FanView: Juventus Should Sack Allegri Before They Regret Giving Him Too Much Confidence

Juventus need a new manager as soon as possible.

This might understandably come as a surprise: the Italian giants are still fresh from celebrating their sixth consecutive Serie A title, are currently third in the league and remain in a strong position to win the Champions League.

However, the Old Lady's current situation is far from positive, and their apparent satisfying results may not last so long if Massimiliano Allegri remains in his job. 

No need to worry. These are not the words of a grumpy fan with personal resentment towards him, nor a Friday evening moment of lunacy: they rather are the inevitable result of an ordinary supporter's growing feeling of instability.

Allegri has been rightfully regarded as one of the best managers that Juventus have had in the past decade or so.

This year, he was shortlisted as FIFA Best Men's Coach and only lost to Real Madrid's Zinedine Zidane, who eventually defeated him at the awards night like he did in Cardiff in June, when Los Blancos beat Juventus in a glorious Champions League final. 

The former AC Milan coach has achieved a great deal since 2014 and generally more than his predecessors can say, namely three Serie A titles, three Italian Cups and one Super Cup.

However, compared to last year, Juventus have started out the new 2017/18 season with a few hiccups, losing twice to Lazio, winning with the minimum effort in many other league games and, in general, failing to show that impressive quality that had left Europe speechless in the past.

This disappointing beginning of the season also saw the Serie A winners shifting from having one of the best defences in the continent to conceding an incredible total of 18 goals in all competitions since August.

When such a great team create so many expectations and then perform below par, it is natural to point fingers against who could be considered responsible. If this was any other club in the world, the culprit would inevitably be the manager. However, this is Juventus and for them, there is no such thing as distrust towards the coach.

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The team's progressive lack of concentration, worsening performances and dangerously decreasing number of clean sheets are due to the absence of injured players, a very stressful calendar and, inevitably, to other teams' strong form.

But it's not just that. Juventus earned €110.4m thanks to their Champions League heroics last year and spent a good deal of such sum to recruit new players, including Douglas Costa, Federico Bernardeschi and Blaise Matuidi.

After three matches, none of them had yet debuted for Juventus, apart from the Brazilian winger who had played a maximum of 16 minutes. These facts reflect Allegri's attitude toward change and innovation, showing that his stubborn conservatism at Juventus might prove extremely costly if not changed soon. 

The most prominent example came in Juventus' home Champions League game against Sporting CP a few weeks ago. The Italians were stuck in a 1-1 tie against the Portuguese side, having conceded yet another goal in the opening twenty minutes, exhausted from relentlessly running through the flanks but unable to score.

In line with his tendency to wait until the last ten minutes of the match to make substitutions, Allegri eventually chose to swap Stefano Sturaro with Douglas Costa. The ex-Bayern Munich star took less than a minute to provide Mandzukic with the perfect assist for his equalising header.

The club should acknowledge that his time has come and let him go elsewhere where his strategic visions and technical style of playing are requested. But Juventus don't need that now. 

They require practice, humility and team play alongside a strong focus on defending, and Allegri is simply not the ideal manager right now.

But the issue with the Bianconeri is that they won't sack him until he causes major problems - as shown this summer when they chose him over Leonardo Bonucci. 

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The Italy and Milan left-back is thought to have left the Old Lady due to increasing and irreconcilable disagreements with Allegri himself, who, eventually, was favoured and given confidence by the club.

This means that axing him only a few months after the Bonucci case would throw Juventus into a massive internal crisis that could prove fatal.

But the reality is that keeping him onboard could prove even more fatal for the club, who are stuck with Allegri's obsolete playing techniques. All too often, they risk losing games because of his stubborn arrogance to be the best manager in the world.