Tough game, I'd say I was disappointed with how we faded in the second half , but this isn't fair n the effort the players put in. To put it in to perspective, Napoli are top of Serie A and beat Juventus recently, they were never going to cave in and almost created a scenario where scoring two goals at home would not have been enough for us. They didn't sit back and if we hadn't have made that lightening start we could have found it a very difficult game to get something from. At least that is what I am hoping, rather than fatigue is setting in.
A third for us would have made it much more comfortable, but maybe it isn't a bad thing for the team to be reminded that they have to fight for everything. But i still feel that the guys would have found another gear if needed, my concern is more that we could be exposed by an opponents game management at some point, especially in Europe. But not every game can be shooting practice.
Stones and Ederson were immense, which probably says a lot about what we had to do to win this one, but Jesus showed great strength and control to give us an outlet repeatedly.
Second one definitely a pen, first i thought at the time their player leaned back in to Walker and not seen it again since, but either way when you look at the overall key moments we created our own problems to a large extent, but have to accept that Napoli got into those position more frequently than many league teams ever will against us, so had more opportunity to make the ref make these decisions, and make us make decisions defensively. Maybe a Danilo type to freshen up the midfield would have worked, but trust Pep knows best and bringing on two midfielders who can keep the ball was his preferred option. It worked ultimately.
The return will be interesting.
