RALPH Hasenhuttl responded to a number of social media frenzies between supporters, that were started after sections of his media answers were posted, by saying: “The problem is people are not listening.”
Ralph Hasenhuttl said: “Yeah (it is frustrating), but the problem is that people are not listening. They take a part of the interview and then say ah ‘it is like a lottery’, but it is, coming here in the morning you never know who is missing and this is right. But I have never spoken about postponing a game, you know us, as I said we have had two injured goalkeepers and signed another one before cancelling the game as we have a goalkeeper, we could have made the argument yeah with one out with COVID and the other injured but we didn’t do this. We try not to do this at the moment, you never know what happens in the future – suddenly we have 20 cases and when you have no players any more we will also ask for postponing a game. But at the moment we try everything to play and I think this (is how it) should be, we have tried to do this. I have not spoken about thinking of cancelling a game on Tuesday, we have two right-backs missing and none (available) at the moment but we never spoke about thinking the game would be postponed because we have injuries and a few COVID cases.”
After being directly asked by a journalist after the FA Cup third round win at Swansea City on Saturday if there were numbers enough in his depleted squad to play, Hasenhuttl explained that, now, you can never be sure. This was then portrayed in different ways on social media and opposition supporters took an implication of him wanting the match postponed.
Ralph Hasenhuttl added: “It should be possible to speak honestly in the media about your thinking. And if this is not happening anymore and things are getting turned around for, I don’t know what reason, to get some clicks or some traffic to social media platforms, then we have another problem. But not the problem of being honest.”
