Max Allegri dismissed Juventus’s Serie A title hopes after our midweek loss to Sassuolo, but there are a number of reasons why we cannot accept it.

Our side suffered a painful defeat on Wednesday evening, with their extremely late winning goal causing much pain as they ended our nine-match unbeaten run.

While it was a hard pill to swallow, the manager clearly couldn’t control his irrational frustrations as he conceded his side’s title challenge, but it is almost impossible to be out of the race after around 25% of the fixture list.

The bookmakers certainly aren’t willing to rule us out wither, with some pricing us as low as 6/1 to finish top of the table after 38 games, while the biggest risk takers have only pushed us out to 10/1 also.

I get that nobody should be naming us as the favourites at present, but the fact that we are still in a transitional phase, readjusting to philosophies under an extremely experienced winning coach, while he also learns how to get the best out of some key new players in Kulusevski, Chiesa, De Ligt, Locatelli and Arthur.

The only way is up for this team, but despite our setback in midweek, Allegri is already teaching the team how to win ugly, while the potential for much more resonates throughout the entire squad.

We have a wealth of untapped potential that Allegri will bring to the surface as the season runs on, and while we of course have strong rivals for the scudetto, that also means that each of those will be taking points off of each other, meaning that there will be plenty of ground to make up.

I can’t be alone in believing we are not out of the title race just yet, can I?

Patrick