Has Benjamin Sesko started how you would have expected him to start having not played in the Premier League before. It seemed at Forest that Bruno got frustrated with him, he had a good chance when the ball came over [towards Bruno’s path and Benjamin shot instead]. Are you quite relaxed with his form at the moment?
“Yeah, I’m relaxed. He’s not relaxed. What I mean is that I understand how things are in football and he’s going to struggle. That is normal. He has no experience here, and then the first impact when everyone says that you are so good, you are the next big thing, and you hear about that with Sesko, and then you come to one club that is the hardest club. If you don’t perform every week, you are going to hear a lot of things from club legends, from pundits, from the media, and sometimes they are right. To have the ability to understand that is normal and still maintain your level of confidence is really hard for a young kid, especially for a young kid that is a control freak, wants to control everything, and he’s not going to control everything. So I know, and I say that when I start training with Ben, he has more potential than I was thinking. He’s going to struggle and we need to understand how he likes to play, [and] also to put in our ideas. So, [with] everything, I think I’m quite relaxed with that. He is going to be our striker for the long term. But he’s going to have these struggles and these bumps during the ride, and that is a normal thing in football.”
Gary Neville said Benjamin Sesko looks miles off it, what did you think of that and do you think players are affected by comments from former players?
“Of course, nobody likes to hear [that], but he struggled a little bit, and that is a fact. So, let’s embrace that. It’s not personal, it’s not nothing. That is what I try to explain to the players. That it is not personal. It’s an opinion that is going to change in three weeks. Everything that is true today, in three weeks, could be a lie. So, of course, it’s hard to hear, but my advice to Ben is you are going to get used [to it]. And then it’s going to be natural. It’s going to be like your Monday here. So that is part of the process and we are going to help him and we are going to protect Ben because he works really hard and we want to succeed. So he’s going to succeed.”
