Verona are clawing their way back up the table with a precious victory over Salernitana, sealed by Cyril Ngonge’s second goal in as many starts.
This was a relegation dogfight with Hellas in the bottom three and Salernitana only two spots above them, albeit seven points clear. The injury crisis continued with Marco Davide Faraoni, Thomas Henry, Miguel Veloso, Milan Djuric and Ajdin Hrustic still out of action, so Adolfo Gaich got his first start. The visitors missed Giulio Maggiore, Pasquale Mazzocchi and Federico Fazio, but surprisingly dropped Guillermo Ochoa.
Verona simply had to score on 22 minutes when Ondrej Duda saw the first shot charged down, but he was greedy and insisted on taking the second too when his teammates were better placed, turning it wide.
There was another close call with Gaich firing slightly off target, then the ball did go into the net with Ngonge’s deflected strike at the near post, but he was already in an offside position.
Verona finally managed to break the deadlock when Darko Lazovic sprung the offside trap down the left and whipped a cross to the back post for an acrobatic Ngonge volley. It was the January signing’s second goal in as many Serie A starts.
Fabio Depaoli fired over from a promising position, but Salernitana did have a chance on the stroke of half-time when Boulaye Dia flashed an angled drive across the face of goal.
Just as Salernitana were starting to push for an equaliser, Josh Doig burst into the box and was tackled by Lorenzo Pirola. The referee pointed to the spot, but the VAR images were clear that Pirola made a sensational challenge.
Duda fired straight at Luigi Sepe and Junior Sambia almost propelled Lorenzo Montipò back into his own net with a rocket of a free kick from distance.
Domagoj Bradaric and William Troost-Ekong bravely threw themselves in the path of a dangerous Lazovic cross to prevent the tap-in from seven yards.
Sepe also needed a few attempts to get the Lazovic strike under control and got one hand to a Duda effort set up by Kevin Lasagna.
Verona continued to waste chances and were almost caught out in the final minutes by Krzysztof Piatek, but Montipò made a fantastic fingertip save one-on-one.
Dia also curled wide in stoppages for Salernitana.
Verona 1-0 Salernitana
Ngonge 31 (V)
You can check the full line-ups, substitutions and statistics from Verona-Salernitana here.