Romelu Lukaku, formerly of Roma, struck the only goal of the game for Napoli.
“If we look back, we have some problems and that is why I was called. We were up against a team that is fighting to win the Scudetto,” Ranieri told Sky Italia.
“Having said all of that, I am happy with the performance from my players. We made some mistakes that we will talk about during the week, but the hunger, the determination to get back on track was there. We have a lot of work to do, but I feel positive.
“The objective was to keep more of the ball, which we did in the second half, and we also prevented Napoli creating so many chances with the diagonal runs. We saw that at times Lukaku was followed by two of our defenders, leaving Kvaratskhelia unmarked. He missed one chance when totally unmarked in the first minute, then fortunately El Shaarawy managed to go across and cover.
“I thought this way we could be more solid and try to get a foothold in the game.”
He also said: “They need the right character to help themselves and then others. Naturally, when I arrived, the team was a little closed up, but I think we started to open up a bit by the second half. We had that header with Dovbyk and the Baldanzi chance too.
“We know there is work to be done, we have to focus on reacting rather than sitting there feeling sorry for ourselves.”
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