Bottom-placed Sampdoria will travel to Udine this Monday looking to record just their fourth win of the season against Udinese.
The hosts come into this tie on the back of a hard-fought 1-1 win over Napoli, confirming Luciano Spaletti’s side as the Scudetto winners this season.
But for Udinese, their aim for the season remains to finish in the top half of the Serie A for the first time since 2012/13, and that draw boosted their chances of doing so as they sit in 12th position ahead of this round.
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But they have won just one of their last six games (D2, L3) and need five more points to better last term’s haul of 47. Yet, there is some hope that they could get another win here as their last four home league games have seen them beat last year’s champions AC Milan 3-1 and hold this year’s title winners Napoli as part of a longer sequence of seven matches unbeaten on their turf (W2, D5).
With none of the last five home head-to-head against Sampdoria ending level (W3, L2), they’ll fancy their chances of claiming three points here against their struggling opponents.
Sampdoria’s 17 points after 33 matches have left them rooted at the bottom of the table with no hopes of playing Serie A football next season.
They come into this tie on the back of a 2-0 loss to Torino, which has left them ten points behind the 17th-placed side. So they desperately need a victory here to keep their wafer-thin survival chances alive.
But having won just one of their last 17 league fixtures (D5, L11), they will still finish the season with their lowest points total in the three-points-per-win era, regardless of where they play next season.
Meanwhile, their position in the league has been chiefly down to their poor away form. La Samp hasn’t won a league away game since early January (D2, L6 since) and conceded an average of 3.25 goals per game across their last four fixtures (D1, L3).
A tough finish to a miserable season awaits as they also travel to face AC Milan and Napoli after this.
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