Hehehe, ett spr og plutselig gikk visst et kvarter av pressekonferansaen
13:49
Concerned with form?In the first five games we won four of them. And in the last eight games we only won twice. It’s impossible not to see a problem. We are trying to make the right diagnosis because otherwise any correction would be a mistake. We need to correct, we have to change this cycle of results and we have to find out the real reason for us not winning the games. For me, the main reason is we need every time more chances to score. At the beginning we needed two or three chances to score once and now we need five, six chances to score. This is very important. We have other aspects too, that I analyse.
I analyse to try to see if I can change things on these aspects. For example, in the first cycle we lacked two players. Now, in this cycle for each game we have six players missing. When a player is not injured it doesn’t mean he has the sport performance we need. To get the fitness takes longer than recovery from injury. Actually, we find good solutions for the absences of some players. I don’t think it’s a justification. Maybe the component of the subs is a level lower. I don’t think this is the main problem. The average of the performances in the first five was seven out of 10 and now it’s around six out of 10. There’s not a big difference.
The physical performance has always been a satisfaction. It was not a problem to get the possession and impose our style. Of course, in the last press conference one of your colleagues made a good point. The point was how did we feel about the difficulties in the game when the opponents went physical with frictions.
It’s very difficult to prepare a group for two different things. It’s difficult to play with the ball, with a style and play with a friction game. Of course, we need to be prepared for both moments. Before, starting the game we don’t know how many minutes with one aspect or how many minutes with the other aspect.
Of course, a team who is playing long balls and disputed balls don’t have the capacity to impose a style of play. Our team has more main features of creating, not a fighting one.
My reflection is the following: we’re the second team with goals scored, we are the first team regarding the goals missed, the next team after us missed only 50 per cent of the chances we missed. This leads us to the following conclusion: we are less efficient and we could build the offensive profile of the team. This is a long answer because I’m giving you the analysis I made. Each point I mentioned is to know how to play when the game becomes disputed, when we have to run more and run less, the style, the possession, the creation of danger for the rival, the efficiency when we have to score a goal. In all these aspects we have things to correct, but the most important is the matter of efficiency. Usually the opponent, to score, does less than what we have to do. The efficiency is one of the few things you can’t develop because you can’t train efficiency. What you train is the creation of the offensive play. We can’t work efficiency in a training session.
The last aspect is are we the best team in the Championship? If we think we are the best in the Championship we would have the right to think all the different teams’ cycles in the first games, we don’t have to go through the same cycles. I don’t compare to the other teams we are that good. We are not good enough to say what happened to Middlesbrough, to us, to Derby, to West Brom, have ups and downs and we can’t say we are too good to have ups and downs.
Imagine in the last eight matches, instead of two we had four wins, we would be the leaders of the Championship and you will find in the last eight scenarios that lead you to think we maybe should have won two more games.
One thing is to justify and the other is to explain. I am explaining things. You can’t justify why you don’t get what you can get. There is no justification for that, but we have explanations for that.
It’s very important, for me, you don’t take my talk as an excuse. I’m just explaining to you my analysis and I’m responsible for all of this. In each case I insist a lot to improve as much as we can the aspects I mentioned. I have the resources and the authority to improve things in all the aspects I mentioned and if I can’t get that it’s my responsibility. We can close this press conference because we couldn’t have another subject and I left out friend speechless because I know he’s very incisive when he asks questions so I prepared myself to avoid a second question.
If you have a second question you will hurt my pride a lot.
13:33