Santiago Castro

Um, but anyway, the thing that I think was most sort of impressive or reassuring for Roma was that when they made changes in this game, there was a level of physicality that they brought off the bench that, like, really helped them keep Torino at bay and kind of not allow it to just become a situation where they're really clinging on to a one-nil lead.

Because Santiago Castro comes on for Daniel Marlon, and obviously he wants to come on and score goals, but that wasn't really the situation.

What, what he needed to do was disrupt their defenders as much as possible and, and the midfielders, and he's, he's a very busy guy, and he's a strong guy, and he likes to tackle.

He is that sort of striker as well as being a good striker.

I'm gonna kind of avoid this question in that we know what Martin de Roon is gonna bring to this Roma team, and it's gonna be massively beneficial for them to have him there because he's an excellent player.

Manu Kone not going to Chelsea at the end of the transfer deadline is so good for Roma that it, it almost doesn't even warrant mentioning because it's just so obvious that any listener will be just thinking that I'm an idiot for even m- needing to say it.

Santiago Castro is someone that I've loved for as long as he's been in Italy as well because basically for all of the reasons except for scoring, and he can score, but I, I love him for all of the other stuff that he does, like the dirty side of being a forward.

But I, I wanna ask you Burnsy about Roma because Marlon scores the opener, again obviously, um, a really ugly goal if you don't mind me saying.

We're suddenly a fast team.

And Santi Castro came on as well pretty early in the game.

And it showed why Roma wanted him so badly.

I thought he was very, very good as well.

Cause he's very, very aggressive.

And despite scoring five goals already, Gasp was not afraid to take him off.

And I don't know if it was workload management with Champions League around the corner, or did Gasp just see something in the game that required Castro? So Gasparini did say that it is an option going forward to use Castro and Mullen together, which I think would be interesting to see, depending on the type of game and if Dybala is fit, if he can go play in the hole.

There's different looks we can have.

But I went from that kind of frustration you often get here at the Olympico to resignation, I think.

And it probably came when Santiago Castro hit the woodwork for the second time.

And then you're probably thinking at that stage, this just isn't our night, is it? It's just not going to happen.

I think everyone's been in that position at some point or another, watching their team.

But funnily enough, the goal came just after one of Karaseki's best moments, his double save.

it was the resulting corner where they just left Hermoso alone and like I described had that weird contact on his header it seemed to kind of hit the top of his head and fall into the net but yeah Roma got there they really got there and they do have firepower that's the thing it's not just that the team is playing much more Gasparini style football they definitely are it's scary to see at times it is kind of wave after wave and they have so many different ways of pulling you apart and stressing your defence but it's the transfer business over the summer has just really improved the depth and I think that's the difference that you saw tonight for the first time this season really because hammering Fiorentina and Lecce you don't see the benefit of the squad depth as much as you do in a game like this where Malin struggling to have the impact he had in the other games.

You bring on Castro and, okay, he didn't score, but he did really liven things up.

Like I say, he was very unlucky, not just sinking the post a couple of times, but had a couple of other really good chances too.