Oliver Glasner delivered an insight into the development of two players in his Crystal Palace squad.
Daichi Kamada has excelled in a midfield role next to Adam Wharton or Will Hughes. He had been with the Austrian at Eintracht Frankfurt, and over time, the coach learned how to get the best out of his technical skills. Above all, patience was required, and Yeremy Pino is on a similar journey.
“[Daichi] is a great guy. He's a little bit quiet. He's not the loudest speaker in the dressing room. But he's so professional and he's always available. He struggled at the beginning with the physicality of the Premier League like many others.
*“I had a talk with the Chairman and he said he's been involved in the Premier League for more than a decade and much longer than I have. He said we say: ‘it takes one year to adapt to the **Premier League*’, and now we expect him to adapt within one week or two weeks! We have to stay patient.
“This is the way we are working with our players, to support them as long as we see 100% effort in every single training, every single day to get all the support. And then, at the end, it's up to them.
“But for us, we always knew and we always believed in Daichi that he has the quality to be a dominant Premier League player, and he shows it.
“With Yéremy, again, if we always put him into the last line, where he has the centre-back in his back, he loses his strengths because he's not the most physical player. But with his intelligence and with his movement between the lines,. and also then, it was like Liverpool mirrored us.
“Then when he always stays in the same position, it's quite easy to get marked. And then we say, ‘OK, you are free. You don't always have to hold this position. But don't play like a centre-back or don't play like a full-back. So in these areas, you have freedom. Between the lines, you can overload one side, you can be wide. If they close the middle, go wide, create an overload in wide areas.
“If there are gaps, like there was in the second goal, for example, then move more inside, and that's the freedom we give them. But of course, we don't want him to drop behind our centre-backs because we need these players in these areas where they can score goals.
*“I think also we could see that he was sometimes struggling with the physicality of the Premier League. But like with Daichi, we support him because when you see how hard he was working at Liverpool, out of possession, how often he doubled up, ran back and did his job in an excellent way.”*