Inter head coach Simone Inzaghi has it all to do if he is to get his team back on its feet following yesterday evening’s damaging loss away to Lazio in Serie A.

This according to today’s print edition of Milan-based newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport, whoa argue that the coach must very quickly reverse course and comprehensively bring their level up with things only set to become more difficult for them in the coming weeks.

Inter had started off their season well enough with wins over Lecce and Spezia in their opening two Serie A matches, although the sense was that these were fixtures in which it would not have been hard for the cracks that had appeared in preseason to have been papered over.

The coach clearly felt that something novel was needed against Lazio as he relied on the physicality of Roberto Gagliardini in the 28-year-old’s first start of the season, but the gambit did not work.

Whether the unexpected selection of Gagliardini was the problem in and of itself, or whether it points to some flaw in the Plan A and normal starting lineup that Inzaghi had tried and failed to cover up by relying on the former Atalanta midfielder, there’s little question that the 46-year-old will be left with work to do to cure what ails his team.

Inter face Cremonese at the San Siro next week in what will be, on paper, not the hardest test for Inzaghi and his players, but then they are right back in it with back-to-back fixtures against AC Milan in Serie A and then Bayern Munich in the Champions League.

These two matches will come within the space of a few days and promise to be a stern test of the Nerazzurri’s capabilities, and more specifically, of the viability of Inzaghi’s approach when faced with adversity.

The coach was out-thought by his Lazio counterpart Maurizio Sarri yesterday evening, with the Biancocelesti boss getting the best out of what he had available to him both with his starting eleven and his substitutions.

Inzaghi, meanwhile, still seems to be wrestling with the problems of a team that lacked compactness in preseason, with the loss of Ivan Perisic without the arrival of a real replacement, and with the problem of fitting a returning Romelu Lukaku into his tactical schemes in attack.

There is time for the coach to emerge with a solution before the next major challenges are placed in front of him, but not much, and the pressure will be on him now that the extent of the work he has to do has been laid bare on a miserable trip back to the Stadio Olimpico.