Boss Bilic: ‘I was trying to be respectful’
Slaven Bilic has ‘big time’ respect for Andorra minnows FC Lusitans and has refuted claims of disrespecting the club.
Lusitans coach Xavi Roura’s well reported comments have been sadly received byu Bilic, David Gold and the club and the new manager retorted that the decision was made because he had been splitting his time between two groups of players rather than disrespecting both opponent and competition on Thursday.
‘I respect Terry (Westley). I respect West Ham so I wanted to show respect to Terry as he coached this team and he took them for pre-season in Ireland and knew them all well.
‘I didn’t want to be disrespectful to him. Also the majority of the first team is in Ireland so that was behind our decision to do it like this.’
‘I will now go back to Ireland on Friday to meet back up with the first-team group,’ he added.
‘To be honest I don’t really like this kind of situation with one half of the team in Ireland and one half in England but it will be that way until after we play our second leg in Andorra next week.’