Boring, ugly and unloved - but could Massimiliano Allegri's Juventus win Serie A? Sunday's Derby d'Italia showdown with Inter will reveal all

Italy is effectively made up of two types of people: those that love Juve and those that hate Juve. There really is no middle ground and neither group is ever really willing to back down. It is, therefore, incredibly significant that it is not just the anti-gobbi brigade slamming Juve's style of play right now.

Their supporters take enormous pride in the club motto 'Winning isn't important, it's the only thing that matters' - but many Bianconeri have long since grown weary of Allegri's pragmatic approach.

This, remember, is the Tuscan's second spell in charge and while his first went incredibly well (five Scudetti, four Coppe Italia and two Champions League final appearances), he's still trophy-less this time around. And negative tactics are much tougher to tolerate when they're not yielding positive results, which is precisely why many Juventini wanted Allegri out at the end of last season.

The under-fire manager was even asked about the fan unrest ahead of the final league fixture, against Udinese, and he replied, "I have nothing to tell them. We've worked with seriousness and honesty. In life, getting everyone to agree is impossible. There is always someone happy and someone who is not. It happened even when we were winning trophies. This is part of the game.

"We must analyse two difficult seasons but football is not an exact science. We must work with serenity, trying to make fewer errors. Perfection doesn't exist."

The thing is, though, most Juve fans weren't demanding perfection; they merely wanted to see evidence of a game plan - other than defend for their lives and pray for a goal on the break or from a set-piece.

"Whatever they do, it is almost accidental or a fluke," former Juve forward Christian Vieri said on Bobo TV. "They have to rely on the opposition making mistakes [to score]. There are no ideas."

As a result, Allegri was accused of implementing a small-club mentality with the highest-paid squad in Serie A.

"He's an embarrassment and cannot represent Juve," Antonio Cassano, who played under Allegri at AC Milan, said earlier this year. "His football ideas are still the same as 30 years ago. In the two-year hiatus (between 2019 and 2021), he went fishing, but the other coaches use that time to study.

"I think of coaches like Thomas Tuchel, Marcelo Bielsa, Roberto De Zerbi, who clearly love football and study it from day to night. Allegri never has done that because he just doesn't care."

Allegri does care, of course - just not about entertaining. He is solely interested in winning, which means he remains, in many ways, the perfect coach for Juve. He even takes enormous pride in the fact that he has been derogatorily referred to as a 'company man' at times.

"That is a compliment," he said last season. "A coach does not just have a role on the field, you are also responsible for the sporting area and, along with the club, must do your best on and off the pitch."

And Allegri has undeniably done a fine job dealing with off-field distractions.

Juve were embroiled in two separate financial scandals last season and had the club not been hit with a 10-point deduction for breaching capital gains regulations, the Bianconeri would have finished fourth in Serie A and qualified for the Champions League - which would have been an admirable achievement in the circumstances.

As for this season, Luca Fagioli has already been suspended for seven months for placing illegal bets, while Paul Pogba is also set for a lengthy ban after failing an anti-doping test.

Despite the seemingly constant controversy, Allegri's Juve sit second in Serie A thanks to a five-game winning streak. Perhaps even more impressively, they've conceded just once in their last seven outings.

However, while the numbers are impressive, Juve's performances have been anything but.

Juve's 1-0 win at Milan was an absolute horror show, a PR disaster for a league trying - and presently failing - to sell itself to both domestic and international audiences.

Despite having a numerical advantage for more than 50 minutes, Juve ended with less possession (48 percent) than their opponents and only managed to win the game thanks to their first shot on 'target': a speculative effort from Manuel Locatelli midway through the second half that took a wicked deflection off Rade Krunic.

"The match was boring and there was very little quality," former Italy defender Christian Panucci said. "Milan-Juventus must offer more, also from the entertainment point of view. Overall, it was a match of incredible limitations."

Milan, at least, had the excuse of having to play with 10 men. Juve had no such alibi - and even Allegri was disgusted by their inability to keep a hold of the ball in the second half. In the closing stages, while screaming at his players, he took off both his jacket and his tie before storming down the tunnel at the full-time whistle.

