Juventus fought back to hold a nine-man Bologna to a 1-1 home draw on Saturday as their Scudetto hopes suffered a definite blow. Another scrappy showing from Massimiliano Allegri’s men nearly handed Bologna their first Serie A win in Turin since 2011.
A completely uninteresting first-half performance from both sides saw zero clear-cut scoring chances. However, Marko Arnautovic fired Bologna in front only seven minutes into the second half.
The Austria international made the most out of his side’s intricate build-up play, moving past Wojciech Szczesny before slotting into an empty net for his sixth goal in his last seven appearances.
Juventus shifted through the gears in search of an equaliser, but they had to wait until the stoppage time to beat Lucasz Skorupski. Dusan Vlahovic turned Alvaro Morata’s bicycle kick into the net late in the injury time for his 23rd goal of the season.
However, in addition to halting their run of eight consecutive Serie A home wins over Bologna, Juventus have shut down their Scudetto hopes. More importantly, Roma’s potential away triumph at Napoli on Monday would see the fifth-placed Giallorossi reduce the gap to three points.
Another disheartening performance has left Allegri fuming, who admitted Juventus would have lost ‘this kind of match in the first half of the season.’
“This is the kind of match we would’ve lost at the start of this season, so let’s see the glass as half-full. We absolutely need to do better, but we mustn’t get depressed either,” he told DAZN, as relayed by TUTTOmercatoWEB.
Juventus at least showed some character and commitment as they never gave up their hope of hitting back. That was probably the only positive from a thoroughly disappointing result against a bottom-half side.
“Fortunately, we were able to get a point out of a situation that had become very complicated. It was a bad first half, then after going 1-0 down we hit the woodwork and had lots of shots on goal.
“We always seem to concede lately, so we need to improve on that and be more relaxed.“