Mourinho: We fully deserved this latest win

Roma beat Sampdoria 1-0 on Monday night, returning to the top four in the Serie A standings.

Lorenzo Pellegrini scored the only goal of the game from the penalty spot, as the Giallorossi saw out the contest with comfort.

Here's what Jose Mourinho had to say to DAZN after the contest...

What is your assessment of this one?

“First and foremost, it’s a really important win – and I think one we deserved as well. I am very, very pleased because it is also clear to me that next season we will be back here to take on a team that I really like, coached by a man who is like a younger brother to me.

“A team like that, that plays like they do, united and spirited, is a side that won’t get relegated to Serie B. I’m very confident about that. For that reason I give a special hug to a special lad [Stankovic].

“As far as we go, it’s an important win – we’ve already played a lot of games this season and the most recent one was on Thursday. We’ve had injuries but we’ve also showed spirit, heart, organisation. It was a really smart performance from us.

“Maybe some will have a different assessment, but we are used to that: we beat Inter because ‘they were terrible’ and then they went to the Camp Nou and drew with Barcelona. We lost to Atalanta, a ‘clinical Atalanta’, who had just one shot on goal. Apparently it’s hard to give credit in some cases…

“But, with all the issues we’ve had, all the limitations on us, we are plotting our league campaign in the best way possible. Today, I think we deserved to win. Perhaps we could have done it without having to suffer as much, but still. When we got to the last 20 minutes I knew that adding Zaniolo would really hurt them. And that’s how it was. We just lacked that second goal to kill it off. But, nevertheless, those last 20 minutes were absolutely under our control. We earned the win.”

Is the Tammy Abraham-Andrea Belotti partnership something that could continue…

“But I was really pleased with Nicolo – he came on and did really well, with his speed and power he made a massive impact. With two tired defenders it was impossible for them to contain a fresh Nicolo. Both he and Belotti could have scored the goal to make it 2-0, which would have killed off the game.

“But the team were solid, organised, focused and they didn’t make any mistakes at the back. It’s a 1-0 win where Rui Patricio did not even have to make a save.”

We could see that your notebook, where you write down the things you don’t like, did not seem to have much in it tonight…

“It’s not just the things I didn’t like, but also the things I need to speak about during the half-time team talk. There are points about the match, also things that we’ve done well.”