Napoli, Gattuso: 'We hope to sign Lobotka and after that we're done in the market'
- Apollo Heyes
"We had a good match, especially in the first half. In the second half we dropped our level a bit physically. We need to improve. What we're doing isn't enough. Lozano had a good game, he needs to find consistency. I'm satisfied with the first half, but in the second half we made a lot of mistakes. There's something to review.”
The 42-year-old Italian coach refused to believe that Napoli’s upcoming game against Fiorentina distracted them in the second half today.
"No, I don't think so. I’ll take this opportunity to clarify something. These days there's a lot of controversy about Ancelotti. Ancelotti was a football father to me. We changed the way we play, we do different things, the methodology is different. I never said we've hit rock bottom. I've heard newspapers and websites say that I deny what Ancelotti did, that before it was Ancelotti's fault. Instead we only changed our working methods, I didn't offend anyone. We are not able to express ourselves to the maximum now, because there are two different ways of running in 4-3-3 and 4-4-2. And my working methodology is very different from Carlo's. It's a matter of respect, you have to be decent people. I'm also ready to answer 'yes' and 'no' to all the questions until the end of the year. If you use what you say every time... We must have fairness, but so must those who work in public opinion.”
Gattuso then spoke about the debut of 28-year-old German midfielder Diego Demme, who joined from RB Leipzig last week.
“He was captain of Leipzig for 4-5 years, he's strong, he knows football. Today he moved too far forward and left a hole in front of the defence at least 4-5 times, but he's been training with us for two days and he's new. We took him to clean up the game, he makes the team look good. If we get him into condition, he can do a lot.”
The former AC Milan coach discussed what he expects on the transfer market now.
"From the transfer market nothing. We hope to get Lobotka and then I think we'll do nothing else. We have to improve, the team has to get back together and think again. We have to think about climbing up, not giving men away. That's why I say this.”
Gattuso touched on what he expects in Napoli’s upcoming two games against Fiorentina and Juventus.
"I expect us to improve physically, mentally and to be able to give some consistency to the game. Both against Inter and Lazio we’ll be having a good game and then we'll get into trouble on our own.”
Finally, Gattuso spoke about some specific players in the squad.
"Mertens will arrive tonight and we hope to have him available for next week. Koulibaly, we would like to have him playing all the time, but I can't risk him too much and send him on the pitch now. Everything has to be clean on a medical level. We don't know when he'll be back yet, we have to wait for the edema to go away from the muscle. The five to six weeks scheduled for his return will be met. Ghoulam will be back in training next week almost at full capacity.”
Napoli are currently 11th in the league after 19 games, sitting on 24 points. The club have only won one of their last five league games, drawing one and losing the other three. The club’s form in the Champions League, however, is much better and the side are in the knockout stages of the competition.
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