Ranieri prepares for ´beautiful match´

Roma manager Claudio Ranieri believes most Serie A fans will be behind them when they tackle league-leaders AC Milan on Saturday.

The sixth-placed Romans travel to the San Siro to try and cut their deficit on Milan to seven points, and Ranieri said his side will attempt to thwart the potent Milan line-up.

“It will be a beautiful match. AC Milan has changed a lot under Allegri,” Ranieri said.

“The team is aggressive, puts pressure on and tries to finish games off as soon as they can. They deserve to be top of the table. We’ll try to stop them and part of Italy will be supporting us.”

“If we’re the team that scored the biggest number of goals in the calendar year, this means that the guys worked very well. I always compare it to last year’s second round.”

“We’re not satisfied this year since we had different expectations: we wanted to do more, but are not making it. Of course we don’t give up, we try hard and will improve all those things we’re not making in the right way.”

Ranieri insisted the match was not season-defining for his side, with sufficient fixtures remaining in the new year to catch the Serie A leaders if they do not get a positive result on Saturday.

“No, this is not the last chance, but it’s an important match for us,” he said.

“I always say that everyone achieves what they deserve to achieve. If we have a 10-point gap from top of the league, that means we deserve this position and we haven’t been able to repeat the same performances we made last year, or at least in the second part of last year’s championship.”

“Therefore we know we should work harder. This represents a boost which encourages us to play better in 2011 compared to 2010.”