“It’s a balance of everything. If the team is trying and I understand they are trying but cannot do it, I am not ruthless. I don’t like to be like that just to be, or to show strength. I just understand and I have the feeling [of] what I’m seeing. You can have two similar situations but the context is completely different. I’m trying to understand everything in my team to help them to be better. But when I feel it’s something that is going to harm the team, I’m quite ruthless because I know for sure we are not going to win with certain behaviours. So, I’m trying to make a balance of everything and just help the team.”
Come the end of the season, whatever you do for the remaining two or three months, you’re going to have to show a ruthless side at the end of the season because it does need changes, by your own admission. Which does mean, for some of them, it’s going to be: ‘Sorry mate, on your bike’…“We can talk about that in the end [of the season] because it’s hard… we have a lot of games still to play and talk about and but that is clear. And I think that is not a difficult situation because everybody understands that in football, sometimes you stay, sometimes you have to move on. If you know how to explain it, for me, it is easy. If I know how to explain, I can do it and I like to do it because I want to be clear. When I was a player also, because I like to use all that experience. When you are honest with someone, in the beginning it is hard, but they will understand. So, I’m quite honest with my players and they already know that sometimes they have to move on at the end of the season.”
