Oliver Glasner says Crystal Palace are working incrementally, step by step, game by game, to improve results, ahead of Monday night's trip to Nottingham Forest.
The Eagles are without a Premier League win in their opening seven matches of the season, although the sum of those results arguably fails to reflect some otherwise-strong performances in their midst.
Now, ahead of travelling to the City Ground on Monday (21st October, 20:00 BST), Glasner discussed, in his pre-match press conference, how he and his players are working to get that first win on the board – and you can catch up on the key quotes below…
“We will see on Monday at Nottingham if it was the right moment [for the international break]. Like always, we try to do the best out of it. We had several players playing for their national teams, some players working individually, especially in the first week.
“Today was the first training all together and it's positive that we play on Monday. We have three days preparing for the Nottingham game and the evidence is on Monday.”
“We don't go into the right direction [so far this season] because we wanted and expected to have more points. And the performances, it's always in many parts of the game, against Liverpool, against Man Utd, against Everton, against Leicester.
“In many parts of the game, we are competitive, but at the end, we lose or we have a draw. Some percentages we are missing, and this is what we are talking about.
“If it would always be the same, it would be easy to change it, but sometimes we lose the focus – like Everton, [we conceded] after two second phases, after set plays. Then, sometimes we miss the clear chances we have to get a better result. Everything isn't so settled at the moment, and this is what we are working on.
“We always focus on what we can influence. We can't influence luck or not. We can force the situation. We can create more situations to score more goals. We can create more chances. We can defend better so that the opposite team doesn't get so many chances or clear situations to score – this is what we can do on the pitch.
“This is what we can train, but we can't train [to be] lucky or unlucky.”
“They’ve had quite a good start. We know, at home, they didn't win at the moment, but they’ve scored many goals from set plays. They're very compact. They don't concede many goals.
“I watched the last 10 minutes at Chelsea [a 1-1 draw], and it was an up and down, so even with the red card, they could score at the end and they could concede a goal, so it's a very physical team.
“[They have] lot of pace, especially from the wing, with [Anthony] Elanga, with [Callum] Hudson-Odoi, with their full-backs: [Alex] Moreno, Ola Aina. [They’re] very physical in the middle, so they kept the whole squad together. They got new, experienced signings like [Nikola] Milenkovic in defence. [Goalkeeper Matz] Sels did an excellent job all over the season.
“Every Premier League game will be challenging and we prepare as well. We don't look back. We analyse, we try to improve day by day, game to game, but the mindset will never change, so we go there on Monday to get the win and we don't say ‘OK, we always hear it. You didn't win, I don't know, for seven games now in the Premier League and this and that.’
“When I arrived here, I was told the team had conceded the most goals in the last 15 minutes, and then I said: ‘OK, we don't talk about it, we focus on how we can improve it’ – and this is what we're doing now. We go to Nottingham and play for three points there.”
“We all try not to get influenced by the results, but it's not so easy, especially on the players' part. I think we were closer to a point against Liverpool in the home game than we were in the away game, but the result was a 1-0 win at Anfield and a 1-0 loss at home. But when we look at the chances they had at home, and we had, and then we compare it, so I think we were closer this time.
“But we didn't get a point, we didn't get a win, and then it's not complaining and mourning about it, it's just staying very objective, don't judge it too emotionally, analysing what are we doing well, what are we doing not so well, and in parts of the game we are too passive, and the first-half we struggled a little bit against a very good Liverpool side.
“But also we can see that we're always able to create chances, so this should give us confidence. If you win six out of seven, or if you don't win in seven, everybody is a human, everybody is thinking about it, all our players are very self-critical, and thinking: ‘why did I miss this chance, why couldn't I defend this goal?’
“So they take a lot of pressure on their shoulders, but at the end the best thing is in these situations when you always look at the team, because we can solve this just as a team, not one single player can solve it for us, so we need everyone, and this is the message.”
“After the last international break it felt like a restart, late signings, first time training together, but we didn't get the results we expected and we wanted, so now it's to be consistent in what we want. Sometimes if you don't get the results, you ask about everything, and now it is okay to keep what is really good working and progress where we are not good enough.
“This is how we work, really very analytically, and also always trying to keep the mood high. It helps when we arrive in the morning and it's foggy, and when we go on the pitch it's sunny, this helps all of us, and this is what it needs to get the turnaround, not blaming each other. Okay, stick together, let's work hard, let's improve and then we will get the results.”
“I tried to switch off with the weekend off, but as I said, we are all human. I was in Austria, I visited my family, but sometimes they said ‘you are not really here’! So this is the fate of a football manager, that your thoughts, especially in these moments, are always about your team, what you can influence, but this is the same.
“Sometimes it's good to take a step back and not to over-analyse, as you said, and also in training, because this is always the question I ask myself: ‘how much input’? But it's not overthinking, because if you always have to think on the pitch, it makes you slow in decision-making, and to take good decisions, especially creative players.
“They need freedom, they need to feel well on the pitch, they need to feel well in their environment, and this is what we, also by analysing everything, need to create or keep this environment of feeling well, of feeling protected, and feeling that everybody can be himself, and that everybody can make a mistake. It's not to be scared that you make a mistake, because there will be mistakes, because it's football. Every player will make a mistake, but don't lose the confidence.
“This is the challenge we all have, but this week really gives me confidence again.”
“I think in my more than 10 years as a manager I never had the same squad in the next season, so you always have to replace players. You got new players due to injuries… it's just natural of football.
“I was asked this question last season: ‘how long it will take [to click]?’ and I said ‘I don't know’. It's the same at the moment, but I can promise that every single player is working really hard, everyone in the staff is working really hard, to get into a better shape and to be more consistent and to get the results – this is what I can promise.
“Of course we will give everything we have against Nottingham to get this win, but this doesn't mean if we have the win that we can sit back and enjoy the London sun, because then six days later Tottenham comes here, and then we go to Aston Villa in the Carabao Cup, and then we play Wolves away, so it's always be competitive, always be 100%.
“This is the challenge we are facing. This is the challenge every club is facing, and we do our best to improve step by step, game by game, and get the results we want.”
