The top of the Serie A table can breathe a bit this year.

Juventus has loosened its strangle hold which has seen them take the Scudetto in the previous four seasons (although James Yorke has provided some indicators of their ascendency this season), and now most of the familiar faces can sit down at the same table.



Figures indicate total gross salaries (millions) in Serie A for 2015-16 season

Parity among lead leaders breeds competition that Serie A has grown apart from in recent years. The top four sides in the table are currently within three points of each other, thus leaving the door open for a team to charge through or fall away at anytime.

Inter Milan have been the most surprising and perplexing team in the Italian league, a combination that puts them at top spot going into the Christmas break.

Manager Roberto Mancini has introduced a new look to his Inter project through key changes in personnel, which contributed to allowing the fewest goals in the league (11).

Both central defenders, including captain Andrea Rannochia, have been replaced through rotation as the South American pairing of Miranda and Jeison Murillo has been preferred. As Mancini prioritizes possession stemming from the back, the new tandem provides a similar quantity of average passes per 90 minutes (just over 102), but the quality has improved—passing accuracy and variety statistics are up.

The centre of the midfield has been regenerated as well, as Felipe Melo and Geoffrey Kondogbia add grit, energy and certainly a physical presence. The transition has been from a ball playing midfield with Mateo Kovacic and Hernanes featuring, to a ball winning midfield with Kondogbia and Melo dominating space.

Although this injection of power has made it difficult for oppositions to establish rhythm in the middle of the park, Inter’s lack of certainty in possession causes costly errors and lapses of judgment. This has been the indictment of Inter’s middle—they are just one lazy square pass or two wayward touches away from conceding a scoring opportunity.

This new iteration of Inter through the evolution of Mancini’s typical desires in team shape and personnel have made them very hard to beat and a nightmare to play against.

But, that’s when the weird starts. Inter, and specifically goalkeeper Samir Handanovic, has a European top five leagues leading save percentage (85.4). It’s absurd, and typically unsustainable (as 11tegen11 and James Grayson have previously discussed). This save percentage probably accounts for the majority of the disparity between Michael Caley’s expected goals against and goals against of 4.4 goals.



PDO (Scoring % + Save %) in buckets of 10 games with coinciding league position circled

This absolutely accounts for Inter’s league leading PDO (114.28), which has been a decent indicator of where in the league table they have finished in recent seasons. Although PDO is generally a poor predictor of a team’s overall quality and regresses to the mean sharply, the connection in these individual cases is evident.

Offensively, service to striker Mauro Icardi has been a problem so far this season, and it shows in his shooting numbers and total touches in the attacking third.

Playing in Inter’s single striker system, the onus is on Icardi to not only provide a link in possession high up the pitch, but to be the main and consistent scoring threat. After posting 3.4 shots per 90 minutes last season, he has dipped to 1.6 and has struggled to have the same overall impact in games.

Expected Goals Against compared to league position

So, the question is can Inter continue with the defensive precedent they have set through the first half of the season? It seems to me that Inter is a volatile side, with the expectation of volatile results moving forward in the season.

Melo, Kondogbia, Fredy Guarin and Gary Medel will grow into cohesion and understanding, forming an even more feared central midfield to break down and potentially curbing their ball retention issues. The service to Icardi must improve, as he represents the main hope to consistently score goals and put shots on target.

Handanovic’s save percentage will probably decrease, and therefore to float a similar, league leading PDO scoring efficiency must come from somewhere (see previous Icardi sentence).

Juventus is picking up steam, Napoli and Fiorentina are scoring at great clips with different focal points and Roma’s first XI is full of talent. Maintaining the top spot in Serie A will clearly be difficult, and I don’t see it lasting the season.

Quantities and figure template courtesy of http://footstats.co.uk/

Coleman Larned is soccer analytics writer based in Antwerp, Belgium. Follow him on Twitter