You can't accelerate time, the plans and the planning are in the same place - Postecoglou
Category
🥇
SportTranscript
00:00 Have you had a nice Christmas?
00:02 Yeah, it was okay. Yeah, it was good. Nice. Quiet. Yeah.
00:05 First off, can we just start with a team news injury update, I suppose, and more specifically about Christian Romero?
00:11 Yeah. Yeah, not so great with Romero.
00:16 Had a scan the other day, so he's got a hamstring strain.
00:19 So we're looking at probably four weeks, five weeks for him.
00:25 Everyone else from the weekend, from the last game,
00:28 it was a pretty demanding physically, in terms of the numbers we generated that day,
00:35 both us and Everton, it was quite extraordinary.
00:37 So fair to say the boys were a bit fatigued, but they had a couple of easier days,
00:42 so everyone else should be okay.
00:44 How disappointing is it to lose Christian for that long?
00:47 And I suppose you've talked about January and the need for a centre-back.
00:51 Does that accelerate plans?
00:53 No, it doesn't change anything.
00:55 It's just, like I said, disappointing to lose him, for sure.
01:00 We obviously missed him with the suspension,
01:03 and now we just got him back and kind of steady things up,
01:07 but obviously with him missing again for quite a chunk of time.
01:12 But it doesn't change really.
01:15 You can't accelerate time, mate.
01:17 It's still December. January 1st stays January 1st, irrespective of our situation.
01:23 So the plans and the planning are still in sort of the same shape.
01:27 Obviously, we know you're going to lose Kjell Minsson for a lot of January,
01:32 if not all of January.
01:33 Do you have an actual date about when he's going to go away with South Korea?
01:37 Because obviously you've got the game on New Year's Eve.
01:40 Yeah, not yet. It won't affect the New Year's Eve game.
01:43 We're just sort of in dialogue now, I think, with the three lads.
01:50 I assume he'll probably leave a bit early.
01:52 Obviously, he's suspended.
01:53 And then Pape and Sonny, it'll be sometime in early January,
01:59 but we haven't got official confirmation yet.
02:03 Hi, Ange. I just wanted to ask you about Richarlison.
02:05 Obviously, he's hit form in the last two or three matches.
02:09 Last time I was here, you said that you expected him to see an upturn
02:13 because he was a bit freer mentally and obviously physically.
02:16 Is that what you put it down to then?
02:18 He's managed to free himself up,
02:20 and we're now seeing the results of that on the pitch.
02:24 Yeah. Like I said, I think I've said a few times,
02:28 I mean, they're human beings,
02:31 and when you don't feel 100% in yourself,
02:34 whether that's physically or mentally, it's going to affect performance.
02:37 And not that everything's rosy in his life now.
02:40 I'm sure he's still got issues in there,
02:41 but in terms of especially the physical side of it,
02:45 the kind of operation recovery he had from it,
02:49 he came back to training,
02:50 you could tell he just felt a lot better about himself
02:53 in terms of the way he was moving, the way he was training,
02:55 and he was a lot freer in his movements.
02:58 I think that's allowed him to go into games now with more confidence,
03:02 more self-belief about his body more than anything else.
03:08 Sometimes that's all it takes.
03:10 There's no doubt he's a talented player.
03:12 He's scored plenty of goals in the Premier League.
03:15 He's playing for his country.
03:18 But at the same time, like I said, they're human beings,
03:20 and sometimes when things aren't right,
03:25 it affects performance and it affects their output.
03:29 - Just a couple on Brighton then.
03:31 They get a lot of praise for the way that they played.
03:33 They certainly did when the new manager came in.
03:36 Some people say that it's very difficult to play against them.
03:39 Is that something that you agree with?
03:40 And also, if so, why?
03:41 What is it about them that makes them difficult to play against?
03:45 - Yeah, no, their football's fantastic,
03:47 and I think they probably do things a little bit differently to everyone else.
03:52 Look, they're a very well-run club.
03:55 They have been for quite a while.
03:56 You could see even under Graham that they were making progress
04:01 as a football club, and then Roberto's obviously come in.
04:04 He's always done things fairly unique in his whole career,
04:07 and he's brought that to the Premier League.
