Ive seen people in the other thread claim how Max had the far superior squad last season so it was/should have been easy game getting the scudetto from Sarris Napoli. Lets take a closer look at both teams.
According to number of starts & minutes played in Serie A, this was our starting lineup (number of starts/38):
Buffon (21/38)
Lichtsteiner (21/38) Rugani (22/38) Chiellini (25/38) AS (23/38)
Khedira (24/38) Pjanic (28/38) Matuidi (27/38)
Dybala (26/38) Higuain (32/38) Mandzukic (27/38)
2nd unit looked like this:
Szczesny 17/38
MdS 10/38 Barzagli 14/38 Benatia 19/38 Asamoah 18/38
Cuadrado 15/38 Marchisio 9/38 Bentancur 3/38 Sturaro 7/38
Bernardeschi 7/38 Costa 18/38
We replaced Sturaro with Howedes who started 3 games in January.
Lets start with the defense. As great as Licht was he was 34 and couldnt deliver highest level performances even at semi regular basis anymore. His replacement MdS spent more time recovering from injuries than playing. We had to use Barza, Cuads or even Sturaro there (later Howedes) because at times we had no one ready. Sarri had one of the best RBs in Europe Hysaj play 35 games. At CB Chiellini missed 13 games. We had Rugani start in more than half our games. Benatia was a great alternative though. Napoli had Koulibaly play 35 games, and Albiol 30. At LB, do we need to remind ourselves what kind of season AS had? And Asamoah was his alternative lol. Napoli didnt fare much better either as they had Rui start 25 times, after Ghoulam went down after 11 games. And when they needed, they had Maggio on the bench with Hysaj switching to LB. GK, Gigi and Woj are better than Reina, regardless of which one started. Defense - Napoli takes the cake
Midfield. Jorginho, Hamsik and Allan didnt start a combined 17 games. Look at our mids. Let our dear
@Nedved96 tell you which midfield is/was the better one. And even worse, look at the alternatives here. Corpse Marchisio and a kid that just arrived from Argentina. And Stu for half a year. Sarri had Zielinski "whod walk into our starting XI" on the bench, but started him 14 times only. Rog and Diawara, talented youngsters that were supposed to thrive under Sarri barely played. Who had the advantage here?
Attack. Insigne-Mertens-Callejon didnt start a combined 5 games (Mertens 3 and Insigne 2). He started Milik 3 times. This season under Ancelotti he scores 17 goals. I guess sarri was holding him back? Still, we had the better attack due to having 6 quality players to rotate, while they had only 4, and ours were better.
They had less depth in defense, and less depth in attack, but they left both cup competitions early and focused on the scudetto only. We on the other hand stayed in CL until april and Coppa until May, yet despite our only WC CB missing 1/3 of the season, our only WC fullback turning into Kevin Constant, zero midfield depth, we managed to get 95 pts. Hats off to Napoli for staying in the race until the end, but we beat them fair and square, not by having the "far superior squad"