Fiorentina 4-1 Frosinone: Fiorentina convincingly defeat Frosinone, return to the top of the table

Like the match against Hellas Verona, Fiorentina was faced with a must win situation against more potential relegation fodder. Frosinone's first ever season in Serie A has been slightly better than Hellas' year so far, but only just. Paulo Sousa used this match to rotate, giving Mario Suarez, Matias Fernandez, and Ante Rebic opportunities to show they deserve more playing time, and those three made sure to show Sousa they can be trusted.

Rebic opened up the scoring with an attempted cross that instead bounced off the corner of the goal creating a bizarre deflection. The goal may have been lucky, but Rebic was a workhorse, almost scoring again soon after.

Less than five minutes later, Gonzalo Rodriguez redirected a Mati freekick with a back heel flick to make it 2-0. Frosinone responded by melting down. Mobido Diakite tripped Mati in the box, and Khouma Babacar confidently made it 3-0, scoring on a panenka.

Suarez made it 4-0 after intercepting a pass from Raman Chibsah and running through the defense. It was a nice goal from a player who hasn't had many opportunities to show his skill so far this season. This ended 45 minutes of Fiorentina domination against a side that, while weak, had yet to concede more than 2 goals per game.

The second half was mostly a victory lap as Paulo Sousa gave playing time to Joan Verdu, Giuseppe Rossi, and 70 minutes in gave goalkeeper Luca Lezzerini his debut. Unfortunately Lezzerini was unable to complete the clean sheet, as Samuele Longo too advantage of a lack of focus from Fiorentina to create a chance that enabled captain Alessandro Frara to score the consolation goal.

Although not ideal to lose the clean sheet, it's hard to blame la Viola for losing focus with a 4 goal lead. Fiorentina still ended the match with statistical domination, with 73% possession and 31 attempts on goal (9 on target). Mati Fernandez had easily his best game of the season, terrorizing the Frosinone defense all match and directly creating 2 of the goals.

With Napoli drawing at Genoa, Fiorentina is back in first place with 24 points, tied with Inter and one point ahead of Roma. The 4 goals today means Fiorentina has scored 22 for the season, more than anyone except Roma (25), and with 9 goals conceded (third behind Inter and Napoli), remains tied with Napoli for the best goal differential in Serie A.

Although Fiorentina failed it's biggest test of the year so far with back to back losses against rival scudetto contenders(!) Roma and Napoli, we continue to convincingly win the so called 'must win' matches. This is surely a good as no team in the league has proven to be anything close to flawless so far.

Fiorentina travels to Poland next for a Europa League match against Lech Poznan, which will be vital in order to progress beyond the group stages.