The boss discussed the trip and its merits, as well as what he's trying to do to improve our form, as well as injuries and transfers.
Here is everything he had to say:
on how the injury list is currently looking:
We still have a few unfortunately on that list that we haven’t managed to get back yet, but hopefully they are much closer and some of them are in a better place than we expected.
Individually I'm not going to tell you exactly how everybody is, but we are still missing a few.
on whether anyone will be back this weekend:
We are touch and go with a few, that's what I would say.
on how the trip to Dubai went:
It was great, it was a phenomenal camp in every sense. We worked really hard on things that we wanted to do, and we recharged our batteries. The context and the change in environment in beautiful weather helped, and the togetherness and the moments that we shared together were great. We feel fully recharged.
on if the break came at a good time:
It was. I think it gave us an opportunity to look at things with a bit of perspective and analyse what we've been doing, and I will take a lot of positives from the first six months of the competition. Even though results haven’t gone our way in the last few games, when you look at what we have produced in terms of the Premier League and any other team, we are up there.
on the focus shifting to taking our opportunities in front of goal:
We need to continue with who we are. Defeats cannot make you lose who you are because if you do that, then you were never who you said you were. We have to continue to be ourselves but there are certain details and marginal gains that we have to improve and evolve, and the beautiful thing about my job is to constantly find the evolution of a team and what it needs to keep winning.
You have to look at it objectively. In order to do that, you need to dissect the game in many parts as much as you possibly can to understand what happened and there is the balance. In football, what you merit and what you actually have are not always at the same level, and that’s been the case. But I think overall in the season, where we are, there’s things that we can improve on and do better, and those marginal gains have to be installed. They have been installed in the last 10 days and we have to see them coming out.
on turning around a run of defeats:
A lot of times, it’s not what you have to do, it’s just looking around and [seeing] how people behave. When I say that I love my job so much, it’s because I love so much the people that I have next to me, that they are with me every day. OK, we had a difficult time, and it’s true that we played in a certain way against big teams and we didn’t win, but we know what we produced. They are a joy to work with and they give me every reason to be super positive for the second half of the season.
on whether he hides his emotions from the players:
I don’t know if the word is hide, but I think I have to be honest and tell them how I feel. You have to be as clear as possible for them to understand what they expect from you, and as well, for them what they are actually doing, and can we improve to always find the motivation when things or results don’t go your way, or you have a problem within the team to resolve. We are all here, we are willing to win and we have to continue to do that.
on how he approaches the psychological aspect of finishing:
Changing certain things; analysing first of all myself and the coaches and what we can do better. It’s the most difficult thing to coach because it’s so unpredictable: times, distances, spaces, opponents; they change from picture to picture and change immediately after the ball has moved. We need to try to give them clarity and we have to take responsibility and we give them the tools to deliver the best possible way, that’s what we have to do. They have it in them, and they know that. We have had a lot of individual talks about it, and it will come.
on whether it is more complicated than players just missing chances:
I don’t want to give the responsibility to the players, that’s why I’m here. The responsibility at the end to win and to score three, four or five goals is there. The question we set is: how do we score five goals every game? That’s the question. Are we expected to change it tomorrow? It’s not going to happen. So we have to make things happen, we have to be active and find solutions to that.
on how many points it will take to win the league:
I don’t have a clue! You can look at what happens in the league, but it’s always after it happened. I’m not that good at predicting what’s going to happen before. It depends as well what happens in the direct games, that’s a big consequence, so let’s see.
on Emile Smith Rowe’s future:
I’m really happy with Emile, he’s on the right trajectory now he’s settled and he’s training really well. You know that I’m not going to talk about any individual situation.
on whether he has seen a change in Emile:
No change, Emile is Emile. He’s got incredible qualities, we are really happy to have him and what he needs now is chances to put all those desired qualities on the pitch. In order to do that, we have to give him minutes.
on how close Jurrien Timber is to playing any part this season:
There is a possibility but at the moment he is still very, very far from competing. That’s the reality of it. We’re hopeful that he can have an impact at the end of the season, if everything goes well, and it looks like there is a chance that that might happen but I think it’s too early to make that call.
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