Following the match lost to Cremonese, Kosta Runjaic and Jesper Karlstrom held a press conference and discussed the game against Cremonese.
Runjaic: “I’m very disappointed and angry. The entire team are not happy with our performance. We had a different idea of what was going to happen. We thought we’d play well and celebrate a win in our final home match. Instead, we failed to pick up even a single point. But one mustn’t judge an entire season based on one game. We have 50 points, but we can’t only look at the games we’ve won against the top four teams of the league. We’ll take stock of everything once the season is over. We don’t have the consistency that’s needed to score even more points, even though our overall result is good.
“Today’s match was unusual. We lacked the right intensity and energy in the first few minutes. In the first half, we didn’t have a single shot on target. It was a terrible performance. We don’t want to play like that at home. We didn’t have [Nicolo] Zaniolo and [Keinan] Davis wasn’t in top form, so we tried to make some adjustments. [Juan David] Arizala is young and he was in the starting line-up. We gave [Abdoulaye] Camara some playing time and [Jordan] Zemura also returned to action.
“We must always reach our limit and have the right level of tension because there is a very thin line separating good and bad results. You risk a lot with teams fighting at the bottom of the table such as Cremonese. We shouldn’t have conceded that kind of goal.
“I must thank our fans for the way they welcomed us at the stadium and for their support throughout the season. They deserve much better than even eighth or seventh place. Now we have to regain energy and try to finish the season as well as we can in Naples with at least one point. After that game, we’ll go over this season’s statistics.
“We didn’t work well together tonight. We weren’t ruthless enough and didn’t press them with enough energy. We conceded a goal and the match got complicated. Cremonese defended well and gave it their all until the very last second. I tried to shake up the players in the first half, as did the captain, as that is his responsibility."
Karlstrom: “We did not play well in the first half. In the second half, we did a bit better, but it wasn’t enough. We’re disappointed. Our fans deserve better than this. We’re sorry we let them down.
“Attacking Cremonese was hard because they sat deep. We lacked that extra something in the final third. We know that we’ve had a good season, but right now I’m disappointed about tonight’s result. We can talk about the season some other time.
“Cremonese played a good game and made things hard for us. They were very focused and their goal at the start of the match complicated the game for us. However, we didn’t lose because of that goal. We must play better.
“Before that goal, I thought we had the right level of concentration. We didn’t play well. We were often second to second balls, but we didn’t run less or fight less hard than in other games. Our fans fired us up before kick-off. It’s hard to explain this performance.”