Juventus 'Hitting Top Form' Insists Massimiliano Allegri After Old Lady Cruise to Bologna Win

Juventus manager Massimiliano Allegri paid tribute to the progress made by his side after they moved up to second in Serie A courtesy of Sunday's 3-0 win at Bologna.

Goals from Miralem Pjanic, Mario Mandzukic and a first in a Juventus shirt for Blaise Matuidi saw the defending champions move to within a point of league leaders Napoli.

Speaking after the match to the Juventus website, Allegri said: "The perfect Juve doesn’t exist – Juve just need to be solid and win football matches. We’re achieving that because the whole squad is ready to work hard. We’re improving and slowly but surely we’re hitting top form."

The Juve boss added that he was pleased at the way his team had learnt from failing to kill off games earlier in the season leading to Juve dropping points, revealing: 

"We’ve made a lot of progress. When we went 2-0 up at Atalanta after 25 minutes we just stopped playing, we took our foot off the gas against Lazio at home after a good 50 minutes, then at Sampdoria we stopped playing after a decent first half – we needed to learn from those games."

Allegri also faced questions about striker Paulo Dybala, who has failed to score in his last six appearances in all competitions and has started the last two matches from the bench. Allegri however is impressed with the Argentinean's performances, claiming: 

"He looked good when he came on and is doing well in training, I made the decision to leave him out, but up until recently he’d played every game. 

"He’s an extraordinary player but he can still improve a lot and he needs to make sure he doesn’t just focus on goals, because his job is to chip in with lots of assists as well as goals."

Dybala came on with fifteen minutes remaining at Bologna in place of Mario Mandzukic after the Croatian limped off having landed awkwardly while jumping for a header, and Allegri revealed that the Croat suffered "cut to the calf" and will be monitored moving forward.