Thomas Frank is backing his players to bounce back from Monday's defeat at Manchester United when Southampton visit the Brentford Community Stadium later this afternoon. With three games left to play, beginning tomorrow, The Bees boss says nothing has changed in his or his players aim which is to win as many games, and finish as high as possible. Watch Thomas' Press Conference below.
Team News …
It’s one game too early for Ethan Pinnock and Sergi Canós. We hope both of them could be involved for Everton. Other than that, it’s the same squad as available for Manchester United.
Saman is out of the boot, in the gym and running. Frank Onyeka is also training again with physios. It’s still going to be tough [for him to play again this season].
Maintaining focus …
I really try to be as consistent as possible with the messages and I would be disappointed if the players were already in the holiday mood. I’m convinced that they still want to push and fight to get as many wins as possible in the last three games. I watch the players every day in training and look at the numbers, so I have no worries about them dropping off. We maybe didn’t perform to our best against Manchester United, and they performed very well, but our output was remarkable again. If we can replicate that again tomorrow, then hopefully we can get three points.
Our last Southampton clash …
I’m a big believer that you learn more when you lose than when we win. We learned a lot from that game; Southampton were better and won fair and square. I really hope and expect that we put a better performance in tomorrow and it will be an even game against a very good side. [Ralph Hasenhüttl] is a brilliant manager and they have done very well again this season.
Dealing with James Ward-Prowse …
We’ve prepared for it. I think right now he is maybe the best free-kick taker in the world. He’s scored nine goals with five assists this season which is remarkable for a midfielder. I understand why the top six are circling around him.
We need to be really good on defensive set-pieces and take the mistakes that we made against Manchester United out. Then I’m fairly confident that we will give very few chances away. I know that we will create opportunities and hopefully we will take them.
We have clear principles for how we defend set-pieces in terms of corners, wide free-kicks, and direct free-kicks. We can tweak it for different oppositions but it’s not like we go from having four zonal players to having six. We tweak it a tiny bit where we think there is a key area. It is just normal preparation for Southampton as other teams.
Ending on a high …
We want to end as high as possible. I think we should have had more points; if you look at expected goals and all that, plus our own analysis of the games, we should have had more points. I think we’ve learned and now we need to focus on the game tomorrow. We need to be aggressive, cool, and brave and bounce back with a top performance.