Football

Arsenal will love this ALARMING admission from Napoli boss Carlo Ancelotti


Ancelotti takes his side to the Emirates for the first leg of their quarter-final tie on Thursday.

They warmed up for it with a disappointing stalemate against a side who were reduced to 10 men early on and are struggling towards the bottom of Serie A.

Their latest setback came just days after a 2-1 defeat by lowly Empoli and Ancelotti’s side have been accused of neglecting their domestic duties with the Arsenal game on the horizon.

While Ancelotti rubbished those claims, the Italian concedes his team need to improve dramatically or risk being out of the tie after the first leg.

“I don’t think the players were distracted, because we haven’t talked about Arsenal at all,” the former Chelsea boss said.

“We knew the difficulties we could run into in Empoli, although the difficulties we ran into tonight [Sunday] were a little more unexpected.

“We’re defending badly at the moment, even when it was 11 against 10, and that means we cannot control the game.

“If you control the game, you don’t allow counter-attacks, you don’t let the opposition to turn and run at you.

“It’s an alarm bell, certainly, because if we play like this in London, then we’re in trouble.

“It is unusual to see Napoli doing that, so we have four days to focus back on the basics, because these are basics we’re getting wrong.”

Arsenal go into the game on the back of a disappointing 1-0 defeat by Everton in a match they were lucky to lose by only one goal.

Unai Emery’s side showed their own fragilities in both attack and defence and the Gunners boss says he needs to find a solution.

“We need balance. In the first half we were good defensively but needed more offensively,” he said.

“In the second we were better offensively but not defensively. The match is demanding and the end result, we can’t change that.

“We know we needed to be strong and solid, and to be competitive.

“After the negative result after the first half we changed things defensively and it gave us better options for 45 minutes but we could not find a goal.

“If we scored than it would have changed the match but defensively we conceded more chances than what we were doing first half.”



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