04:09 You've got to respect that because, as we know,
04:12 this is probably the toughest league competition in the world,
04:14 and it can be easy to shy away from doing anything that's too different.
04:20 But he's--I don't know the man.
04:24 I've never met him, but you can tell that he's pretty determined
04:27 to do things his own way, and they do provide a different challenge
04:32 from a lot of other clubs in the way they play,
04:34 the way they keep the ball, the way they build up,
04:36 the way they press, and it's great because that's what you kind of want
04:42 to be in these competitions, to get challenged in those kinds of ways.
04:47 There's a lot to admire about the way both the football club
04:50 and Roberto and his players have gone about it.
04:53 Do you think there is anything predictable to play against,
04:55 as people say there are?
04:58 It depends on sort of what you view as kind of predictable or unpredictable.
05:05 Ultimately, I've always said that every game is its own unique piece
05:10 of living, breathing thing.
05:17 No one can tell me how a game of football is going to go.
05:20 I don't know if you watched last night, but at halftime,
05:22 you probably would have read it in a different story to what you wrote.
05:25 That's the beauty of football.
05:27 As much as we as managers try to control the whole thing,
05:31 the reality of it is every football game is a life in itself,
05:36 and what you've got to do is just try and prepare your team
05:38 to deal with whatever may happen in the course of the 9,500 minutes
05:43 that transpire.
05:45 Thank you. Ali, please.
05:49 Hi there, Ange.
05:50 Obviously, it's been well known that you need another centre-back
05:52 in this January window for quite a while,
05:54 obviously probably towards the end of the summer window.
05:56 Maybe the perception from the outside was perhaps it would be
05:59 another left-sided centre-back, because obviously you only had
06:01 Micky van der Ven at that point.
06:03 Obviously, Ben Davies has done a good job in kind of a makeshift role.
06:07 Has the kind of idea shifted maybe towards being,
06:10 as in over the course of time, to being maybe a right-sided centre-back
06:14 you need, especially with the Romero news now,
06:16 or is it just someone that can play either?
06:18 I don't – yeah, I don't sort of put as much stock into the whole
06:22 left-sided, right-sided centre-back kind of scenario.
06:26 We just need another player in that position that can provide
06:30 some more sort of depth for us and the ability to change things up
06:36 and it won't really matter whether it's left-side or right-side.
06:40 It's more about the characteristics, the profile characteristics.
06:45 I mean, we didn't go looking for a left-sided centre-back at the start
06:48 of the year.
06:49 It just happened that Micky was the perfect centre-back, you know,
06:52 and even if we had another left-sider on us, the order signed him.
06:54 So, like I said, it's about looking at the right profile,
06:58 the right characteristics we kind of need for that position at this point
07:02 in time and seeing what's available and going from there.
07:07 Just something towards the end of the Everton game I noticed,
07:09 that Guilherme Vaccaro started to take quite long kicks from goal
07:13 and some of the goal kicks as well go quite long.
07:15 It kind of feels like the antithesis of everything we've seen from you
07:18 in the past.
07:19 You like that kind of build-up from the back of the quick.
07:21 Is that something that he was just naturally doing or is it something
07:24 you wanted because of the way the game was shaping at the end?
07:27 No, I mean, he took a couple of longer kicks, but we're trying to win
07:30 a game of football and, like I just said a second ago,
07:33 we like to try and control everything in a game, but ultimately it's the players
07:37 who have that control and they'll always do what they feel is right.
07:42 It's not the first time we've done it this year.
07:44 It won't be the last time.
07:45 It's all about game state.
07:46 It's all about sort of what the players are feeling in that moment,
07:50 what the information they have out there.
07:51 Like I said, for me, you know, I try and prepare the players
07:57 in the best way possible for every challenge ahead, but, you know,
08:01 there's always a uniqueness in whatever challenge they face out there
08:04 and all the tools we give them prior to the game, they're there for them
08:08 to use and that's one of them.
08:10 Last one from me.
08:12 Dane Scarlett's come back, obviously, from Ipswich.
08:15 Presumably that's more cover with Stony going away.
08:19 If, let's say, you were to sign another attacker in January,
08:22 would there be any scenario where Alejo Veliz maybe would head out
08:25 on loan just for some game time?
08:26 Oh, mate, there's a lot of moving parts you were just talking about there, mate.
