I saw my philosophy

– Before the match, you said that you would like if not to win but at least to see your philosophy and game plan. Did you see it? (TribunaUA)
– Yes, I saw this character again, but also a great will to win and achieve a result. I also told my players that I am very proud of them, of how they proved themselves and what they showed. You can imagine how difficult it is to play against such an incredible team – in my opinion, very strong, maybe one of the best in Europe. And playing away, we knew that the opponents will be act very powerfully in the first half, with a lot of movement and individual qualities, but we also defended pretty well and had our moments. To answer your question, yes, I saw my philosophy again, especially in the second half.

– It must have hurt a bit: to lose in such a way, due to an own goal by Riznyk, who was probably the best player of the match? (Zorya Londonsk)
– Yes, of course, it is a pity because we had opportunities to score an equaliser at the end. I always say it is better to lose with your philosophy than lose without it. So we lost, we have to congratulate the opponent because, again, this is an incredible team. And Riznyk also was outstanding, but I think all my players deserve compliments for the way we played, showed ourselves and worked. Because, as you understand, we are not pushed to defend low in the domestic league – actually, we never defend low. So it is a tremendous challenge when you are playing in the Champions League against an opponent of that quality, when you are pushed back to defend in the low block. We had the right strategy, it worked pretty well, the guys implemented it very well. Because we are a team that mostly has approximately 70-75 percent in ball possession in our league. And it is not easy to mentally switch to the opposite, but we achieved that. And this is a great success of my team.

– We saw a moment in the final minutes that was saved by Raya. How close do you think it was? How do you like the save? (Reuters)
– It was a fantastic save. To be honest, I thought it was going to be a goal because the shot was great as well, but of course he is a quality goalkeeper, and you need to be a little bit lucky with the ball, maybe for it to bounce and surprise him, something like that. At that moment I was really hoping, thinking: this is it, this is the goal. But…

– You showed quite a bit of pressure in the final 20 minutes of the match. Do you think you might have deserved the equaliser? (Reuters)
– Well, with the way we played in the second half, I think we deserved it for sure. We were not always lucky or good in finishing to create more chances, but there were several moments. I would say it was very close and we chased that equaliser until the end of the game. This is what I asked from my team and how I made the substitutions: I put all our attacking forces in the game. I could not replace Riznyk because we need a goalkeeper, but I would even replace him to score a goal. But you also have to deal with the quality of the opponent, playing Arsenal away. They are an amazing team, like I said, so they can also defend well. So we did our best and, one more time, I am proud of my team and our performance.

– It has been a difficult start to the league phase of course, but you still have more chances to get points. Based on what you have seen so far, including now, do you think you have a good chance to at least win back the lost points? Have you seen things that encourage you to believe that you can do it? (The Guardian)
– Yes, of course. But we also had our moments in the previous two matches. We missed one penalty, had some chances. I try to explain to people that it is not easy to create a lot of chances at the Champions League level, it is very difficult because you are facing great opponents. We played against Atalanta, the Europa League winner, and even then we had moments – at 2-0 we lost a hundred percent chance to come back. Did we play our top matches then? No, because we were not able to play because we had to deal with the quality of the opponent. When you play against two Italian clubs competing in the Champions League, one of them is the Europa League winner, you also have to be a bit realistic. We never lose our philosophy, we keep playing. Do we create a lot of chances? No, but we create enough to get a result. It was the same story tonight, maybe even better in the second half. And to be honest, we knew that there are certain opponents in the Champions League against whom you have a real chance to get a result, and there are those where you think: it is going to be very difficult. Arsenal is one of them. Atalanta, maybe too. I feel a little sorry for the first match we played in difficult conditions: there was a heavy rain during the match against Bologna, where we deserved to win. But it is a matter of perception. You do not win and then people think it was a bad game. But we did well, well enough to win that match. So altogether, we play football to win, we play football well enough to win. If you look realistically, you cannot say that Shakhtar will come to London and beat Arsenal. But we tried, we did our best. That is why I am very proud of my players and the way we played.

– Before the match, you said that you must play a perfect game to win. What exactly went wrong? (Megogo TV)
– First of all, we like the build-up – building attacks from deep, getting players into good positions. We did not manage it very well in the first half: maybe there were two or three good opportunities to create something, but we did not do enough, in my opinion. We changed something during the first half of the match to get better positioning and progress better, but it did not work out the way we wanted. As for the defence, everything was pretty good, because we were very organised and worked hard in defence. But of course a team of such a quality as Arsenal will always create chances. I was not completely satisfied with our game on the ball in the first half, unlike the second half.

– You spoke with Andrii Shevchenko before the match. If it is not a secret, what did you discuss? (Megogo TV)
– No, it is not a secret. But I will not tell you. It is a joke. I like to talk to people who love football. For his part, he did a lot to improve Ukrainian football in general. Such work takes a lot of time. I, a foreign coach, also try to contribute to Ukrainian football for the development of the game and players. So we talked about it, about the growth of individual players. It was a great conversation. It was very nice to hear words of support from him before the match.

– Do you think the current performance can be considered a good preparation for the weekend game against Dynamo Kyiv? Maybe you have a bit of an advantage because you come back a day earlier than Dynamo? (Zorya Londonsk)
– This is always an interesting question, because you never know in advance. Of course, when you play a good game like we did now, it gives you confidence and energy. So it is good preparation for sure. Derby is always a special game. We have already played against them two times. People also think it is a decisive game: if they win, they will have a nine-point lead, if we win, we will only have three. It really is a very important game, but it is not yet decisive – it is still too early. They also need to get into this rhythm. We will travel back now, which is about 20 hours on the road, and we will need two days for recovery. It will be an interesting game.