Wojciech Szczesny was on the losing side as Roma suffered a surprise 3-1 away defeat at the hands of Torino on Sunday afternoon.
The Polish goalkeeper, who was solid in-between the posts for the visitors, would’ve felt disappointed that he didn’t receive enough protection from his backline on a number of occasions.
After making a good initial diving stop to deny Iago Falqué on the edge of the area, the ball was not dealt with and the hosts were able to recycle possession effectively before creating a goalscoring opportunity, which Andrea Belotti took from close-range.
Joel Obi’s inviting cross evaded the attention of the Roma defenders caught ball-watching, and although Szczesny got a hand to Belotti’s header, was unable to stop it from beating him at his near post after just eight minutes.
Szczesny was once again let down by a defensive mistake, this time when Bruno Peres (linked with Arsenal over the summer) caught Belotti with a flailing leg inside the area and gave away a penalty eight minutes after the half-time interval.
Falqué made no mistake from the penalty spot with a driven finish into the bottom corner, despite Szczesny diving the right way, to double Torino’s advantage and put them firmly in the driving seat.
Francesco Totti netted a spot-kick of his own just two minutes afterwards, but this proved to be little more than a consolation in the end when Falqué grabbed his second of the match in the 65th minute.
Roma lost the ball in a key area of the field, and were unable to recover quickly enough with the gap between centre-backs far too big, allowing a defence-splitting pass to be made. Falqué’s effort took a harsh deflection on the way towards goal, looped over a helpless Szczesny who could only watch as the ball nestled in the far corner.
He will be disappointed with the result and ultimately feel as though he might’ve done more to stop Belotti’s strike early on, but could do nothing to stop either of the following two strikes to hand Torino all three points in a match they ran out deserved winners.
With that being said, Szczesny has done well this season and will be hoping for better defensive performances from his team-mates in the coming weeks.
Having conceded five goals from five Serie A matches before Sunday, Szczesny has made 17 saves and tallied an impressive distribution accuracy of 80%, one of the highest percentages in the division.