Slot on Villa and Liverpool injury latest
18/02/2025
AXA training centre, Liverpool, UK
18/02/2025
AXA training centre, Liverpool, UK
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SportsTranscript
00:00What a run.
00:02Unbelievable.
00:08I was at the new stadium last night as well.
00:10Oh.
00:14I was in River.
00:15Sorry?
00:16Liverpool fan.
00:20All set.
00:21Arnaut, first of all, just check on Joe Gomez and Cody Gaffpo,
00:24how are they, what's the latest?
00:27I think both are available for tomorrow.
00:30Cody is close to being back,
00:33and Joe will take quite a long time.
00:37He's going to be out for numerous weeks because of Hamstring injury.
00:42Big blow for Joe.
00:44Yeah, and for us.
00:46But first of all, of course, for him, because he tries to do everything to be with the team.
00:51He worked really hard to come back,
00:53and then the first game when he came back, after two or three minutes,
00:57we saw him making a sprint, and now he's out for weeks again.
01:02So, yeah, that's always very hard for a player in every part of the season,
01:06let alone in the part of the season where everybody is looking forward to.
01:10You've obviously got the chance to go 10 points clear with this game against Villa.
01:13It's Villa away, City away, Newcastle at home.
01:18We can look at it and think you've got a real opportunity over the next week
01:21to take a real step towards sealing the Premier League title.
01:24So how do you see it?
01:26I see it as 13 games to be played and the next game to be the most important one,
01:30starting with Villa away, which is, like Wolves at home,
01:34again a difficult game for us, but for everyone.
01:39They have a great home record, maybe even more if they play in the evening,
01:45so we know that is going to be a challenge.
01:48But we have quite an OK away record as well this season,
01:52we've done quite OK this season in general as well,
01:55so it's a game for everyone to look forward to,
01:58to see these two sides playing against each other.
02:01What have you made of Villa of late?
02:03Because they've not won a Premier League game since the middle of January,
02:06and that was against Everton, and in that time they'd drawn with Arsenal,
02:09drawn with West Ham, drawn with Ipswich, but also lost at Wolves.
02:12If you win against Everton, that's a special accomplishment, isn't it?
02:17I don't know what you mean!
02:19They are an extremely good run of form at the moment.
02:22No, but they did beat Celtic at home in an evening game 4-2,
02:27so I think when you get to the fixture list you all know
02:33that Villa away is one of the tougher ones you can face.
02:37But last season was also a very interesting game,
02:41with it ending 3-3, if I remember correctly.
02:45A very good manager always has a very good game plan,
02:49they brought in quite a lot of good players in the winter break as well,
02:53and they already had a very good team.
02:55They qualified for top eight in the Champions League,
02:58so it tells you that it's a strong team we are going to face,
03:02but that's where I started with.
03:04Wolves at home was also tough for us,
03:07so every game in this period of time for every team in the league is difficult.
03:14One of the players they brought in recently was Marcus Rashford,
03:18I'm sure he'll be desperate to play in this game.
03:20Is he someone you'd have to pay particular attention to
03:23as he obviously tries to revitalise his career?
03:27Yeah, the first time I knew Marcus Rashford,
03:32because I followed the Premier League,
03:34but the first time I faced him in real life was in the USA tour.
03:38I was really impressed with how fast he is,
03:42how he has a nice height, he's comfortable with the ball,
03:46so I think he's a very good player.
03:48And I hope for him as well that he's going to show that at Villa,
03:53of course I'm not hoping that he will do this tomorrow,
03:56but I would be completely surprised if a player of that quality
04:01is not going to show this in the upcoming months,
04:03because, yeah, he's a very good player in my opinion.
04:09It was obviously nervy at the end against Wolves,
04:12is that only natural at this stage in a title race,
04:15and can you do anything to affect that?
04:19I think it is because we are going to the end of the season,
04:22and not because of us but because of what people make of it,
04:25because we've played more games at home or away than we let by one goal,
04:30and in the end it was also tight, so I can remember Crystal Palace away,
04:34where it was really tight in the end,
04:36and Vito Jaros had to make a big save to secure the win,
04:42and we didn't even need a big save now to secure the win.