08:30 It's good to get Dane back.
08:32 Obviously, the loan move didn't kind of work out for him at Ipswich,
08:35 which is disappointing for him, disappointing for us because the reason
08:39 we sent him out on loan is to get some game time with him and develop him.
08:43 It hasn't worked out that way, so it made sense to bring him back.
08:45 He's back training with us and, you know, becomes available from January 1st
08:50 and, again, then it's up to him to, you know, he'll stay with us
08:54 till the end of the year and hopefully, you know, see how he trains
08:58 and what opportunities may or may not come along.
09:01 And, you know, we'll sort of address those situations then.
09:06 Thank you.
09:07 And we'll finish this section with George on the back, please.
09:14 Hi, Ant.
09:15 With that Romero news, what's the kind of latest with Micky van der Ven
09:18 and his return that I think he was at the Darts a couple of weeks ago
09:21 and said he might be back in two weeks to some fans.
09:24 So I don't know how accurate that is.
09:25 Where was he?
09:26 He was at Ali Pali for the World Darts.
09:28 The Darts, okay, all right.
09:31 Jeez.
09:32 I think I've said before I wouldn't be taking players' sort of views
09:37 on kind of their recovery process.
09:40 Look, he's getting closer.
09:42 You know, we'll see him sometime in January.
09:46 I don't think Burnley, but, you know, Man United on the 14th,
09:51 I think potentially.
09:52 But, again, I don't look at comeback dates until I see him training with us.
09:57 And he hasn't been part of the group.
09:59 He's not due to be part of the group this week.
10:02 We'll see how he's going by the end of the week.
10:04 So once they start training with the group,
10:06 then we can start thinking about when they'll be available.
10:09 He's at the tail end of it for sure.
10:11 So, like I said, at some point, you know, middle of January,
10:15 definitely we think he'd be available.
10:17 But, again, how we use him then is going to be after such a long absence
10:21 is going to be depending on sort of where we feel he's at.
10:25 And, obviously, losing Romero is a big blow.
10:28 Have you got the kind of added headache of whoever comes in,
10:31 whether it's Eric, Ash, someone else, you've got to be mindful
10:34 they've not played a lot of games and you don't want them to kind of break down
10:37 straight away coming into the team?
10:38 Well, I mean, we've been in that sort of state for quite a while now.
10:42 We've just had to throw people in.
10:44 Ultimately, we can't, you know, as much as you'd like to sort of bed guys in.
10:51 But the reality is we obviously weren't in Europe,
10:55 so we didn't have games to give games to these guys.
10:58 So through a needs sort of basis, we just had to throw them in.
11:04 And, to be fair, the majority have done super well for us.
11:07 Guys like Emerson, you know, like I said, Eric came in.
11:10 Benny now has played a few games but hadn't played a lot myself.
11:14 So, Gil, I could go through quite a few that were kind of thrown in fairly cold.
11:19 There's always that possibility that they could break down,
11:22 but we've got no other choice.
11:24 And just finally for me, I don't know whether it was true or not,
11:27 but around a year ago before De Zerby got appointed,
11:29 there was speculation in England about you potentially being involved
11:32 in the running for the Brighton job.
11:34 I wondered how far that ran in terms of yourself.
11:37 And was it maybe the first time that your name was actually linked
11:40 to a Premier League club?
11:42 No-one knew about me a year ago, mate, you know that.
11:47 No, look, I didn't have discussions with Brighton at the time.
11:51 And, to be honest, last year during the year, you know,
11:54 I was – there wasn't really the possibility I was going to leave Celtic mid-season.
11:59 I just didn't think that was – I'd only been there a year and a half.
12:03 And, like, even though there was nothing real – not nothing real,
12:09 but people weren't really saying to me that there's clubs that want to talk to you,
12:12 I kind of knew in my mind that if I was going to do anything,
12:15 it would have to be after the second year.
12:17 I wasn't going to leave mid-year.
12:18 So I never entertained it.
12:20 But, like I said, I've got great admiration for the football club
12:23 because they obviously – I've said a few times,
12:28 you kind of like the clubs that have a plan and stick to it.
12:32 And they're certainly one of those clubs.
12:34 Okay, we'll end the broadcast section there and move on to the EnviroLeader section for