With Napoli hosting Juventus on Friday night, we split the regular Serie A blog in two this week. The main piece, covering that game, is here. But the rest of the weekend turned out to be rather lively as well …

Talking points

• Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve probably heard by now about Benevento’s draw with Milan, and more specifically about the manner in which the game ended. After losing the opening 14 games of their first-ever top-flight campaign, the Witches snatched a draw in the 95th minute with a header from their keeper, Alberto Brignoli.

Benevento win first Serie A point after keeper's injury-time header stuns Milan Read more

There are so many sub-plots with this one, but it is only right to start with the goalscorer himself. Brignoli is a man who professes to be a bit of a wimp about heading the ball in general, yet when Benevento won a free-kick just outside the area with time ticking down, he charged forwards despite being commanded by his manager, Roberto De Zerbi, not to.

“The boss didn’t want me to go up,” acknowledged Brignoli afterwards. “He can be stubborn but I’m even more so. I said: ‘I’m going. I’m going, and that’s that.’ I leapt like a goalkeeper, not an attacker. They tell me that I looked like Aldo in the scene from [the movie] ‘Tre uomini e una gamba’ (Three men and one leg), and they are right. I was a bit crooked. I closed my eyes.”

Brignoli is only the fifth keeper to score in Serie A – joining Michelangelo Rampulla, Antonio Rigamonti, Lucidio Sentimenti and, most recently, Massimo Taibi. He wasn’t even Benevento’s starting keeper at the beginning of this season, taking over from Vid Belec in October. It was hard not to warm to him, though, as he paused during post-game interviews to express solidarity with the keeper he scored against: Gianluigi Donnarumma.

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Sensational drama at Benevento 👏 pic.twitter.com/3q7qVYbvYU

A point might have been the least Benevento deserved for a game in which they had more shots than Milan and held the ball, on average, much higher up the pitch. As desperate as their league standing is, performances had been improving even before this.

Four of their previous five games had been lost by a single goal – including the one away to Juventus – and there have been some especially cruel twists along the way. At Cagliari they grabbed a 93rd-minute equaliser only to concede again in the 94th. Benevento thought they had earned a draw with Sassuolo as Domenico Berardi’s penalty hit the bar in injury-time. Instead, Federico Peluso headed home a winner for the Neroverdi moments later.

So perhaps we should have seen this result coming. It was naive to imagine that there would be some immediate transformation for Milan under Rino Gattuso. The new manager has a modest coaching CV, and it will take more than his competitive fury to fix a team boasting plenty of talent but no clear tactical vision. As Gattuso himself observed afterwards: “It won’t help, right now, for me to raise my voice and smash my fists on the table.”

This was supposed to be Milan's revival season. Instead they have regressed | Paolo Bandini Read more

This result, though, will leave a mark. “It would have been better to be stabbed than concede this goal,” added Gattuso. “The lads in the changing room were desperate.”

• As Milan licked their wounds, the neighbours went top of the table. Juve’s win at Napoli had created an opportunity for Inter, who seized it eagerly with a 5-0 demolition of Chievo. Their 39 points from 15 matches equals a club record set under Roberto Mancini back in 2006-07, when they cruised to the Scudetto. Back then, though, the field had been decimated by Calciopoli.

It is hard to overstate what a fantastic job Luciano Spalletti is doing as manager, in a far more competitive field. And if any one player best represents the transformation of this team, it might be Ivan Perisic – who grabbed a hat-trick on Sunday. Next up comes the small matter of a trip to Turin to take on Juventus. The last time they met, back in February, Perisic was sent off in a 1-0 defeat.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ivan Perisic with the match ball. Photograph: Claudio Villa/Inter via Getty Images

• Roma rolled over Spal on Saturday, but Lazio kept hold of their coattails in the race for Champions League places, with a come-from-behind win away to Sampdoria. Not for the first time this season, it was Sergej Milinkovic-Savic who made the difference, scoring his team’s 80th-minute equaliser before setting up Felipe Caicedo’s winner with a clever reverse pass into the box (even if it did take a bit of a scramble from there before the Ecuadorian could bundle it home).

• Not a happy return to Serie A for Beppe Iachini, whose first league game since replacing Cristian Bucchi as manager of Sassuolo ended in a 3-0 defeat at Fiorentina. But more encouraging signs for this young Viola team, for whom Giovanni Simeone (22 years old), Jordan Veretout (24) and Federico Chiesa (20) grabbed the goals.

Results: Roma 3-1 Spal, Napoli 0-1 Juventus, Torino 1-1 Atalanta, Benevento 2-2 Milan, Bologna 1-1 Cagliari, Fiorentina 3-0 Sassuolo, Inter 5-0 Chievo, Sampdoria 1-2 Lazio. Monday: Crotone v Udinese, Verona v Genoa.