Oliver Glasner is looking forward to his first away game as Crystal Palace manager, when the Eagles make the short trip north to face Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday afternoon (15:00 GMT).
Read on below for this thoughts on the early changes he has made to the Eagles' training sessions; the challenges of facing Tottenham Hotspur away, including what he learned from a well-publicised recent visit; and the prospect of 'blue cards' in professional football...
For Glasner's first pre-match team news update ahead of Saturday's game, please click here.
Of course we have to take care of the players, that they are ready for the game. The most important fitness level is Saturday, and it will be tomorrow at Tottenham.
As I’ve said, we have different days we are training.
The team was used to being off on Sunday and on Wednesday. We trained on Sunday – recovery, of course, for the starters – and we gave them off Monday, so we have had now four days in a row. We always look at what they did before and what we want to improve, where we want to increase.
Again, this is just the beginning of the cooperation from all of us. Again, the players did it very well the whole week, but it's nothing. I didn't find something new that nobody knows or that nobody does, but of course, we have our ideas and we try to implement it into the team.
It was a very intense game, I remember. We had a great start with Frankfurt, 1-0, very fast. But then we could see the quality of Tottenham and they scored three goals. But in the end it was close again after a2-3, and one player out from us.
Of course I know the terrible record, but you know what happens in the past, it must not always have to be in the future.
We go there and we prepare as well as we can. We analyse them. I think we know what are the opportunities for us, but then it's important to show it in the stadium, to show it on the pitch.
But Tottenham are a very good team, who also have a different way of playing. I know them with [Antonio] Conte as manager, now it’s [Ange] Postecoglou, who does a great job there. It is more offensive playing and defending very high, a very aggressive way of playing.
We will have troubles to find solutions, but if we find the spaces, you have a lot of space. Wolves showed it two weeks ago, so we go there with confidence and we go there to take the three points.
Maybe it's time after 27 years!
I think the most similarities [are] when I go on vacation, they say: ‘where are you from?’ I say: ‘from Austria.’ They say: ‘oh, Australia!’ So maybe this is our home country, it's very similar!
But I don't know him. I have a lot of respect. I think we coached one [mutual] player, I had an Australian player in Linz with me and he played under Postecoglou for the national team of Australia, so at that time we spoke sometimes about him.
I don't know him personally, but this will change on Saturday.
The most important thing that I could enjoy this week more than the week before was now we start to get a daily routine: to come in the morning, speak about football, speak with the players, speak about what we want to do in training, to analyse our game against Burnley.
The first three days was, I don't know, 90% not football and 10% football, so maybe this week it was 50-50 and the next weeks will be better. It will be more football because this is what I like, to talk about football, to talk with the players, what they need, so this I enjoyed most in this week.
For me, everything we do in training is what we need in the game and we cannot demand something from the players in the game when we never did it in training. Everything we do in the training sessions, from Tuesday to Friday and on Sunday, is what we expect the players to do.
We want to give them confidence to support them, that they maybe have the same situations in the game and they know what to do. And so if we want to play very intense, we have to train very intense.
This is what we did and so it's nothing to do with the past, it's just the picture of how we want to play, how we want the players to play on the pitch, this is how we train. So maybe this is different, but it has nothing to do with the past.
Maybe one of the biggest advantages of London is you can see many Premier League games here, because many clubs are from London.
And yes, if we don't have a game and there is an opponent playing at home and it's not so far and we were playing them maybe the next two, three weeks, I would go to the stadium because I'm a football fan and I like to be in the stadium and the Tottenham stadium is a very nice one. That was the reason.
Of course, I’d watched them playing before because I like the way they are playing, the offensive style and very aggressive. I think Tottenham is the team after Liverpool, or next to Liverpool, with the highest pressing situations in their game, so I like the way they play.
But it's always the same: every strength also has its weaknesses and I could see what they do really well, and I also could see where maybe they are vulnerable, and this is what we’ll try to find tomorrow.
[Some of my coaches] were with me and we enjoyed the game. Of course, they were not here just for vacation, and they gave us maybe some more information about Tottenham, but also the analysts, they prepared for the game pretty well again.
I think we know it, but it's always on the screen, in the pre-match sessions, in the analysts, so we win every game, but it's important to show it then on Saturday afternoon.
Every training session, every day, every game gives us information about the players, about where we are, where we want to go, and I think I mentioned it many times.
You can learn from every game, you can learn from a win, you can learn from a defeat. And, of course, you can always learn from good teams because you need these challenges.
When you are always in your comfort zone, maybe you don't increase your level. I think it's impossible to win against Tottenham playing in our comfort zone, so we will have to reach the edge of our possibilities at the moment, and then we will see.
If it's enough then it's good, we are in a good way. Maybe it's not enough, then we know okay, we have to improve here, we have to improve there, and this gives a lot of useful information.
Of course there are some differences, but you know we have many experienced players and I don't know, Joel Ward has been playing for 10-15 years, different managers, different ways of playing. And Joachim Andersen, I don't know, it's his fifth, sixth, seventh club, so different managers, different countries, different cultures, he’s played in different ways.
So the players are open, they know it. It's just to adapt it and to give them some triggers where they have to take care, what they have to do, but that's no problem.
I conceded one when I was nine, I think. We had this in Austria in the youth, but I don't have much information about the blue card at the moment. Too many questions. For example, if there is a mass confrontation in the game, sometimes it's yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, so then do we continue playing eight against eight?
I don't know what the rules will be, but I hope they will say them before we can see the first blue card on the pitch.
[They are very important. It's the same. We're all new, new team, new country, but they know most of the things that happened.
First of all, they are great guys, not just great coaches. From the beginning, from the first day, we had a good mood in our coaching staff.
[They have] very important information about what happened before, about the players, and also not to give too much input from the beginning. We discuss it every day and I'm very pleased that they are part of our coaching staff.
