Hi, Jürgen, well done tonight,
first of all I suppose we can start with Thiago's goal;
technique, pureness of strike, what more can you say about it?
Not much!
Let me say, we had bigger chances than that in the game,
but we scored with that situation because it was just an incredible goal, obviously.
Whoever sees Thiago in training knows he has the technique to do it,
but even with this technique it doesn't happen constantly
that he can fire such a thunderball.
It was good timing, to be honest. Great goal.
The whole game, we needed in some moments some luck,
because of a few new things we did today.
They came through and had big chances,
especially counter-attacking on the left side, and were very tricky to defend.
They had their moments, but they didn't score -
we scored twice and controlled the game in the second half much better.
So, I'm really pleased about the performance.
Is the biggest positive the rhythm of the side?
Thiago seems to have rhythm about him and we saw another goal from Mo.
You've changed players tonight, brought some back from injury,
and we also saw Tyler Morton growing into the game,
so is it all about maintaining that rhythm?
Absolutely, that was the plan. We had a lot of things to think about: who came from injury,
who played a lot of games, who needed to get rested and all these kind of things.
For this game, nobody felt like he needed a rest because we had Saturday-Wednesday,
the boys are really used to that and they are all completely fine.
It is just then the amount of games coming up,
we need them all really in kind of a rhythm
and that's why the line-up really made sense tonight.
It worked out really well, because nobody got injured
and stuff like this, so everything is good.
Hi, Jürgen. I think Taki played on the right in the last 20 minutes or so,
was it an indication of you not really being satisfied with how he played in the middle?
I was completely happy with the way Taki played.
We just had to see the game out with bringing on players
and then we have to move it a bit around,
and Taki then ended up on the right wing.
But that's only a position where you defend.
In our system, you are not there as a right winger.
You play in the half-space, you drop, you do a lot of stuff
and you are never a right winger, like Mo is not a right winger when he's playing there.
He's in moments a right winger but in other moments he's a striker,
in other moments he's a centre-forward, all these kind of things.
So, no, I was very happy with Taki.
Hi, Jürgen. During your last pre-match presser
you regarded AFCON as a little tournament,
I think it's an insult to the players, the fans, the people and the continent.
Stop, stop, it's all good, I didn't mean it like that.
That was what you said, I listened to the presser.
OK, come on, you say what you want to say and then I'll start what I want to say.
Tell me what you want to say.
I'm done, I think you owe the continent an apology.
It was not even close, that was not even the idea in my mind
that I want to talk about AFCON as a little tournament,
or about the continent of Africa as a little continent, not at all.
What I meant is, because people said -
and if you watch the press conference, you could have understood it in the right way,
because they said there's no international break anymore until March,
and I said, no, there's a little tournament in January,
and I didn't mean it's little, I just meant there's still a tournament,
it's ironic. It's a big one, we lose our best players to AFCON.
If you were talking about the Euros, you wouldn't say a little tournament.
Sorry, I'm not a native speaker, but if you want to understand me wrong,
you can do that all the time.
I know that I never would think like this,
I don't understand why you thought like this, but that's really not OK.
Because I would never do that,
it was not my intention, but you made something of it,
that's not so cool, to be 100 per cent honest.
I think we've clarified it was an ironic statement, Chris Bascombe to finish.
Jürgen, you've said many times you wanted your side to be one
that others hated to play against, more than any other team -
do you think you've really got to that stage again?
You've made so many changes tonight but Porto couldn't really land a punch.
We could have lost this game tonight.
We gave chances away where they could have scored,
and that would have made the game obviously really difficult,
so we should not make too much of it. We were lucky in moments.
But, yes, we have our moments
where we are really not cool to play against, that's true.
And I didn't expect that tonight really, because we changed decisive things,
to be honest, and you don't expect then the boys
immediately get like a ruthless pressing machine or whatever.
You just know we have to grow into the game,
and that's what happened actually - that's what I'm happy about.
But there's so many games coming up and it's always you judge one game -
that's the game today -
but actually I think we have to play even better on Saturday against Southampton,
because they are a proper pressing machine and they go really for it.
We have to make sure that we are ready for that.
This game tonight helped obviously because we could rest players,
we could give rhythm to other players, we could bring players back after injury,
all these kind of things.
So, a lot of good things happened tonight but I'm not sure we should make the mistake now
to say we are this or that again.
What we are or what we were, we will know after the season.
But in the moment, we are in a good moment
and we should try everything to keep that going.