Napoli has a relatively easier schedule, but at this point you can't make claims because of obvious reasons. They have been shaky lately, and they've shown to have real issues against mid-table/bottom teams. Their most difficult matches out of these remaining ones are next two; against Milan and Bologna, the rest are "easy" on paper.
Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? Two things anyway - one being that Napoli might have the easier remaining schedule (on paper; everything's on paper, it gets tiring always feeling the need to give this distinction), but we have the easier schedule for the next two weeks. I know we're not looking forward to the trip to the Dall'Ara and the associated trauma with late season games there, but if we're up to a 5-7 point lead by then, even a loss wouldn't be the end of the world. More importantly, if Napoli do drop points in those games while we (hopefully) take care of Udinese and Parma, we might just reach a point where Napoli will psychologically give up.
Here's a little thought exercise - in 2025, Napoli's played away to Fiorentina, Atalanta, Como, and Venezia, and home against Juventus and Udinese. How many points would people have expected them to get from those games? My guess is somewhere between 11-14. How many did they get? 11, but not in the way that would've been expected. The expectation would've likely been 7-9 points from the Como/Udinese/Venezia trio, and then five points from the three tougher games. Instead, they beat Viola and Atalanta away and Juventus at home and all of a sudden it looked like if they were winning those games against that level of opposition that we were going to have a real problem on our hands trying to get in front of them. The three other games really balanced the scales out, thankfully. Nobody expected 9/9 from the three tough games and 2/9 from the "lesser than" games. But that's football and why it's not played on paper.
As
@Jnr also points out, Napoli play after us in each of the next three weeks after the break. That's three chances for us to temporarily boost our lead before they play, three more chances to put the pressure on. It's always a benefit to play first, in my view. Just need to take care of our business and see where it takes us. We have tough games left but the nastiest part of our schedule is finally behind us and, through it all, we somehow came out better for it despite not winning any of the away games until the last of them.
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