Here are some of the topics he spoke about...
On what he’s seen so far this season…
“A lot of good moments, some moments we can still be better at, some adversity we’ve faced but I’d say a lot more of the positive things on and off the pitch when we’re a full collective that maybe everyone doesn’t get to see, and I feel that we’re moving in the right direction, showing good qualities with and without the ball. We just need to refine certain areas continually to make sure that we can be the most competitive (that we can be).”
On Victoria Pelova’s form…
“I know Vic was always a good player from what I’ve seen of her before, not just domestically at club level but also nationally, and then the references you get on character and professionalism as a footballer – obviously with your own eye it’s the most important part – but I always knew she had good qualities, it was more how we would get them out of her and how long it would take for her to do that. I think she’s settled into the environment very well and I think that tells you a lot about the culture and about the players that are around her, but then her own qualities, whether that’s defensively or attacking, she’s shown a lot of that and to be in a position where she’s scored six goals (and got) three or four assists, I think it’s a remarkable start for a player. I think she’d have wanted that start but maybe didn’t expect it, and maybe the same for me, but I think we have a wonderful player on our hands.”
On Kirsty Hanson…
“Kirsty started really well, I think you’ve seen the goals she scored in the first game, I think she started the first four or five, we had a little bit of rotation in the cup, she hasn’t started the last couple, the last one being more from a small niggle she had coming out of the Bristol City game which not everyone gets to know and that’s maybe why you get a lot of backlash from fans but yes, she had a small niggle that didn’t enable her to start the last one but apart from that, I think Kirsty is a wonderful player, has a lot of quality, a lot of talent, possesses really key characteristics that we look for in those forward players in her speed and her directness but her off-the-ball behaviours complement that too, so hopefully now she just continues to work hard and puts her head down. The hard part with the squad now and the team, with where we’re at, is when one person isn’t in the team, the other person goes in and gets an opportunity, sometimes they take that and it’s then about as a group, collectively competing and challenging one another to get in that starting XI. As long as they do everything they can through the week to give themselves the chance of starting at the weekend, the thing they don’t control is my decision-making tactically on what I want to do, but what they can do is give me a really good headache. I think this season definitely we’ve had a really strong headache from every single player in terms of should they play, should they not, and then a further headache from the fans to make sure that I play certain players they maybe want to see!”
On what to expect from Brighton after our recent Players Cup tie…
“It doesn’t have much bearing because that result won’t dictate how we perform and what we do here. What it does do is give us some reference maybe and some kind of insight in terms of when we played them ourselves with how we set up and how we approached the game. Was that right, was that wrong, were there areas we kind of missed? It gives us some reference on the players and the characteristics we want to start in those games maybe against those individual players, but what it does tell us is they’re a good team, they pushed us, at the back end of the game especially, the last 20 or so minutes they pushed us onto the back foot, we had spells in the first half and in parts of the second half where we were good with the ball and created opportunities against them, so you can take a lot of both sides from it. Then the format has enabled us and most clubs to experiment a little bit differently. One thing I want to make sure of in the cup competitions is I will change where I feel we need to change but I won’t change everything for the sake of minutes. Minutes should be earned and not just given and I want to make sure that we go into these cup competitions wanting to get to the latter stages, get to finals, getting close to winning silverware because the more we do that, it shows the strength of this club. It’s where the fans want to be, the club wants the be, I want to be, so we have to show respect to the competition and the opposition, but it definitely gives you a little bit more flexibility. What it doesn’t help with is the schedule and how tight it is but there’s tos and fros for everything. But I think if you ask the players, they’d want to play more games anyway.”
On Toko Koga’s abilities…
“Any words don’t do her any justice. I don’t think we speak about her enough, I don’t think you (the media) speak about her enough. As journalists you will always go to the players who’ve been in the league for this long and the price tag of everyone but I actually think that Toko in my opinion is probably one of the best, if not the best central defender I’ve worked with. She’s 20 years of age and I think you forget that. She’s playing well above her means in terms of her level of where she would be at now, she’s over-achieving in terms of what she does with where we’d expect and with how she’s been in the league for 16 or 17 months and the level she’s performing at. Yes, she’s going to have games that she’s disappointed with but she’ll be the first to address that. But for a player of her stature, her technical quality and her tactical level of understanding is phenomenal. Until you can work with that first-hand you never really appreciate it, but I believe in the future she’s going to be (one of), if not the best centre-back in world football.”
On Sophie Jackson and young players in general turning pro…
“It’s a huge part of the club and you’ve seen Luca (Williams-Barnett) do it with the men’s team recently. It’s a really big part of this football club, a big part of the ethos of producing your own talent and that was a really big thing which drew me to the club when I came here – the opportunity to make sure there’s a clear pathway for our Academy and that it’s aligned through junior football into senior football, and as soon as we can get players through and they’re ready to come through then we give them the opportunity. I do that in training a lot, we’ve had lots and lots of players train with us over the last 18 months that I’ve been here, so I want to make sure that continues. Sophie getting her first professional contract and turning down opportunities from other big clubs in this league who also wanted her shows her belief and confidence in what we’re doing. She believes she can grow here and mature as a player, and I definitely think that it shows that we’re a club who can produce our own players and consistently do that, but we also have a platform and a foundation and a structure in the Academy that allows us to do that to.”
On quickly recovering from conceding goals to scoring them again…
“We’re entertaining, I’ll tell you that! We seem to score a lot of goals and concede a lot and we spoke about that question actually in a wider leadership meeting this week. We’re there to entertain fans, I say I want them on the edge of their seats and they’re either on the edge of their seats or they’re falling off the back of them when we’ve conceded six, so either way we’re entertaining! We don’t go into any game thinking that we want to concede, but what it has definitely shown me is that we have areas to grow in and I’m very clear on that with everyone, especially in these press conferences. We have a lot of work to do and we’re not where we want to be and where we need to be, and what we have to do is find that consistency in performance but also build the mentality of the group when we’re playing against those teams. I think you saw a different side against Arsenal which is where we want to be, compared to the other two games before that. We’ve also got to make sure that the players can adapt from being aggressive and being more reserved, but I want to make sure that we are entertaining and we’re scoring goals. I think we’re doing that well, what we’ve got to make sure is at the other end we start to shut it out.”