”Yeah, I think so [we have enough full-backs] because right now we have Ben and Spence. I thought [Djed] was very good against Arsenal and did very well against Saka, and I think Ben is a very important player.
”I think his leadership qualities, his character and the way he understands the bigger picture. Everyone has got an ego, but his ego is not too big and that’s good. So you understand how much you need to help the team and the younger players.
”He understands when it’s for the better for the club, you know, all the actions. So as a player that can speak up and push a bit inside [the team] and they like him, he’s a good guy. It makes sense what he says, and he does it in a good way. That’s just respect, respect, respect for all players.
“Some win respect by being the top player and Ben is still, by the way, a very good player. So when you do the other things [as well], if you think you win more respect.”
”Obviously we are signing players here where the processes in Brentford, I’m not saying they were better, I think they’re very good. I think that Johan and his team is doing a top job, top, but just for them to understand what I’m looking for, so that needs to be aligned.
”At Brentford it was aligned (clicks fingers). ‘I want that’, ‘OK, fine’, we look at it, boom, and now I need to use more time with Johan and Rob and these guys and then we make presentations. ‘No, no, no, I need that instead’, so all that is just extra hours every day.
”We try to recruit the right players, try to get to know the team, try to get all the principles in. As an example, I was very, very happy with the first half against Arsenal [in Hong Kong], because I think there was a lot of the elements that I want to get into a team and it looked okay in sync, without being completely free floating, but a lot of the principles, so that’s a lot of hard work.
“Then as we go through the transfer window, that’s why we need the next step with players that maybe need to beat them.”
”I think that’s difficult. I think that there’s no doubt that I want, how can I say this, a big enough, small enough squad! You know what I mean? It needs to be big enough and robust enough to compete in all four tournaments because that’s extremely important, but I can’t have too many players.
”It’s just so difficult to keep everyone happy, it is almost impossible, and then we also want to see if we can add in enough quality, but again, we don’t want to sign players we don’t think can really improve the squad.
“Then I would rather wait to have the right talented players. I’m not here for the short term fix. I want to build something that can last, so we need to think longer term, but of course we need to compete now. That’s my thought process.”