Ranieri: “My players believed till the end”

The first win of his tenure, the first away victory of the season, the first clean sheet on the road and Caprari’s memorable first goal of the campaign. On an evening of firsts, there are certainly plenty of reasons to be pleased, but Claudio Ranieri does not want to get carried away just yet. “I’ll only be over the moon when we’re out of the danger zone. It was a tough game this evening and we knew about SPAL’s strengths. They made life difficult for us in the first half down the right. In the second half, we didn’t start as we’d wanted and they were dangerous, but we had more efforts on goal. A draw would’ve been a fair result, but the boys kept believing till the end and that’s how we scored late on, just as we did against Lecce.”

Ranieri’s coaching philosophy is certainly clear: “I couldn’t be hard on these players because they would’ve collapsed. They were playing well last year, albeit with three other key players, so I needed to restore their confidence. If we keep moving forward like this, we’ll get ourselves out of this situation. This is a message to the whole squad: I need everyone.” With so many options up front and just two places, the boss said, “I opted for two strikers instead of just one. That’s why I didn’t start Gaston Ramirez, even though he played well against Lecce. I enjoyed Gabbiadini and Bonazzoli’s performances. As for Quagliarella, he had a small knock and this was our third game in a short space of time. I think highly of Caprari. Now it’s a case of striking the right balance in the team, not conceding goals and hoping we get it right.”