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Napoli squad for Atalanta includes Britos, leaves out Michu

Miguel Britos has been declared fit to start, but Michu is being left in Naples for undisclosed reasons. So he's probably hurt, too.

Maurizio Lagana

As Rafa Benitez and Napoli prepare to face Atalanta for the second of their three "win or else" matches, there's a mixed bag of news as far as the squad goes.

Miguel Britos, who was only available on an emergency basis on Sunday, has been declared fit to start tomorrow. Unfortunately for our sanity means that he probably will, even though Faouzi Ghoulam's mediocre day against Hellas Verona was better than anything Britos has done this season. Still, with Camilo Zuniga out for awhile, having a fake fullback is better than not having one.

In midfield, Michu has been held out of the matchday squad for undisclosed reasons. While it's entirely possible that Rafa just decided that Michu has been in too poor of form to even sit the bench, based on this season's pattern it's far more likely that he's injured and the club just doesn't want to talk about it yet.

On the plus side, Michu being out opened up a spot for Josip Radosevic on the bench. Not that he's going to play (what a waste...), but hey, it's something.

How Rafa approaches this match as far as rotation goes will be interesting to see. As previously noted, he's got a "win or you're fired" ultimatum hanging over his head, but with just two days' rest after the last match, a fair bit of rotation just makes sense for the players, especially with a far tougher match this weekend against Roma.

In any event, here's the twenty one available players that will be facing Atalanta tomorrow:

Goalkeepers: Rafael Cabral, Mariano Andujar, Roberto Colombo

Defenders: Christian Maggio, Giandomenico Mesto, Faouzi Ghoulam, Miguel Britos, Henrique Buss, Raul Albiol, Kalidou Koulibaly

Midfielders: Gokhan Inler, Jorginho, David Lopez, Josip Radosevic, Jonathan De Guzman, Dries Mertens, Marek Hamsik

Forwards: Jose Callejon, Lorenzo Insigne, Duvan Zapata, Gonzalo Higuain