Bruno Lage manager
What did you make of that?
Look, I think we deserved to win the game, but to win the game we need to score goals, and to score goals we just need to put the ball in the net and I think we had plenty of chances to do that. Sometimes our players faced their goalkeeper, I think there were two situations without their goalkeeper in the goal. First, with Pedro [Neto] and the second one with Morgan [Gibbs-White]. I think it’s clear chances, obvious chances to score goals. So, in the end, what we look for is the performance. Again, another good performance, with personality. And I can see by the way the fans responded at the end that they enjoyed the performance. Now it’s time to continue to work. We are working hard, we are working hard in everything. So, I’m happy because of the performance. I think we lose here two points, but against a strong opponent, Marco [Silva] is a top manager. I think the way they played against Liverpool, it was different. I think they respected us a lot as a team so it means a lot for him to understand the way we are playing. That’s why he is a top manager. And when you look back, what they did in the Championship, the way they started the Premier League season, the way they come here and they respect us. So it means a lot to us. Now, we have to continue to work. This is our direction. The fans are happy. We are happy with the performance, but I want more and we know that tomorrow is off and Monday we will be there again, to push hard because we are here working hard for our fans.
Formation
Yeah, I’m happy with the four in the back. Now we need to work more, especially the game between the lines. What they did in the first 20 minutes, they blocked Ruben, and put both midfielders on Ruben so he didn’t have the ball. And we need to understand that if we don’t have Ruben available, (Nathan) Collins and Max (Kilman) should be more aggressive. We usually do that when we played the line of three defenders. So it was (Romain) Saiss and Max to be more aggressive to find the man. With two, I think until the first water break we were more conservative so and we didn’t create too many chances. We control the ball. We have two good chances in the first five minutes, but after that they controlled the game without the ball. After that we start to to improve to find the spaces between the lines and I think in that part, we we dominated more, we created more chances. So this is the things we need to improve in the different system. When they block some player, how can we find, and how can we replace? Where is the space to be more and more aggressive? The other thing, and I just spoke with the players, is that we need to grow up. It’s the emotional control and I think in the last 10 minutes we lost a little bit of our positions. I put people with fresh energy on to try to explore more of the game on the sides because they were more worried about closing inside, and we don’t get a chance. When the game comes to that part in the emotional control, we lose a little bit the positions, we lose the rest defence, we lose our balance and we give chances for the opponent to score. So that’s one more thing that the team needs, to grow up.
Guedes debut
Look, he did what we expect for two or three training sessions with the team. So we need now to adapt and to know better the players, but it was good to see the dynamic he can give to us, how we run. Now, it’s a question of time to adapt, but we can see he can give us a lot of things, play in the middle, play out wide. So for the first game, I’m happy.
Bench strength
I think the last game, I was reacting and today I was more action. I think every time I think that the team needs more energy, I change. I put Guedes on after to create more dynamic on one side. We can change and put Nelson [Semedo] fresh and recover and Adama to continue to be more fresher. And look, we worked so hard this pre-season that I’m also happy because we played 97 minutes with a good tempo. So we put Fulham a little bit in trouble. You can see what it did in the last 10/15 minutes because they thought that they have a good chance to score a goal, but I think the last 20/30 minutes they didn’t have the same power than at the start.
Sa save
This is football. So, the last game we were talking about Jose because he wasn’t happy in the first goal and now he did a save and he gave us, in the end, that situation that we didn’t concede one goal. So football is about that. That’s why every time when I do the evaluation of the players, it’s not about the mistakes they do, because football is about the mistakes, it’s about the good things they can do. So that’s the standards, the standard is to be continuous and not like this. Jose did a fantastic season, the pre-season, it wasn’t good for him because he was in the recovery, just one game against Sporting, second game against Leeds. And today he came up with that safe. So happy with him. He needs to continue to work because he can be one of the good names in the Premier League one more time this season.
Penalty decision
I didn’t see it yet so I cannot say anything about the penalty. And, one more time, I can say, because they asked me at the flash (interview) about the situation with Mitrovic. It’s not about him, it’s about the rules. Also, I didn’t see it. When you do a foul to break the transition, it’s clear, it’s a yellow card, for me or for the opponent. After, it depends on the way you stop the tradition, if you kick or do aggression, it’s not a yellow card, it’s a red card. So it’s not about Mitrovic it’s about the rules. I didn’t see it, I didn’t see it but because they asked me if it’s yellow or red, my opinion is about that. The way you stop if it is a normal foul, it’s a yellow card. We know that. If it’s with aggression, it’s a red card. When I’m saying it’s aggression, a player goes, right, if you try to stop him in a different way or a normal foul because the opponent will advance towards goal, it’s a yellow card. If the player goes and you try to kick him in his legs, it’s not a normal foul, so it’s about that. I didn’t see the situation [with Gibbs-White]. I came straight to the press so. I didn’t see it. But if they did, red card both. It’s to play football. For me, it’s so clear.
Emotional control
Football, it’s to play the game and we were here to play the 90 minutes and we were that, the emotional control comes from that.
How do you teach that?
It’s to prepare. We are preparing sometimes when you’re training for 70 minutes and in the end, we can prepare a scenario like this where the opponent is near the box. And we need to take control of the situation. In six, ten minutes we need to score one goal and we cannot concede. We need to put more men in front and need to have balance in the team. So this is the little things. If the opponent does something against us, we cannot react because what happened. It was a yellow card for both players. If it was a red card, it’s red for both players. And we don’t do that. No, nothing. We just want to play football and the other team started. So it’s about this. So it’s the middle things that we should do, we should do more emotional control. But, this is so hard. The way we were playing, the environment, the fans pushing for the team and I’m so proud of my players because they run 90 minutes, no one went down, one more time, we did a good pre-season for that, we are ready to play. My concern is just in the first game, we just had eleven players and now we have more. So I’m happy because we did everything in our hands. We do everything on our end to win the game, but it’s a draw.
Gibbs-White
Morgan did a fantastic performance. He missed that goal, in a normal situation, he’s scores. So that’s what I want from Morgan. Very happy with him.
