Barella: "We're paying for certain mistakes. We need to improve"

“We’re certainly paying for some mistakes, apart from the free-kick goal, where Moreira did well. I’ve said it before: our approach to games hasn’t been good enough lately, to put it mildly. We need to improve. We can’t spend the whole season falling behind and then having to come back. That leaves you tired, and now we’re playing every three days. We’re taking every game down to the 90th minute, and sooner or later you pay for that. I’m not saying we were tired, and obviously we’re not looking for excuses, but our approach is something we need to work on. When they scored their third goal, we were enjoying a positive spell and Maignan made some great saves. I managed the situation incorrectly, which led to their third goal. These things happen, but at the moment, whenever we make a mistake, we’re punished for it. The derby is a game in its own right, regardless of the form we were in coming into it. We need to take a hard look at ourselves, because we tend to find our rhythm when we score. There have been derbies when we’ve played well without winning, and others when we’ve played badly and drawn. Our performances in these games have been inconsistent. We need to look each other in the eye and be honest. I think everything is magnified because it’s a derby, but ultimately it’s worth three points, just like any other game. Given the confidence and the run of results we had been enjoying, we should have done better. We were short on options today. Bonny had a fever, as did Pio during the week. Not having fresh attacking options on the bench may have influenced the coach. We tried something different, which perhaps took something away from our game. We struggled to get going and realised a little too late that players operating between the lines, such as Sucic and Diouf, could make the difference. We weren’t fully accustomed to playing in this formation, but regardless of the tactical set-up, attitude matters more than positioning. Today we had the chance to make a real statement, but we fell short. It wasn’t easy to create chances in the second half. AC Milan are a strong team defensively too. We could have tried more shots from distance, but we weren’t able to do that.”

“I’m disappointed because we conceded two goals early, and this is an important game for us and our fans. We need to focus on Tuesday’s match. We want to win, and we’ll prepare well to get a good result. You can go behind and come back, but AC Milan are a very good team. We need to tighten things up to stop conceding so many goals. Once we do that, we’ll certainly be in a much better position. Today was a tough game, and mindset can also decide matches like these”