Casa Pia slump to 17th with -13 goal difference

Casa Pia sit 17th in Primeira Liga with 4 points from 7 matches. One win, one draw, five defeats. The goal difference reads -13: 3 scored, 16 conceded.

That is the worst defensive record in the division by a distance. No other side in the bottom half has shipped anything close to 16.

The last outing offered a rare positive. Casa Pia won 2-1 at Estoril Praia on Sunday 20 September, their first victory of the campaign after a run of LLDLW. It arrived on matchday 7, and it lifted them off the foot of the table.

Now Casa Pia on Saturday 10 October. Matchday 8. A home fixture against a side sitting fourth on 15 points with a goal difference of +7 is not the obvious place to build momentum. But Casa Pia have to start somewhere.

Can one win change a season? Usually not. But 1W is at least something to hold on to.

The wider table shows the scale of the task. Porto lead on 21 points with a goal difference of +15. SL Benfica are second on 16, also +15. Sporting CP sit third on 15, Santa Clara fourth on the same points. At the other end, Casa Pia have four.

Scoring is the deeper problem. 3 goals in 7 matches is a rate of roughly one every two games, and no player at the club features among the division's leading scorers — that list is headed by Vangelis Pavlidis of SL Benfica on 8, ahead of Luis Suárez on 6 and Georgios Koutsias on 5.

Seventeen goals conceded across seven matches works out at more than two per game. Fix that, and Casa Pia have a chance. Fail to, and matchday 7 will not be the last time this column mentions the bottom three.