Lazio captain Ciro Immobile admitted relief after their 1-0 win against Cagliari.
Immobile struck the winner on the day.
He later said: "We have to win even like this. We know it wasn't our best performance, but we needed 3 points, the team deserved it and we needed this victory.
"I didn't like the warm-up, you can see we were tense. The performance in the Champions League reassured us, but with the championship the ghosts return. The whole team wanted the victory and to bring home the 3 points because we are behind and we want to recover in the standings.
"Maybe we were playing better with 11 against 11 than with numerical superiority. We were good, Provedel made a good save but it was also the only one."