Fran Escribá: 'Deportivo is a team on the rise and it will be tough to create chances”
The coach highlighted that the players are fine after a tough week
Fran Escribá, head assistant coach of Atlético de Madrid, was in charge of appearing before the media. Quique Sánchez Flores is suspended and won’t be able to sit on the bench to direct his players against Deportivo, and for this reason Escribá held the pre-game press conference. “The players are fine after a tough week. The team has turned the page. The work we did with the defence during the week didn’t differ from other weeks in any way. We never practice with a fixed starting line-up and we always mix things up. We watched video, just as we do other weeks, and analysed the mistakes that we’ve made. They were normal days,” he assured.
Atlético de Madrid will face Deportivo, a team that has been playing with five players in defence. Escribá explained that “we think that they will continue to play with that back line. If they do otherwise, we’d be surprised. Obviously we’ve worked on that facet of play during the week. Although I’ll repeat that our work in defence or attack hasn’t changed with respect to other weeks; it was the same as always.”
The member of the coaching staff tried to find an explanation for the poor run of results of the ‘rojiblanco’ squad in the last 10 days. “We’ve all reflected on those things that we've done poorly. Although logically I’m not going to comment on anything that was said in the dressing room. We all form part of the team, we realise that just a few days ago we were close to qualifying for the next round of the Europa League, and that we could have been in Champions spots with a win over Espanyol. Nevertheless, everything has changed now. We have to remain optimistic. The team showed many things last year. It was coming off a worse situation and was able to win a title and make it to another final. Now there is no reason to think that we can’t get over a hump. Just as we’ve strung together three consecutive losses, we can get the same number of wins on the trot to get the team in the place we want it to be,” he asserted.
Fran Escribá was categorical upon assuring that he doesn’t feel that “we are in our final moments; not at all. It doesn’t even pass through our heads, and we’re not considering it.”
In analysing the causes for which the team has been unable to earn points in recent weeks, Escribá said that “all of the managers in the world, when they hit a poor stretch, study everything, training sessions, meetings, habits, etc… We try to look for an explanation for the bad times. From the match against Levante you go with it simply being a bad game. That hurt us physically and mentally. From there, I think that all losses are different. It doesn’t have anything to do with the match against Espanyol, which we could have won. It was a match with chance mistakes. Something similar happened against Aris. We should have won because of the way we played and the chances we had. However, we ended up losing on two slip-ups. The match against Levante was a disaster. Those defeats don’t have a reason. They were isolated games that coincided during the same week.”
Fran Escribá admitted that Quique Sánchez Flores’ staff is only thinking about the match against Deportivo and hasn’t looked ahead to the clashes against Bayer Leverkusen and Málaga. “From outside of the club you can see things in one way, but we knew that the matches against Espanyol, Aris and Levante were going to be very difficult. If we though beyond Deportivo we’d be making a mistake. Deportivo is a team on the rise. They don’t create many chances, but it’s also true that it’s very tough to create scoring chances against them. We’re going to try to play a good game to give our fans something to cheer about. From there, we’ll think about the upcoming commitments.”
The ‘rojiblanco’ coach has confidence in his players and was even able to ensure that “the squad is prepared for anything that might happen. I understand that we’re negative news, but a few months ago we were positive news. Coming from wherever it may, how are they going to lose confidence? If we were coming off several negative years, it would be complicated. But the opposite is true. We were capable of fighting back from a poor streak and winning a title, which we hadn’t done in 15 years. We’re convinced that if we earn two good results in-a-row we’ll move up because of the quality and conviction of our players. We have a good group of good people. I believe that we have to stay calm, although we understand that there might be a certain amount of nerves, but the players are relaxed,” he finished.
Atlético de Madrid will face Deportivo, a team that has been playing with five players in defence. Escribá explained that “we think that they will continue to play with that back line. If they do otherwise, we’d be surprised. Obviously we’ve worked on that facet of play during the week. Although I’ll repeat that our work in defence or attack hasn’t changed with respect to other weeks; it was the same as always.”
The member of the coaching staff tried to find an explanation for the poor run of results of the ‘rojiblanco’ squad in the last 10 days. “We’ve all reflected on those things that we've done poorly. Although logically I’m not going to comment on anything that was said in the dressing room. We all form part of the team, we realise that just a few days ago we were close to qualifying for the next round of the Europa League, and that we could have been in Champions spots with a win over Espanyol. Nevertheless, everything has changed now. We have to remain optimistic. The team showed many things last year. It was coming off a worse situation and was able to win a title and make it to another final. Now there is no reason to think that we can’t get over a hump. Just as we’ve strung together three consecutive losses, we can get the same number of wins on the trot to get the team in the place we want it to be,” he asserted.
Fran Escribá was categorical upon assuring that he doesn’t feel that “we are in our final moments; not at all. It doesn’t even pass through our heads, and we’re not considering it.”
In analysing the causes for which the team has been unable to earn points in recent weeks, Escribá said that “all of the managers in the world, when they hit a poor stretch, study everything, training sessions, meetings, habits, etc… We try to look for an explanation for the bad times. From the match against Levante you go with it simply being a bad game. That hurt us physically and mentally. From there, I think that all losses are different. It doesn’t have anything to do with the match against Espanyol, which we could have won. It was a match with chance mistakes. Something similar happened against Aris. We should have won because of the way we played and the chances we had. However, we ended up losing on two slip-ups. The match against Levante was a disaster. Those defeats don’t have a reason. They were isolated games that coincided during the same week.”
Fran Escribá admitted that Quique Sánchez Flores’ staff is only thinking about the match against Deportivo and hasn’t looked ahead to the clashes against Bayer Leverkusen and Málaga. “From outside of the club you can see things in one way, but we knew that the matches against Espanyol, Aris and Levante were going to be very difficult. If we though beyond Deportivo we’d be making a mistake. Deportivo is a team on the rise. They don’t create many chances, but it’s also true that it’s very tough to create scoring chances against them. We’re going to try to play a good game to give our fans something to cheer about. From there, we’ll think about the upcoming commitments.”
The ‘rojiblanco’ coach has confidence in his players and was even able to ensure that “the squad is prepared for anything that might happen. I understand that we’re negative news, but a few months ago we were positive news. Coming from wherever it may, how are they going to lose confidence? If we were coming off several negative years, it would be complicated. But the opposite is true. We were capable of fighting back from a poor streak and winning a title, which we hadn’t done in 15 years. We’re convinced that if we earn two good results in-a-row we’ll move up because of the quality and conviction of our players. We have a good group of good people. I believe that we have to stay calm, although we understand that there might be a certain amount of nerves, but the players are relaxed,” he finished.