Four Things We Learned: Dzeko roars again at the San Paolo

Di Francesco delighted with the character shown

Having seen his team crumble once faced with adversity too often this season, in his pre-match comments coach Eusebio Di Francesco said he was keen to see a response from his boys when they went behind in future.

So when Lorenzo Insigne gave Napoli the lead in just the sixth minute, he was afforded an immediate opportunity to see how his side would respond. To his delight, Roma replied immediately and subsequently went onto produce an outstanding, spirited performance to defeat the current Serie A front-runners 4-2.

"We worked really hard on the mental side of our game this week," Di Francesco said. "People said we'd run out of energy and ideas but we showed we're a team today. It's vital that we kick on from here now.

“We performed brilliantly against a side who play very good football. We went toe to toe with them and maintained our level throughout the 90 minutes, which is something we often haven't been able to do lately. Today we showed that we're strong physically, that we have an identity, ideas and a mentality. It annoys me that I have to rediscover that today. But I can't not be happy tonight.”

Moreover, the victory importantly sees Roma move into third as Lazio lost to Juventus, on what could only be described as a brilliant evening all round away from home.

Dzeko back to his best

Having been heavily criticised recently, Edin Dzeko produced a stunning retort to his doubters by putting in a superb shift, on his way to bagging a wonderfully well taken brace.

In a display that encompassed so many of his most endearing attributes, the Bosnian combined power and finesse beautifully, linking up play slickly, finding space shrewdly, defending manfully and using his towering frame to great effect.

His two goals offered terrific examples of his skillset, both in the air and on the ground, with his first goal coming from his crafty positioning, excellently timed leap and execution.

And his second arriving after his evasive dribbling saw him gain enough separation from his markers to create room for him to lash home a sublimely placed finish, despite being in an unfavourable 3v1 scenario.

First phase defensive structure

Whenever Maurizio Sarri's men attempted to pass out from the back in customarily well structured fashion, the Giallorossi came out with a sound strategy to prevent them from finding their groove.

Firstly, to combat Napoli's centre-backs, who'd split to the edges of the 18-yard-box, Di Francesco would instruct his wingers to mark them. Dzeko would then take Jorginho while being ready to press keeper Pepe Reina, and crucially keep Jorginho in his cover shadow when doing so.

Daniele De Rossi would usually take Allan, Radja Nainggolan would be on Piotr Zielinski and the fullbacks would be ready to press their opposite number if they anticipated they'd be a pass recipient.

Kevin Strootman would take up an intriguing position as he'd be ready to harass Jorginho if he received, but also ready to give Roma a numerical superiority in midfield on the regular occasions Napoli were forced into a long ball forward.

Horizontally and vertically compact block

As soon as Napoli approached the final third, their collective movement, understanding with one another and super fast combination play make them so hard to stop. But Roma did an admirable job here, for their vertically and horizontally compact 4-5-1 defensive block covered the extremely difficult to defend spaces in between the lines, successfully compressing the room their opposition had to work within.

Although this left inherent spaces out wide, this stopping organisation worked well for the most part, as Roma deserved credit for demonstrating such immense concentration, dedication and awareness in limiting one of the most fluent frontlines in world football.