On the injury to Isak sustained as he scored…
I don’t have any news on him, but if a player scores, then gets injured and then doesn’t come back on the pitch and doesn’t try to come back… which Conor Bradley, for example, did, but I had to take him off as well because he couldn’t go on, but if a player doesn’t even try to come back that’s usually not a good thing. But I cannot say anything more than that, that is just [a] gut feeling. Nothing medical to say about it.
On whether Isak has said anything about it…
I haven’t spoken to him about it yet. It’s a good thing that he scored: a good goal, assisted by Florian Wirtz. I said last week already players are getting better and the team is getting better. Again, it wasn’t perfect today, especially not in the last 10 minutes, but in the meantime we pick up points and I see the team developing in a way I like to see.
On whether losing Isak is ‘all the more frustrating’ after he scored from a Wirtz assist…
Yes, that is what we would like to see happening a lot. Good finish, good pass, but let’s not be too negative yet. We don’t know yet. Let’s hope he is back with us soon but difficult to say to you now.
On whether Jeremie Frimpong was substituted due to injury…
No, Jeremie has no problem at all. I didn’t want to go down to 10 men for 30 seconds. I think this is the only country where if players are injured they need to go off for 30 seconds, with a head injury [it is] even 45, so I adapted to that. I knew there wasn’t long to play and I thought we struggled a lot with our plus one, so playing 10-v-10 for half a minute with him being on the floor, yes or no, then we just go with Federico [Chiesa]. No problem with him, but with Alex and with Conor we have to wait. You could see our bench today as well, but this is not for the first time in the last few weeks and we are picking up points and that’s the main thing. We are not the only team that suffers injuries in this period in England because we play so many games. This is quite normal, that teams have injuries in this period of time.
On pushing for the top four again…
Of course we are happy with that. But when we started the season, it wasn’t as if I was thrilled and completely happy when we were top four. We’re always aiming for the best possible and, after a very good start we had, we were disappointed with the run of results we had afterwards. But I think you’ve said it, we are now maybe on equal points for top four, I don’t exactly know. But don’t forget, in the Champions League we’ve done quite well with a very difficult draw. I see a lot of teams that hardly have a point but we haven’t faced them. So, I think it’s never been as bad as people said, but it’s also true that we are definitely not perfect yet. But we knew this when we made so many changes in the summer that it would take time. Maybe because we won the first five or six games, everybody thought this would just go so easily. But as a club, ownership, Richard [Hughes], Michael [Edwards], all the other people, knew that change could, could, could also go with different results – and that has shown to be true.
