“Micky and Djed came into my office yesterday, unprompted. And just said: ‘Want to say sorry for the situation.’ They didn’t want it to look bad or disrespectful or all of the kind of perceptions you can get in this beautiful media world. That was not the intention at all towards me or the team or the club. They were just frustrated with the performance, the loss and the booing during the game.
“Of course I had to ask them about the situation they were walking in, what they were feeling, why they were doing it, because we all have a perception. And we are very, very good to have that strong [opinion]. That’s because they... whatever, because their mom wasn’t well, or they didn’t like the head coach, or they were irritated with the performance, or it’s because they lost, or whatever. We’re very, very good at that. None of us knows.
“So that would be my first question to them. How were they and why? Of course I’m happy, because I knew the question would come today, that they were coming in. And that means they care. I think that’s very good. They care about the team, the club. In this case, me.
“I’m happy with that. So that was very good. Then we just had a good talk about a lot of things. And like with everything, we keep it internally. Like I said to the players when I said that before, it will be very, very, very unusual if I ever throw a player under the bus. We’re all humans, but I’ll always protect them.”
“I think it depends on whose narrative that is. The journalists? A few fans? I guess we have quite a few fans out there so I guess the ones who write on social media. I’m not on social media. I’m very aware we haven’t been free flowing, in some games, I think there’s definitely been some moments where we’ve been quite good. It’s something we work very hard on every single day.
“It’s fair to say every team I’ve managed, we’ve been able to score a lot of goals. Also a Brentford team with let’s say on paper lesser players, creating a lot of top goal scorers. I’m convinced we will do the same here. I think it’s fair to say we are also working very hard on it. The players are doing everything they can and it’s my job with the coaches to make sure they hit good relations, good structure and can be confident.”