Billed as D-Day by Roma fans, they weren’t about to miss it. They left work or rolled up their beach towels, got behind the wheel of their cars and fired up their motorini. Destination: Fiumicino airport. Alitalia had tweeted that Edin Dzeko was on a plane from Amsterdam. By the time it touched down in the Eternal City, there were as many as three thousand supporters outside Terminal 1. Like the temperatures outside on a balmy day in August, the enthusiasm soared. 

“We’re going to win the Tricolor,” they sang. One held up a banner. “L’Amore è Dzeko” a play on the saying “Love is Blind.” The exits were blocked and in order to get the Bosnia international out, Roma’s welcoming committee had to go through Terminal 5 instead. The crowds were too big and even then they had to wade through a sea of people to reach their transport. Sirens wailed. Dzeko, now wearing a scarf that had been draped around his neck, required a police escort at least until the motorway. 

Meanwhile Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany was tweeting his Belgium international teammate Radja Nainggolan “to look after him.” Nainggolan replied: “Already [at] dinner. [He’s] in good hands.” Miralem Pjanic was also round the table. They really should call him the salesman. One imagines Pjanic being on the charm offensive during every international break with Bosnia, selling the club and the city to Dzeko. 

The hope was that he would be to this team what Gabriel Batistuta had been to Roma 15 years earlier; the 20-goal striker capable of ending a long wait for the Scudetto. Upon arriving, Dzeko couldn’t have made a better first impression either. Days after joining the club, he scored with pretty much his first touch in a friendly with Sevilla. By the end of the night, he’d put another one away and “looked after” Nainggolan by setting him up too.  A 6-4 win had fans believing this could finally be Roma’s year.

“He’s a top player,” Francesco Totti said. “Formidable in front of goal. He can help us do better than last season.” A 1-1 draw on the opening day in Verona was something of a reality check but when Dzeko got the winner against Juventus in Roma’s first competitive game at the Olimpico of the campaign, everyone got carried away. The inmates at Rome’s Regina Coeli prison celebrated as if they had been released. Nainggolan tweeted “Ooooppppsssssss!!!!” with emoticons in tears of laughter. 

Snap judgements once again decided Roma had got the better of Juventus in the transfer market: The received wisdom was that Dzeko was a smarter buy than Mario Mandzukic just as Ashley Cole was thought to be a shrewder pick up than Patrice Evra a year earlier. You’ll recall how that deal came in the same window Roma ‘beat’ Juventus to the signing of Juan Manuel Iturbe amid all the confusion that followed Antonio Conte’s resignation, which was supposed to be another hinge on which the balance of power would swing…  Both cases perhaps should have made the media more cautious and more measured before rushing to conclusions about their respective transfer campaigns. 

Roma, however, had seen enough to be satisfied with Dzeko. Rather than wait until the end of the season to make his move from City permanent, Roma brought it forward in October as they did with Mo Salah and Iago Falque. Great things were expected of him but after after meeting them initially, Dzeko has underwhelmed. His goal against Juventus at the end of August was his first and last from open play in the league. Since then he has played more than 18 hours in Serie A and his only other goals were penalties - one for an incident outside the box - against Lazio in the Rome derby and another in the rain in Bologna. 

Unfortunately for Dzeko, even those have been eclipsed by the one he missed in a shootout as Roma were eliminated from the Coppa Italia by second division Spezia. It’s now almost two months since he last got on the scoresheet in any competition and that was a forgettable consolation goal in the 6-1 defeat to Barcelona. His conversion rate when Serie A resumed after Christmas was 2%. 

Downplaying Dzeko’s struggles before he got the sack, Rudi Garcia said: “Batistuta didn’t score much either before the winter break in his first season. Then he finished it with 20 goals.” On the contrary, Batistuta had got on the scoresheet 13 times by this stage of his maiden year in the capital. 

Now there are mitigating circumstances to help us understand Dzeko’s problems. Let’s not forget he’s operating in a different country and culture. He’s got new teammates to adapt to and Roma’s wingers like to go it alone. Gervinho and Salah have 11 goals between them but only one assist. They take too many touches and play with their heads down. 

Their selfishness contrasts with Dzeko’s altruism. He comes short, makes space for them. They bounce off him. His teammates probably hadn’t figured him out yet either. At 6’3 the temptation is to put the ball on his head. But of Dzeko’s 119 league goals in club football only 25 have been headers. He likes the ball to feet. The development of any understanding between him and his teammates was interrupted by an injury Dzeko suffered against Carpi. That knocked him off his stride. It checked his momentum. 

Nor is it easy to play well when the team itself is underperforming and that’s been the case really ever since the 2-2 draw with Bologna. His confidence is understandably low. Posting on Instagram on Monday, Dzeko wrote: “You have to fight through the bad days in order to earn the best days,” In this unforgiving age of social media, the mockery has begun in earnest. Memes have appeared suggesting Dzeko is actually Mario Gomez in disguise. He is now being called Cieco rather than Dzeko because he has lost all sight of goal. For the uninitiated, Cieco translates as Blind in Italia. 

The situation calls to mind when Inter bought the European Cup winning striker Darko Pancev from Red Star Belgrade in 1992. Nicknamed the Cobra, it wasn’t long before the Curva Nord took to sarcastically referring to him as the Grass Snake. Another Inter buy of that era, Dennis Bergkamp suffered a similar fate. Bought in response to the success of Marco van Basten, the Swan of Utrecht, at Milan, he flopped and became known as the Cold Turkey instead. 

A long held suspicion with Dzeko - cited in briefings one of the reasons why Juventus favoured Mandzukic to him - is that he is “too nice”, too much of a gentle giant. He doesn’t have the nasty side some of the deadliest finishers display and with it the ruthlessness to kill games. Since leaving Wolfsburg five years ago, Dzeko has scored more than 20 goals in all competitions ‘just’ once. Mandzukic has done it three years running and, after a slow start at Juventus conditioned by injury, now has nine goals in Bianconero, six of which have come in his last eight appearances. 

Make no mistake, it’s too early to write off Dzeko. Way, way too early. In their 2016 forecast, the analytics and consultancy firm 21st Club, wrote that they anticipate his form for Roma will turn around. They believe his current conversion rate is “unsustainable given the quality of chances he’s getting, and is likely to improve to around 11% over the rest of the season.” Can new coach Luciano Spalletti spark Dzeko into life? “If you would have asked me which centre-forward I would like [to buy], I would have said: ‘Dzeko’,” he said at his unveiling. 

“We’ve got to help him,” Spalletti added after Sunday’s draw with Verona. Up next - and on a 10-game winning streak - are Juventus in Turin. It feels like a lifetime ago now since Roma beat them and Dzeko scored, holding off Giorgio Chiellini to nod a goal past Gigi Buffon. How dearly both the player and Roma would like to get that feeling back on Sunday night.