Atalanta beat bottom club Venezia 3-1 despite late red card

Atalanta needed less than six minutes to put this one to bed. Franck Kessié opened the scoring in the 4th minute, finished off by Nikola Krstovic with a header two minutes later, and Krstovic struck again just before the half-hour to make it 3-0 against a Venezia side that arrived at the Gewiss Stadium without a single point from five league games. Antoine Hainaut's header pulled one back for the visitors before half-time, but the damage was already done, and Atalanta saw out the win even after Eljif Elmas was sent off late on.

Krstovic does the damage

Kessié broke the deadlock in the 4th minute, converting a Krstovic assist from close range, and Krstovic turned provider into scorer two minutes later, heading in a cross from Eljif Elmas for 2-0. The Montenegro striker was not finished: he added his second of the afternoon in the 30th minute to make it 3-0, a result that would have been even more comfortable had Venezia not responded through Antoine Hainaut, who headed in a Richie Sagrado cross in the 37th minute to make it 3-1 at the break.

The second half had little more to offer in terms of goals, but it did produce a flashpoint: Elmas, so influential in the build-up to the first two goals, was shown a straight red card in the 89th minute, leaving Atalanta to play the closing stages with ten men. It did not matter. Venezia, who had lost all five of their previous league matches, never looked capable of completing the comeback.

Atalanta lined up in a 4-2-3-1, with Kessié and Éderson screening the back four and Krstovic the furthest forward of an attacking trio behind him. Venezia set up in a 3-5-2, with Juan Jesus and Matías Moreno at the heart of the back three that could not keep Atalanta out early on.

The numbers tell an unusual story for a 3-1 scoreline: Venezia had almost two-thirds of the possession and completed 250 more passes than Atalanta, but it was the home side who were clinical in front of goal, scoring three times from eleven shots on target to Venezia's one from four. Matías Moreno and Juan Jesus were both booked for Venezia either side of half-time, while Atalanta picked up no cautions at all before Elmas's red card.

Two very different runs of form

Atalanta had won their first two league games of the season before losing three in a row — to Roma, Cagliari and Juventus — heading into this one. That run of defeats stopped here, and in emphatic fashion. Venezia's picture is bleaker: five straight league defeats, including losses to Lecce, AC Milan, Frosinone, Fiorentina and Lazio, have left them the only team in Serie A yet to collect a point this season. The two clubs had never met in a Guriball-reported fixture before this one, so there is no archived head-to-head to draw on.

What it means in the table

The win pulls Atalanta up to 10th in Serie A with 9 points from six games, level on points with Sassuolo and just behind Frosinone's 10. Venezia stay bottom of the table on 0 points from six matches, still without a win, a draw or so much as a goal difference in credit, 9 goals worse off than the next-placed side. Atalanta's next task is to keep building on a result that ended a three-game losing run; Venezia's is simply to find the first point of their season.