04:46But, yeah, if this happens at the end of the season,
04:48people, you guys, are going to start talking about nerves,
04:53but, yeah, securing a win in the Premier League,
04:56if you are only leading by one goal,
04:59is always going to be a lot of defending and a lot of hard work.
05:03And during large parts of the season it's just hard work,
05:06and in the end part of the season we talk about nerves.
05:10Not me, but a lot of people talk about nerves.
05:16Arnon, when you won the title with Feyenoord in the run-in,
05:20I think it was five times in six games where you won by one goal,
05:23so I'm just wondering what experiences can you call upon
05:26from that run-in to potentially help this season?
05:30I think it always helps if you've experienced it already,
05:33and that's not only for me, that's also for the players.
05:36But it's difficult to take things from that period of time
05:41towards this period of time, different players,
05:44different opponents, different leagues.
05:46But it tells you, again, what I've said so many times,
05:50that in the end phase of the season a lot of games are really tight.
05:54It's not only ours, if I just look at all the results,
05:57I even saw yesterday playing Barcelona,
06:00which is a team I admire a lot and play really good football this season,
06:03but in the end they were close to conceding the 1-1.
06:07So it is the end phase of the season where results like this are quite common,
06:13like in our title-winning season with Feyenoord as well.
06:17It tells you that you have a team that fights till the end,
06:20and these games you need to win if you want to achieve something.
06:26I know we're focusing on the one-goal margins,
06:29but the player that came on on Sunday and did really well in achieving that
06:33was Rataro Endo, and that was only his fourth game of the season in the Premier League,
06:37where he's played more than 10 minutes, excluding stoppage time as well.
06:40Just wondering how crucial do you see someone like him being
06:44in terms of seeing out games towards the end of the season,
06:46when, as you say, it could be so tight?
06:48I think Wata has been really useful for us this season,
06:52and it's not always a matter of how many minutes you play,
06:55you can be very important in two minutes and you can be less important in 90 minutes.
07:00But what makes Wata special, in my opinion, is every time we have to rely on him,
07:04if it's 5, 10 or 20 or 25 minutes, he shows up.
07:08And that sounds much more simple than it is,
07:11because if a player hardly has a lot of playing time,
07:15then to be mentally so strong that if the team needs you,
07:18you can bring your best performance, and that's not always easy,
07:21because mostly you see players that don't play a lot,
07:24they find it difficult to get their rhythm or their quality in the less playing time they get.
07:30The only thing is, defending is always more easy than creating,
07:34so if you play a player that hasn't played for a long time and he has to create something,
07:40it's always more difficult than defending.
07:44But he's been important for us and he will be important for us in the upcoming weeks as well.
07:51We've heard already of the talk about nerves and pressure at the running start,
07:58I'm just wondering, with the experience of the players you have in dressing room,
08:03who have been there and done it already,
08:05how much do you lean on them to deal with it themselves,
08:08or pass on that experience to people, and how do you handle it?
08:12We lean a lot on the players, because we train with them, we try to prepare them,
08:18I give them a pre-match meeting to try to prepare them in the best possible way,
08:23but from that moment onwards you lean on the players.
08:27How much work do they want to put in, how well do they execute the game plan,
08:33do they adapt to what the other team does?
08:37So, yes, you always adapt on players, and I think it helps you
08:43if a team or a player already won something, but don't make that too big,
08:48because you still have to play for it and you can't compare the circumstances.
08:53The ones that won the league here already, that was in corona time,
08:57without fans being in the stadium, they were, if I'm correct, at a certain point 25 points up.
09:03So you can hardly talk about pressure then!
09:08Although I'm a type of manager, if there are 10 games to be played and I'm 25 points up,
09:13I still feel like, oh, we have to win two!
09:16But no, there's hardly any pressure then.
09:19But we do lean on the players because they have to show up
09:24and they have to bring the performances in,
09:27but not in the manner that they are today, tomorrow or whatever date,
09:32where they present a meeting on how to deal with the pressure.
09:37No, that's not how it works.
09:39But the players you've got in there, like Virgil and Alisson,
09:44they are so experienced and they've had that level of experience
09:50to just put it all to one side and concentrate on the job?
09:54Yeah. No, but it helps, not in the sense that they've won the league here maybe,
09:59but it helps that they are used to playing big games in their careers with a lot of pressure.
10:03That's also for Maka, who's won the World Cup.
