On the game…
A great game of football. Two teams that wanted to play, two teams that wanted to win, had no intentions to do things that people normally don’t like to see if they watch a game of football, so no time-wasting, no tumbling. Two teams that were just for almost 100 minutes trying to win a game of football and with some brilliant individual moments. I’ve seen a few from us but the lead-up to the 2-2, the ball from the goalkeeper towards that midfielder that pretended to play the ball to the outside and then played [to] his midfielder was a great moment from them, and then the lead-up to the 3-2, the way Mitoma bounced that ball behind his standing leg towards the midfielder that came underneath him. [They] were from their perspective great moments, and I think there were many of those moments during the whole game from both sides. So, [a] joy to watch, unfortunately not with the result we wanted.
On Federico Chiesa playing as a No.9 and making his first Premier League start…
I think the biggest quality Federico has is scoring goals. So the more you get him in and around the box, the bigger chance it is for him to score a goal. He got a good chance just before Mo [Salah] had his big chance. Mo assisted to Federico and for him to have an open shot from the 18-yard box is for Federico a very good chance because he’s such a great finisher. But [it was] well defended by [Jan Paul] van Hecke, who blocked that ball. I think he did even more than I could expect from him. Because if you haven’t played throughout the whole season, hardly ever had any starts, and then to play Brighton away – which is a very good team, No.8 of the league that can bring in Mitoma 20 minutes before the end, that tells you everything about this league – and then for him to be out for so long and play a game like this is more than I could expect from him.
On whether he learned ‘much more about his players’…
I wouldn’t say more, because if you work with them for 10 months it would be a bit strange if you learn new things after 10 months. But for me, I think I saw many things that I already knew and one of them is how close the margins have been throughout our whole season. And now with us failing to score the third, with us just missing maybe this two or three per cent sometimes in our defensive work, immediately it leads to us losing games of football – although I know it’s against Chelsea, I know it’s against Brighton and I know we didn’t lose against Arsenal but I know it’s against Arsenal.
But we won this league because we’ve been so consistent, we’ve done so many things right, but we haven’t won it in a way like [Manchester] City did it for the last four seasons where they just could close the eyes and they were even 4-0 up. We’ve been very close in terms of quality with all the teams we’ve competed with. That’s why it’s also such a big compliment that we won this league by such a big margin, because the quality margins are not so much different between us and some other teams, so that’s why it’s such a big compliment – especially because we’ve had our injuries throughout the season as well. To lead by 12 now is a big compliment to our players.
