Pressekonferansen:
17:30
He's here...
Right, let’s see what the Leeds United head coach as got to say...
17:31
Home form important - how much of a statement would back to back wins be?
Every time that a profession team plays, the win is an obligation.
I don’t think it would have a special impact if we win.
17:32
Birmingham are yet to win - but are they in a false position, given how hard they are to beat?
It’s a team that concedes very few goals. By itself it’s a difficulty.
The few goals they conceded doesn’t correspond with their ranking so the fact that they conceded few goals means an important difficulty for us.
17:33
On Garry Monk on the job he did at Leeds
He was the head coach of a team that finished 7th as far as I know. So it’s a fact that he’s important for any Premiership head coach.
He was the head coach of several teams so he’s an experienced head coach.
17:35
Is Tyler Roberts the solution to the injury worries? And what will the goals do for his confidence?
When a number nine scores it always gives him confidence. In both games he played he was a link to the opponent’s box. He did’t score against Millwall but against Preston he scored twice. The important thing is that he creates chances to score and then when he scores more goals he will become an important player.
17:36
Are the team exceeding expectations at this stage of the season?
A club with a such a history of Leeds has to have the hope to go to promotion.
17:37
Are you expecting Birmingham to be very defensive this weekend?
I can’t tell you in advance. One of the features of Birmingham is they concede very few goals.
17:37
On injuries
The injured players won’t be in the group and able to play against Birmingham.
17:39
What other sports have you taken inspiration from for your coaching?
No, not particularly any other sport, no. When you watch other sports you make associations with certain situations, but these sports, basketball, hockey, rugby, but I don’t make any lasting parallel between those other sports and football.
17:41
Who inspired you to be the football coach you are?
I started as a head coach 35 years ago. I received a lot of influence from Jorge Solari he’s a master for me. I was with him at Newell’s Old Boys.
I collaborated with him, but I also watched a lot of Louis van Gaal.
17:42
Are you impressed with how your players have understood your methods?
Our team is faithful to some features.
The assimilation of a style is not only a method. More inmimportant is the influence of each player regarding his willingness to assimilate new styles.
To convince the player to adpot a new style is more important than the style itself.
17:47
How does this side compare in attitude and application to the better squads Marcelo has worked with?
Frankly I admire the professionalism of the English player. I am sure this is not a new thing for English people. You already know that English footballers are very serious, like players from Great Britain are very serious. So it stimulates you to develop plans of work with these kind of players. It’s also important to say I came here with ideal conditions because we had a long pre-season. The fact that we had a long period thanks to the World Cup means we could work and make decisions without hurrying.
And another thing that is important is that this club has 15 players and a group of 5 or 6 youngsters and if I had to make an evaluation of them and an opinion I wouldn’t want to change the players I had.
And you know very few teams can say what I’m saying. I can tell you that I have 12,13,14,15 players I would not change and we also have 5 or 6 young players with possibilities so it indicates that this club has good football health.
And the players are broadly speaking pretty young all of them.
17:50
It feels like this has taken hold quickly?
I have an advantage and not every head coach has it. During 10 years in my career I worked as a head coach of national teams. ANd this allows you to develop mechanisms you can transmit to the team in a fast way. Because when you prepare a game with the national team you only have two days and you have one game per month. So not every head coach has to face this kind of situation. And you can’t learn how to serve problems that you don’t face.
So I think I have the advantage of being in situations where you have to make fast solutions. We also have to take into account a pre-season which lasted 7 weeks, that’s a lot of time and we also had one month before the pre-season to analyse the team. And we also had a good basis regarding the players, we didn’t have to bring in many players. All these aspects are advantageous.
17:52
Do you want to see more improvements?
You know this is unstable, cyclical. Our performances against Millwall and Middlesbrough were not the same against Preston, Derby and Norwich.
The games versus Millwall and Middlesbrough were tough games for us. That’s why we can;t say that our team is a strong team.
Because we need to do things that we have not done before. It’s long distance run.
17:57
Is it still a priority to grasp English or is that no longer essential, given the speed your players are learning?
Yes, it’s a priority for me to learn English.
What I’m going to say doesn’t mean it’s not necessary to understand and speak English.
What I can tell you is the less you speak, the better you are as a head coach. Because you communicate not through words, but through the actions in training sessions. When you see a team is assimilating a habit it’s not because you talk a lot. It’s because you did practical facts that allowed the players to assimilate an idea.
17:59
That's all from Marcelo
And he’s done. Some interesting stuff in there.
We’ll have more for you shortly.
