Ranieri: 'Roma doing all we can'

By Football Italia staff

Claudio Ranieri insists Roma are “doing everything we can” to turn this disastrous season around after a 4-1 home defeat to Napoli.

“We are trying to do everything, to be honest. It’s an odd time, we conceded the first goal at the first attempt. We managed to equalise and I’m not even sure how,” the Coach told Sky Sport Italia.

“After the restart, again straight away we went behind again. It’s hard to help the team, the others run faster, harder and we are doing all that we can.

“The players told me they haven’t had as much fitness training this season, as they had so many injuries and there was no consistency. They had a packed schedule and couldn’t train, just play or recuperate.

“I am trying to get them to train, but it’s not easy. Then we had Nicolò Zaniolo, who is in great shape at the moment, but had a stomach bug on Friday and told me he wasn’t in condition to start today.

“It was tough, as Napoli swarm around you, change position constantly and make it very difficult to defend against.”

Did Ranieri expect Roma to be in such bad shape when he accepted the caretaker role after Eusebio Di Francesco’s dismissal?

“Watching from the outside, you do get some ideas. It’s different from the inside, but you still try to fix what we can. This team has quality, but when you suffer certain defeats and can’t get back on your feet, or players like Daniele De Rossi, Kostas Manolas, Aleksandar Kolarov and Edin Dzeko who are not at 100 per cent, we do what we can. Unfortunately, this is the situation.

“The fact these players were struggling physically and still wanted to play, to contribute to the cause, was positive. They are not abandoning ship, so we must all try to push the ship into harbour.

“Do I regret it? Never! I could never regret accepting a call from Roma.”

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