Let’s start off with injury news – are you any better in that regard?
No, not really. James McCarthy trained today, which is very positive, so we’ll see how he trained through that. But a couple of others picked up slight knocks that we need to keep an eye on – we don’t know how well they’ll recover. Certainly there won’t be a vast difference from the last couple of games, and if we’re really unlucky it could be slightly worse. Two players are suffering from knocks and we’re monitoring them.
What about Wilfried Zaha? Is there a timeframe for his return?
He’s still suffering from the injury, there’s no question of that. The doctors in particular and physios are very anxious to not put dates on people so they’d be very angry with me if I suggested dates he could return. He’s working very hard to get back as soon as he can. I’m rather hoping the prognosis will be different to the actual timescale.
Yes, I think whatever team we’d have played after the last two results, where we’ve been below par, we’d have been anxious to show that we were better than that. It’s important to get out there and show the fans that the last two performances are not what they can expect from us. The fact that it’s Brighton adds that extra spice, because it’s a match very important to the fans – and everyone at the club is aware of that. There are players, when you’re not doing well, who are showing things but won’t get recognised because everyone wants to dismiss the performance as showing no desire, when it’s more complicated than that. We know we need to play better. We need to get some points on the board, but the only way to do that is to keep working, to keep ensuring that the players are aware of what’s required from them.”
How do you get those early goals out of the system?
There’s very little in terms of what managers and coaches actually say to the player… there will be very few who send the players out without reminding them to be solid and compact and not give away goals in the opening 15 minutes, but still goals get scored then – not just against us. If it was that simple, you wouldn’t see them.
What does it come down to?
In most of the cases, it’s that we haven’t defended well enough. It gives you a real uphill struggle to get back into the game. It really isn’t quite a case of being able to identify a particular reason why a mistake is made or a piece of defending you don’t want to see happens early in a game, it’s just a fact of football life. Of course, ideally those things happen and you hope you’ll be good enough to put those to one side and get back into it and put things right. But we haven’t been able to do that against Leeds or West Ham or Burnley.
I didn’t see it because I don’t think it was up for very long, but I of course heard about it. You expect the fans, I guess, when you give performances that are way below what we expect from ourselves, to be critical of the performances. I would deny, of course, that it’s a lack of interest or desire on the part of the players. We can’t deny that we haven’t played well enough to get the results in the game, that’s a fact of life as well. But I would also deny that it’s because the players are apathetic or they haven’t wanted to do better, because I see every day here on the training field how hard people do work and how much they do want to do well. But of course, it doesn’t go well, I’m afraid you do open yourselves up to all sorts of criticism of that nature. It goes very quickly. After results against Newcastle and Wolves, the mood was positive and the criticisms were non-existent, and in fact a lot of praise was coming the players’ way. I honestly don’t believe that in two weeks and two performances, everything has changed to that extent. But we do need to do better than we’ve been doing in these last couple of games, there’s no question about that, and we also do need to get some of our injured players back into the squad again. Because like all teams, we are dependent on our players. And when you’ve got a lot of the players on whom you rely on the treatment table and not on the field, it’s not going to be something that you can cover that well. We need those players back. In the mean time, we must fight on and make certain we do a better job than we have done in the last two games.
Did you take it personally at all? Was it a case of ‘do I really need to see this’ on the banner at the training ground?
Well it’s not something that you would encourage. Our fans have been very, very good through the years and they support us very well. For them to do something like this is not something one could claim to be happy about, but I also believe that we have got the wherewithal within the club to turn the situation around. We aren’t in a desperate situation in the league, which is something positive. In the mean time, we must accept that fans have got a right to their opinion, got a right to be upset when the team they love is not doing as well they would like it to do. We accept as football people that criticism that comes our way. That is also one of the things you sign up for when you decide to take on a job as a manager or coach of a team which has a big following. You expect that hopefully you’ll get some praise when it goes well and accept the criticism when it doesn’t.
You can match Crystal Palace’s best ever points tally at this stage of a season with a win against Brighton. Is it a bit of a misrepresentation to say that things aren’t going well?