10:06So players that are used to playing in those kinds of environments,
10:10so, for example, Everton, in a way, is a hostile environment.
10:13It helps if you've already experienced this once or twice.
10:17So that's why it was so good for Conor Bradley, because I think it was his first to experience it,
10:21and I assume next time he will only, he played quite OK,
10:25he will only play better the next time, because you get more and more used to big games,
10:30and that is one of the things that very talented players need to have.
10:34They need to have playing time, and it's mostly more comfortable if you play at home at Anfield,
10:39and everything you do, fans cheer for you.
10:42Whereas if you play an away game, if you do something very well, fans don't cheer for you.
10:47So that is something a player has to go through,
10:50and the more experience you have in playing big games, the better it is.
10:54But some young players don't have the experience of big games,
11:00but they make the right decisions because of quality.
11:04So we must not overvalue experience, but it does help in certain situations.
11:11Hi, Arne, you mentioned after the Wolves game that there's more of a mental toll of the recent games
11:17rather than necessarily a physical toll.
11:20Considering you're playing at the moment every three or four days,
11:23is it actually harder to get the players to reset and recharge mentally than it is physically?
11:28Because obviously they can sit in an ice bath or recharge,
11:31but they might still be thinking about the last game or the next game to come.
11:35Yeah. No, it depends on how the last game went, and that's why I said after the Everton game
11:40it wasn't a surprise to me that the players weren't tired,
11:45but they were more tired than they maybe were in previous games,
11:49because the Everton game, the way that game went, all the things that happened during that game,
11:55and then especially in the last eight minutes,
11:58that costs a lot of energy for everyone that was involved.
12:03So that's why you can't compare tomorrow with last Sunday.
12:11I think we had a good win, we didn't play our best football,
12:15but to go away with a win gives us a different reaction than after the Everton game,
12:22where we eventually conceded in the last second with so many things happening.
12:27That probably was the reason why we were a bit not that much, and not everyone,
12:35because I think if I had only one or two players in my mind that looked a bit exhausted,
12:40the rest didn't.
12:42So, on the other side of that, the fact that they were able to come through a similar challenge
12:46against Wolves and they're facing Everton,
12:48will that give them maybe a mental boost going into these next two tough games
12:52against Liverpool and Manchester City?
12:54I think we managed many times already to get a win over the line,
12:58where I think we won quite a lot of games with one goal difference,
13:01I'm not even sure, but I think we did.
13:04But there were also moments, Newcastle away where we conceded in the last minute,
13:08Man United at home where we conceded five to ten minutes before the end,
13:12and now this game.
13:14These things happen in a strong league as well,
13:17that you sometimes concede a goal in the last minutes of the game.
13:20Of course, it gives us confidence that we this time brought the win over the line.
13:25Again, like the Everton game, we didn't give anything away in the last 20 minutes,
13:30till the moment at Everton we all remember.
13:36So, yeah, we do take confidence from both last 20 minutes,
13:41because we had a certain feeling about the goal we conceded as well.
13:48Both games give us confidence, but it definitely helps that we didn't concede
13:53in the same manner as we conceded against Everton in the last minute.
13:59Just on Joe, is there any danger he'll miss the rest of the season?
14:03He will miss a large part of the end of the season,
14:06but we expect him to be back in the end phase of the season.
14:09Will he need surgery?
14:11He might, but that's something we still have to assess.
14:19On Sunday, Thiago Giotto made his first Premier League start since October.
14:23He's obviously had injury issues and he's been managing his minutes when he has been available.
14:28If he can keep him fit from now until the end of the season,
14:31what role can he play to be able to see how good he was before that injury against Chelsea?
14:39A role like many others. He's done so well before his injury,
14:45and I think I've said it during the weekend,
14:49I couldn't even remember when his last start was for us in the Premier League.
14:53So I think we've missed him three or four months when it comes to a start.
14:57Chelsea, yeah, that's a long way back.
15:01We've missed the number nine that played in the first seven or eight games,
15:06every single game, almost for three or four months.
15:09But now he's back and he played 60, and with the amount of games we play now,
15:15you don't expect him to play 90, 90, 90 in the upcoming three.
15:19But he will be involved in hopefully all the free games,
15:23and hopefully with a lot of minutes as well.
15:27Thanks very much.