Thoughts on the performance?

Very happy. With the victory, with the clean sheet and with big parts of the game. It’s a really difficult opposition. When you are playing so many games you see that teams are winning by very small margins. We could have won by a bigger margin today. We didn’t. But I liked how we held our nerves to defend in the last few minutes and overall very happy.

Is the frustrating that you could have had more?

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More yes. We had some big openings in the second half when they were a little bit more stressed and a little bit more aggressive. The big header of Gabi as well one yard out. So we should have scored more. But it’s the consistency. We conceded nothing again. The defensive behaviours were again outstanding. That’s something that’s going to give us the chance to win games.

Has Saka had surgery?

He had a procedure. Everything went well, but unfortunately he will be out for many, many weeks.

Is there more positive news on Sterling?

Yes, the news with Raz I think is better. We have to see this week how he evolves. We probably expected the knee injury to take longer than it has evolved in the last few days. Hopefully that’s good news because we need him.

Did you see enough from Martinelli tonight on the right wing?

As I said the replacement of B is going to be the team. That unit in particular. Having minutes together and asking different things and doing that. There were moments where it flowed really well and moments where there is more we can do there to improve it and adapt to the quality of the individuals. I’m certain that we’re gonna do that.

Was this more satisfying for you than Palace?

In terms of how well we controlled the opposition 10 times because we conceded 14 or 15 shots against Palace and that’s not something that we normally do. Overall I think this one was much better yeah. But overall it’s about the goals and the beauty of it and entertaining people. One was probably better for them.

Can you give more of a timeline on Saka?

I said many weeks so I think it will be more than two months. I don’t know exactly how much longer. It will depend on how the scar tissue starts to heal, the first week or so, the mobility of that. Let’s see it’s very difficult to say.

How important is having a reliable defence without Saka at the other end?

Well it’s always important. Even with Bukayo we weren’t guaranteed to score three or four goals. We never rely on individuals scoring 25 or 30 goals and we have still managed to be competitive. We’re going to manage to do that.

What happened in the moments when the team replaced Bukayo that you liked?

That Gabi needs people around him. He needs to be always in the last line when the ball is on his side. He needs to have people close to him and relationships there because he’s very intuitive. If you isolate him too much he’s going to suffer, especially playing with his natural foot on the right. That’s the things that we can evolve and improve.