Luciano Spalletti admits the defeat to Juventus “bothers us” but Roma can’t “throw everything away” because of it.
The Giallorossi were defeated in Turin on Saturday night, a result which saw the Old Lady pull seven points clear at the top of Serie A.
“How have we reacted?” Spalletti considered in his Press conference ahead of the Chievo game.
“Very well, in the sense that when there are defeats that hurt, an objective analysis should be made afterward.
Luciano Spalletti admits the defeat to Juventus “bothers us” but Roma can’t “throw everything away” because of it.
The Giallorossi were defeated in Turin on Saturday night, a result which saw the Old Lady pull seven points clear at the top of Serie A.
“How have we reacted?” Spalletti considered in his Press conference ahead of the Chievo game.
“Very well, in the sense that when there are defeats that hurt, an objective analysis should be made afterward.
“Usually we’ll talk about things in the dressing room, in the gym, on the pitch and in video analysis. This time we just had the dressing room.
“We realised right away how to define this current situation, we can’t throw everything away in five minutes because of this defeat.
“The defeat bothers us, it leaves us three points further away from Juventus, but then there are other considerations which speak favourably of these lads.
“We have to keep our self-esteem in tact, they must have faith in what they’ve done and in what they can do. They’re working correctly.
“If you’d seen the team training yesterday you’d have seen the enthusiasm of the group, and the desire to transfer the bitterness from this defeat into a win against Chievo.”
Wojciech Szczesny suggested this week that the Lupi needed to be “men” on the pitch, how does Spalletti see it?
“At times we’ve shown something different than the value of our team. I could say that we were kids in Cagliari, those are points we shouldn’t have dropped.
“I can say we were kids at the end in Bergamo [against Atalanta], given how we started and what we showed. We didn’t follow that up in the second half.
“We shouldn’t have lost points in Cagliari and Bergamo, and we can’t drop points tomorrow night. Defeats against Juventus can happen, we lost in a dignified way because we showed a reaction in the second half.
“We did something more, we tried to press them high and suffocate them, though it’s clear that when you do that you’ll be unbalanced and taking more risks.”
The Coach caused a stir this week, when he appeared to admit in an interview with France Football than he could walk away at the end of the season.
“I spoke to a colleague 20 days ago who reported it well enough,” Spalletti sighed.
“I said the same things I’ve said here, it’s you who twisted it.
“In football that’s how it is, you have to win if you have a good team but you have to analyse things, you get to a certain point and see if the team is following you.
“For example, take things now: you get to December and you analyse the first six months of the year.
“In comparison with the best European teams, I think if you analyse the 36 games [since Spalletti’s return] we have 81 points.
“Compare that with Bayern [Munich], Tottenham, the two Manchester clubs, Arsenal, Napoli, PSG [Paris Saint-Germain] and Atletico Madrid, you’ll see we’re on par or perhaps even above.
“So there are the presuppositions to go on together, but you have to make your analysis. It’s clear that we’ve had some bad results, but in general we’ve worked correctly.
“When you get to the end of the year, you take stock, look at what you achieved and see where you can go. Where’s the scandal here?
“Since I haven’t won anything, I should get a five year contract. Is it better that way? Not for me, this way seems correct. I want to get results, just like you do when you write.
“Is that what you do, or do you want to take advantage of things for your own interests? I’d like to think that’s not the case.”