“Stop!” the Torino fans beg Ciro Immobile. Have you ever heard fans tell their striker not to score?

Supporters of the Granata have their reasons. Immobile is co-owned by rivals Juventus and if he keeps finding the net at the rate he has this season, the fear is that they’ll want to take him back in the summer.

That wouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Immobile has scored 13 goals in Serie A this season, all from open play, not one from the penalty spot. He shares the title of vice-capocannoniere - or should that be capocannoniere-elect? - with Carlos Tevez, the player currently leading the Juventus forward line, a role that Immobile could have taken on and still may yet do so in the future.

Both find themselves a goal behind Fiorentina’s Giuseppe Rossi, who has been injured since the beginning of the New Year and isn’t expected back until towards the end of the campaign. With him out of it - at least, for now - the expectation is that one of Immobile or Tevez will finish as the league’s top scorer. Neck and neck in the goal-scoring charts, they go toe-to-toe in Sunday’s Derby della Mole (BT Sport 1, 5.30pm).

“ You wonder if Torino coach Giampiero Ventura will print out Juventus’ statement, a withering and unfair assessment of his team, and pin it to the dressing room wall as motivation on Sunday

It promises to be a bruising encounter. Tevez still has the scars to prove it. He’ll never forget his first one back in September.

Offside when he set up Paul Pogba for the only goal of the game, Tevez became the focus of bitter recrimination during and after it. Brutally tackled, he’d later tweet a picture of the bloodied bandage and stitches on his ankle. “We always win with un aiuto - a help or a favour - … It’s for this that I’m like this now…” Tevez posted sarcastically. “And only a yellow for almost breaking my ankle.” The player who put in the tackle just happened to be Immobile. “He hasn’t apologised,” Tevez revealed this week.

Juventus coach Antonio Conte was furious with the challenge. What also angered him were the questions he fielded from journalists. The goal should have been disallowed. Juventus didn’t deserve to win, they said. Conte couldn’t disagree more. “We kept the ball and attacked for 70 minutes,” he countered. That provoked Torino to issue a statement asking: “How does Conte count?” Juventus hadn’t dominated. They’d only had 52% possession.

A reply soon arrived from the Old Lady. “Not even a shot at goal on Torino’s part. This stat should be enough to explain Juventus’ absolute supremacy in the derby.” It evidently wasn’t though. Juventus felt compelled to add that goalkeeper Gigi Buffon was a “non-paying spectator” and they reminded Torino that the last player to score for them in this fixture was Benoit Cauet on February 24, 2002 and that with their latest victory they equalled a club record five straight wins in the derby – matching their run between 1932 and 1934.

It was an amusing exchange. You wonder if Torino coach Giampiero Ventura will print out Juventus’ statement, a withering and unfair assessment of his team, and pin it to the dressing room wall as motivation on Sunday. He shouldn’t need to. Torino do not have to rely on revenge alone having shown they are a good team this season, a very good team.

Up into sixth after Monday’s battling 3-1 away win at Hellas Verona, they haven’t been this high in the table at this stage of a season in two decades. Just three points behind Inter and the final Europa League qualification place, and a possible return to continental competition for the first time since the ‘93-94 season, a year when they reached the quarter-finals of the Cup Winners’ Cup, is a distinct possibility. And if they do qualify then a lot of the credit must go to the all-Italian strike partnership between the aforementioned Immobile and Alessio Cerci.

Not since Francesco Graziani and Paolo Pulici, ‘the gemelli del gol’ or goal twins, who spearheaded the Granata’s attack when they last won the Scudetto in 1976, have they had such a prolific pairing. Over the course of eight years, they scored 200 goals exactly - Graziani got 97, Pulici 103. He was Juventus’ nemesis. Nine times he scored against them. He also went “17 games without ever losing [a derby]. Good times,” Pulici reflected in Il Corriere della Sera.

Immobile and Cerci have combined for 24 in what is their first season together. To put that into some kind of perspective, the higher profile Tevez and Fernando Llorente have managed 23. So Torino, it’s fair to say, haven’t posed Juventus this much of a threat since they last won the Derby della Mole on April 9, 1995. The question is: Can they end an almost 19-year wait for a victory? And if not: Can Immobile or Cerci do what no man since Cauet did 12 years ago and score against Juventus?

Juventus beat Torino 1-0 in their Serie A clash at the Olympic Stadium back in September. (Getty)

Torino fans believe they can. While they may have told Immobile to stop scoring in the hope he escapes the attention of Juventus’ management, ahead of Sunday it’s a case of don’t stop him now. With eight in his last eight, he is on a hot streak. Immobile knows Juventus’ defenders too, past and present. Ciro Ferrara was the one who spotted him playing for Sorrento aged 14 and insisted Juventus sign him. “I didn’t even have a trial,” Immobile recalls.

Loan spells aside, the most successful of which was at Pescara where, playing in the same team as Marco Verratti and Lorenzo Insigne, he scored 28 goals as they earned promoted to Serie A in 2012, he’s been more or less resident in Turin ever since. His landlord is Juventus’ Giorgio Chiellini. “I pay him rent and if a pipe bursts I call him,” Immobile smiles. One wonders if Chiellini has cut the power and switched the hot water off ahead of the derby this week. Joking aside, it’s beginning to look more and more likely that his tenant will be joining him at the World Cup in Brazil next summer. After that who knows what the future holds. Torino? Juventus again? Maybe even Borussia Dortmund if the papers in Italy are to be believed.

And to think, “this summer Ventura and I were the only ones who had faith in his potential after a not so great year with Genoa [5 goals in 33 appearances],” Gianni Petrachi, the Torino director of sport, told Tuttosport. “No one was willing to bet a euro on him.” Their gamble has already paid off. Nominative determinism doesn’t seem to apply with Immobile. Going nowhere? He’s most definitely not. He’s on the up, headed to a higher place. And for Torino, there is no bigger high than beating Juventus.