Ole's post-match press conference
TranscriptHear the manager's view on our disallowed goal, Martial's form and a big week ahead, in his media briefing...
I wonder if the result and performance surprised you, and how big of a bearing did key moments have on your team who perhaps weren't at it tonight? "Well, of course we’re disappointed. Any result in the Premier League should not surprise anyone. But then again, very disappointed that we couldn’t put a better performance on. It was down to us to put the performance up. We just couldn't find an opening behind, around or between a very compact and good Sheffield United defence. The big moments went against us. If you look at it, Billy Sharp's been around the place and knows how to put the goalkeeper off. That's definite foul on him as David can't get up. For me, the referee makes a mistake blowing the whistle on our goal for that corner, and that's disappointing. He blows too early but that happens. Can you put a finger on what went wrong tonight? Some of your better players didn't seem to step up to the level they know they're capable of. "There's many facets to a game of football. Today, we didn’t pass with enough quality, get enough rhythm and tempo and quality in our passes. We didn't make enough runs in behind when we should have. There were spaces there at times, especially second half, in the first half it was less so and more difficult. The boys have been absolutely terrific for the last few moments, they've been really consistent, high performance levels. Tonight was our night to not hit those levels and when you don't, you don't get results in the Premier League. Do you worry Anthony Martial’s form? He seems to get a lot of criticism from supporters tonight. He's only got two goals in ten more starts than Edinson. He's obviously got four and played really well. "Well I think the whole team will probably get criticism tonight, and myself as well. I don't think Anthony is exempt from that. We all should be criticised because we didn't perform. I know Anto, he's been working really hard in training, working on his finishing, working on his movement, so I got no doubts that he will come good." That's your first loss in 13 games in the Premier League. Everything has gone really well lately but now these bumps come along. Are the upcoming games going to be the time where you find out what these players are really made of? "Of course, there’s no time to feel sorry for ourselves. TWhere's a game already on Saturday. Other teams have lost games, we have done it before. This group of players have done it so many times and I expect the performance to be much better on Saturday. We got Arsenal, Southampton, Everton, three massive games coming up. We cannot feel sorry for ourselves for too long. When I see them in the morning, I expect them to get the mood back up tomorrow and have focus on Saturday." There were some absentees in the squad, any reason for that? "Eric had a bang yesterday and got a sore bruise so he was out. Brandon and Amad and Jesse trained as well this morning so we more or less we stuck with the same squad we've had the last few weeks. How do you balance the need for substitutions with wanting to see how if your starting players can properly execute your gameplan? "You need to find the right moment. I think maybe we didn't find the performance level we needed. I felt we started okay. We didn't have the quality in last past to find the openings. Then, of course, at half time, when you're 1-0 down you think to yourself "do you sub early on or give them some time get back in the game and score?". We felt the time was there for Edi to come on then, it's always a balance between sticking with the starting eleven or making changes when you see things don't work."