Ole backs his Reds in the press conference
TranscriptThe manager offers his support for David De Gea and Brandon Williams, while speaking to reporters at Wembley...
Where did it go wrong? Very general question. Of course the blow to Eric’s head when Harry and he were down for a long time meant we seemed to lose concentration for a little while and conceded the goal straight after. That had a massive impact on the game. Did you prioritise Wednesday with your team selection because certain players were tired today? We picked a team today to give us a best possible opportunity to go through in the cup and be ready for Wednesday. It didn’t work today. We almost got to half-time and we had the change when Eric had to come off, but that will stand us in good stead for Wednesday. I picked a team today to go through. You’ve always supported DDG. If these errors persist, at some point are you going to have a decision to make? Obviously everyone has to perform and everyone has a chance every time we play to stake a claim in the team. David knows he should have saved the second goal, but that’s done now. We’ve got to move on and look forward to Wednesday. It’s hard for a keeper to make amends apart from David making two or three fantastic saves after. You saw Brandon [Williams] for example and the character he showed. He played a square pass into Mount [which led to their second goal] and he probably felt a bit responsible, but for the rest of the half he was absolutely outstanding. The kid has been out for a while and not played, and had the eye injury, but his character and personality out there was great, he kept going and kept going. It’s so much easier for outfield players but David in the rest of the game made a few good saves. He knows he could have saved that one. How is Eric? Eric is in hospital going through all the routine checks and protocols. He got a cut in the back of this head as well so I don’t really know anymore. I haven’t heard or spoken to the doctor about him. Of course that had a big, big impact on the game. Eric played very well in his 42 or 44 minutes that he was on for and we conceded just after the restart which was very disappointing. Eric was a big part of us not having any chances against us really. What must you learn from this and is Leicester losing one bit of good news for us? Of course we can’t do anything about that but it’s between us, Chelsea and Leicester for those two last positions and the more help we get from others the better, of course. But if we do our job on Wednesday we’ll be in a good position. We’ll go into the Leicester game and hope that if we win that one we can qualify. We’ve just got to regroup and go again on Wednesday against West Ham. What do we have to learn? We’ve got loads of things to learn as a team, but we are learning and we are developing. This team took a knock today confidence-wise, but let’s see how the reaction is on Wednesday.