By Pete Kaenmaki

Smaller club Sassuolo have had a good spell in Serie A and they are also clearly an in-form team. Now they will visit Genoa on Sunday afternoon and will face some defensive challenges. Two regular openers Sime Vrsaljko and Paolo Cannavaro are both suspended and thus will miss the trip to the capital of Liguria. Sassuolo have been very dependent on their home advantage and their normally very solid defense has leaked 16 times in nine away matches. Now, missing the backbone duo from defense should be a clear minus for the team, but with AccuScore’s simulation engine we can see just how these players affect Sassuolo’s performance against Genoa.

Reminder: For every Serie A match, AccuScore has Serie A Betting Picks and updated Odds

Here are the probabilities by AccuScore when both defenders are included in the lineup

Teams Lines Line% ACC% Goals
Genoa 2.38 41.2 32.6 0.88
Sassuolo 3.45 28.4 32.7 0.89
Draw 3.22 30.4 34.7

As we can see this encounter would be pretty much a coin toss. But what will happen, when we remove Vrsaljko and Cannavaro from the equation?

The probabilities by AccuScore when both defenders are not in the lineup


Teams Lines Line% ACC% Goals
Genoa 2.38 41.2 30.7 0.88
Sassuolo 3.45 28.4 36.1 0.97
Draw 3.22 30.4 33.2



Surprisingly Sassuolo’s chances to win will increase, when we remove Vrsaljko and Cannavaro out from equation. But in fact, this isn’t a great surprise to us as the replacers are off good quality and have offensively more potential. Market has clearly reacted on Sassuolo’s defensive issues, but according to our studies, this seems to be a harsh overreaction and thus, the odds for Sassuolo winning and also for the draw are very tempting.