Carver: We will not change our style of play
On Friday, 6 February, Lechia will open the round in front of their home crowd. The White-and-Greens will face Cracovia. Ahead of Friday’s match, head coach John Carver spoke to the media.
In the last three league matches, Lechia have scored 13 goals. The coach was asked whether this is still an area for improvement:
Of course. We are creating chances, which is good, but we need to score more goals. I would be very happy if we scored even more! We have also made progress in defence – we defended our penalty area very well and cleared the ball effectively.
A few words about the upcoming opponent:
Cracovia have changed their system and style of play. They have lost a few players, but they still have very good footballers. I watched their match against Termalica and we have a very difficult game ahead of us. They have very strong attacking players. We will do everything we can to make it difficult for them.
Tomasz Neugebauer will not be able to play on Friday, but Rifet Kapić will be available:
It’s incredible because we didn’t plan for players to drop out one by one like this. Sometimes coaches tend to “manipulate” situations to have an extra player available, but in our case it’s purely coincidental.
The weather is not making things easier for the players. What is the current condition of the pitch:
I saw the pitch at the beginning of the week and it looked good. I haven’t checked it in the last few days, so we’ll find out tomorrow once the covers are removed. We have under-soil heating, so it should be fine. It’s been a difficult week because of the weather, but every team in the Ekstraklasa has the same problem. I must also point out that the people at T29 are doing a great job. It’s not perfect, but we have to deal with it. We also need to manage some of our players – some of them cannot train on artificial turf. Today we have a session on artificial turf, so a few players will do something different. We have to adapt.
Lechia’s plan for the match:
We will not change our style of play. We want to play the way we have been playing. We are aware of how Cracovia play and how they have played.