Lazio match Inter at the top

Lazio beat a 10-man Monza 3-1 on Sunday to move level on points with Inter at the top of Serie A, according to the Guardian. Lazio now sit second in the table with 16 points from six games, five wins and a draw, with a goal difference of plus seven, having lost nothing all season.

Gattuso finds his footing again

After a stint in charge of the Italian national team that did not go the way anyone in Rome hoped, Gattuso has built something that looks genuinely durable at the Olimpico. Six games into the season, his Lazio side are unbeaten and matching Inter point for point at the top of the table.

Beating Monza with a man advantage for most of the second half is not the kind of result that rewrites a season on its own. But doing it 3-1, cleanly, with the kind of control that doesn't need late nerves, is exactly the sort of afternoon that quietly builds a title case.

Roma stall in Como

Roma, meanwhile, could not find a way through at Como, drawing 0-0 in a game that never threatened to break its own stalemate. For a club with designs on competing at the top of Serie A, a goalless afternoon away from home against a side not among the division's traditional heavyweights is the kind of result that gets filed under missed opportunity rather than disaster, but it still leaves Roma further adrift of the pace Lazio and Inter are setting.

Two different Sundays in the capital

It's a tale of two very different weekends for Rome's clubs. Lazio look like genuine contenders, with Gattuso's side unbeaten and sitting level with the champions elect at the top of the table. Roma, by contrast, are left to work out how to turn draws like the one at Como into wins, with the margin for error in a title race already looking thin this early in October.