Napoli's senators promised hunger. Five games on, still no sign

Napoli are ninth in Serie A on 7 points from five games: two wins, one draw, two defeats. On Sunday 20 September, the draw at Fiorentina showed the same film again. High possession, chances created, and the sense that something precise is missing to take the points home. The question doing the rounds this week is simple and uncomfortable: where did the hunger go?

The squad is strong and complete as it is.

The transfer window still closed with a net spend of around -€47.5m: in came Badiashile from Chelsea and Lucca from Udinese, out went Kvaratskhelia, who left for Paris Saint-Germain. It wasn't inactivity, but nor was it the kind of business a club used to finishing near the top might have expected after coming second.

That choice was also propped up by reassurances from the dressing room. The senior players had promised they wanted to leave behind the strain of two exhausting seasons and were ready to go again with the same hunger for wins as always. Five games in, that promise remains just that. The team produces football; it doesn't turn it into results.

The word used to describe this moment, poison, isn't picked at random. It's the same word Antonio Conte used in May to explain leaving the club after finishing second, when he accused an environment full of infighting and of "failures" spreading poison around. Under Allegri the problem looks reversed: there isn't too much poison, what's missing is precisely the nastiness that removing that tension was supposed to leave room for.

The Fiorentina game confirmed it. Gilmour put Napoli ahead in the 23rd minute, and Napoli moved the ball around for long spells after the break, but wasted chances left the door open for Jiménez to equalise in the 51st. Afterwards, Allegri didn't mince words: he asked for more anger in attack, because possession alone isn't enough if shots don't become goals.

Here the responsibility splits clearly. The club chose to trust the word of its most experienced players instead of strengthening a squad coming off second place and a heavy European exit. The senior players, for their part, haven't yet backed up that word on the pitch. Nineteen days remain before Napoli host Frosinone at the Maradona on Saturday 10 October: time to turn the summer's promises into something visible in the table, before ninth place stops being a blip and becomes a verdict.