Serie A: Napoli maintain top spot after crushing Milan

Napoli have recorded five straight wins from their last five Serie A games to maintain their position on the summit of the log.

They become the league leaders temporarily after crushing action Milan 2-0 at the San Siro courtesy of two first-half goals from Romelu Lukaku and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.

This is a huge statement from a Conte side that suffered a 3-0 crushing in their first league game of the season, making  Paulo Fonseca face renewed pressure over controversial Milan decisions.

Due to severe weather warnings, Diavolo couldn’t play their league game against Bologna on Saturday. 

Having had Theo Hernandez and Tijjani Reijnders out due to card yellow bans, Fosesac had to deal with another headache. Christian Pulisic had flu, while Matteo Gabbia, Tammy Abraham, Luka Jovic, Alessandro Florenzi, and Ismael Bennacer were injured. He also dropped Rafael Leao for the second league game running.

Napoli came to Milan with almost their full squad, with only Stanislav Lobotka being replaced again by Billy Gilmour.

The visitors quickly settled into the tie as Lukaku accidentally charged down Amir Rrahmani’s effort after a quickly taken free kick.

They eventually broke the deadlock in the fifth minute. Rahmani found Andre Frank Zambo Anguissa, whose slide-rule pass released Lukaku through the middle before shrugging off Strahinja Pavlovic with great ease to sweep into the near bottom corner with the inside of the left boot to record his 100th Serie A goal contribution. The Belgian has scored 74 goals and assisted 26 in 137 games.

Milan had a chance to equalize when Yunus Musah hit a scorcher inches past the far post from just inside the area. Moments later, Alex Meret was called into action when got down to push a dangerous Samuel Chukwueze to strike out from the far bottom corner.

Milan continue their push for an equaliser forcing Napoli to commit an error from the back. But Meret was also quick off his line to stop Musah from making the most of the error while Matias Olivera stopped Musah from tapping in after the acrobatic Alvaro Morata back-heel flick.

A few moments after Matteo Politano drilled his shot wide of the near post following a Musah mistake, Napoli doubled their lead somewhat against the run of play on the stroke of half-time.

After gathering from the left, Kvaratskhelia cut inside past two Milan defenders and bent the powerful right-foot finish into the far bottom corner from outside the area to record a goal in his 100th match for Napoli.

Milan thought they had reduced the deficit straight after the restart, but the goal was chalked off for offside.

A cross from Chukwueze landed on the towering head of Morata, beating Meret at the far post, but VAR confirmed the Spain international was offside.

As Napoli got a reprieve, Milan continued the search for goals as Ruben Loftus-Cheek zipped a ball across the face of goal beyond both Morata and Noah Okafor.

After Lukaku fired the Matias Olivera pull-back over the bar, Scott McTominay turned wide from a promising position.

Napoli held on to nullify all Milan threats as they were on top of the league table.