Mourinho: “Llorente is fit to play”

Tomorrow you'll be playing a team who are in great form at the moment. 

“We're in decent form ourselves. We've won our last three games. Monza did well last season and they've brought in good players. They're an excellent side and it's going to be a tough match.”

How are Chris Smalling and Diego Llorente? What's been going on with Smalling in the last month?

“I'm not the best person to describe it to you in detail. What I understand from speaking to the medical department and the knowledge I have in these matters is it's an injury that causes pain and it's hard to work with pain. Lots of clubs use VAS to determine the level of pain and with many injuries a level 2, 3 or 4 means you have a big problem. In this case there's no risk of it worsening; it's a question of pain tolerance. Chris has overcome that now and trained on his own last week. Yesterday was his first day back with the team but he did low intensity work, mainly on tactics. He trained with us but he's not available for this game. Diego will be available. Renato [Sanches] and Lorenzo [Pellegrini] won't be, and nor will [Marash] Kumbulla and Tammy [Abraham] of course, but I'm very happy to have seen them on the pitch – it makes me more optimistic. [Paulo] Dybala won't be involved tomorrow.”

Will Llorente start tomorrow? When do you think Renato Sanches will be available again?

“Diego can play. He's fine. He's available for selection tomorrow. His workload over the last few days is similar to what's required in a match. Renato is not training with the team yet but I hope he will next week. He's training on the pitch but doing personalised work.”

The last time you played Monza there was some controversy. Raffaele Palladino described the way the Roma bench behaved as 'scandalous'. What's your view on such a harsh remark?  

“I don't want to stoop down to that level in this press conference.”

What do you think of Palladino from a technical point of view?

“I don't know him personally but when I don't know a player I know the team. Normally a team is the sum of their own potential and their coach's. Monza had an excellent season last year and are doing really well again, and that's no doubt because they have a good coach.”

Roma have the second best coefficient between goals scored and expected goals. Has your team become more clinical or is it thanks to Romelu Lukaku? Will Andrea Belotti play in support of Lukaku tomorrow?

“I find it quite hard to talk about this. It often happens that my team doesn't get what they deserve. We've scored some fabulous team goals and if we were another team with another coach, there would be reels and reels about us.

“We've improved our build-up play since last year. When we have everyone available and when we build play with all our most talented players together we play better. Lukaku is obviously a player who improves a team's stats. When you have a player like him scoring 20-25 goals a season, it obviously changes things.

“Anyway that's enough of comparing Belotti, who didn't score in Serie A last term and has already got three this year. Will Belotti play with Lukaku tomorrow? I won't answer that because I don't want to reveal my team but Paulo is obviously an important creative outlet for us and position-wise he's a more dynamic player, but we're well covered in that area with [Stephan] El Shaarawy, Belotti and [Sardar] Azmoun. We're well covered even without a key player like Paulo.”

A couple of Roma players have been linked to the betting investigation. Both they and the club have categorically denied any involvement. I wanted to ask you what difficulties there were in talking to the two players.

“I spoke to my players, not with anyone else, just my players. [Nicola] Zalewski and I smiled about it. I spoke to him first when he didn't even know what had been said exactly. Then we spoke with both of them. I'm happy to have spoken to them. Happy and calm.

“The only thing I find a little sad is that in Portugal there was a front-page headline that a player of Mourinho's was caught up in the betting. That sort of thing is big news. Then when people realise that it's not true, the real news is always a lot smaller.

“It's damaging for the players' reputation if they aren't guilty. I trust my players. We have the sort of relationship where they would tell me the truth, even if the truth was not good. They didn't and I trust them, and so does the club. The club doesn't often make official statements but did this time for these two players because we're all united and all calm.

“The situation with the others will be a legal matter. In that case, you have to wait and have faith in justice and if someone has made a mistake they pay for it, normally.”

At the start of the season you said Evan Ndicka would have to learn the team's way of defending. How is that going? Will he keep his place when Llorente and Smalling are available again?

“It's hard to say. In the last two weeks he hasn't learnt anything from us because he was on international duty and played two 90-minute matches. Ivory Coast are good team who play with a back four. And it's not a big deal – the opposite, in fact. It's all good for the learning process.

“He hasn't perfected it yet. He needs to learn other things but if [Gianluca] Mancini, [Rick] Karsdorp and other players who have been with us for two and a half years still make the wrong decision sometimes, it's only normal that a new arrival does. In any case, he's looked good in the last few games – and against Cagliari especially he was very tidy. When we have all our defenders available, we have five players, not forgetting that we're without Kumbulla for the moment. It's hard to say who will play or not play. With all the matches we have ahead of us, and if everyone is available, we can start thinking about rotating the squad. We're already in a better position than we were against Cagliari when we only had Ndicka, Mancini and [Bryan] Cristante as an emergency solution. Now we have Llorente as well.”

What do you think of Julen Guerrero's son, who's playing for Roma U19? You've handed first-team debuts to lots of youngsters.

“I think it's early. The boy only joined us a couple of months ago and has trained with us a few times. I know the ones who train with us all the time better. Last year there were others who sadly are no longer here. Now it's more [Riccardo] Pagano, [Niccolo] Pisilli and [Joao] Costa. You saw me there today but I'm always there. The reason for that is simple: I pay a lot of attention to those kids. It won't be any different with Guerrero's son. If he deserves to play for Roma, like with all the others, it will give us great pleasure to pick him and open the door to a different future. But right now I think it's still early.”