“There was the thrashing at Old Trafford. The whole world buried us.
“But you don’t lose your football like that.
“It can happen that a small grain of sand jams the engine and after that you start to doubt your own qualities, the club, the coach and everything else. We needed to sort that out. Everyone got down to doing just that, the coach, the club.”
“The group was not giving enough for the club and we realised that.
“We got down to work and we said the things we needed to say. After that, one win, two wins, confidence returns and things follow on from that. The new players were immersed in the group and so on.”
“For sure we also had Robin van Persie. It is his season.
“I’m really happy for him. It’s the first time that injuries left him alone and we saw the difference.
“I try not to kick him a lot in training, I go soft with him. We try to be reasonable when you have such a long season.”
“I don’t want to have regrets.
“If we have a nightmarish start to the season it’s because we deserved it. Frankly I want to come out of this season having matured. The season I went through was tough but full of emotions. Tottenham at our place…
“We had pressure, we were five points behind Chelsea and everyone was saying ‘the Champions League is finished, Tottenham will win’.
“But we beat them 5-2 and we put together seven wins. Maybe we didn’t dominate all our matches but mentally we had something more.
“At Liverpool for example we always believed and Robin gave us the win at the end of the match.”
“The big regret is maybe the match at Milan that passed us by. A goal would have helped us.
“A club like Arsenal — its place is in the top four. The players realised that. Not a lot of people were with us in this comeback but we did it.”
