On why he thinks the team has periods where they don’t have control of games…
I think because we’re not able to score the second goal, because that would immediately damage the momentum of the other team. But as long as it’s 1-0, of course, it’s quite normal that with either the substitutions the other manager makes – with going even more offensive, going even more direct, taking more risks – that can lead for them to create chances, which they did, but it also led to them being very open for counter-attacks. And then the way we conceded, we didn’t concede our chances by being too open or being too offensive or being outplayed through the midfield or being too late with a press, it’s just playing over the press, playing the balls into our last line.
And if throughout the whole game we never picked up any second balls, that is something then where you could say, ‘Yeah, this is the whole game the same’ but all the chances we had in the second half were when we picked up second balls and then counter-attacked them. But the three, four or five times during the game that we were not able to pick up the second ball, not clear it far enough, they were a threat and that’s probably the belief teams have now when they play against us. And I think we might be a bit anxious towards the end as well, when we don’t extend our lead. I think that’s also normal if it happens so many times, that you start to think like that, and it’s normal that the stadium has that same feeling.
On how much he can do to change the approach to games at this stage of the season…
I think approaching a game has not so much to do with the final minutes of the game. I think what you are trying as a manager or as a team is to outperform the other team in terms of chance creation. You always try to create more chances than the other team, because usually that leads to winning more than you lose. So that means attacking-wise, generate as much chances as you can. And defensively, don’t give away as much. And I think throughout almost the whole season we’ve been on the positive side of that in terms of chance creation because we’ve not been a lot of times on the positive side of scoring goals or conceding goals.
How to approach the last minutes of the game, I think if you look back on it, which is maybe not the nicest thing to do if you’re a fan of us, but we’ve tried, I’ve tried a lot of things. I brought in Joe Gomez in the last minute of a game to keep the lead at Fulham. We conceded. I brought in Wata [Endo] during the season to have that midfielder that picks up all the second balls. I’ve done attacker-for-attacker substitution, not to bring a defender in. We’ve tried many things but the way we are conceding goals is also constantly different. So, unfortunately, the things you can try to do as influencers from the side is in the defensive substitution or offensive substitution. I have tried many of them but it hasn’t led yet to us not conceding in the last minute. But we also have our chances in the last minutes of the game, even today. In extra time we had an unbelievable chance that simply doesn’t go in. But it wouldn’t stay like that, I can tell you that.