Empoli vs Salernitana prediction: ITALY: Serie A betting tips on match 2023-09-26 16:30.
The fourth coming of Aurelio Andreazzoli as Empoli manager failed to give the side a much needed lift at the weekend as they were beaten for the fifth successive time this season, leaving them rooted to the foot of Serie A (SA) with no points on the board. His tenure didn’t get off to the best start with 1-0 defeat to table-topping Inter Milan, but after a 7-0 thrashing by Roma just a week prior, losing by one goal perhaps wasn’t too bad.
No team in the division has conceded more goals than Empoli’s 13 so far in this campaign, and at the other end, they are the only team yet to score, which is largely behind their early season plight. As such, they are the first SA team in history to have failed to register a goal or a point from their opening five matches, but encouragingly they did beat Salernitana 2-1 in this corresponding fixture last season.
Salernitana themselves are winless, but they have at least picked up three draws so far including a 1-1 home stalemate on Friday evening with Frosinone to end a run of two straight defeats. On the road the Garnets have been struggling for a long time, as they haven’t picked up a victory since a trip to Lecce at the end of January (D7, L4) and have alarmingly won only twice away from home in SA since May 2022 (D12, L9)!
Boss Paulo Sousa will be hoping to improve upon that against the against bottom-of-the-table side but will need a change to their current H2H form which has seen Salernitana win only one of their last nine against Empoli, part of a run in which they haven’t triumphed in an away H2H since November 1999 (D2, L8).
Key battle: Etrit Berisha made five saves against Inter on Sunday, and despite not keeping a clean sheet yet this SA season, his three career appearances against Salernitana all yielded shut-outs! Aiming to end that run, Jovane Cabral scored his first Salernitana goal on Friday and hasn’t finished on the losing side in the last 20 games that he has found the back of the net!
Hot streak: Empoli have failed to keep a clean sheet across their last 14 SA games.