Pochettino on... West Ham United

  • by Staff Writer
  • Saturday, 22nd February 2014

They may well "play on the floor", but they also shipped three goals today. Saints boss Mauricio Pochettino does his best to explain this afternoon's defeat - via his interpretor...

Mauricio: I know you're not a huge fan of statistics but you did had 25 shots today. Can you believe you lost the match?

I do like statistics today! To justify the defeat today. I'm very disappointed with the defeat, I felt we deserved to get something out of the game. We had full control of the game to go 1-0 ahead and it's clear their equaliser came from an offside position. That was unlucky for us.

The team struggled to recover at 2-1, that made everything quite difficult for us. I felt that in the second half we created many good chances and were unlucky not to get back to 2-2. which would have changed the game. Overall I thought we were quite unlucky with the refereeing decisions and were unlucky in the sense that we didn't actually score more goals.

It was the first game back for Mark Clattenburg, a lot had been made of that - do you feel he didn't have the greatest of games - and his assistants as well?

The refereeing decisions actually influenced the game today. We were unlucky in that sense. We don't want to make anything more out of it. It seems that the stars are not with us whenever Mr Clattenburg referees for us.

Defensively you looked a bit sloppy at times. What did you make of that?

I thought we were unlucky for the first goal so we can leave that one to one side, because it shouldn't have counted. For the second goal there were three of our players who were unable to clear the ball, it was just one of those moments where there was indecision in the box.

Then we were looking for the equaliser and they came out strong on a counter attack. We know of Cole and Nolan's strength, they're very strong players. but I thought the team worked very well today. We knew it was going to be a tough game against very good opposition. and I think today we lacked exactly what they had - effectiveness.

Were you surprised the Premier League allowed Mark Clattenburg to referee a Southampton game so soon after everything that happened?

No. It's clear that we're disappointed but I think that it's a good thing that he's refereeing for us because we want to try to normalise the situation. We don't want to make a bid deal out of it or keep on rehashing the situation again. We want to help referees as much as we can because we know that their job is quite hard and try to make things easier for them so that they can make the best decisions in every single game for us and every other team.

England assistant Ray Lewington was here today, do you think he'd have been impressed by your English players? Do you expect them to get called up for the game with Denmark?

I don't know, after a defeat it's quite hard to analyse individually the performance of every single individual player but it's clear tht Roy Hodgson and his assistants have been to many of our games and that they know our players quite well already.

You had [Dejan] Lovren on the bench today; how long is it before he'll be able to play?

We'll see. We need to assess his fitness. Also, Gaston [Ramirez] came on the pitch today. They're both fully recovered, but they will have to fight to get their places back in the team.

Thank you.



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