Glasner reveals training plans in build
Asked whether he would approach the week like any other, the manager explained: “Yes, we will meet tomorrow [Monday]. The players who started [against Spurs] will recover, the others will have a good and intense session.
“Then there will be Tuesday off. The players deserve to recover, and, of course, the staff have already started to prepare. We will watch a few Man City clips as well, and Wednesday will be the start with the preparation for Man City.
“But we can't do something different. It also makes no sense [to do that]. It's [about] showing what we can [do], who we are on our best level, and this is how we will enter the final, and then let's see. Then, it's football and everything can happen.
“But the worst thing that we could do is now changing many things, because we can't teach the players something different in four days – it would just make them dizzy! So, business as usual.”
Drawing parallels with the Eagles’ semi-final win over Aston Villa, which came just three days after an eye-catching result against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium, Glasner named a strong side to face Spurs on Sunday, making just two changes to his starting line-up ahead of the match.
His players responded with a comprehensive performance to produce a first-ever league double over their North London rivals.
Glasner noted: “Yeah, the performance was really good. The many chances we created was really good. The clean sheet was really good – so many positive things to take for the FA Cup Final.
“We were talking about it before, and this was mentioned at the pre-match press conference, that the best preparation is showing a good performance here. The plenty of chances we created, the goals we scored, the consistency in our defending, because this is what we will talk about on Wednesday, this will help us for the Final – not just the result.
“We talked about it, and it's easy to talk about it. It's more difficult to execute it in the way the players did, so that's why I said all the credit to them – and it was really a nice Sunday afternoon.
“They [the players] stay in the rhythm. That's the most important thing.
“I think it's more risky and more dangerous to not to play players from last Monday [against Nottingham Forest] until next Saturday [versus Man City]. And 12 days without the game, just the training rhythm with a few days off…. we all know this – every football player knows – you get all the fitness, all the confidence, all the tactics you get in the games.
“So that's why it was never to think about if we’d do it in a different way. And this is what we did at Arsenal as well: we made three subs after 60 minutes. We had to do one more, one different one, because Jeff Lerma felt a little bit of pain in his ankle at half-time – otherwise Will Hughes should have gone off – so this was a slight adjustment.
“But everything else worked how we wanted to prepare.”
