Yeah, that’s the timing of things. Just unfortunate for us that we couldn’t get a couple back, we were hoping to get a couple back for this last week and it didn’t happen. We could have risked a couple but with what’s ahead we went conservative on that. It is a bit of a re-set. We'll get three, maybe four, players back this week, with the possibility of one or two others in the week or two after that. More importantly, this group that has been going gets a rest. They can go a whole week now without having to get up for another game. We got back from Liverpool at 2am on Friday, the early hours of the morning. So they can get some rest they desperately need physically and mentally.
No, because they're tired mate. Do you think they can press like [we would]. If we hadn't played Thursday night and I hadn't rotated that team we wouldn't have been pressing aggressively today? Fair chance, unless you don't think they're human beings. Unless you're super human and you think no, after playing Liverpool on Thursday night they should be flying tonight. It doesn't happen. They're human beings. Why do you think Liverpool and others rotate 11 players? Why? There's a reason and I wish I could do the same. So you can bring a freshness to the team. Of course they're not playing anywhere near the levels that we want or expect, but that's not because they're not trying. It's because they can't. I think this group of players once we get the rest of the group in, will be an outstanding team. I have no doubt about that. Whether other people can't see that, that's of no interest to me. If you want to measure anything on what they're doing at the moment, other than the extreme situation they're dealing with then I think your analysis is skewed and it's not objective. That's my opinion.
I'm not talking about me. People can judge me. They can say I've done a bad job, I'm not up to it or whatever. That's fine. What I'm saying is you can't be critical of players or players' performances at this time. Because if you do, then do that with everyone else. Be as critical of other clubs when they've got 9 or 10 or 11 players out. And none of them have. and have to play every week. And not for one game. I'm not just saying we had to do this today. We've been doing this since the middle of November and you can't judge performances of these players and critique them on what they've done.
All they've done is given all they can and that's all you can ask for. Me, that's not of interest to me. My responsibility at this football club is this group of players and this team, to get them to play in the manner I want them to and bring us success. Whether people think I can do that or not, that's for others to judge. But there's got to be a better appreciation for what a very small group of players have been doing for the last two and a half months. It can't be that people think that's an excuse.
That's just not anywhere near close to objective analysis. That's just agenda driven stuff. If it's to get rid of me that's fine. Good on ya. Go for it a million times. But in terms of this group of players, what they've given over the past two and half months has been outstanding, it's a credit to him, I can't speak highly enough of them.
It’s not damaging for me, it’s obviously disappointing for us in terms of our objectives. But for two-and-a-half months, this small group of players have given everything in multiple competitions. I think they’ve been outstanding. We had 11 first-team players missing today. We started with four teenagers, a 21 year old goalkeeper coming to one of the best teams in the country, away from home.
After playing the best team in the country on Thursday night. After playing a Premier League game last Sunday, playing a Europa game [before that]. The same group of players. No rotation. And they’ve been doing this since the middle of November. I think they’ve given everything they can and I’ve got so much respect and admiration for the players and how they’ve gone about that. We get a couple of midweeks off now, great for them to recover. We’ll get some players back which is also great for this group that they’ll get some help. And we move on.
It’s a disappointing result, cup competition. We wanted to progress, we didn’t do that tonight – that’s disappointing. We didn’t get off to a great start. It doesn’t help when you are playing away from home, especially a place like Villa, to concede so early, it gives them momentum and confidence, gets the crowd going. We were struggling to stay in the game. Having said that we had a big chance to equalise which could have settled things down for us.
Second-half was more even, we got better control of the game. We had to open up which allowed some transition moments. I felt like we were controlling the game a lot better and the second goal makes it even more difficult. We kept fighting, got the goal we needed. It just wasn’t enough in the end.