Glasner on Liverpool, Selhurst support and keeping focus

First-team

5 Aug 2024

Oliver Glasner says his Palace side will need ‘Selhurst at its best’ as he prepares to welcome Premier League leaders Liverpool to South London on Saturday afternoon.

The manager was addressing the media in his pre-match press conference – check out his key quotes below!

On facing Liverpool…

I think I'm one of the few managers who has a positive balance against Jürgen Klopp, because I just played once against him, and we had the win!

It was great win, but it's the past. I've had in my career great wins, but winning at Barcelona doesn't count tomorrow, winning at Anfield four or five months ago doesn't count tomorrow, so we have to be ready tomorrow, and we will be ready.

Liverpool are doing quite well. Fantastic players, new manager who is doing a fantastic job.

The squad has stayed together, nobody left, all the players look very hungry, very ambitious. I think it's the team with the most sprints in the game, most runs in behind, so they always threaten your defence.

But we also want to play forward, we want to score a goal, because if we don't score a goal, we can't win.

On working hard and teamwork…

I think that there is no button we can press, so it's hard work. But it was the same last week, it was in every club I was. It's hard work, nothing happens from itself.

I said I have confidence because I see the players working to get back into their best shape, and we are getting players back getting into the rhythm.

Yes, we have new signings, but Eddie Nketiah I think has played almost the same minutes in three or four weeks than he played all over the season with Arsenal.So we have to give him time, and we give him time because we are completely convinced of his quality, and this is the same with anybody else.

We will get our results. We have to play better over 95 or 100 minutes. This is what we know. We have parts in the game where we do it really well, but we have still parts where we don't do it well. And, for example, at Everton we lost it within 10 minutes, the game.

We have to be more consistent all over the entire game.

I have confidence in any single player in our squad and I think we can't listen to what the outside is thinking. We see them daily in the training, we see what fits together and I think it's really unfair to say one guy is responsible for a loss or for a win.

We didn't praise the guy who was the scorer when we won the game because it was always a teamwork, I mention it very often. We have to come back to the situation where the team is number one, team is first and this is what will bring us the success.

On keeping focus…

Never lose the focus. The two goals [at Everton] are after set plays and we had a very good focus on the set plays itself, we defended it very well, but in the second phase and the second balls we lost a little bit of focus and we got punished.

We had I think 60% more possession, we played 200 passes more, but in the final third we played the same amount of passes. So we played it, let's say, in the land of nowhere.

Yes, we want to prepare the situations, but then, when we go into the final third, we have to be more direct, we need more numbers in the opposite box, we need to have this aggression to score a goal.

We had many situations that could be dangerous, but weren't dangerous, because we didn't get the ball into the box, we didn't make the run, and then you're always behind the defender instead of in front of the defender.

This is what we worked the whole week and the players did really well.

On the supporters…

Absolutely, we will need our fans. As I said once, Selhurst at its best, and we will need it tomorrow. We will need the support.

There will be moments in the game where we will struggle, where we have to fight, where we have to suffer, run, because they play so quick, they're very variable, they build up with a back four, with a back three, five in the offence, six in the offence, four in the offence, a lot of movement, and so there will be moments of suffering.

In these situations, it's like in life: if you suffer, you need somebody who supports you. Then there will be moments where we will get our chances, and then it's up to us to be efficient and take the chances.

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