Giampaolo: “We’re not doing the sums, we just need points”

After the 2-0 defeat away to Lazio, Marco Giampaolo gave his view on his team’s display. “It was a very good performance. Before conceding the opener, we had a couple of decent chances. We conceded one goal from a free kick and the other from losing the ball when one of our defenders brought the ball out. We held firm as a team and played the sort of game that we needed. We tried to be compact and limit the gaps. We kept ourselves in the contest and did well despite the quality that Lazio have, which is higher than ours. There was a difference in quality on the pitch.”

Giampaolo was keen to look at the positives compared with recent performances: “If you look at the recent past, we played better tonight both in and out of possession. We were also braver. The result didn’t go our way, but we did adopt a serious approach.”

Bravery is certainly one of the key attributes that will be needed between now and the end of the season. “We aren’t doing the sums. I already said last Saturday that we’d still need some more points. We’ll give our all to get something out of the last two games. We’re not calling on anything or anyone else. We want to clinch safety.”