Kvaratskhelia Hurt in a Trying Time for Napoli Attack | OneFootball

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia sprained his knee during the recent clash between Napoli and Lazio. He has been diagnosed with a low-grade MCL sprain. The injury will sideline him for the next game, then it’ll depend on how things evolve and his pain tolerance, Gianluca Di Marzio reports.

The blow adds to the difficulties of the Azzurri frontline, which were highlighted by the recent faux pas. While still collecting a couple of wins, the Partenopei haven’t scored more than once in the past five fixtures.

They have notched just 21 goals, which is worse than all the teams near them in the standings, La Gazzetta dello Sport points out. Atalanta lead the league with 38, while Inter have bagged 34. Even Juventus and Milan have done better with 24.

Napoli hadn’t produced this little after 15 rounds since 2009/2010. Romelu Lukaku has been okay, finding the target five times and coming up clutch in a pair of games. However, he’s no longer the force he was under Antonio Conte at Inter. The boss addressed the issue.

He’ll have to turn to David Neres, Cyril Ngonge, and Giacomo Raspadori to substitute for his star.

Our Take on Napoli

They need to kick it into high gear more often, especially without Kvara.  Perhaps going back to a 4-2-3-1 with Scott McTominay in the hole rather than a 4-3-3 would help. Still, it’s not yet time to sound off the alarms. They have had issues only in crunch matches, while their formula has worked in other games.