We all know that in football. This is our period. I, from afar this season, have seen it happen in so many clubs. At the start of the season Pep Guardiola was being questioned because Man City were lying 14th in the Premier League. We’ve seen Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Man United go through several periods – that’s just two off the top of my head. This is something that happens all the time in our walk of life. I think it’s very important that we as managers, especially if you have some experience, keep things in some perspective. It’s also important that we don’t necessarily take note of every single criticism. Because some of it won’t be true criticism. Because we know what’s going on at the club, we know the possibilities we have and we know what we’re doing, as players and coaches, to try and put things right. In the mean time, we must not allow anything that’s happening in that area to deflect us from what needs to be done. We need to prepare well, we need to get the players that we have at our disposal in a good shape mentally, physically and tactically to play the game Brighton. And then let’s hope that in that game we play well, put behind us the last two performances, which were not good and then of course things, perhaps, will start to move in another direction. But this is something that happens every year in football. It’s not many who will go through the year without a period where things haven’t quite gone their way.
From an injury point of view, are you happy that it will be roughly back down to one game a week from now on? Will that help to get players back fit?
Well perhaps not because we’re being threatened with a game in between Fulham and Tottenham against Manchester United, I don’t know whether that’s been ratified as yet, but it’s been mooted as a possibility, which would give us three games in a week and four games in under two weeks from Monday night’s game against Brighton. So I fear that our problems in that respect are going to have to be pushed further down the road.
How difficult is it to be consistent with injuries in the Premier League? Is it two steps forward, two steps back in some ways?
It has been for us. There have been periods where it’s looked like we’ve been on the rollercoaster on the way down only to find that the upwards slope has hit us before we realised. But we’re not the only club, I suppose, to be experiencing that. But there’s no doubt that a club like ours, the sur squad is not limited, but not as profuse as some of the clubs above us. We do suffer greatly when the injuries come our way, because we rely heavily on our players. Wilf Zaha’s name is always mentioned, we can’t win without him we’re told and people use the facts to document that. But we have to live without him at times. Some times in those periods we don’t get the results we want.
How much is a testament of the strength in depth that you’ve remained competitive without Wilfried Zaha?
Well, I think we have been competitive throughout the season. I have to be very careful that when you’ve had two bad performances and two bad results that you don’t start to suggest that everything is great just because you’ve done well before that. This is something we have to take seriously. When the fans are upset, that’s also something that you have to take very seriously because we play football for the fans, they are the lifeblood of the club. But as a manager you have to keep things in perspective. That is not always easy. When things are going well, people are encouraging you to think very positively and think that there can never be a problem on the horizon by telling you ‘this is the biggest number of points you’ve had at this stage of the season, you’ve never been in the relegation zone in three years’, all these type of things people tell you to make you feel good. But you’ve got to put that into the perspective when things don’t go well, a couple of bad results – are you going to see the other side of the coin? Which is people not understanding why the performances have not been good enough. More often than not, people find reasons for that, which as a manager and coach working with the players, you can’t really relate to. Complacency. Well I don’t see complacency, and that’s the problem. If it was there, I’d see it. Apathy? I definitely don’t see apathy. Players not wanting to wear the shirt or not showing pride – I don’t really see that either. In training, I think we work as hard, do as much as any other team. But football matches tend to throw up a picture, if you like, and if it’s gone well, everything is rosey and hunky dory. If it doesn’t go so well, that’s when you want to see all the cracks. The bottom line is this: when you’re playing well, there will still be lots of things that are not going as you would want it to do. There will be players in that team – a winning team – doing less than you’d want them to do and not showing some of the determination or aggression or desire that you want them to show. By contrast, there are actually players when you’re not doing well, who are doing those things but it won’t be recognised because everyone wants to dismiss the performance as this ‘no interest, no care, no desire’… It’s much more complicated. But the one thing that I know for certain is that we need to play better than we’ve played in the last couple of games: everyone is aware of that. We need to get some points on the board – I think it’s six from the last five or six – we’d like to do better than that. So that’s another factor. But the only way to do it is to keep working, and keep ensuring that the players are aware of what’s required from them, and to hope that you get some of the players who you think are quite important back in the team. Because we know that every team misses the players that they consider important to them winning matches.
