Giampaolo expects Samp to show true colours against Udinese

Sampdoria will be looking for a much-improved performance when they host Udinese on Saturday evening, a week on from their unimpressive showing against Fiorentina.

While a point in Florence was by no means a bad result, Marco Giampaolo knows his side under-performed – but says he expects it to be a blip.

“We’ve moved on from last week’s game in Florence,” he said at a media conference on Friday. “We were below par and you get games like that sometimes – it happens to us as it does to other teams. I have nothing to blame my players for. They’ve trained really well this week, despite a few too many injuries. We have some problems but we’ll try to overcome them.”

The boss went on to analyse tomorrow’s opposition, who won the reverse fixture 1-0 with Julio Velazquez in charge but are now coached by Davide Nicola.

“Udinese got their campaign off to a really good start and were riding high for a while. Then they suffered a downturn in form and that led to a change in coach. We’ll be up against a really good side with strong and skilful players. It’s going to be a very difficult match.

“If we try to make a physical battle of it, we could end up losing the individual duels. We must be very clever and try to play our own football, while matching them physically and technically.”