Ahead of Udinese's match against Roma, Kosta Runjaic held a press conference. This is what the boss had to say:
Roma and form
“We'll be up against an in-form team tomorrow. Roma are playing some fantastic football and will be in contention for the title. We played well against them last season and we can learn a lot from those games. They're tricky opponents. We must be properly committed in all the duels and play with intensity. We're not on a hiding to nothing but we know we're going to need a huge performance. We took a step forward at Parma and picked up an important point from a psychological perspective. It was a solid performance, although we weren't able to win it. Now we must continue in that vein and try to get another result tomorrow by performing well.”
Attacking play
“It's not good that we're not turning our chances into goals. We haven't scored in recent games but not because we haven't created anything. We must do better in that but first of all we must keep a clean sheet. We're aware of the situation and we're working hard. [Keinan] Davis and [Nicolo] Zaniolo are key players for us. In another situation we'd have managed their return from injury differently but as it is we need them. They're irreplaceable. They can cause problems for opponents even if they're not 100%. We caught glimpses of their importance at Parma and tomorrow they'll be keen to play well.”
Strategy
“We'll play three at the back tomorrow. We need to start the game well and finish it well. We gave away an early goal against Milan and it's hard to come back. Tomorrow we must switched on from the first to the last minute, play our football and try to cause problems for Roma. We know they play man for man and they're very physical. We need to be able to dig in and then do our bit.”
Chakvetadze
“Giorgi is a versatile player who can play in the hole or as a box-to-box midfielder. He's confident on the ball, he's dynamic and he has good vision. He played well against Parma. I put him in midfield because I couldn't start [Jakub] Piotrowski. We'll make a few changes to the last game but not many. We have two decisive matches before the international break and we must put everything we have into them.”
Treatment room
“[Oumar] Solet, [Vakoun] Bayo, [Alessandro] Zanoli and [David] Alaba are unavailable. Solet and Bayo have trained partly with the team and if all goes well we could have them back for Venezia. [Nicolo] Bertola is not injured. On Wednesday he was just tired after a solid performance.
“Since returning from Parma we've focused on recovery and the team is in good shape. In different circumstances we'd have been more cautious with returning players but we need our key contributors. Tomorrow we'll fight for every ball. The players will have the right energy and the right intensity for the battle that awaits.”
Opponents
“Roma have a well-established style of play. They haven't changed much since last season and we know what Gasperini's teams are like. They're complete and have lots of quality. We'll have less of the ball than we did against Parma but we'll try to put into practice the things we've worked on.”