Pelle: ” I think we can beat Liverpool”
As ever, there are no injury excuses although he believes the transfer speculation of January – presumably surrounding Marko Arnautovic in particular – helped nothing but he won’t go hunting for excuses in any circumstances.
Instead, he has been making it quite clear to players and fans that at this level of the game anything is possible regardless of where a team’s form appears to be and that Liverpool are just another team to be beaten.
It’s a refreshing approach designed to take out the anxiety which the squad may be feeling from whatever factors have been affecting them over recent times.
The message quite simply is “bring on Liverpool.” We are ready and won’t be going into the game with any other attitude than winning on our mind.
Speaking at his pre-match presser he said: “I don’t know if they are nervous or not, but I think we can beat Liverpool on Monday night because every team in the Premier League can beat another one, look at Newcastle beating Manchester City.
I remember the last race I had with Liverpool for the title in 2014, City were six points behind them but with three games in hand, so we had a lot of pressure and won the title.
I repeat, we want to beat Liveprool. If we want to beat Liverpool we need to play a good game, defend well, as they have top players and we need to play with a high pace as we have done against a lot of teams at home so we have all the chances to do it again.
After we beat Arsenal, we must improve if we want to continue being a competitive team. I see the players, they are mindful again of our project and I think we will improve.
Football changes in every game, there are lots of reasons why you win or lose a game. We lost the first four games and if you saw the picture in that moment, we then played three very difficult games and won two of them and drew one.
Two or three balls can change the game at any one moment so the only way to do it is to be concentrated in what we are doing.”