After Monday's disappointing defeat to Venezia, Raffaele Palladino urged his team to keep pushing in the final two games of the season as "anything can happen" in the race to qualify for European football.

“Missing important players like [Moise] Kean, [Danilo] Cataldi and [Albert] Gudmundsson obviously has an impact but I never look for excuses. Today it was about trying to recover our energy, especially our mental strength, because getting knocked out of the Conference League on Thursday was a massive blow. We worked hard trying to restore confidence and I think we came into this game in a pretty good way. The guys gave their all till the end. The substitutes injected energy. Last Thursday I got a little angry with our subs but today they did well.

“Today's match turned in a few moments. The first goal should have been disallowed for handball. Everyone saw it. It's a shame because it's a serious error. I'm not looking for excuses here either but of course it had an impact on the game.

“At 1-0 down we fought back and attacked. We hit the woodwork and from the rebound we conceded the second goal. Luck wasn't on our side. We have to accept it. We gave it our all but it wasn't enough. 

“Obviously we're very disappointed but we mustn't give up. We have two games left and we can take advantage of other teams dropping points, as we did today. We have to believe because anything can happen. That's why I'm telling everyone, myself included, not to let up in these last two games.”