Juventus were not good enough on the day to beat Inter Milan, but credit to Antonio Conte for denying us any real chances.

Juventus started the match well and were growing nicely in confidence. We even looked to have scored the opening goal, only to realise that the offside flag had been raised.

Federico Chiesa is clearly in an offside position, although the ball did ricochet off the defender and the goalkeeper before falling to him to tee up Cristiano Ronaldo for the disallowed goal.

Before we even have time to analyse if the touch off the defender would have made a difference, we were behind.

Nicolo Barella floated his ball into former Juventus star Arturo Vidal to break the deadlock inside 12 minutes, with the midfielder leaping high to head to the goalkeepers right.

They used their lead well to control the game. Juve pushed hard to try and get back into it, and endured countless counter-attacks, and while we enjoyed the most possession, the best chances were coming at the other end.

We went into the break a goal behind, and I can’t say I noticed any changes after the break.

Inter allowed us the ball, and were painfully direct with their counters, and it didn’t take long before the doubled their lead.

The 23 year-old went from creator to finisher as Barella was the man to put the final touch onto the through ball which completely split our back line.

The game continued to this tune, despite the manager making all three changes just before the hour-mark, and all the praise has to go out to Antonio Conte, and the only thing I will say is that Barella better bring that level for Italy next summer.

We were second-best today, but we still have the best league form of our rivals on paper, and the scudetto is still in our sights.

Patrick