Lautaro Martínez and the late swing that made this round look sharper than it was

The narrow-win habit held in places, then got mugged by the clock

This was a round that began with Fipster leaning hard towards control: low-scoring home wins, tidy margins, not much room for drama. One fixture obliged exactly as asked, several others stayed close enough for comfort, and then the late minutes started doing what late minutes do. AS Roma turned a 1-0 forecast into a 2-1 win over Atalanta, Inter were dragged into a five-goal scrap with Napoli, and Lazio nicked it at Udinese after the model had pointed the other way. The broad idea was not absurd. The execution was less obedient than hoped.

The cleanest hit came from Cagliari’s 1-0 win over Lecce

This was the one call that really earned its keep. Fipster had Cagliari down for a 1-0 home win, and that is exactly what arrived. No need for heroics or second-guessing: the model read the game as tight, low-event and decided by one moment rather than a rush of them. That is the sort of forecast that looks dull on paper and sensible in practice, which is usually how you know it was worth making.

The miss was Udinese against Lazio, where the wrong side of the margin mattered less than the wrong scorer list

Fipster backed Udinese to edge it 1-0, but Lazio took the points instead. The model over-weighted the home side’s narrow-win profile and under-read how quickly the game could turn once Jesper Karlström had put Udinese ahead. Davide Frattesi levelled it, then Albert Guðmundsson finished it off late enough to make the forecast look tidy only in retrospect. That is the awkward bit for any model: sometimes you are not just wrong on outcome, you are wrong on which team has the last word.

The players who actually moved things along were mostly not on Fipster’s pre-match list

The round’s loudest names came from outside the pre-match calls. Lautaro Martínez scored twice for Inter and was comfortably one of the week’s decisive figures; he was not among Fipster’s called scorers before kick-off. Antonio Raimondo did similar damage for Frosinone with two goals of his own, while Assane Diao turned Genoa against Como into his personal afternoon with a brace. Matteo Politano scored for Napoli in defeat, Hermoso rescued AS Roma with a late equaliser before Matías Soulé Malvano finished Atalanta off, and Albert Guðmundsson supplied Lazio’s winner after being introduced into a game that had already started to wobble.

That last point matters because it explains both sides of the ledger. Fipster did find useful structure in several scorelines — especially where matches stayed tight — but this round belonged to players who broke out of those neat boxes. The model had no called scorers in these fixtures, so every goal above arrived as an unforeseen name rather than a confirmed pick landing. That is why the round feels better than its record at first glance: four correct outcome calls still count for something, but they were often saved by timing rather than by player prediction.

Next week will tell us whether this was a brief wobble or a sign that Serie A’s early-season margins are already loosening up. For now, Fipster can keep Cagliari in its pocket and file away the rest as useful bruises. Better that than pretending every late winner was part of some grand design.