Kiko Ramírez: “We will get back up as many times as we need to”

Kiko Ramírez met the press ahead of the match against Real Jaén, to be played this Saturday 12 September at 18:45 at the Pinilla Stadium on matchday three of Primera Federación. The rojillo coach described the week's work as one of “self-criticism”, starting with himself, “looking for ways to improve and to get even better so we can be more competitive”.

That review focused above all on individual tactics. Without belittling Real Murcia, “who have very good players and are a very big club”, Ramírez admitted that “we made them better”, because after analysing the goals “many of them can be avoided with different behaviour, and we have worked on it”. He read it as room to grow: “That is what coaches are for. Now it must not happen again”.

He spoke about the opponent with respect. Jaén are a side “who play very good football”, who “knew how to hold on to a result with two players fewer” against Huesca, who “come from a hard-fought promotion” and who are coached by an old acquaintance: “He was a team-mate of mine, we played together at Málaga; he knows the club very well and has three or four promotions with his Jaén”. A team “to be taken very seriously”, with “a very powerful attack”, good centre-backs who “thread very good passes” and a desire to keep the ball.

Against that, the coach is clear about the plan at home: “We are playing at home. Everything they want to do, we have to do: take the initiative, set the tempo and be intelligent in transition”. And he underlined the underlying goal: “Our big objective is to take as many points as possible from our home games. That is a final we have to play tomorrow, and that is where we have to make ourselves strong”.

Good news in the treatment room. “Practically everyone is back”, he explained, except for one player who “next week will start to be in the dressing room at least, doing individual work”. He did point out that those returning are “not at 100 %” in muscle condition and that it is not advisable for them to play ninety minutes “for fear of a relapse”. The difference from the Murcia game, he said, is that “when I look at the bench I will have more players”.

On Mario Sesé he wanted to be explicit: “I am very happy with Mario Sesé. He is not out of the team because he is playing badly, he is out because there is a team strategy”. He recalled the chance the forward had at the Nueva Condomina: “If he had scored, the game would have been different. On the next move they made it 2-0”. And he admitted that when preparing matches “sometimes it works and sometimes it backfires”.

Asked what the team needs to make Pinilla a fortress, he first called for support from the stands: “The first thing it needs is what we had in the first match: for people to come, to be with us. That is a weapon that has to be very much ours”. And then, consistency: that players who performed well for sixty minutes “are able to reach eighty or ninety”, and that with the substitutions “the level does not drop”. He pointed to the difference between the two halves against Real Madrid Castilla as the area to improve, and welcomed that there is now “more competitiveness” in training: “People are fighting for their place and that is good”.

His message to the fans who may have doubted after the defeat in Murcia was the most emphatic of the press conference: “I would tell them that we are going to get back up as many times as we need to. This is a fight in which sometimes you take a blow and they knock you down, but you have to get up. We have already got up, we are ready. Let's see if instead of taking hits, we can land some”.

He closed with praise for the dressing room and a confession: “I am the first one who is gutted after a defeat. In the morning my cereal doesn't sit well, and the only thing that fixes it is winning a match”. Even so, he called himself “privileged” to “have these lads who are going to give everything. You will see it”. He recalled that the calendar has given no respite — “we have had Real Madrid and Murcia, one is top and the other second” — and said he is convinced about what is coming: “I am very happy with the lads, they have worked very well and they are going to get better, absolutely convinced”.