Perotti: We can't look for excuses, just ways to improve

Roma followed up a midweek defeat to Lazio in the Coppa Italia with another defeat to their nearest rivals in Serie A and Perotti - who provided the assist for Kevin Strootman's late goal - knows the poor form cannot be allowed to continue.

“Napoli played better than us, although we managed to pull one back through Kevin [Strootman] at the end and very nearly got an equaliser," Perotti noted. "Still, our goal is important because it means we're still ahead of Napoli on head-to-head results.

"It's a shame about the result today because we could have put daylight between us and Napoli if we'd won. Now we have to focus on doing better, look at what went wrong here and make sure we don't make the same mistakes again.

"We have another important match in the Europa League on Thursday.”

Roma seem to have lost their spark. How do you explain that?

“We're playing lots of games one after another and they've all been difficult ones: the derby, Inter, now Napoli. It's not easy to play every three or four days against teams like that. Having said that, we know we didn't play well today and we know we can and must do a lot better. In any case, we're still above Napoli in the table. We just need to move quickly on to the next one and get back to winning ways.”

Do you think losing the derby affected the team mentally?

“No, we lost a game that was important to us and our fans on Wednesday, just as today was. But we immediately forgot about the game against Lazio and had nothing but Napoli on our minds. Unfortunately, we didn't play well but we mustn't look for excuses. They were simply better than us out there today – that's why we lost.”