Breaking News... July Fourth Press Conference...




Last night's CL QF 1st leg result: July Fourth 0-1 Equimetal SAD

Q: You're obviously disappointed with the result last night - What went wrong?
A: I think its our style of play that we are normally used to and our opponents did a good job of stopping us playing our football and frustrated us the whole evening, but they were not entirely dominant as our defence did a good job of keeping them out from scoring more goals, there goal came from a free-kick and as we know with free-kicks sometimes when they are on target you cannot do anything about those.

Q: How do you rate your chances of progression?
A: I would say they are now slight favourites to qualify now being at home for the second leg and with a 1-0 lead, but we are a strong team and last season we performed well twice in 2nd legs when the questions were asked. I think the ball is in their court and the pressure will be on them to try and hold on to this advantage. We have 2 league games to test a few systems out before the second leg since the league looks like its been won by us now and look for a potiential solution, if we can play well in the second leg I have no doubts we can qualify, I think it is their tie to lose now and that may push the chances of progression back to 50-50.

Q: Injuries have been frequent all season how have you been handling all this?
A: Yes, Unfortunately injuries are a big part of the game and we can't avoid them, we have had to let many first team players sit out injuries through the first half of the season we would of normally liked to have healed, but if its a 'key player' that gets injured then thats with the case with Michu last night.

Q: You have sold Crawford last night and will there be many more transfers in/out the club to be made?
A: Crawford would of been sold at the end of the season anyways but it means we lose a player from our squad depth because he was a spare striker if we needed him to the end of the season, you can never tell with injuries/suspensions. But he got a 9 day injury which means the rest of the season so we thought it was best to let him go there and then. There will be plenty of more players to be sold at the end of this season or beginning of next season and we will need at least 4 or 5 new players at the beginning of next season to strengthen our first team next season and NOT a few players we ended up picking up just for reserves because there was no real good players to buy at the beginning of this season.

Q: How have you managed to cope this season in general because of the lack of good players to buy at the start of the season?
A: I think we have done OK, I dubbed the season being a potential "season from hell" at the beginning when we saw we had tough League and CL draws coupled up with no good reinforcements available to our first choice XI and went on with it. We thought Takis would give us a real challenge for the league title this season and Mehmet gave us a surprise when they started 7-0-0 in the league, but we got through a tough start with 4 draws occuring in the first 10 games of the season and both Takis and Mehmet losing form, it now looks like we have came through to win the league with flying colours. Still work has to be done though to make certain of our 17th league title. Champions League though is different, It's a knockout competition once past the group stage and in all honesty being at L18 any team can beat anyone no matter if your around 10 quality stronger or weaker than the opposition, any team can pull a good performance to throw you out the competition at any time just like our opponents did last night. We are "still in" but will need a fantastic performance from our team to make the semi-finals.