I know you said a couple of times you don’t want to over-celebrate qualifying for the Champions League, but just in practical terms, when you’re looking at making that next step, does it make that easier in maybe having more money to spend in the summer, maybe you can attract better players, is that how you’re looking at it?
“It’s a huge step, don’t get me wrong, for so many reasons, I’m not underplaying it, it is a big step. The signs of improvement and being in a position now where we ware with three games to go, there’s a lot of satisfaction that comes with that, but that can’t be everything, that’s the point I’m making. There’s a lot of credit to the staff and the players for doing that, but we want more of that, we want and expect more of that consistently and that’s the message of let’s try and push on and keep improving, it’s not just to sit back and think: ‘that was alright, that was good, we’ve achieved something’.”
You spoke about togetherness, the players clearly are quite a tight-knit group. How have you managed to develop that, or is it something that was there before and needed a bit of extra attention?
“I can only say from what I’ve faced and seen with my own eyes really, and ever since we came back through the doors, I think the boys have responded really well to it. I think it comes from trust as well and how you treat each other and the trust between us and the belief, certainly I’ve got in them and the staff have got in them, and we spoke about that before the game, about how much belief we’ve got in them, so trying to give them that confidence to go and play. They’re really food players and it can be a really good team when we put things in place, and that’s proved to be the case over recent months.”
I know it’s a delicate matter but I’m sure you’ve heard about Sir Alex. Is there any comment you have on behalf of the club?
“I haven’t got any updates, so I don’t know the latest as we stand now, I did hear about it before the game so I was aware before the game. All I can say is I wish him… I was very affected by it, the news, and we just hope he’s alright. I just don’t know the latest, but we hope for him to be in good shape and we wish him all the best. I certainly think, I mean hopefully, the result, when he hears about it gives him a good boost.”