Lobotka goal ends Napoli losing streak

Good evening, Napoli supporters, this is Napoli Tonight for Sunday 13 September.

Napoli have their first home league win of the season. They beat Bologna one-nil at the Maradona this evening, Stanislav Lobotka scoring the only goal, in the sixty-sixth minute, for Napoli, against a Bologna side missing their suspended head coach, Domenico Tedesco, and four regular starters. It ends a run of three straight defeats, to Como, Inter and Arsenal, and it followed an unusual step from Allegri: the squad spent Saturday night in retreat at a hotel in Pozzuoli, outside Naples, rather than going home before the game. Alex Meret was recalled in goal after a week of doubts, Anguissa was out with a muscle strain, and McTominay was left out entirely, amid growing talk of a transfer.

One player carried extra scrutiny into the game: Matteo Politano. He's been a starter under three different head coaches now, Spalletti, Conte and Allegri, and undroppable throughout, but part of the fanbase have been asking why he keeps starting when he scores so little. His agent says the criticism has left him bitter. Our view: it's the wrong target. Before tonight, Napoli's defence had conceded seventy-six shots across those three defeats, twenty-five a game, including a club record four-point-oh-five expected goals conceded against Arsenal. That is a defensive problem, not a winger's finishing.

The build-up barely touched on the team news. Il Mattino led with only seventeen thousand tickets sold for a game Napoli needed to fill after three straight losses, while Tmw opened a contract question over Meret's renewal, on the very day he was back in goal. Both are real stories, but they looked past where tonight's answer actually had to come from: the pitch.

Head coach Allegri had called this game, and next Sunday's at Fiorentina, the two matches that could pull Napoli clear of the crisis before the international break. That's Napoli Tonight for tonight. Every story, in full, at arenarete dot com slash napoli slash e n. Back tomorrow evening at eight o'clock CET.