AS Roma

This is what the defender had to say...

How important is tomorrow's game and how is Claudio Ranieri's playing system different to Ivan Juric's?

“Tomorrow's game is incredibly important for us. It's possibly our last chance if we want to finish in the top eight but we need points anyway to reach the next round and turn things around for our team and our club. It's a very difficult game but it's also a big chance. We're playing a very strong team but we can show we're able to play at a much higher level.

“The biggest difference for me as a defender is that we work more as a unit together, rather than covering man for man, although sometimes you defend man to man anyway. There are some similarities, but with Ranieri we prefer to defend more as a unit. I hope we can do that properly tomorrow.”

How many times have you found yourself in such a difficult dressing-room situation as this? What's the mood like? Against Napoli, despite the effort, the team seemed to be lacking a spark and looked a bit disjointed. Do you think there's been a change of gear?

“First of all, I can say that since I arrived here three months ago the team has been working really well on the training ground so I don't think that's a problem at all.

“Of course I've had some difficult times in my career. At Borussia Dortmund we were bottom after 19 games – that was a crazy season. You just have to work hard and believe in your qualities. You go through spells when things don't go smoothly and you have to work harder.

“We have the quality to be a lot better and I'm 100% convinced we can play much better and score a lot more goals. We have some very good attacking players so we have to put them in the right positions to let them shine. We work hard in training every day and I'm sure we'll get better over the coming weeks.”