Roma success last season in reaching the final will certainly make them a respected club, so that every team that meets them needs to be fully alert if they don't want to be eliminated easily. But things are a little different now, because the main actor has left, namely Mourinho. De Rossi, who is now the head coach of Roma, will try to do better. He is determined to bring Roma to become champions even though he realizes that his team abilities are limited. The depth of Roma squad is not like Liverpool, or close to Leverkusen, which has been on fire all season, but they have Lukaku who they can rely on up front.
De Rossi journey continues to the round of 16, he has succeeded in guiding his squad through the play off round, and Brighton will be a tough opponent for them next. De Zerbi has better ammunition, and his team plays regularly in the very competitive league, namely the Premier League. Herein lies the difficulty that Roma will face, a defensive strategy and relying on counter attacks might be a good choice for De Rossi. Because if they play openly, Roma could be slaughtered by Brighton even though they act as hosts. However, with almost the same squad that played in the Europa League final last season, Roma has the mentality to overcome every challenge they face.
Roma is still worth considering even though Jose Mourinho is no longer Roma coach.
There are many reasons why Roma must be taken into account, firstly because this team has quality, secondly the Roma players are top players who have a high mentality and finally the reason why Roma still has to be taken into account is the team's performance which has increased since being coached by De Rossi.
It is true that overall Roma's strength is not much stronger than Leverkusen or Liverpool, but we must also remember that this is a Europa League competition which is full of surprises and the team's mentality must still be taken into account without ignoring quality.
Brighton is also a strong team, and of course this is a big challenge for Roma, I see that the percentage of Roma and Brighton to advance to the next round is still quite the same and personally I favor Roma more after seeing the overall strength and performance of the team in recent his last match.