Slaven Bilic has spoken in depth of life with Dimi Payet and how he has handled the player during the present campaign.
He explained that he’d spoken with the play maker during the week declaring: “We speak often. It wasn’t like, “Come to my office, we h ave to sit down, we have to talk about something in particular”. I wanted to share some ideas with him and that was it.
He had a very demanding season like everybody else last year and then went straight to the Euros.
After the Euros he had a break and it wasn’t ideal and it wasn’t like six weeks but he had three weeks off and then he got injured a bit.
He didn’t have a proper rest or pre-season but every player who played at the Euros and went towards the semi-finals or Final was in a similar position.
The schedule of the Premier League is one that you don’t have a winter break and you cannot give him two or three weeks off.
He is experienced enough and last week against Liverpool he had one extra day off when he was in the gym and he was on the massage table doing a different kind of training and that is the kind of thing you can give him to avoid the possibility of fatigue and overloading.
We have got to do that (to protect him) but it is not just Dimitri, we do that with other players as well when you feel they are tired and have to change their routine a bit.
It is a team sport but sometimes you have to treat individuals differently. It depends on how much they play or if they have any private issues. It is all part of the job of course.”