaissance but, for now, Fiorentina are most definitely relying on hard work rather than artistic flair.