With nine games to go, the table offers a clear picture of who is competing for what in the Serie A.
The title race is restricted to Milan and Juventus as Lecce, Novara and Cesena are thriving hard to avoid the drop.
If third-bottom Lecce were to improve, then the likes of Parma, Fiorentina, Siena, Genoa and Cagliari could all find themselves fighting against relegation.
Further up the table, but behind Milan and Juve, one finds three teams – Lazio, Napoli and Udinese – all vying for the remaining Champions League spot.
Lazio currently have an edge as they have 51 points, three more than Napoli and Udinese. Roma are trailing behind on 44 points but they are too inconsistent to really stand a chance of making a top-three finish.
The indications are that Roma and, perhaps, Catania, who have 42 points under their belt, may challenge for a berth in the Europa League with Inter finishing empty-handed.
Napoli, through to their first Coppa Italia final since 1997, missed a great opportunity to keep up with Lazio’s pace on Sunday as they threw away a 2-0 lead to share the spoils with Catania at home.
Napoli’s inability to close games has been their downside all season.
Besides dropping precious points in the Serie A, this factor has also cost them their exit from the Champions League at the hands of Chelsea in the Last 16.
Against the in-form Catania, Napoli dominated for long stretches and could have easily built a more comprehensive lead. However, two Catania goals inside the last 15 minutes undid most of their good work.
To Napoli’s consolation, the result enabled them to extend their positive run to nine games (five wins and four draws). They have not suffered a league defeat since going down to Genoa (2-3) on January 29.
On Saturday, Udinese, too, were involved in a draw. But, unlike Napoli, they should consider themselves lucky to leave Palermo’s Barbera Stadium unscathed thanks to a late Gabriel Torje equaliser.
Francesco Guidolin’s side are going through a poor patch lately.
Apart from being knocked out from the Europa League, they have only three points to show from their last four outings.
Despite not being up to their best, Lazio bounced back from successive defeats to Bologna (1-3) and Catania (0-1) by beating Cagliari 1-0 at home. Lazio, however, need to show better consistency to keep hold of third place.
This has been quite a season for Lazio. Coach Edy Reja twice handed in his resignation but, strangely, he is still in charge.
Reports in Italy are saying that Reja will be replaced by Gianfranco Zola next summer.
Such rumours will surely not help Lazio’s cause and the same could happen at Napoli where coach Walter Mazzarri, along with some of the club’s star players, are being linked with moves elsewhere.
Napoli have two key matches coming up. This weekend they travel to Turin to take on Juventus before heading to Rome to cross swords with Lazio.
Following that, Napoli play Atalanta (home), Lecce (away) and Novara (home) before returning to the capital to play Roma. That will be followed by matches against Palermo (home), Bologna (away) and Siena (home).
Lazio have a tricky away fixture at Parma next Saturday before taking on Napoli and Juventus (away).
They then play Novara (away), Lecce (home), Udinese (away), Siena (home), Atalanta (away) and Inter (home).
Udinese travel to Siena this weekend and host Parma next.
The Friulani face two tricky matches against Roma (away) and Inter (home) before a ‘six-point’ clash with Lazio.
Udinese then travel to Chievo before Cesena (away), Genoa (home) and Catania (away).
Serie A statistics
1 penalty taken last weekend from which Zlatan Ibrahimovic made no mistake. Milan’s eighth penalty in favour coincided with Roma’s sixth against (all scored). The Rossoneri, along with Juventus (one), Lazio (five), Palermo (four), Cagliari (six), Fiorentina (five), Lecce (five) and Novara (three), have a 100 per cent scoring record from the penalty spot this season.
4th win on the trot for leaders Milan who came from behind to inflict on Roma their 11th defeat of the term. Overall, Milan are un-beaten in their last eight outings (six wins and two draws). Milan and Roma have last shared the spoils at the San Siro in November 2004 (1-1).
5th winless game in a row (two draws and three defeats) for Palermo, who could not go beyond a 1-1 draw with Udinese last week. Udinese are winless in their last four outings (three draws and one defeat). This was the first drawn result between these two sides since March 2008 (1-1).
8 consecutive games without a win for Roberto Donadoni’s Parma as they came from behind to share the spoils in a 2-2 away draw with Cesena. The latter have collected their last of four wins this season on January 15 (vs Novara 3-1). In Turin, Juventus scored twice after the break to beat Inter 2-0. This was Juve’s third straight home win against Inter. The Nerazzurri have last conquered Turin in April 2005 (1-0).
24 goals were scored on the 29th day. There were no away wins and six draws. Foreigners contributed with 12 goals while there were six first-half goals. Total number of goals scored so far is 726. Zlatan Ibrahimovic spearheaded Milan’s comeback against Roma by scoring twice after the break. Thanks to this brace the striker has consolidated his leading role in the top scorers’ sheet with 22 goals.