Lucca's slump may be mental, says psychologist, as Napoli eye a loan

"For an athlete, the surrounding environment is a genuine amplifier of emotions." That is where the psychologist Monica Pignataro starts when she explains Lorenzo Lucca's form at Napoli, which has so far been disappointing.

The most concrete part of her analysis is about the change of setting. "Moving from a calm team to a big team is an enormous leap," Pignataro says, and she names three possible blocks.

The first is the feeling of "not deserving that place", the fear of not measuring up to more famous team-mates. The second is the fear that every lost ball could ruin everything, which "stiffens both the muscles and the mind". The third is losing old certainties: going from being a reference point to facing the bench, and starting again from zero. On performance anxiety she is blunt: under pressure, "clarity drops to zero".

The advice and the bigger picture

She has three practical rules. Switch off social media, which means to "put the phone on silent or stop reading the comments in difficult moments and in the days before the match". Listen only to the coach, team-mates and people you trust. Focus on what you can change, namely the effort in training.

Alongside that, she says, a sports psychologist should "dismantle rigid beliefs", starting with the idea of having to be perfect at all costs, and build a pre-match routine that shuts out the noise.

It is a serious reading and it deserves respect. As supporters, though, we cannot stop there. Lucca arrived from Udinese for €35m, and the club is already open to letting him go in January, almost certainly on loan. Yet Allegri said on the eve of the Monza game that he "will certainly get chances to play".

It is not clear how those two positions fit together. If the problem is partly mental, sending him elsewhere six months after paying that much looks more like an admission of error than a solution. Whoever built this squad will have to answer for that choice, not just the player for his state of mind.

"Moving from a calm team to a big team is an enormous leap"

Then there is the question that concerns us. Pignataro says a player's confidence becomes "extremely fragile" when he feels the fanbase judges his worth on goals alone.

Napoli are tenth with 11 points after eight matches, their worst start since 2009-10. Fans are right to criticise a team that concedes too many goals and sits too deep. But holding Allegri and the board to account is one thing. Dumping everything on a twenty-year-old, or near enough, who has yet to find his place is another. On that, we need to take a hard look at ourselves too.

The real issue is that Napoli need reliable strikers now, not in February. Højlund has scored 2 goals and has not found the net since Saturday 5 September, so nobody up front has a guaranteed place.

Monza v Napoli kicks off at 20:45 CET (19:45 UK, 15:45 ET) on Wednesday 28 October at the U-Power Stadium, with Landucci on the bench in place of the suspended Allegri. Juventus follow on Sunday 1 November.

Every minute Lucca gets between now and January will help show whether he was the wrong bet, or a bet that was badly managed.