#PLStories- #PatrickVieira on #WillHughes medical, Crystal Palace transfer news and West Ham #CPFC
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Any news from the training ground at all in terms of team news? Any injuries or absentees from midweek injuries.?
All the players are ready to go.
I understand that will Hughes is having a medical today. What is he going to add to your squad?
He is a player that we know quite well. He is really comfortable on the ball and is good at linking with the play going forward. I’m really glad and very pleased to have him in the squad, obviously, he’s not going to be ready for the game tomorrow. So we’re looking forward to working with him in the international break so he can be ready and starting and meeting his teammates for the next game.
Four days until the window closes Palace haven’t scored yet this season, how important, then, is if you get another striker in?
Yeah, this is something that we identified quite a couple of weeks ago, we knew that it would be important for us to reinforce that department, to have more options. The window is still open, and we’re trying to improve that department, and anything can happen.
Is there any movement on the Eddie Nketiah deal?
Not yet, I think, you know, like I said we are working hard to try to improve the squad. It’s very difficult to go into names because those players are in the football club and the contract in the football club so I don’t think it’s fair for us to give any names or to mentions any names. What is important is that we know that we need to improve and to have more options upfront, and we will try to do it.
One transfer dominating the headlines today is the prospect of Cristiano Ronaldo moving to Manchester City. When you were at Arsenal, would you have ever thought about joining a rival, like Tottenham?
I don’t think that the deal is done. Well, I don’t know if this is breaking news. But I think at any period of the career players try to find the club that they can express themselves and their talent. And if Ronaldo signs for City I think that would be fantastic news for the Premier League, it will be good news for the City fans. And I think that’s good for football.
Would you have ever thought about joining a rival like Tottenham when you’re in your playing career?
There’s no point for me to answer that question because my career is over, and it’s difficult to answer that question.
Michail Antonio is looking frighteningly good up top for the league leaders, how do you plan on stopping him?
I don’t think it’s just about him. It’s more about the way that the West Ham team are playing at the moment. They are really strong in every department, they’re in a really good moment. They’re playing well, they’re scoring going goals. He [Antonio] is a really good player obviously, but players around him are doing a really good job to allow him to express himself and his talent, and we will be concentrating on what they are doing well as a team, not as an individual. This is what we are going to do. We are going to go there with a good game plan and try to express ourselves. We have to play with our strength, we know what we are capable of doing. And, and we will have to play with the personality and try to execute our game plan.
West Ham really excelled last season. How far away are Crystal Palace from competing on a similar level and fighting for a place in Europe?
I think West Ham have been working in the last couple of years to get the results that they’re having today, there is consistency in the squad, there’s not so much rotation. I think in every single club. You want to have time to build a team, and, and that will require time. We know where we are at the moment, we know where we want to go. I think we have a couple of players who arrive at the football club who are doing quite well. We are still a little bit short, we will improve the squad. And I think we will be strong enough, to compete in the Premier League.
Apart from the lack of goals so far are you satisfied with the progress the team are making under you since the first game?
Yes, when you look at the first game we played in the pre-season and look at how we express ourselves against Watford I think there is an improvement there. Obviously to win football matches you need to score goals. I think it’s important to see if we are creating enough chances if we have enough people inside the box, I think all these kinds of details need to improve, but overall I think we created enough chances to score those goals. We just have to keep, keep working hard, keep believing in the way we want to play. I don’t have any doubt about the quality of the team, the quality of the players, the way we want to play. We are really calm, we are only focusing on the way we want to play, and those goals will come because players are working well, players are working hard, and we created those chances so it’s just a question of time before we start scoring goals.
Should you not be able to get anyone in before the window closes, are you confident you’ll be okay this season with what you have.
Yes of course. No doubt about it.
Aside from focusing on specific players what generally have West Ham been doing so well since David Moyes took over again?
They’re really solid and really clinical and physical. They’ve got the power they’ve got the physical strength to compete. They have pace, and they have some really good individual talent. I think this team has been built quite really well, so I’m not surprised at all they did well last year and they start the league, the way they did. But saying that, we have to believe that we can give them problems, we have to create problems for them and take our chances because we will create chances. We will have opportunities to score those goals and we have to take them.
Only Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool have scored more goals than West Ham since Moyes took over for the second time. That’s a very impressive record?
Yes of course. I’m not surprised at all I think David’s been in the game for quite a long time and he knows the league better than anybody else. He had the time to build the team that he wanted, and they are doing quite really well. It will be a really good game for us to play. We will try to play our game and we will try to create those chances. We have to score those goals to win football matches. And that is what we are missing at the moment and obviously, these are the most important things and the most difficult things to do in football.
How many players would you ideally like to bring in before the deadline?
We didn’t fix ourselves in any kind of numbers, what we really want is to improve the squad. We’re working to improve the squad and we didn’t have any kind of numbers in our head or in our mind. We just want to find the right players who can take the team to a different level of player that can improve the squad.
How is Luka Milivojevic? Will he be involved tomorrow?
No, he’s not going to be involved. He needs more training is not physically fit to play the game. We’re going to use the international break for him to catch up and to be ready for our next home game.
Will the international break be a good thing for you to have the players for two weeks to get your ideas across and to develop even further?
Yeah, that will be a really important period for us. And now it’s just waiting to see how many players will stay and how many will go to international duty. But this international break will be really good for us to keep working and keep improving on the details.
Is it quite a hard thing to wait to see if players will be allowed to travel for international games?
Yeah, I think all the managers and all the football clubs are waiting to see what will be the decision and we will have to follow that decision. Obviously, it will be difficult for us to allow the players to go to international duty if that country’s in the red zone.
You said that Ronaldo to Man City will be good for football – why?
I think it’d be good for football, it would be good for the Premier League because we are talking about one of the best players in the world I think in the last 15 years. Ronaldo showed that he is there with the best ever players, so to have him I think in the Premier League is good and to have him at City I think it is good for City because if they tried to buy the players is because they need them.
Striker is the hardest person to bring in?
It’s really difficult to find those players who can come and perform in the Premier League and score goals, but I think every player that you’re going to buy there is a question and if he can adapt himself and how well he can do. But I think what is important for me and for the football club is to identify the profile that we want. We have those strikers in our football club, I believe that they can score goals. We just need as well to create those chances for them to allow them to score those goals but we need a different profile of players up front, and we are working to try to improve that. I believe that it’s just a question of time before we scoring those goals because like you said when you look at the Watford game, I think we played quite well and we created enough chances, but we were unlucky. So what we have to do is to keep working well to keep working hard, and to force that luck to come to our side.
You were at Arsenal when Theirry Henry came to the club. Can you do the same with Wilfried Zaha and covert him into a number nine?
That can be an option, yes. What’s good with Wilfried is that he can play on the left, he can play on the right, he already played as in number nine position is something that he liked to do a time as well. We have Christian, we have JP. I think it’s about as well, confidence. When those players start to score one goal the momentum will keep going. It’s important for us to keep creating those chances. I don’t have any doubt that it’s going to come because those players used to do it for years in the Premier League and they will do it again.
How important is it for you to get a goal, maybe get a win?
To score the goals we need to play well. think this is is what we need to do is to be consistent in the way we play. And I think when you look at the type of games that we played we’ve been consistent on the way we want to play I think we have a clear idea about what we want to achieve on the field. And if we keep playing the way we did, we will create those chances, and then we will score those goals. I think the process of scoring goals is all about how you will play, and if we managed to play well, we will score goals, because we have the players to score those goals so I’m not worried about that at all.
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