Earlier this month at Augusta National a familiar line was trotted out – that the Masters does not really start until the back nine on Sunday. How Cesena must hope the same applies to Serie B.

Having spent just five weeks outside the top eight this season, the Seahorses find themselves ninth in the table as the campaign resumes following the prolonged Easter break in the wake of Pope Francis’ death.

Winless in their past five outings, Cesena have scored only four goals over that period due to a combination of injuries and alarming profligacy in the final third.

Top goalscorer Cristian Shpendi ended a four-month drought two weeks ago, while Antonino La Gumina and Flavio Russo have finally returned to full fitness.

“With the strikers out, it was always going to be tricky to have much attacking punch, but you can still win games with a set-piece, a lucky break, or a shot from miles out, so we can’t use their absence as an excuse,” Cesena manager Michele Mignani said last week.

Against that backdrop, Sassuolo’s visit to the Dino Manuzzi on Friday night can hardly inspire optimism. The runaway league leaders have already clinched promotion back to Serie A and have by far the best attack in the division with 73 goals scored in 33 games, at a rate of over 2.2 per 90 minutes.

Could they take their foot off the gas after securing a return to calcio’s upper echelon at the first time of asking? The feeling is that Fabio Grosso’s men are determined to finish the season on a high.

They coasted to promotion with five games left, a performance bettered only by Benevento, who secured their return to Serie A with seven matches to spare in the 2019-20 season, a Serie B record.

The Giallorossi finished top of the table with 86 points and an 18-point gap to second-placed Crotone after winning 26 games and losing just four, scoring 67 times in the process.

Sassuolo could finish on 90 points, and need four more wins from their remaining five games to beat Benevento’s tally. They have already scored six more goals than Gli Stregoni did under Filippo Inzaghi five seasons ago.

So, bet on the Neroverdi slowing down at your peril.

But while Cesena face the best in the division and find themselves outside the play-off spots for the first time since the beginning of February, a sense of perspective is required.

With 44 points, they are three points clear of Modena, remain level with eighth-placed Bari and are only one point adrift of seventh-placed Palermo. Considering the Galletti and the Rosanero have made inconsistency their calling card this season, the race for the play-offs is far from over.

Cesena head to Mantova and Cosenza over the next two weeks with a crucial home fixture against Palermo in between, before a trip to Modena on the final day of the season.

Hopes of a second consecutive promotion have not been extinguished just yet.

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