Rafa: We are nearly there

Rafa believes we are close to becoming the team he desires. He is happy that we are better than last season and says that there are only a few more problems to be ironed out:

He said: "People have been talking about crisis but you can see that the team is stronger than last season.
"We can score goals, we can control the game, we can create chances and we've had clean sheet. As a manager, I only need to correct some mistakes.
"As I always say, after a Sunday there is a Monday. In football, you must be calm, you must analyse the situation with calmness and afterwards say 'okay, I need to do this and this'.
"We could say that this week has been really important but I hope to see a lot more wins over the season."

Once again Rafa has backed Peter Crouch after his important contribution in winning the decisive penalty:
"I think it was Harry, Zenden and Crouch who changed the game.
"Crouch gives to us many things - he can keep the ball in the air, he can give the players around him more space. He can give to us something that the other players can't. It's important to have more than one option.
"He has confidence. You can only score if you continue trying and trying. If you give up, then you won't. But the most important thing is the team winning the game."

The win after a midweek Champions League game is something that we need to replicate if we are to achieve the consistency that Rafa is after:

"It's another statistic that we can change and it will be important for our confidence for the future," the Spaniard said. "We want to play a lot of Champions League games this year and we need to win after them."

It's a shame that we now have an International break just as we are putting a decent run together. Hopefully though we can continue where we have left off in a couple of weeks.

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