Bielsa Press Conference: Pre-Villa

[Roofe out injured for Villa]

Marcelo is here....

Here we go, Sky first


On picking everybody up..

"You can feel only one way and we feel this way."


Difficult picking them up?

"What happened was unavoidable. The way the player feels is normal, if they didn't feel that way we would be worried about it."


Thinking all about play-offs or still top two chance?

"Whatever the reality says."


On Villa - could beating them give you can advantage?

"Of course we need to play a game that would build our optimism and winning Sunday would be something good in that aspect."


Roofe out

Apart from Roofe and Alioski all the other players are available. He (Roofe) has a problem in his hip and he can't sprint, he can't use his maximum speed. I think he will be available soon.


Injury woes

As an average we have missed four players for each game this season.


How do you lift your spirits?

I think when you receive a blow, to ignore the consequences is not the right path. Pain has a natural process and if you want to force this process or hide this it is meaningless.


How important that you stay here and work continues?

It's not up to me and I don't have any response to that. It's not a decision that we have to take now and it's not the right time to give my opinion on it


Can you recover? This is where Bielsa says players will never do this again

We don't need to recover this football because we haven't lost our football. When you lose you lose, it's obvious. But we can't ignore the way these losses happen. When you lose you don't always have the same message and when you lose at a specific moment it's not always the same message that comes out. I am going to give you some figures that for me have a lot of value. Our team this season has had 300 chances to score in total and we had 100 chances more than the teams in first and second in the table. And we have 14 players who have played this whole season. Douglas, Alioski, Davis - our three left backs - all of them have had three knee injuries. So when you take into account this reality you just have to value that the players have done at the right level. If only 14 players can play a whole Championship, if we need six chances to actually score one goal and our rivals need only three, the only feeling I have towards our players is respect and consideration. The game that decided our fate was the game we lost at home to Wigan, in that game we had 15 chances to score and we had more than 70 per cent of possession so between brackets, the final result was a decision of God. I know that what I am saying will be taken with irony/sarcastically - no-one wants to miss a chaance to score and you don't evaulate a team by the goals they score but by the chances they create but of course the teams who are efficient make a difference. We are not efficient but then when you play a competition with a small number of players and also the injuries that we had a lot of which are muscular it is to do with luck so we are not helped by destiny in that sense. I am very happy with all I have received from the club and the sports director but there are things obviously that we couldn't get and I always describe myself as responsible of the situation because I know the things we couldn't get and I know what I did to try and find a solution and I didn't find one. So this is the story but what we can't say about our team/our group, we can't say they couldn't take the pressure because you don't assimulate the pressure only when you can't use the skills you have and remember what I am going to say rght now because you will be able to verify it...
You won't have one single player in our team who will priduce the same performance and being that constant in another season because we have been very demanding with them and they gave everything and I have the figures that I am checking all the time that shows what I am telling is true. The players won't be able to rerpeat the level of performance they have shown this season. We can say that you can't support the pressure and handle the pressure only if you know what handling the pressure is. If you say like in the last few games you lost five or ten because you couldn't handle the pressure, it's not only about the team who wins who can't stand the pressure, it's about how you win and how you lose a game.

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