"Playing against 10 men, you have to use the pitch like an airport and not let them get anywhere near the ball," Allegri fumed afterwards on DAZN, "You do not allow them to counter like that.

"When you have the extra man, you do not make those passes in tight channels, you do not dribble, do not take men on. You don’t force the moves, you go for the guaranteed ones."

Allegri apologists will argue that he can only do so much with the players at his disposal - and it's worth pointing out that many Juve fans labelled the starting XI at San Siro the weakest line-up they'd seen since the dark days of Luigi Delneri more than a decade ago.

"I used to change my style depending on the characteristics of my players and the countries where I was working because each place has a footballing DNA," former Milan coach Fabio Capello told the Gazzetta dello Sport. "Any coach would like to attack for 90 minutes but then they have to consider opponents and the characteristics of their team.

"Not conceding goals is a strength, the starting base. Allegri has normal players in midfield. He no longer has (Miralem) Pjanic, Pogba or (Paulo) Dybala. He lacks creativity, so he must rely on counter-attacks."

Of course, the counter-argument is that Allegri didn't put up much of a fight to hold onto Dybala, found no room in his starting line-up for an exciting attacker like Dejan Kulusevski, and is still struggling dismally to coax the best out of Federico Chiesa and Dusan Vlahovic. It's certainly no coincidence that no side in the top seven of Serie A has scored fewer goals than Juve (19) so far this season.

Capello has also claimed that Allegri is unfairly maligned because "he doesn’t follow the gospel" according to Pep Guardiola and "that there is not just one religion in football."

"Manchester City love to attack with many players, but when they need to, they defend deeper," he argued. "They did the same thing (as Juve) for 25 minutes in the Champions League Final against Inter."

However, very few Italian football followers fail to appreciate the defensive side of the game. What's more, there is simply no denying that the game has changed, evolved enormously, and even in Italy catenaccio is no longer an acceptable tactical base for a supposedly top team.

The most successful sides so often press from high up the field these days and Allegri's Juve are an outlier in that regard. He is very much old school - and not in a good way, when one considers the fantastic football produced by coaching compatriots such as Luciano Spalletti and Roberto De Zerbi on far smaller budgets.

Juve nearly always sit deep, no matter the strength of the opposition, but are not even an especially effective counter-attacking team because they are so poor in possession. Their passing is devoid of any adventure or ambition because this is a team that prefers to play without the ball than with it.

Consequently, their matches are characterised by painfully dull period of nothingness, with opponents struggling to break down Allegri's two compact lines of defence, and the tedium only ever punctuated by a set-piece, break or mistake.

The hope is that Sunday's Derby d'Italia will be different. Inter are in fine form at the moment and Lautaro Martinez is scoring goals for fun (more than Chiesa, Vlahovic and Arkadiusz Milik combined, in fact) but when the two teams last met, in the Coppa Italia in April, boredom reigned supreme. "I hope whoever was transmitting it on international TV cut off the signal to save us embarrassment," former Italy international Daniel Adani told BoboTV.

Allegri didn't care, of course. He did what he felt he had to do to give his team a chance of beating a superior side. This weekend will be no different - because there is too much at stake in Turin.

Even though he's reluctant to say it, the Scudetto is a realistic target for his team. Juve, because of their UEFA ban, are unburdened by European football this season. Inter, by contrast, look set for another deep - and draining - run in the Champions League. Opportunity knocks, then, for Allegri, who will have a week to prepare for nearly every single game between now and the season's end, meaning ample time to work on - and recover from - tiring rearguard actions.

Of course, the paucity of their play suggests that they are incapable of maintaining their winning run. Their luck is likely to run out at some stage because of their lack of quality in midfield. However, Allegri is as decorated a coach as he is divisive because he has proven himself a specialist in spoiling.

Winning ugly is his forte, meaning the Derby d'Italia will probably be tense, tight and tough to watch. And if that doesn't sound much fun from a spectator's perspective, it's probably worth seeing if there's a circus in town on Sunday night instead...