Napoli's attack faltered once more as they suffered a 2-0 defeat to Bologna at Stadio Renato Dall'Ara in Serie A.

Thijs Dallinga and Jhon Lucumi both scored in the second half for the hosts, sending them fifth in the table, with Napoli dropping to second.

Bologna were forced into a change of goalkeeper in the eighth minute, with Massimo Pessina replacing the injured Lukasz Skorupski to make his senior debut.

And he made the first save of the match, getting low to hold onto Eljif Elmas' curler after a pacey Napoli counter-attack, but Bologna grew into the contest, with Dallinga's long-range strike needing to be palmed away by Vanja Milinkovic-Savic.

It took the hosts just five second-half minutes to break the deadlock; Nicolo Cambiaso raced down the left before pulling it back from the byline, and Dallinga's deft flick at the near post took it past the goalkeeper.

Riccardo Orsolini saw a tight-angled volley punched away by Milenkovic-Savic, but Lucumi met Emil Holm's cross to guide a header into the bottom-right corner.

Napoli offered little in terms of a fightback as they failed to score for the third consecutive game in all competitions, and fell to a third league defeat of the season.

Elsewhere, Atalanta suffered a second consecutive Serie A defeat, going down 3-0 to Sassuolo, while bottom-of-the-table Fiorentina were held to a 2-2 draw with Genoa, as Paolo Vanoli and Daniele De Rossi took charge of their first games at their new clubs.

Data Debrief: Napoli's struggles in front of goal go on

It is the first time that Napoli have failed to score in three consecutive matches since a run of four in all competitions between December 2023 and January 2024.

In fact, they ended a Serie A match with fewer than five total shots for the first time since February 2021 against Atalanta (also four).

Only one of Napoli's attempts were on target as they accumulated 0.26 expected goals (xG). Bologna, by contrast, finished with 0.94 xG from 11 shots (four on target).

Bologna are enjoying their best start to a Serie A season in the three-points-for-a-win era (21 points in 11 games), and have won six of their opening 11 games for the first time since 1996-97.