Spalletti satisfied by depleted side's show of resolve

Roma coach Luciano Spalletti believes his side showed they are "on the right track" during Thursday's victory over Austria Wien, showing resolve to win despite the club's ongoing injury difficulties.

Spalletti opted to deploy Daniele De Rossi in defence as injuries elsewhere left him with limited options, but a 4-2 win (thanks in part to another Edin Dzeko brace) leaves the Giallorossi firmly in control of their European destiny.

That was a great win, but it’s a shame that you conceded from your first lapse in concentration…

“It was a really quick move from them down the right to make it 1-0. They have some good wide players. Our defence did very well tonight. As I’ve said, their first goal stemmed from a good move and the second came when the game was all but over. That said, we don’t want to be conceding those goals – you could see we’d eased off a bit. That’s annoying and rightly so. We need to make sure we don’t concede those goals.”

What were the biggest positives from the match?

“The fact that we showed we’re able to react to developments and the way we started the game in the right manner, regardless of the goal we conceded. I think we showed real improvement in terms of our character, the way we calmly went about playing the match and securing the result. I’m delighted with that.”

There seems to be a real togetherness about this Roma team.

“That’s right. We’re becoming more of a team. The attitude and desire is improving, but not just from those that have it in their nature. The whole squad has made progress in that regard and that’s exactly what I wanted to see.

"We were short on numbers today because of the absentees – we were without [Federico] Fazio too, but what were we going to do? We had to win the game and we did so by making sure our mentality was spot on. Daniele [De Rossi] had a good game, but the yellow card clipped his wings a bit. He did well over the 90 minutes.”

Would you say that Roma’s European performances are improving?

“Yes, definitely. It’s part of the general improvement that I’ve been talking about. Unfortunately, there are always things for us to improve on – we shouldn’t have conceded the second goal because it showed that we had already taken our foot off the gas and were overly relaxed for that move. We should have tried to find [Juan] Iturbe more to give us that outlet. We’re definitely on the right track, but I won’t go so far as to say that we’re completely there yet.”