Juventus beat Sampdoria 3-1 away from home this weekend to keep the pressure on our rivals at the head of the table.

The Old Lady hadn’t actually started the match all that brightly, but they were gifted the opening goal when Sampdoria were unable to deal with a Juan Cuadrado cross, with Maya Yoshida ending up putting the ball into his own net.

Soon after we were then awarded a clear penalty when Moise Kean was hacked down from behind in the box, and Alvaro Morata calmly dispatched of the spot-kick to make it 2-0 before we had even got ourselves out of first gear.

While you have to give credit to Sampdoria for keeping their energy to keep fighting to try and get into the game, they did manage to bring the game to life in the final 10 minutes thanks to a large deflection off the wall from the free-kick to beat Wojciech Szczesny, but thankfully it was our side who heeded the warning to close out the game, with Manuel Locatelli’s deep cross being headed home by Morata at the tight angle.

We shouldn’t have exerted ourselves too much here ahead of the Champions League clash with Villarreal on Wednesday.

Patrick