Around Europe: Once favourites, Inter Milan are now famished in Serie A

Ian Hawkey focuses on the goals-drought at Inter Milan that has diminished their scudetto hopes ahead of a Sunday clash in the Milan derby.

Inter Milan forward Mauro Icardi reacts during his teams Serie A match against Carpi last weekend. Daniel Dal Zennaro / EPA / January 24, 2016

The figure that mattered to Roberto Mancini was not so much the fee, but the number of recent goals that the player had netted.

Eder, the Brazil-born Italy international striker who is finalising the details and medical tests for his move from Sampdoria to Inter Milan, has, Mancini pointed out, scored a dozen in Serie A this season.

For that, the former league-leaders were ready to offer €13 million (Dh52.1m) for a player who will turn 30 later this year.

Inter’s need for more goals has become a yearning.

They began the year on the top of the league table, probably the favourites to win the scudetto at one match short of the halfway stage of the campaign, albeit that the virtues Mancini had apparently prioritised were those of defensive resistance and ruggedness, rather than extravagance in attack.

Read more: Ian Hawkey on Napoli riding upstart Maurizio Sarri to the top of Serie A

But in the last four weeks, a palpable slump has taken place on the pitch that was the catalyst for Mancini and Inter moving to the transfer market to find a solution.

Inter have taken just five points from their last five league games, and will go into Sunday night's city derby against AC Milan on the back of a heavy 3-0 loss to Juventus, one of the clubs who have leapfrogged them in the race for the scudetto, in the Coppa Italia in midweek.

Eder’s arrival may be the boost they need to compensate for damaged morale.

“He should turn out to be very useful,” said Mancini, anticipating the confirmation of the striker’s signature, and possible availability even for the collision with a less-than-vintage AC Milan.

“He is an adaptable player, who combines well with others and gives us characteristics which we don’t have elsewhere. And he has scored 12 goals.”

That figure already puts him ahead of Mauro Icardi, Inter’s top predator this season, who has eight.

It makes Eder three times more prolific than Stevan Jovetic, who began the season very lively but may now doubt what future he has with Mancini.

Bologna were showing interest in taking on the former Fiorentina player, who is on loan from Manchester City at Inter, with three days still left open of the winter transfer window.

Adem Ljajic, who like Jovetic, joined last summer to add a new dynamic to Inter’s attack, has scored just twice in his 18 league appearances.

While Inter’s back four, their excellent goalkeeper Samir Handanovic, and a midfield that sometimes features a trio of players whose primary qualities are in the recuperation and recovery of possession – Gary Medel, or ‘Pitbull’ as he is sometimes known, the teak-tough Felipe Melo and Geoffrey Kondogbia – were maintaining the tightest ship in Italy, the relative parsimony up front seemed a surmountable handicap.

But then the leaks sprung up. The Inter who had conceded just nine goals in their first 16 matches of the campaign have now conceded five in their last five, a run that includes the home defeats against Lazio and Sassuolo.

The brutal fact is that they now look conspicuous in the pack of clubs chasing the main prize in Serie A not for leading that pack but for being the least potent force among the candidates for the scudetto come the end of the season.

Napoli's Gonzalo Higuain, who has contributed 20 goals so far to the current table-toppers, has only six fewer this term than Inter's entire squad.

Mancini needed the veteran Rodrigo Palacio to register a rare goal to scrape a point from Empoli last weekend and his team go into this weekend fourth in the table, outside the Uefa Champions League qualifying zone.

Icardi, the captain, has not scored in his last three outings and admitted: “As a team we are having a difficult time, and I am too.”

One consolation, however, for Inter.

It is not yet as difficult a time as that of Sunday’s opponents. Milan lie eight points beneath Inter in sixth spot.

Forgotten man

Victor Valdes has had a difficult past 20 months. When he announced that he would leave Barcelona – the club he had been associated with all his adult life, and for much of his growing-up at their fabled La Masia academy – in early 2013, supporters prepared anxiously for life without the totemic figure of their successful, inspiring goalkeeper. He meanwhile looked forward to fresh challenges.

He was due to be out of contract that summer and planned a lucrative free-transfer move to AS Monaco, who at the time were recruiting ambitiously. Valdes was 31, close to peak performance time for a keeper. Then in March 2013 he ruptured a ligament, and his projected recovery schedule alarmed the French Ligue 1 club who had plotted to sign him. The Monaco deal never materialised, and his Barca contract expired.

He was in limbo, but was offered the chance to continue his career at a high level when Louis van Gaal, with whom he had worked at Barcelona in 2002-03, let him first train with Manchester United and offered him an 18-month deal, last January, as understudy to David de Gea. They then fell out, as they had 12 years earlier at Barca. Valdes had made just two Premier League appearances when Van Gaal announced he had no further plans to use Valdes.

The Belgian league has few players on its cast-list who have won a World Cup and a European championship – albeit as a reserve – and starred in three winning Uefa Champions League finals, as Valdes did with Barcelona. But Standard Liege certainly hope he will raise their standards, from their seventh spot in the Jupiler league table. Valdes hopes his spell there will springboard him back towards the game’s elite, starting against Oud-Heverlee Leuven on Saturday.

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