The Stadio Artemio Franchi has known plenty of anxious afternoons, but few as bleak as this. Frosinone arrived as visitors and left as raiders, carving Fiorentina apart with a ruthlessness that turned an early-season fixture into an examination of nerve. By the final whistle the scoreboard read 0-3, and it flattered the hosts not one bit.

This was a performance of two moods and only one direction. Antonio Raimondo struck twice, Gabriele Bracaglia headed the second and later turned provider, and Frosinone's clinical edge in front of goal exposed everything fragile about a Fiorentina side still searching for a foothold. The home crowd, restless from the first misplaced pass, drifted towards silence as the goals mounted.

Two matches into the campaign, Fiorentina have nothing to show but a growing list of concerns. They sit 20th, pointless, having conceded seven goals already and scored none of their own. For a club of their stature and expectation, the picture could scarcely be starker. Frosinone, by contrast, walked away with their first win and a spring in their step.

Raimondo sets the tone

The first blow landed on 26 minutes, and it carried the crisp certainty of a side that believed. Giorgi Kvernadze worked the ball down the left and picked out Raimondo lurking inside the six-yard box, and the striker needed no second invitation. A left-footed finish across the goalkeeper found the bottom-left corner, and Frosinone were ahead.

It was the kind of goal that ought to have jolted Fiorentina into life. Instead it seemed to loosen their grip. The visitors grew in confidence with every passing minute, pressing higher, moving quicker, sensing that the hosts had no answer to their tempo or their appetite.

Raimondo's opener set a pattern that Fiorentina never managed to break. Frosinone attacked with intent, defended their lead with discipline, and refused to let the occasion shrink them. For a side away from home against opponents with far grander ambitions, it was a statement of composure.

Bracaglia doubles up

If the first goal wounded, the second cut deeper still. On 38 minutes Frosinone won a corner, and from Giacomo Calo's delivery the ball was worked into a cross that Bracaglia met with a header from the centre of the box. It flew low into the bottom-right corner, and the Franchi's mood curdled into open frustration.

Two goals down before half-time, Fiorentina trudged off to a chorus of discontent. Their defending from set pieces had been alarmingly passive, and their attacking play carried none of the conviction that Frosinone brought to everything they did. The interval offered a chance to regroup, but the deficit already felt heavier than the scoreline suggested.

Whatever was said in the home dressing room, it changed nothing. Frosinone emerged for the second half with the same clarity of purpose, content to let Fiorentina come at them before striking on the counter. The visitors looked the more likely to score again, and so it proved.

The third arrives

The killer blow came on 68 minutes, and it was Raimondo again who applied it. This time Bracaglia turned architect, threading a through ball that released the striker on the right side of the box. Raimondo took a touch and lashed a left-footed finish into the top-left corner, a strike of genuine quality to seal his brace and his afternoon.

Three-nil, and the contest was long since over. Raimondo's second was the goal of a forward brimming with belief, the kind of finish that separates a good day from a great one. Frosinone had turned a promising start into a rout, and the travelling faithful savoured every moment.

For Fiorentina there was nowhere to hide. The final half-hour played out to the sound of the exits emptying, supporters unwilling to endure any more of a display that offered so little to cling to. The whistle, when it came, was almost a mercy.

Reckoning ahead

The numbers make grim reading in Florence. Two games, two defeats, no goals scored and seven conceded. Fiorentina sit 20th, bottom of Serie A, and the early-season malaise threatens to harden into something more troubling if answers are not found quickly. A club of this ambition cannot afford to let such rot take hold.

There is time, of course, to correct the course, but the manner of this defeat demands honesty. The defensive frailty, the absence of a cutting edge, the way the fight drained from the side once behind — all of it points to work that cannot wait. The Franchi will expect a response, and it will need to come soon.

Frosinone, meanwhile, will travel home delighted. Three points, three goals, and a first win of the season lift them to 11th, a healthy return from an afternoon that few would have predicted before kick-off. Raimondo and Bracaglia have given their side a platform, and belief of this kind can carry a team a long way.

For now the tables tell contrasting stories. One club climbs into the comfort of mid-table with a spring restored; the other stares at the bottom of the division wondering how it came to this. Fiorentina must respond, and quickly, before a difficult start becomes a season-defining crisis.