Diego Milito's a cracking bet to rediscover his shooting boots on Wednesday night
Three successive victories in the Scudetto has elevated Inter Milan to a far more respectable position in the table compared to a few weeks back, but Claudio Ranieri’s men are still 10 points adrift of current chart-toppers Juventus at the time of writing, so the pressure will be on when the Nerazzurri entertain strugglers Lecce at the San Siro on Wednesday night.
The Beneamata hierarchy are not synonymous with patience, and having failed in their bid to retain their Serie A crown last season, 60-year-old coach Ranieri remains firmly in a metaphorical pressure cooker, and could do without reports linking their playmaker-in-chief Wesley Sneijder, who is currently sidelined with an injury, with a move away from Milan when the January transfer window becomes ajar.
On the upside, with three successive wins, all gained with clean sheers, in the Italian top-flight, the mood amongst the Giuseppe Meazza faithful is certainly improving. There hasn’t been much margin for error, though, with five of their league victories gained this season being decided by just a solitary goal. However, if Inter are going to win a game by a wide-margin it will surely be this one, bearing in mind that the visitors have shipped no less than 13 goals in their last five games.
During that five-match period, Lecce have unsurprisingly picked up just one point, and they’re currently rooted to the foot of the table. To be fair to Lecce, though, they do tend to raise their game when on the road, with both of their wins in the league so far this term gained in away fixtures, and they do have goals in them, as they proved when fighting out an entertaining 3-3 draw away to Parma last weekend.
Serse Cosmi’s charge’s are simply too poor at the back, however, as their aforementioned recent defensive record implies. Consequently, for all that the fact that they will feel they have nothing to lose going into a match everyone expects them to lose, something which could make them dangerous, I can see them getting caught on the counter by an Inter side that, for all that they’re failing to scale the heights of a couple of seasons back, still boasts plenty of quality.
Backing a striker struggling to hit the target in the first goalscorer market may not be a strategy to everyone’s liking – and it isn’t usually to mine – but Diego Milito hasn’t been playing at all badly, despite not getting a goal since late September. The Argentinean faces the perfect side against which he could bag a couple of goals and restore some confidence that may be slightly lacking, and the 7-2 about him striking first with Ladbrokes is well worth a wager.