“We faced a really good Atalanta side today. We should have done better in the first 25 minutes but improved after the equaliser and played well. This is our sixth win in seven games; we need to continue in this fashion and start off in the same way in January. Edin is a fantastic player who always helps the team in both attack and defence. He’s a real asset and is now also finding the net on a regular basis.
We had 34 points after 15 games last season, whereas this year our tally is 30. This campaign is going in a different direction due to the run Napoli are on. We’ve paid the price for the early setbacks we suffered, and now we have to continue at this pace.
We’ve improved lately but are still shipping goals. Today, we conceded a penalty that we shouldn’t have given away, and then we let in another from a corner due to poor marking; they were two avoidable goals. Usually, we start much better, but this can also be put down to Atalanta’s approach: they went man-to-man all over the pitch. We moved the ball slowly at the beginning, but then we improved.
250 matches as a coach in Serie A? Let’s hope that there are more important milestones to come.”